Going Hunting for Brain

Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #57

Session CVIX -- Still the 19th of Wind

Shilukar has a weapon that will kill an Elder Brain?!?

"Would you mind giving it to us?" asks Diethan of our dark elf guest, "since we're going to try to kill it and all?"

Shilukar reminds us that this Elder Brain has become so powerful from steeping in the godsblood of a dead Galchutt deep underground. The Galchutt, though, were a paranoid lot and wanted a means to neutralize a resulting Vested. So they created a device that will divest someone of godlike aspects it has absorbed. "I happen to have that chaositech item."

He agrees to let us use the weapon in exchange for information about how we got such accurate information about the future. Oh, great, he knows about the dresden door. What a thought: Shilukar with a key to traveling through time. But he's got us over a barrel -- he knows we need his divestiture device and that we have no time to waste (we have to get into the Steam Foundry before Emperor Segaci's visit in two days).

But when Barbatos lets slip something about our item "propelling you into the future" we notice something odd: for the first time in our acquaintance, Shilukar seems surprised, as though he did not think the item we'd be loaning him was the dresden door at all, but merely something that allowed us to look into the future. Diethan seems to think that the dark elf won't live long enough to actually use the door. But Shilukar made Barbatos submit to some sort of loyalty spell to make sure we'd stick to our end of the deal.

"As a show of good faith," the dark elf says, "after this business is concluded, I might be able to help you find your friend Tharn." Then he tells us he'll send over the weapon tomorrow and bids us good night.

Speaking with the Emperor

20th of Wind

We do some shopping for magical aids to help us in our efforts to infiltrate the Steam Foundry.

Later, a half-orc shows up with a package from Shilukar. The weapon looks like a long spike with a tip made of glass. Thrust into the Elder Brain, it will drain away its saturated god-power.

In the evening we travel to the Foundry in disguise. We bluff our way inside and head over to the materials storehouse. Our glibness potions help us bluff our way through the secret door under guard. "Word to the wise," the guard tells us conspiratorially, "that larger fire giant is a little unruly. Keep your eye on him." Gulp.

We pass into a manufactury where the Shuul create their secret equipment, such as automatons and flying dragonfly constructs. We head down a hall, past Savane's office to a door emitting a crackling noise. Behind it is a room full of the cutting edge of technology -- much of the machineworks here I can't even recognize. We bluff our way in again, posing as security inspectors for the Emperor's visit. By the sound of things, he's already here! We head to the metal door at the end, which has an opening for the aelectrical key. We open it and head through to a lift. So far, so good.

As we begin to descend, we hear a soft buzzing sound and our hair stands on end. We descend a few hundred feet to another door with an opening for the aelectrical key. It opens to us and we come face to face with some sort of clockwork scorpion. Everyone in the antechamber seems surprised to see our door open. Beyond them is a large room bustling with people including the Emperor Segaci Fellisti and a Tarsisan wizard called Endendam. (Word on the street was that Segaci wasn't supposed to be here yet!)

Barbatos manages to bluff us past the guard and scorpion by claiming to have a confidential report to deliver to Savane. The guard seems a little incredulous but lets us pass. Ahead of us are three one-eyed green creatures who shriek and point upon seeing us. They're called true-eyes (they can see through everything from magic to solid matter), and they've blown our cover.

"Endendam, protect the Emperor!" Barbatos shouts. "They want to enslave him to an Elder Brain!" Sir Feruch and Calista echo these sentiments.

"Who are these people?" bellows the Emperor. "What are they talking about?" When the Shuul security head declares us to be assassins (thanks, Diethan, for hurling that chaositech anti-technology bomb), the Shuul knights attack us. "They're chaos cultists!" cry out the guards with their useless guns.

The Emperor's men think we're crazy when we urge them to stop the investiture ceremony. Clearly, talk is overrated. As if all the other enemies in here weren't enough, Endendam summons a Huge fire elemental to block us. The two fire giants (on loan from the Brotherhood of Redemption?) try to stop us as well.

Barbatos tries once more to appeal to Segaci to withdraw to safety with all his men (and elementals). The Emperor tries to get us to quit fighting, but, doggone it, those fire giants keep attacking me! While Barbatos continues to warn the Emperor of the mind flayer danger, the Shuul security chief accuses the wizard of masterminding all the recent attacks on the Shuul. But our friend argues a pretty good case. It sounds as though the Emperor might believe him. But then Segaci says, "It sounds as though you and your friends know far too much."

