Session 11 covered 30 Coldrise and the morning of the Vigil of Remembrance, 1714 PSF. The party finished surveying the old foundries beneath Argentum and ate at the Dancing Sword, where they met its owner, Dorian Draken, and his sword. The next morning they went down into the sealed vaults beneath the Silver Archives. There they found abandoned dwarven homes, graffiti and a journal from a fire in the foundries, and a hidden workshop guarded by two stone constructs. Luma kept a pistol and a control rod from the workshop, though the work order forbade taking anything.
Synopsis
Leaving the Foundries
After the fight with the Living Everfire it was around noon on 30 Coldrise.1 Luma decided to spend two more hours finishing her map of the four foundry vaults, go up for dinner, and leave the second section of vaults for the next day.2 “You’re the boss,” said Temerity.3 Hazel offered the others lunch, a handful of loose pumpkin seeds from her pocket.4
Luma’s survey covered exactly the four vault chambers, so the cavern, the hole and the collapsed passage lay outside it.5 Either whoever set up the survey knew the passage beyond could not be reached, or it was a coincidence.6 Much had gone undiscovered when the vaults were sealed, the hand axes among it, but the place had been surveyed enough to show that what lay beyond was inaccessible.7 “There’s a mystery afoot,” said Luma.8
She teleported across to the collapsed passage, into loose rubble.9 It was densely packed rock and shattered wall, too much to dig out in the week they had.10 The hole in the corner was several dozen feet across at the top, a chasm rather than a tunnel, as though a volcanic eruption had blown up through the floor, though there was no vent there.111213 Shards of rock that had cracked up through the surface were still glowing.14 Luma nearly picked one up bare-handed, and Hazel told her to write “oven mitt” on her hand.1516 Luma drew a blacksmith’s mitt and a pickaxe and broke off a chunk, which stopped glowing over a couple of minutes.1718 The rock was igneous. Nothing about it was special except that it held its heat unnaturally, probably through some elemental magic whose workings were beyond her.192021 She packed some samples. “Hey, I found some cool rocks.” “Those look like hot rocks,” said Iva.222324 Luma suspected there was another vault past the cave-in, and wanted to research how anyone had known there were only four to explore.25
On the way out, Luma pulled the lever outside the great door, which rolled back into place, and turned her key in its steel lock. The four prongs of the key clicked four locks shut at once.26 Going up, Iva was glad nothing was trying to eat her armor anymore.27 Luma meant to note in her report that the fire snakes like coal. Hazel worried that others would not be as compassionate towards them, and Luma promised to make the note really big.282930 The others rested for two hours while Luma finished her map.31 Luma wanted to know who had issued work order 1247. It had come from the Structural Integrity Division.3233
The Dancing Sword
Hazel took the shape of a chipmunk and rode out in Luma’s hat.34 They chose to eat at the Dancing Sword, where they had not been since the night they met.3536 The Hearth Wall has plenty of dark alleys, and Hazel found a secure spot to change back.3738
The party headed north across the Swordgate bridge, and the Dancing Sword stands just past it.39 It was around midday, and the tavern was lively with the lunch trade but not packed. A human woman took orders and tended bar, a couple of servers ran the tables, and nobody was on the small stage.404142 A human man was examining the stage. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, carried himself with youthful energy, and was exuberantly dressed in rich purples and golds. He wore a neatly kept goatee, and his black, salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back into a tight ponytail.424344 At his side hung a very beautiful, elegant rapier, finer even than the dwarven hand axes.4445 He was measuring the stage and chalking marks on the floor.46
The party sat at the table where they had first come together after the Everfire Lamp explosion. A faint, dark red stain still showed where Luma had drawn on it and cleaned it up, noticeable only to someone who knew it was there.47 Luma, who did not remember doing it, took it for evidence of a bar fight.4849 The Dancing Sword is nicer than the dive bars of the outer Hearth Wall, but it is not the Sterling Sovereign and does not try to be. Two embers buy a nice ale or a decent wine and a big plate of meat and potatoes or bread.505152 Luma ordered a loaf of bread for the table.53
