28th of Growth
We’re on our way out of the Shuul underground enclave with our litorian friends, newly rescued from that awful Prajdall laboratory. But first we still have to locate Shim, our skulk friend. Still dressed as a Shuul agent, Diethan attempts to bluff our way past the first batch of guards we see. It only works for a minute, though, then the battle is on! We dispatch a Shuul knight and a boar and its rider, then pick the lock into the central castle while being harassed by a clockwork dragonfly and rider.
Inside, a couple dwarves defend the main castle level. There is another capacitor in this level, like the ones we saw (and destroyed) in the Generator Room. But it is also a big magnet, as we discover to our chagrin. A dwarf flips a lever, and Tharn slams into the magnet. Calista, Diethan, and I slowly get pulled into it as well. Being unarmored, the litorians remain fairly unaffected, and Mowran is able to get in there and flip the lever off again.
We head upstairs, seeking the cell that holds Shim. A captive dwarf confirms that the “shadowman” is here. Upstairs we find a horrid machine with a human corpse strapped to it. Cables run from the poor fellow to the magnet/capacitor that reaches up through the ceiling from the lower level. We see poor Shim unconscious hanging from manacles chained to the wall, and on the steps, Nos lies unconscious, too.
A nine-foot-tall black-gloved and masked figure in a long grey coat stands next to him menacingly, watching us enter. Could this be an iron angel? Tharn smells the same greasy, metallic odor that he smelled back in the shop when an invisible bodyguard entered with Nerlene Camus. “All intruders into my sanctum die!” the figure says.
We charge in, and our foe summons four blade-skinned monsters to aid him. They can shoot knives from their bodies as projectiles! I’ve never seen anything like these things, which I later learn are called bladelings. The iron angel has two hand cannons and can shoot two targets at once! His blood runs like quicksilver under our assault, but we take heavy casualties at the same time.
And then another one appears as though summoned — it looks just like the one we’re fighting! Calista stabs him with a silent scream, and when his head explodes we learn that the iron angel was in fact not wearing a mask as it first appeared: The metallic veneer was his own flesh. The second iron angel doesn’t seem as tough as the previous one, but its blows seem made to hurt the humans in our group. When we finally bring him down, he just fades away.
We take down the unconscious Shim and try to heal him and Nos, but they don’t wake up. I take the hand cannons from the first iron angel—each one has only one round in it, because he was able to reload from ammo in his arm. The body has started to shrivel already. This is like no other creature I’ve seen before. He’s all desiccated and lumpy and bizarre looking. But I do like his long leather coat.
Still the 28th of Growth
Our exit strategy is not fancy: Run for it toward the elevator. Let’s see how that works.
We burst out of the central castle, the litorians bringing up the rear while carrying the two skulks. We confront some Shuul agents outside the door and lay them low (the hand cannon from the iron angel serves us well—it’s got anti-human ammunition). But more of them are waiting for us on the bridge. Barbatos creates a magical image of the iron angel that diverts some of the Shuul. A fighter-construct jumps into the battle and attacks Barris, one of the rescued litorians. The construct, a guard, a dwarf, and a Shuul knight and halfling we’ve fought before battle us fiercely, but with the litorians’ help, we win through, even under constant cannonfire.
We emerge onto the last bridge before the tunnel that leads back to the elevator room. A guard astride a mechanical dragonfly aims a searchlight at us and cries out a warning. We can’t take too much more of this armed resistance—the cannonfire has wounded most of the litorians, and we’re almost out of spells. We race up a long staircase and back into the room with the pool, where some workers have just finished disabling the elevator. Archinemus takes out another construct by shooting a blast of lightning from his rod. How long has he been able to do that?! We hear him murmur under his breath something about “Destor,” the lightning lord. Then Tharn and Archinemus compel the worker to repair the elevator he just disabled.
“Wait a minute!” Archinemus shouts as the worker gets the elevator operational again. “I need to go back to the temple of Destor. There is something I must do there that’s very important. If we achieve it, great rewards will be ours—perhaps even a divine wish.” We’re not sure how much of this is Archinemus and how much is the lightning creature that went into the rod he carries, but we assure our friend that we will go there with him after we see the skulks and the litorians to safety. He agrees, and we head up the elevator back into the welcome starlight.
The platform stops at the level of the cobblestone street and the surface magically merges in appearance with its surroundings. We have emerged in the southern part of Midtown. No one is near, as it seems to be roughly midnight.
“Ah, the stars!” sighs one of the litorians. “Even here in this accursed city, they look sweet.”
And with that, we head for the Mane and a welcome rest. The litorians thank us for saving their lives and their honor, and Tharn and his people begin to make plans to urge the litorians here at the Mane to leave the city. We decide to stay here for the time being. Diethan takes a good look at the unconscious skulks and thinks they suffer from a magical or supernatural effect that will wear off in time. Meanwhile, we want to look through the papers that we took from Feegus’ office, seeking evidence of his lunacy to show the rest of the Shuul. We want to make it clear to them that we have no further argument with them—our conflict with them stops with Feegus.
But more immediately, on the morrow we plan to accompany Archinemus back to the temple of Destor—and whatever awaits us there.