Oh, no! He's been in on it all along! Sure enough, Sir Feruch is detecting evil all over the place (and strangely, it's not from the "redeemed" fire giants).

The Emperor's monk guardian attacks Barbatos. The Shuul security chief seems confused, but tries to subdue him too (as much for past sins against the Shuul as anything). The fight begins anew. While the rest of us are duking it out against bodyguards, constructs, and fire giants, Barbatos manages to charm the Emperor (I can't even imagine how illegal that is!). Under this spell, Segaci confides that he has planned all along to allow the Elder Brain to take control, so that he can enjoy complete control of the entire Empire through it. (He's deluded enough to think that he would control the brain, and not the other way around.) But before we can go any further, Endendam the wizard teleports away with Segaci.

The fire elemental and all the guardians get to stay here with us. While the guardians confer as to what to do next, the fire elemental decides for them. "BURRRNNNN!!!" it cries, no longer controlled by the absent Endendam. At the same time, the Shuul warriors guarding the access to the Great Drill room spring into action. While Feruch and I are busy with them, Diethan manages to command the loyalty of the fire elemental thanks to the fire ring he got back in Kaelist. There's a stroke of luck. (Of course, Diethan won't let the elemental go now that our foes are gone; this disturbs me.)

In the aftermath, we can tell that the Emperor's guardians still think we're absolutely nuts. We're not going to be able to convert them to our cause, so Diethan lets them go (no one can get back in because we have one of the aelectrical keys and the security chief has the only other one). Then we dispel the sphere enclosing the security guy, take his key, and lock him up in the elevator shaft till we're done. (Man, he really hates us. Some of the names he calls us...)

With that done, we're able to take a better look around the place. A large crane commands the back of the chamber; with a chain that dangles down into a large hole. The Drill Room must be down there. The crane is simple enough to operate, and I lower everyone down to a much deeper level some five hundred feet below.

The Drill Room

We emerge in an immense split-leveled chamber full of pipes, pistons, steam conduits, and machinery crackling with energy. An aelectrical fence of sorts separates us from the lower part of the chamber. A drill platform in that lower area rises eighty feet to the ceiling; an entranced Savane stands at the top. With every beat of the great pistons, the drill digs a little deeper, and pulsing violet energy erupts from the hole beneath the drill. Savane's body shudders with each pulse. Dwarves on foot and riding boars guard the place, along with Shuul knights and other familiar figures. "You should not be here!" shouts a dwarf. "Kill them!"

We seem to be doing well against the dwarves and boars, but then two stone giants appear at the far end of the room, prodding before them a strange four-armed creature with a sideways mouth.

I send one of the boars running off with the magic of the beastblade; it fries itself trying to run through the aelectrical fence. I can't detect a way to disengage the fence from this side, but harming the posts seems to do some good. By the time we're through, the giants and the other monsters are ready and waiting for us. Diethan gives us good cover by sending a madness bomb into the thick of our foes, then creating a pyrotechnics effect that blinds many of them.

The fire elemental is fighting brilliantly, but the giant and four-armed creature are taking their toll on it. I race down to the lower level of the chamber and come up behind the four-armed creature. As the stone giant dies under silent sound attacks from Calista, I deliver a final blow to the horrid, acid-covered monstrosity. To my horror, I sense its corrosive fluids are eating away at my Charad-crafted starsword! I'm able to quickly wipe it off with a gloved hand, burning myself badly, but thank Teun I did not lose the legacy of my heritage,

As a bulette enters the fray, Diethan makes good use of his magic arrows, and Barbatos lobs fireballs with great efficacy. But then one of the Shuul knights reveals itself to be a mind flayer in disguise! It attempts to mind control half our group, but it fails. The Cobbled Man races up to it and bashes it in the head, felling it in a single gruesome blow. Then a hasted Feruch takes out the bulette, bashing it right into a piston-filled crevasse.

A Shuul mage -- whom we learn is Cintric, Sallam's former master -- gets off a lightning bolt at us, but in its final salvo the fire elemental crushes him just before disappearing. I take the slavemaster's monocle as a token for Sallam, to show that the litorian has been avenged.