Rhysaene knew the man by reputation, though she had never met him. He was Dorian Draken of House Draken, owner of the Dancing Sword.545556 He was said to have adventured in his youth, as Dorian the Daring, and to have retired on treasures found in ruins and dangerous places, supposedly outside the Silver Vale.575859 That makes him unusual, since nobody in the Vale is an adventurer, and his claim to fame is being a retired one.6061 He is one of the three adult children and heirs of House Draken.62 Rhysaene told Luma who he was, and Luma wondered whether his sword was an actual dancing sword.6364
Hazel walked up onto the stage and sniffed him.6566 Dorian turned, looked her up and down, smiled, and bowed with a small flourish: “Welcome to the Dancing Sword, madame. How may I assist you?”6768 “Yes, hello. My friend wanted to know how you smelled.” “Quite nice, if I do say so myself,” he said.6970 He wore an expensive cologne, not overdone, but strong and strange to Hazel’s nose.7071 She told him the scent was not for her and offered him a sprig of rosemary on a string from under her cloak.727374 He liked it. Rosemary grows here and there in the Vale and is mostly used in cooking, and he said the kitchen was not his battlefield of choice.757677 In his youth, he said, he had foraged to survive in the wild, limited to what would feed him or kill him.78 Hazel told him not to let his time in luxury make him dull. He answered that the inner circles of Argentum are a wilderness of their own, and that his reflexes were not what they had been, so he preferred to leave the sword sheathed.798081
Rhysaene came over to check on Hazel, with Luma hiding in her shadow to listen.8283 Hazel brought out more plants from the pouch at her waist, meadowsweet and caraway.8485 Dorian complimented Rhysaene on her impeccable sense of style, and on finding clothes so well tailored for her physique.86 She said her friends helped, that she was mostly self-taught and liked pretty colors, and that she hoped it rubbed off on her friends. Then she looked back at the party’s table with a positively evil look.878889
At Luma’s whispered prompting, Rhysaene asked whether the sword really danced.9091 Dorian lit up. It soared into the air, he said, and performed feats of acrobatic combat no human hand could, and he had once slain a dragon with it beyond the edges of the Silver Vale.9293 Hazel and Rhysaene saw no obvious tells, but the claim was preposterous, and the bravado and theatrics of it were thick.949596 Hazel’s optimism about him faded, though her eyes stayed on the sword.9798 When Rhysaene said House Draken must be proud of him, he said he was the black sheep of the family. The house is deeply invested in the arts and culture of the city, and his adventuring was seen as a betrayal of its legacy.99100 Hazel had heard enough tall tales. She told him she would be interested in hearing what he had actually done, and went back to the table. Dorian bowed after her: “Until next time, madame.”101102103
For Luma, Rhysaene asked where the blade came from. Dorian peeked round at Luma, but kept up the pretense and answered Rhysaene.104105106 He had found it, he said, in the fabled City of Ghosts beyond the edge of the Vale, a city doomed by the blight of the Sorrow and lost to time. It was one of the ancient relics of powerful magic that once dotted these lands, most of them lost.107108109
Luma asked over Rhysaene’s shoulder how he had survived the Sorrow. By superior fortitude and constitution, he said, and a unique personal determination to explore. The Sorrow, he said, is not instant death but a slow-acting toxin that one can steel oneself against, if one knows how.110111112 Asked where that fortitude comes from, he said it comes from knowing who you are to your core, and Luma wrote it down.113114115 He then leaned in and told her not to go out to the Sorrow on the strength of it, since he did not know her fortitude.116117 He said he was much too old to go with her.118 Luma asked how his sword could be legal. He said it was afforded to him as a grace by the ruling council of the Synod, for his many years of heroics and daring.119120 He said all of it loudly. Every word drew eye rolls from the other patrons, some of them fond of his tales and others wanting to drink in peace. Nobody in the room believed him except Luma, who considers suspecting someone of deception rude in itself.121 To everyone else, only an idiot would talk about a real dancing sword like that, and nobody who had really been beyond the Sorrow would talk about it like that.122123124125
The Crescent Moon
