c02s05e01 - Disaster and Discovery day 221 - over Eastern Thrane, heading northwest along Hellrock Ridge The animated church was just one instance. there are Thranish gunships peppering mobilized constructs all along the eastern ridge and further westward into Thrane midlands. As the sky grew dark during the travel, large weapon fire could be seen lancing though the dusk's fading light; warmek-fused structures lumbering hapazzardly across the terrain while the gunships of the Silver Flame peppered the massive constructs with return fire-- the occasional ship or building exploding from fire or intense force damage, lighting up the dimming sky like an off-shore lighthouse. The underlit red glow of the Dark Sun filtered dimly along the edge of Hellrock's horizon.. the ether uncharacteristically cluttered with massive thrane cliff face and decimated hellrock blown clear of their core mass during the upheaving collision of the summoned landmass bridging between Thrane and Darguun. An interesting feature of the Hellrock is how descending down the northern face was a sprawling fortress complex built along the SIDE, as though the block of land was tumbled sideways during the push upward-- what should have been a hell-forged seige front was ineffectively facing the descending cliffs of Thrane's eastern border. Further; the crushing grind of the rock's rising had pulverized the front edge of the omplex, leaving tattered expanses of fatigued castle structures, defense points and turret bunkers hanging on their sides, dangling above oblivion, like a war- forged cascade of coral bristing with damaged weapons targeting nothing but scrap and debris as far down as the eye could see. Aruldusk was Thrane's second strongst military point on the eastern edge before the Hellrock decimated the entire city, and nearly half the fleet had been stationed there during the ascending attack. Wreckage of crumbled ships, defense towers, administration buildings, plus various private sector homes and businesses had been knocked free of their foundations and lay adrift among crumbled hellrock and similarly displaced warmek strongholds, craft, mek gear and docents hang astray in the churned ether... suspended like floating still deep within a still pond. The team roped Princess Triceratops and pushed her off ship to see if everything will hang adrift if unattended... Yes. about 500 feet down she loses all momentum, and fails miserably to swim her way through the aetheric suspension. The air was thick and full of static charge akin to Deep Ether miles below surface.. the Hellrock had brought up a large concentration of Ether with it, and it was palpable. With hours invested, the team found a mostly-intact Thrane destroyer. with some time and effort the team was able to mend the ship's hull, fix the chained air helms and deliver the ship to FlameKeep with 20 crew still alive. The remaining crew were mostly maintennce and engineers that had been servicing the ship during the dissaster.. the majority of the crew had used survival rafts to leave the ship weeks ago.. 40ish had remained strandeed. the combined efforts of the 40 stranded on the ship, they worked tirelessly to repair the ship-- drifting scrap would weaken and break recently braced supports, gales of glass liike shards would shred the flanks of the ship-- they hoped to get the craft operational before running out of supplies, but then a swarm of bat demons swarmed the ship only a few days ago, killing half the remaining crew. only 20 remained alive, terrified to attract more violence while they were stranded. Thranish ships are so overworked between rescuing refugees in shattered cities or fighting the buildings that came to life after being destroyed--- The only rescue teams heading out into the debris fields are for-profit vultures and pirates. Many ships had stranded crew that could be taken along with anything valuable in tact on neglected military-grade state of the art crafts. There was a fortune in that mess for anyone willing to delve into the thick dust deposits and unstable fields of hellrock The team picked up the beacon of Honest Harry's sending stone-- some sort of stranded ship crew found it and was begging the team to rescue them. They were keeping the stone hidden and communicating thwith the team each hour unil they could get a fix on the stone before it went silent.. What they found was a warmek citadel crawling with mechanic warforged effecting repairs, reinforcing armor points and lashing other nearby seige structures with chains binding the structures to freefloat rock,. bristling with turrets. The sending stone signature was emitting from the command tower of the new floatfort. the Paladins came in low to avoid most turret attcks from the underside of the floating hellrocks. jump jetting through a torn entrance, the turrets rn out of targets just as the two warriors found plenty of warmec to scrap, alongside mantis-like demons that exploded in acidic sludge when killed.. Top demon of the place was an acidic demon very akin to the puddle demon the team encountered imprisoned inevitable prison sphere. "invincible" puddle of acidic putridness. He was great. At the top of the towe the team found a docent control panel with weapnon guidance, damaged sensor arrays, a control node to operate the 40+ animated suits acting as mechanics and repair rigs... and a communication node that was damaged, emitting a signature nearly identical to Honest Harry's and disruptive to contacting the captured shiip crew. With the panel shut down, and a full 27 docents liberated from the facility, the signal of HHarry's sending stone came clear, and they tracked the signal down to a hold in a splinted pirate ship, wedged between two hellrocks. the pirate crew left aboard were serrated to hash by a cloud of obsidian shards.. the team found the dragonfly ship being shredded by a simlilar obsidian shard tornado that the team pulled some navigation shenanigans and jumped clear of the deadly weather with the stranded crew in tow. Princess and Frank got into another fight after Princess refused to call for Frank's help with the obsidian shards started to attack the ship. ATTACk the ship. Princess could sense evil spirits in the wind controlling the bladed whirlwind. Day 222 Offshore, north of Hellrock Enough of that bullshit. The team had far too many refugees on the ship and Bartertown was 15 hours away. The stranded crew happily accepted citizenship at Bartertown and everyone got a good long rest. Dhraksis took up his newest hobby; international scrying. every hour of ritual he gets 10 minutes of sight seeing anywhere he's familiar with. New Cyre was lovely enough from afar, so he decided to take a closer look... Day 223 - Bartertown; Fury Temple After a too-long scrying session, the ranger had a feel for new cyre-- it had been trashed by the earthwquakes and hurricanes alo at ground zero. Those that survived were cut off, and the darguun clansmen roaming the plains east of the mountains had taken the recent fiendpolen infestation, earthquakes and hurricanes to be a sign from their pagan gods to kick some human ass-- so the clans that survived the weather mobilized and are now sieging the under-manned walls of New Cyre. The Darguun were seeking vengeance for their people, and the paladins knew where that rage belonged. We end the session with the team gearing up to fly back to new cyre on a holy mission to convert the clans of Darguun to the ways of Fury on a crusade through new Cyre straight into hell. It's gonna be beautiful. <end of session> day 223 - Bartertown 1/3 to level 19 loot acquired ------------- 27 docents loot lost ------------- giant pearl farm