As the last orc flees back into the cavern, we're free to address the problem of the enormous derrick and Savane, who still stands atop the drilling platform in a trance, bathed in pulsing purple light. With her ring of telekinesis, Calista knocks Savane right off the platform and into the piston-filled crevasse that has already made an ugly end of three foes so far tonight.
After removing healing pills and other useful items from the bodies of the fallen, we investigate some access hatches that lead down to maintenance shafts. Perhaps these would be good places to plant explosives if we need to put an end to this drill. The drill shaft itself is very narrow, but we think the machine is drawing the energy up.

After much debate we decide that we can't do anything until the pulsing energy stops flowing up the shaft. So we plant the chaos bomb with two chaos cubes in the maintenance accessway and set the timer.

Then we race back to the lift to get to safety. We're almost all the way back up again when we hear the explosion below us and feel everything shake. I guess it worked. But what will we find when we return down there...?

Session CVX -- Still the 20th of Wind

After the Explosion

Dust covers everything we see as we descend the lift again to the Drill Room. The destruction of this room is surprising: great cracks rend the floor and walls all over both levels; in two different areas, steam hisses from pipes. The aelectrical fence is down now (but the posts are shooting chaotic sparks of energy in all directions), and the drill derrick has collapsed. There's a big billow of steam right below us as we clamber down into the wreckage.

Newly arrived from the caverns, we see some automatons, the orc who fled previously, and a dreaded mind flayer. The sparking energy all over gives the place a strange, dim illumination. From across the room, our foes fire a huge cannon over at the platform.

Amid the gunfire, Barbatos hits our foes with a couple fireballs and Diethan uses his ring to create a circular wall of fire around them. The mind flayer manages to escape and teleport away (to blast Barbatos at closer range), but the others get themselves good and charred getting through that ring.

A wild cannonball manages to catch Feruch and bathe him in steam from a punctured pipe. Diethan takes out one of the combat constructs with his magical arrows while our orc foe assails Barbatos with gunfire from a hand cannon. Enchanted with flight thanks to Calista, I fly-charge over to the orc and deliver a mighty blow; Calista grabs onto my cloak and comes along for the ride, hammering him with spellpower. Between the two of us, we drop him.

The flayer pops back into the battle again and stuns Diethan with a mind blast; a moment later, he does the same to Barbatos and the Cobbled Man. Meanwhile, following a nice swipe from the paladin's molten longsword, the enormous automaton runs over Feruch. Calista puts a big hole in the thing with her sonic spells and Feruch regains his feet and pummels it. Amid the smoke, a hatch opens at the top of the thing, and an orc emerges and shoots at the paladin.

Just then, I spy the mind flayer about to lunch on Barbatos. Calista sends some wicked blasts of air at it and manages to blow it up a moment before it would have eaten the wizard's brain.

After taking a few moments to recover, we move past the wreckage and enter the caverns. The passage slopes downward a bit and is getting damper the farther we go. One cave here seems to be a horrid barracks of some kind: empty. As we emerge into a larger cave, we see a huge patch of natural black crystal dominating the place. Barbatos has heard of a type of black crystal you can use to teleport from one underground patch of the stuff to another -- perhaps that's what this is. Whatever the case, Sir Feruch can tell that the crystal is evil, and it gets worse toward to the center of the patch.

Calista makes me invisible (so perhaps I can get close enough to the Elder Brain to stab it with our chaositech shard) and we head into the room. Immediately, horrid shambling piles of undead creatures move toward us from the corners of the room. These must be the amalgam creatures we heard about from those poor adventurers who encountered the flayers underground. We charge at these miserable guardians, and they spray us with a horrific spew of undead tissue. But we scatter their bony pieces in a whirlwind of attacks. Feruch really seems to be in his element here.

With the guardians gone, we're able to step into the black crystals and are immediately transported into another cavern. We pass through a short hallway and come upon a number of mind flayers, all mutated in strange ways: One looks like a hovering insect, and one looks like a bulked-up warrior. In the center of the room, a huge mass quivers, its hundreds of tentacles vibrating. It's seeping with weird-looking fluids, and a shaft leads up from it into the ceiling. The whole place smells wretched, and piles of skulls (each with a hole in it) spill out of every corner.