Dorian would not let Luma hold the sword alone, but he let her touch it.126127128 She thought of casting identify, but the spell takes a minute and has to be spoken aloud, and hiding it in the middle of the tavern would have been next to impossible. She decided it was too risky.129130131 She could tell it was an incredibly well-made blade. Dwarven craftsmanship is known to be superb even in the Silver Vale, and whoever made this sword made the smith of the hand axes look like an amateur.132133 An inscription in Elvish lettering ran along the blade. It did not say anything linguistically, so it was either gibberish or a genuine enchantment, and she could not rule out the latter. If the sword was a fake, it was worth more than an actual uncommon magic item.134135136 “You got it from a ghost city?” she asked. “The City of Ghosts, yes, it lies many miles beyond the eastern edge of the Vale.”137138 Luma drew a copy of the sword to study later.139
Rhysaene asked whether he visited galleries hosted by his family. He did not. He was not on the best of terms with his siblings, and his mother did not look kindly on his choice of profession.140141142 He now runs a tavern, he said, where people can hear his tales and enjoy musicians and storytellers free of the high art world’s restrictive sensibilities.143144 He had been checking the stage for a musician coming in that night, who was very particular about where all her things went.145 He called himself a humble servant of the people, and told Rhysaene her group looked like quite the ensemble cast.146147
Back at the table, Hazel told Luma not to waste her time on him for answers about what lies beyond the Vale.148 Then she admitted that she knew of someone who had been beyond it. She had been keeping it from them, and had forgotten to mention it since.149150 Hecate had told her she had been outside the Vale.151 “Why would you keep a secret that important from me?” asked Luma, and decided to go back and see Hecate once the vault was finished.152153154
Iva asked Luma when she sleeps. Luma does not. She meditates for a couple of hours and uses the rest of the time to work.155156157 Her boss once caught her meditating at her desk and was upset, until she learned Luma had been working for fourteen hours straight.158159 Hazel said people of her race and of her creed tend to live long lives, so she does her best to enjoy the time she has.160161 By Luma’s reckoning, sleeping the way Iva does would waste Iva’s entire lifespan.162163 When the food came, Dorian had a word with the bartender and left.164
Hazel asked Temerity whether she believed that people of noble standing, and people who do great deeds, are allowed things by the Synod that ordinary people are not.165166 Wellby Emberthumb had never raised the question with Temerity. As far as she knew, magic is illegal unless it is the magic of the Silver Flame, and a man so open about an illegal magic sword would surely have been investigated.167168169 Temerity thought he was lying about the sword being magic. Hazel was not so sure, but called him a charlatan all the same.170171172
Hazel said that most enchantments she had seen were written in the language of her circle, and found the Elvish script odd.173 Luma showed her the copy, and Hazel could read it. The inscription was flowery and poetic Sylvan, something about wings or wind and dancing on the air, the poetry of magic.174175 Copying the blade, Luma had also noticed a very faint crescent moon etched near the crossguard, out of the way like a maker’s mark.176177178
Hazel knew it was not the emblem of the Shattered Mother, nor any modern depiction of the moon. The moon is so widely depicted that a difference alone told her nothing.179 But she remembered asking Hecate, some time after she joined the coven, whether anyone else worshipped the moon the way the coven does.180 Hecate had said not really, not any more, though the moon is often venerated. One place that had held it in high regard was a city neighboring the Vale, outside it: a city of high art, poetry and music, where the moon was seen as protection and beauty in a way it no longer can be in the Vale, because of its association with what shattered it and the world.181182183 Hecate had grown wistful. It was a once beautiful city, she said, now a haunted remnant where only ghosts dwell.183184 “It was real,” Hazel said under her breath. “It was real.”185
Hazel was offended by the idea that Dorian might be telling the truth, and that the sword might come from a place her teacher spoke of fondly.186187 Either he spoke the truth, she said, or he knew a great deal about what lies beyond the Vale. Her headmistress had spoken of a place that could be called the City of Ghosts, and had been very clear that what lies beyond the Vale is not for the faint of heart.188189190191 Hazel was very upset that someone as outspoken as Dorian might have seen what the greatest and most powerful person she knew spoke of with horror.192193194 “Yeah, but it’s obtainable. That’s the important part,” said Luma.195 Two sources now put a city to the east, and Luma wanted to go there first. She was vibrating in her seat.196197 The job came first, though. “We ain’t going to no spooky place today,” said Rhysaene.198199
