You find yourself next to a hole plunging into the earth, several bronze ladders set around the edge. Colonists climb down in a steady stream as gargoyles keep careful watch, spears arcing with electricity.
[4]
A few of them slip and fall to their deaths with sickening crunches below. One of the ladders even falls down crushing several colonists.
[-10 petty criminals]
The cabal reaches the bottom with little incident, and then only Jadesea is left up above.
"Watch out below you ants!"With that, the massive golem jumps down, earth cracking beneath his feet as he lands, the entire cavern trembling.
What follows is a bizarre journey through pitch-black twisting tunnels and turning caves, the ladders needing to be used several more times to get down smooth shafts that seemed to have been melted straight through the rock. You're not sure how Jadesea is managing to keep track of where you're going, but he seems sure enough of himself.
As the hours crawl by, you begin to feel a fragrant buzzing at the edge of you mage senses (mage senses are totally a thing, shut up), like embalmed nails being dragged across a mirrored blackboard.
[19] Regardless of your mystical detection nothing of note happens. It seems Jadesea actually knows what's he's doing, wonder of wonders.
In addition, the mages can't help but notice that sometimes the ground shifts beneath their feet as they walk, almost as if space was...
"Well here finally here mob! Our destination is through this final pit! Sadly, our ladders aren't long enough to reach the other end, even if we tied them all together! So, you'll have to jump! A leap of faith if you will! Remember that we could have just executed you if we wanted, so I'm not intending to kill you all here! In you go then!"[6]
[12]
Needless to say, the colonists are not at all convinced by Jadesea's little peptalk and begin to back away from the shaft as quickly as they can. The gargoyles however, seem to have anticipated this, and the air hangs thick with the tang of lightning, several colonists fried. As Jadesea begins to literally push colonists into the pit with his body, the rest realize they have little choice, and jump in hurriedly, before they get squished by the damned golem.
[-17 rebellious farmers]
And then there's only the mages left. This is crazy. But Jadesea is staring at you happily, clearly enjoying this far too much. You have only moments to decide on a course of action. What do you do?
"Calm down, fire lady. Keep the heat for where we are heading."
Begin meditating to attract spirits
[15]
You trip over a rock as you follow the crowd.
d100?
Begin carving some runes into a stick for a basic Dowsing Rod to locate places and things of magical interest.
((D20. That rock was mildly significant.))
[8]
You try to carve runes, but they're easy to mess up if you do them while moving, and the fact that you're only source of illumination is flickering torches doesn't really help. You consider getting closer to the fire elemental to use her as a lightsource, but you worry that she might flip out again.
((So I decided to pause the cinematic here so players can interact with it a little, so actual expedition reveal is next update not this one))
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Topic: Penal Mage Colony (7/7): Turn 0, Turtles all the way down. (Read 6623 times)