The Elder Brain

I fly inside and plunge the chaositech glass spike deep into the Elder Brain mass. The gold metallic cylinder flares with energy and seems to draw power out of the brain, which looks somewhat diminished and quite stunned by the attack.

Barbatos tries to web up the insect-flayer, but the others hit us with lightning bolts and mind blasts. Sir Feruch smites the muscled flayer and Calista grapples magically with one of the others. Two more stabs into the Elder Brain pulls all the godsblood from it into the chaositech spike. (Oh, like we're really giving that back to Shilukar full of godsblood!) The brain is still alive, but it's still stunned, its tentacles quivering impotently.

The mage-flayer manages to fell Barbatos while I dice up the Elder Brain and Feruch cuts apart the insect-flayer. Diethan and the Cobbled Man drop the muscled flayer, though the Cobbled Man winds up stunned in the process. Then Diethan races over and goes mano a mano with the mage-flayer, besting him without suffering a single strike. But I'm not so lucky -- the Elder Brain comes around and manages to stun me. I drop the godsblood-invested glass spike right into the gooey mass of its body, and the foul creature pulls me in after it. Feruch races over and begins hacking at the thing, and the rest of us throw everything we've got at it. But Feruch, in a valiant final strike, deals the Elder Brain a mighty blow and slays it, saving me from certain brain-sucking. I rise up out of the mass of brain tissue, coated head to toe in ichor but intact, praise Teun.

We gather up the possessions of our fallen foes (what a huge cache of gems!) and gratefully teleport out of there. Barbatos takes a sample of the Elder Brain along as proof of our victory over this awful nemesis.

Only slightly less difficult than defeating the brain will be making sure Shilukar doesn't get his spike back brimming with Galchutt godsblood.

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Print Shops and Dragonscales We have had a good month at the shop, Archinemus tells us. That's good news -- maybe we can get started on building on an addition. I'd love to have some space to use as a workshop. The more I learn about the crafting of machines, the more I enjoy tinkering on my own.	Strange Allies As we search the bodies of the fallen, we are horrified at the demonic flesh etchings of the red-cloaked wizard. He was a follower of Demogorgon, just as the letter we found mentioned. We are going to have to figure out how to divide up the loot between us and our harr "allies."
The Legacy at Last! Our foes all slain here in the Halls of Cordaris, we emerge into a broad chamber lit from below with bluish illumination. A wide ledge hugs the walls; the center of the room is a vast pit. There is a light mist swirling around a gigantic statue of a blue angel. The statue is so large, the walls of the room bump out to accommodate her outstretched wings. Surrounding the edges of the room are more orcs, siege engines, whitish humanoid forms, and the naga we were warned about. The whitish, shimmering figures are absorbing energy from the statue, gaining solidity as they do. The naga directs the other creatures against us....	The Orcs of Cordaris We notice some strange things on the bodies of the slain orcs down in the Halls of Cordaris. For instance, one fallen orc carried a coil of rope fused together with a bag, all made of glass. Another was wearing some sort of stiff blue sandpaper-pants, and a third carried a pouch filled with mysterious and smelly grey goo. Could all this be evidence of the Chaos Well at work?
Full Circle It's good to be home! While Seanus walks Archinemus through the books for the shop (and from the expression on the sibeccai's face, they're not in good shape), the rest of us head over to Castle Shard to get down to the bottom of what we learned in Ar-Nampur: that someone named Nicodemus was after the Nemesis Stone, the purple shard central to Castle Shard's power.	Compiled Ptolus Campaign Journal 2 Your narrator, Benris Hu-Charad, is a young giant woman who was found as a baby by adventurers twenty years ago, abandoned in a level of the Dungeon. Her rescuers left her with the Delver’s Guild, whose chief librarian adopted her. Giants being nonexistent in Ptolus, everyone—including Benris herself—has always considered her a human girl, though rather large boned. The only personal item found with her was a bronze brooch bearing the cryptic word “Hu-Charad.” These days she works at the Delver’s Guild and has just embarked with new friends on her own life of adventure....
Cast of Characters Get to know the player characters in my new Ptolus campaign!	Compiled Ptolus Campaign Journal 1 Ptolus is the name of a city with ancient origins and a convoluted past. It's also the name of the campaign that I have set there.