The Copper Dragons
After dinner the party split up for the night, and Iva went with Rhysaene.200201 Temerity wanted to send some of her pay home to Crick's Bend. A pigeon can carry only paper, so money has to go by courier or by hand.202203 When she took out the five platinum dragons Luma had paid her, she found she was holding five copper pieces. The rest of her money was exactly as it had been.204205 Temerity thought of Hecate.206 The coins were copper and weighed right, but they were platinum dragons, stamped with Bahamut’s emblem, made of solid copper.207 With Hecate in mind, it had to be some kind of trick, since the only other explanation was that someone had the tools to mint platinum dragons and was striking them in copper.208 “Well, I don’t know what to do with this money anymore.”209 Part of her wanted to send them home by courier anyway, but she did not.210211 So far only Luma’s payment had changed.212 Temerity put the coins away as a problem for later, and felt bad that she could not help her town.213214 She started a letter home but did not finish it.215
Iva checked her three dead drops. Two were empty, and one held a note saying only “we’ll be in touch”.216217 Luma spent the night making Hazel five sets of work clothes for the job Hazel hoped to get. They were not fine clothes, but they were much nicer than common clothes, and right for a server.218219220221
The Silver Archives
The next morning, Luma went to the place where Hazel leaves her map outside her lodging, and found Sage lying there with the map tied to a makeshift string collar.222223 When Luma sat beside him, he put his head in her lap, and she petted him all morning.224225226 When Hazel came out, Luma gave her the clothes. Hazel was touched and a little bashful, and promised to pay her back.227228229 Luma asked instead that Hazel let her go and talk to Hecate. Hazel laughed and told her she did not need permission, and when Luma said she did not want to go alone, Hazel agreed to escort her.230231232233 Then the party met near one of the bridges into the Lantern Wards.234235
With Hazel hidden as a harmless critter, the party crossed the bridge, where their papers were checked again.235 This time they went to the southeast corner of the Lantern Wards, along Luma’s route to work, since the Silver Archives stand across the street from the Bureau of Infrastructure & Mapping.235236237 The Archives are about as big as the three buildings across from them put together, a massive stone building of several stories with rounded ends. Two armed and armored guards at the entrance wore no particular emblem.238239 Inside, the Archives are very like a library, with stone shelves carved into the walls and wooden shelves added to them. The upper levels are balconies over the main chamber.240241
At the front desk, a woman looked up from her reading and tilted her head at the unusual group.241242 “Hello, my name is Luma. I’m a cartographer on behalf of the Bureau of Infrastructure and Mapping,” said Luma.243 The woman had spoken to Surveyor Kessa Tumblebrim about her the afternoon before, but looked at her notes in confusion when Luma mentioned a work order.244 Luma had work order 1247, to survey Vaults 17 to 19.245 She showed the woman the order and the key, which she kept hold of.246247248 The woman read the order twice and looked at the key. “It’s highly irregular, but everything’s in order,” she said. She would take them down to the basement. They were not to touch anything or wander off, since the security down there would not take kindly to it.249250 Hazel asked how many books the librarian had written, and then how many of the Archives’ books she had read. “Hundreds, maybe thousands?” Hazel nodded approvingly.251252253254
The librarian led them down an ordinary set of stairs to a large basement chamber with several doors and a couple of hallways.255 One door was guarded by two men in full plate with longswords, their shields set down beside them, a silver lantern hanging from a hook on each. On their armor was a palm with the Silver Flame’s mote of fire inside it.255256257 Luma and Temerity knew it as the emblem of the Censors of the Inquisition, the members of the Inquisition tasked with hunting down illegal magic users and bringing them in. Apart from the Dragoons, the Inquisition is the most dangerous martial arm of the Order of the Lantern.258259 Luma had been sent to the ground floor of the Archives many times, but had never been allowed into the basement. Anything she needed from it was fetched for her.260261 She did her best to keep an uncharacteristically serious manner, though it cracked whenever something distracted her.262263
