Sessions

Characters

• Ahaucatl a fainthearted and filthy animist, born in the sign of the Dwarf¹.
• Ahuatzi a merchant with glorious hair who craves knowledge. Born in the sign of the Mallard.
• Axatl a hairy but haughty knight, born in the sign of the Wolf-man.
• Oxlahun a delicate bard of rare talent and elusive renown, born under the sign of the Halfling.

Session 0

The group forms at a meeting with a fixer for the Ontei-Sûlét clan. Apparently the village of Tomexl has not turned in its yearly harvest of narcotic Ormuzd berries, and someone has to go and remind them of their responsibilities. They are paid 14 silver each up front with a promise of another 14 each on completion and the possibility of a bonus if all goes well.

With this agreed, the group sets out on the old high-road towards the village, but are ambushed by a strange wounded bear. After a brief fight, they recover some intact Etherglass shards from the bear's face and proceed on their journey.

Session 1 & 2

The group arrived at the village of "the Copper Tower", and found that the villagers seemed to be in the grip of a strange lethargy. After some investigation, they found the entrance to an old ruin, and while exploring it, they discovered that an ancient evil seemed to have convinced the villagers to waylay travelers and grind them down to paste. The paste was fed into a stone sarcophagus where some sort of creature seemed to be trapped. They fought several undead minions before finally clearing out the ruin. As they began experimenting with pouring water into the sarcophagus, it reacted violently by spewing streams of viscous purple goo. The players were spooked by this development, and the palpable feeling of evil emanating from the sarcophagus, and beat a hasty retreat.

When they emerged, they were met by the entire village's population led by the High Servant. In a face off they cowed the villagers to not attack, and the High Servant seemed to have some sort of possessed fit of rage before dying. In the aftermath the villagers agreed to go back to harvesting Ormuzd berries.

Back in Ortuxl, the group were debriefed by the Ontei-Sûlét fixer, and received healthy bonus of gold for their job, and a promise of discretion. They also handed over the golden key they found in the ruin, but not before commissioning a copy in secret.

The group went their separate ways, but agreed to keep in touch. With the notable exception of Oxlahun, they all kept their promise of secrecy ...

Session 3 - 5

Some time after coming back from Tomexl, Ahaucatl was approached by an earlier associate, Tenoch the Scaly, a thief of some renown. Tenoch had heard Oxlahun's stories and taken note of the purple goo. He let slip that he and his crew had observed a trickle of purple goo leaking from a cracked wall in the tunnels close to The Hive.

The group packed their things and went to investigate. They found the cracked wall and broke it down, to expose a walled-off complex that looked to be from before the Shattering.

As they explored the complex, they initially followed the trickle of goo, coming across strange machinery along the way. Eventually they found out that the goo was leaking in from one of the basements in the city above. Crawling up a vent, Oxlahun made a shocking discovery. In a small locked room below the brewer district, he found the very sarcophagus that they had seen below the copper tower. It became clear that the Ontei-Sûlét clan had moved the sarcophagus and were experimenting with it. Based on the stains on the sarcophagus, they had been feeding it blood. The party decided to retreat to their lodgings and return with flammable materials to light a fire around the sarcophagus and roast its inhabitant.

They returned the following day and set about their plan, but as they lit the fire a veritable tsunami of purple slime was ejected from the sarcophagus, flooding the basement and the chamber below where the party was waiting. They were all swept along and were soon drowning in the magical slime.

Instead of dying, they were transported to a strange realm on a dark plain with a lightning-wreathed tower in the distance. Through exploration they discovered that they had entered the dreamlands prison of the sarcophagus' owner, the Overseer Itzyoyotl. As they explored the strange place they were hunted by Itzyoyotl, enraged at their intrusion and meddling with her plans in Tomexl. While she hunted them, a strange visitor arrived as well, and while they never saw him, they were able to listen in on parts of his conversation with Itzyoyotl. He mocked her, and made it clear that she was drawing the attention of others like him, presumably Overseers as well.

Itzyoyotl was in a near-apoplectic rage after the visitor left, and she finally cornered the party in the dreamlands. Just as she was about to rip them limb from limb, they were saved as Tenoch and his thieves found them in the real world and washed the purple goo off them.

Session 6-8

Together with the thieves, the party explored more of the complex and came to the realization that the whole place was a form of factory that reduced drugged and hypnotized people to their liquified components and in turn produced Etherglass from that. They now had a machine that could seemingly produce the very substance that had not been seen since before the Shattering.

They returned to their lodgings to regroup, only to be met with a gang of armed brewers from the Ontei-Sûlét clan. The brewers politely requested that the party come with them to explain the recent events—the persistent rumors caused by Oxlahun's loose talk (and singing), and their possible relation to the recent devastating explosion in the brewery caused by their meddling with the sarcophagus.

The affair turned ugly, and the party drew their weapons and dispatched the clan brewers in a very public and messy way. Afterwards they fled into the tunnels where they sought out their Etherglass machine and hid it, before deciding to explore the lower parts of the Etherglass "factory". An area that had until recently been blocked off by some sort of acidic slime creature.

Session 9

After fleeing the scene of the fight in the Upper Hive, the characters returned to the exposed ruin of their earlier adventures. Here they discovered that the slime creature had moved into the upper area to feast on the corpses in the prison. The adventurers exploited this to explore the lower area. Here they found a strange central tunnel that seemed to be an underground concourse lined with abandoned shops. They also found the first real-world example of a Beetle Knight like the ones in the dream of the Copper Tower, but it was long dead and just an empty carapace. It did, however, have a strange ceremonial spear with a jade head.

Throughout the tunnels they heard a constant thumping sound, like the sound of a giant heart. Following the noise they found a large circular room surrounded by a moat of sorts. The entire floor of the room was covered in a massive summoning labyrinth with lines of gem dust, below a strange "forest" of hanging chains. It soon became clear that some sort of demon was trapped in the room, hiding among the chains.

The adventurers parlayed with the demon, and it revealed that it had been summoned by an overseer and that said overseer was still present in the city above! The party promised to return and free the demon if its information proved true.

As they looked around the rest of the tunnels, they came upon a hall where the exit was seemingly collapsed by a great explosion long ago. There were signs of battle in the form of skeletons, arrows, and spell scorches on the walls and floor. Most interesting, however, were the faded murals on the walls, seemingly displaying Overseers creating the world with magic, and a banner with the strange motto: "Make for us a garden, that we may harvest it."

As the party were moving to explore the other end of the concourse, they came upon another large open hall, with several doors exiting it. On the far wall was a large silvery door with a massive engraving of spiral, flanked by two large stone statues looking like stylized Beetle Knights.

As they were discussing how to proceed, they were interrupted by a sound from the stairs to the upper area, where a group of two Red Priests flanked by a handful of torchbearers had just entered.

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1. See the House Rules "Kin" paragraph. ↩