At another door stood a woman of the same order, with the same palm, lantern and sword. “What’s this about?”264265 When the librarian explained, she asked to see the order. She handed Luma’s papers straight back, read the work order several times, and asked to see the key.266267268 “That’s above board, all right,” she said. They were to stick to the areas on the work order. The vaults off that passage are labeled with plaques, and they were not to try any vault not on the order, which their key should not open anyway.269 Told they were surveying Vaults 17 to 19, she said “Flame knows why”, and unlocked the door with an ordinary key of her own.270271272 As Rhysaene passed, the Censor raised a hand. “Wait.” Her eyes flashed with silver light. “Oh. All right, you can go.”273274 “Thank you, ma’am,” said Rhysaene.275 The door shut and locked behind them.276
“Yo, Rhys, why is she making eyes at you?” asked Iva.277 Rhysaene said she did not know, then suggested it was because of what she is.278279 Iva allowed that a horse was a pretty strange thing to her, and Hazel offered to explain to Temerity later.280281
The stairs down were nowhere near as hot as the way to the foundries. They were narrow and not built for traffic, in the more pragmatic stonework of post-Starfall Argentum.282283 Passages branched off, labeled with the vaults they led to. The one labeled for Vault 17 onward had no door.284285 At its end was another round sealed door with the same four-point keyhole, but made entirely of modern steelwork, with no cast iron.285286
Vault 17
“Do you think there’ll be fire things here that are going to hit me every time you touch them, Luma?” asked Iva. “Maybe. I don’t know,” said Luma, and suggested she stand back.287288 The key turned and the door rolled aside. Stairs led down about twenty feet to a hallway of fine dwarven stonework cut through the rock, with doors along both sides.289290 It was marked only “Vault 17” at its entrance, and the hallway itself was the vault. It was ten feet wide with a seven-foot ceiling, which was cramped for Rhysaene and Temerity.291292 Hazel began breathing exercises.293 There was no light but their own.294 Iva’s own lamp was her Silver Flame lantern, which Luma pointed out was now incredibly illegal for her to have, so Luma gave her an ordinary lantern.295296297
The air was stale.298 Over each door was a traditional dwarven clan mark, of the kind dwarven families in Argentum still use, less often, on signet seals and doors.299300301 Luma recorded every name and mark for her map, grinning because she can read Dwarvish.302303 The first door opened on dust that had not been disturbed in decades, maybe centuries, and a small apartment with a little kitchen, a table and a back room.304305 “This looks like a living space. That’s really weird,” said Luma.306 Iva wondered who would want to live underground, and Luma knew the answer: dwarves.307308 In the back room, a mattress had rotted away on its bed, and an open wardrobe held only a couple of dwarf-sized winter coats.309310 Nothing said who had lived there. They had taken their things and left in a hurry, though not a violent one, as if they had been evicted with two days’ notice.311312
The next apartment was bigger, with several side rooms, and had been left the same way.313314 It still held clothes and dishware, and toys: a stocky little doll, balls, and a small stone dragon that looked very much like Bahamut.315316 Under the bed in a child’s room at the back was a crumpled paper, kept by the dry, still air.317318 It was a note in Common, in nearly illegible handwriting.319 It had been written by a young dwarven child whose first language was not Common, who had tried at the end to spell their Dwarven name in Common letters and given up.320321 Part of the name read “Riswynn”, and the rest was scribbled out.322323 “Rhys, they had a name kind of like yours,” said Luma. “Huh. I’m flattered.”324325 The clan mark over the door was that of the Deepdraft clan, and the scribbled part of the name could easily have been Deepdraft.326327 The child was Riswynn Deepdraft.328 “I’m looking at a note from a child that’s probably dead and that makes me really sad,” said Luma.329 She passed it round, copied it, and put it back under the bed.330331 Temerity noted that its writer had been alive when Bahamut was there.332
The party searched the other apartments on the hall.333 Temerity found two very nice dwarven drinking mugs of sterling silver, and left them where they were.334335 Luma found a locked wooden lockbox with metal trim under a bed, picked it, and found ten platinum dragons, the same coins as today’s.336337338 She took the dragons and left ten crowns in their place.339 Worried about fingerprints and clean coins in the dust, she tapped her hat and dusted the box and coins again with prestidigitation.340341342 The mugs were not magical, but each was worth about ten crowns in silver, and perhaps twenty-five as dwarven work.343
Luma drew a line between taking coins and taking historical artifacts. When Hazel said it was only a mug, Luma answered that it was at least fifteen hundred years old.344345346347 Then she remembered that she had been told the vaults were sealed about five hundred years ago, and the work order said the same.348349350 “Something doesn’t add up.”351 “They’re lying to Luma,” said Iva.352
Vault 18
The vault went on past the hallway, round and down.353 Stairs descended about twenty feet to another round door, this one of cast iron like the foundry door, with a steel lock set in its center.354355 When it rolled open, air flowed past the party into the vault from behind them.356357 It was staler, with thicker dust, and in more disarray: what looked like wooden signs or barricades had been tossed aside, and there were a few cracks in the walls.357358359 Graffiti in Dwarvish covered the walls in a white, chalk-like substance.359360361
Luma read the graffiti out for the others: “…s Moat is frozen.” “The surface is lost. We hold below.” “The Everfire burns strong. So do we.” “Orcs in the Circle.” “Hlin fell yesterday.” “Thorin was here.” Beside a tally were two columns of names, and along the bottom ran “Stone Shields gone. Watchful gone. Remember the names.”362363364365366 None of the names meant anything to her in full, but one was Thoradin Hulduro, and she knew a Hulduro, the writer Rurik Hulduro. Another was Oskar Deepdraft.367368369 Argentum has a moat, and Luma knew it is not frozen.370371
Luma knew from past work that the glowing lamps and tubing of the maintenance tunnels and the river are new. The glass that holds the lava is Sun-Glass, made by a mix of alchemical tempering and the blessing of the Silver Flame, so it could not have existed before the Starfall.372373 The graffiti ran all up and down the hallway, and Luma wrote down all the names.374375 It was written in a chalk that dwarves developed for marking stone. It resists wear from the elements, can still be rubbed off or dissolved, and repels water, so it could last a very long time undisturbed.376377378379 Luma scraped some of it off with her alchemist’s supplies, but could not tell whether it had been there tens of years or hundreds and hundreds.380381
The hallway was lined with more apartments.382 Luma checked every one to map it.383 These were in more varied states than those above. Some still held their owners’ belongings, and others had been cleared out, many of them carefully or slowly.384 In one, behind a broken ceramic jug, Luma found a leather-bound book handwritten in Dwarvish, and drew herself a pair of gloves so as not to leave fingerprints or disturb the dust.385386 The book was badly damaged, with a chemical burn right through it in one place and a shard of the jug embedded in it. Most entries had faded, but three were legible.387388 Luma read them aloud. The Everfire had awakened, fire had come up from below, and the lower foundries and nearby workshops were lost. The passage down was barred afterward, and the Vigilant stood thick in the halls. Days later the dead were still being counted, while the upper levels and the surface fortress stood undamaged.389390391392 The writer had been a smith who worked in the foundries.393 Luma copied the entries in Dwarvish and Common so the journal could stay where it was.394395 Rhysaene flicked her wrist, and a hand like her own, in a garish, blood-wine red flame, closed the book.396397
“Rhys, where does your magic come from?” asked Luma. “Not at liberty to say.”398399 Luma’s comes from words.400 Iva said her own shapeshifting was something she was born with.401402 Luma asked whether she was sure, and apologized when Rhysaene told her never to ask a woman about her magic.403404405
All this time, Hazel had stood in the graffiti hall with her hand on the wall.406407 Luma told her the journal seemed to describe what had happened in the foundry vault with the hole. “I think the Everfire exploded,” she said, like the lamp in the plaza but much bigger.408409410 Hazel wondered whether the Starfall had caused it or made it worse.411412 The journal’s dates were inked over or burned, and Hazel pointed out that they might be in a calendar nobody uses any more.413414415
The Hidden Workshop
Another apartment was decent-sized but very sparse, with largely empty bookshelves and two suits of ring mail on armor stands by the front door.416417 Temerity kept close to the armor so as not to be jumped again.418 A kitchen had shattered cookware and pottery, an oven left open, a chest used as a pantry, and a keg of dark dwarven ale.419420421 Most things of value were gone.420 The few books left were antique Dwarven books on smithing.422423 Two doors side by side led to a bare bedroom with a single stone bed and a workshop ten feet by fifteen, with raw materials, basic weapon blueprints, and a rack of tools built into the wall.424425426427 “You know, I’m kind of jealous of this apartment holder,” said Luma. “He’s got a whole workshop back here.”428
Under the bed Luma found another book in Dwarvish, the journal and inventory log of a fairly ordinary dwarven crafter.429430 Two entries stood out. In one, the writer grumbled that the Ruling Master’s charters forbade his sort of research, so he had gone underground. In the other, his constructs still did not listen and the key did not work, and he had put prototype control arrays into the working constructs, though he knew he should not.430431432 After two or three ordinary entries, the journal stopped.433
The tools in the workshop were all polished and well kept. On the rack hung an ordinary nail hammer, with a very slight, perfect circle in the wood around it.434435 The hammer would not come off. It turned but would not pull free, and when Luma turned it half round, something clicked and the tool rack swung open.436437438 “I found a secret door,” said Luma. “Oh my gosh, he’s got an even bigger workshop back here. This guy’s crazy!”439440441
The hidden workshop was much larger, with piles of iron in a corner, more tool racks and drains in the floor.442 On a workbench lay a strange rod about two feet long, vaguely cylindrical, with a handle. Its body was toothed at the end like a key.443444445 Between the party and the workbenches stood two dwarf-sized stone constructs with big shields fixed to their arms.446447 Luma picked up the rod and began to identify it. At once gears ground and stone crunched, and the two stone defenders moved to attack.448449
The Stone Defenders
The stone defenders were about four and a half feet tall.450 Luma’s faerie fire lit one of them, while a shimmering magical barrier protected the other. She pulled the spell back off Iva, whom it had also caught.451 Temerity raged, stepped in, and cracked the second defender’s stone with her hammer in a little silvery explosion.452453454 The first defender went round Iva to get at Temerity, took a blow as it passed, and knocked her down, and the second struck her where she lay.455456457458 Iva’s axe struck only a shield.459 Hazel called down a moonbeam on the two of them, and Rhysaene hexed the second and struck its mind.460461462463
Remembering the journal, Luma pointed the rod at the nearer defender and said “stand down” in Dwarvish.464465 It clicked, and the round piece where a sword’s crossguard would be turned once, and the rod buzzed with energy and magic.466467 The defender’s head began spinning round as it scanned the room, and it repeated in Dwarvish, “target lost, target acquired, target lost, target acquired”.468 The magic drained out of the rod, its energy spent for the time being.469 “The one closer to me is really confused. Focus on the other one,” said Luma.470
The defenders guard each other rather than themselves.471472 The confused one did not raise its shield when Temerity attacked the other, and Temerity cracked the second defender again.473474 The flames inlaid in her body brightened, and some of her wounds burned closed.475 The confused defender did nothing on its turn, taking Luma’s command at least in part.476477 When the second defender swung at Temerity, Iva caught the blow on her shield.478 Iva and Temerity kept hitting the second until it was badly cracked, and Hazel’s magic ripped through it and shattered it.479480481482
Rhysaene’s eldritch blast tore stone and metal from the first defender.483 Luma ran round it and hit it with her crowbar, and it raised its shield and lowered it again.484485 Temerity swept its legs out with her hammer and it fell.486 It lay on the ground, still confused, while Iva, Hazel’s moonbeam, Rhysaene and Luma wore it down.487488489490491 Its head was still spinning, still saying “target acquired, target lost”, when Temerity brought her hammer straight down on it to shut it up.492493 It caved in on itself like a building being demolished. The moonbeam closed, and the workshop was silent again.494495
The Pistol and the Rod
The workshop was where the dwarf had carried out secret research into constructs, against the Ruling Master’s charters.496 The defenders were stone and metal, and seemed to have had crystalline magical cores, but their destruction had left them unable to hold any animating magic.497 Luma put the rod back on the desk, since they had been told not to take anything from the vault.498499 She finished identifying it. It was a magic item.500501
Searching the workshop, Luma found blueprints for what looked like the constructs, and notes on the rod with a lot scribbled out.502 On the desk was a wooden box about a foot and a half long, with a little brass clasp and intricate silver inlay in a geometric pattern.502503 Inside was an elegant, finely crafted pistol in a clear dwarven style, its wood dark and its metal fixtures a bright, silvery metal.504505 “I found a gun!” said Luma, and brandished it, and everybody ducked.506507 She identified it as a masterwork dwarven pistol, much like the hand axes.508 It came with twenty ordinary bullets.509
The pistol is especially dangerous to anyone who changes shape. “Be careful of this gun. And I guess technically Hazel too,” said Luma, and suggested it might itch if Iva held it.510511 It did not hurt Iva as such, but it was very cold.512513 “You’re right, this gun is uncomfortable. Why are you poking me with it, Luma?” “To prove a point. Sorry.”514515 Hazel touched it and felt fine.516 Otherwise the workshop held only tinker’s, smith’s and mason’s tools and junk.517518
Hazel thought a gun that works against shapeshifters might be worth keeping, and Luma decided to keep it, though she knew she was not supposed to. Hazel pointed out that they had taken the axes too.519520521 Luma said the axes had come from the monster, not the vault.522 Then she decided they should take the rod as well. “It’s a slippery slope,” said Hazel.523524 Luma reasoned that the hidden room was outside the scope of the vault anyway. Whoever had cleared the vaults had not known about the room, or its contents would not still be there.525526527 She was clearly very uncomfortable with it, but the place was dangerous, and all she had was a crowbar.528
Luma wondered whether the vaults were really districts of the old dwarven city that had been sealed off.529530 The cast-iron doors, Luma reasoned, were the originals, and the steel locks were added later.531532 Iva reckoned that it could not be that bad, since there were no bodies down there. They had not found any, at least, apart from the ones they had made.533534535
Featured Characters
Player Characters
New
Returning
Mentioned
- Adrik Torunn
- Diesa Forestone
- Eldeth Dankil
- Hecate
- Hlin Ironmark
- Ilde Fireforge
- Kessa Tumblebrim
- Liftrasa Battlehammer
- Mardred Strakeln
- Morgran Dankil
- Orsik Balderk
- Oskar Deepdraft
- Riswynn Deepdraft
- Ruby-Eye
- Rurik Battlehammer
- Rurik Hulduro
- Taklinn Forestone
- Thoradin Hulduro
- Thorin
- Torgga Battlehammer
- Traubon Lyndhelm
- Veit Torunn
- Vistra Balderk
- Wellby Emberthumb
Quotations
- “There’s a mystery afoot.” Luma.8
- “Welcome to the Dancing Sword, madame. How may I assist you?” Dorian Draken.68
- “Yes, hello. My friend wanted to know how you smelled.” Hazel.69
- “Oh Flame, no. I’m quite the black sheep of the family.” Dorian Draken.100
- “It was real. It was real.” Hazel.185
- “Well, I don’t know what to do with this money anymore.” Temerity.209
- “It’s highly irregular, but everything’s in order.” The librarian at the Silver Archives.249
- “Flame knows why.” A Censor of the Inquisition.271
- “I’m looking at a note from a child that’s probably dead and that makes me really sad.” Luma.329
- “Something doesn’t add up.” Luma.351
- “Oh my gosh, he’s got an even bigger workshop back here. This guy’s crazy!” Luma.440
- “It’s a slippery slope.” Hazel.524
Inventory
- Ten platinum dragons, taken by Luma from a lockbox in Vault 17, which she left holding ten crowns.
- The Masterwork Dwarven Pistol and twenty bullets, taken by Luma.
- The Golem Control Rod, taken by Luma.
- Samples of the glowing rock from the foundries, taken by Luma.
- Five sets of work clothes, made by Luma for Hazel.
- The five platinum dragons Luma paid Temerity in Session 9, now copper.
Trivia
- The Dungeon Master corrected the name of the Vaultsmiths’ guildhall, called the Hall of Anvils in Session 9, to the Hall of the Anvil.536
- The translation of the Vault 18 graffiti was shown on the map under a magnifying glass that the players moved across it.537
- The Sylvan inscription on Dorian’s sword reads “Dance, Fletis, as a leaf upon the wind.”
Speaking Time
| Speaker | Time | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Dungeon Master | 2:19:52 | 37% |
| Luma | 1:08:04 | 18% |
| Iva | 55:54 | 15% |
| Hazel | 49:57 | 13% |
| Temerity | 36:41 | 10% |
| Rhysaene | 23:53 | 6% |