Adventure starts in the abandoned ancient human colony between Vssgon Mountain and the Shrine of the First Light.

    1. Cast Find the Path to Intelligent Undead: it leads us up a mining path to a tunnel that ends in a metallic shimmering wall (the immortal seal)

2: Find the Path to human remains:

First found is bones at the bottom of a filled well. There is a graveyard that was emptied long ago. We find the remains of a murder victim or something.

We decide that we will need to excavate.

Plan A: Cast Drill, tunnel in, or Cast Disintegrate to create a beachhead, and then Passwall the rest of the way to the bones. Carrock will cast Speak with Dead.

The image is of a deceased man, he looks to be about 25, with a heavy sack on his back. A beard, and heavy eyes. Carrock asks him questions.

    1. What gods are worshipped in this town?

“Only two gods are allowed to be worshipped here. Although some worship a third. Mauskal , The Maker. Some secretly worship Heaven’s Fang”

2. What can you tell us about the stone spurs above ground?

“I don’t get it. The giant priests grow them.”

Clay suggests we use our third question to fish for more details we can research…

3… what are the names of 5 most important people?

1 cheiftain, a prostitute, two priests (Mauskal and Maker), and a torch maker.

 

Next Idea: Gelatinous Cubes! Used to sweep up flakes and dust of Gemstone of Venomous Light. We create massive amounts of Gelatinous Cubes and gather up everything we can from the crater path. We collect 14 pounds of gemstone material.

We spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the buildings.

We can identify buildings by their functions. There is some inventory references, but poorly written. The buildings are in extreme decay. There are plants growing over the buildings, but they are now dead or dying without the light. There appear to be no trees here older than 500 years, including trees that have grown and fallen over.

We find the path the next shrine/temple of Mauskal. It looks like a human home. But the inscriptions on the wallstThe ancient tongue describes the diety as Hinn. We see a dais. There are no chairs, no furniture, every item has been removed. It’s empty. Efrim uses the talking dagger to find metals, finds some behind a tile holy symbol of Hinn. L uses xray vision to see behind the tile. There is someone else’s holy symbol carved into the stone and filled with metal to create a holy symbol.

Continue with x-ray vision. Most rooms have been plastered over 2 or 3 times. There are 4 foundations for this building on top of each other.

In the main room where we found the two holy symbols, we find more. It looks like three gods have been worshipped here.

Lackshmi describes the hidden holy symbols to Efrim, who then sculpts them.

Repeat at the temple to the Maker. This temple is big, airy, gives a sense of openness. Vaulted ceilings. Holy Symbols inside. L reactivates x-ray vision – goes gaseous. Only two gods have been worshipped here. The Maker is the older one. The “Boatman” is the newer one. Efrim uses metal detection, and gets more of the same. Occasionally there is gold poured into the wall to create writing. Efrim sketches out the writing and symbols.

 

*Ray suggests that this human colony was created while under the control of the giants. And the priests are directing the human slaves.

Return to the bones

    1. What are the tenets of heaven’s fangs faith?
      1. get wealthy and defeat giant-kind.
    2. Which holy symbol is mauskal’s? the oldest one.
    3. Who is in charge? The chieftain answers to the priest of Mauskal, and the priest answers to the gods.
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    4. What are the tenets of Mauskal’s religion? Protect stone giant kind, and innovation.
    5. What are the other major human towns: two business towns, this one, Central Colony, and Colony West.
    6. What do you know about the Shard of Sakkrad? I don’t know about that, but I know of another shard….
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    7. What do you know about this other Shard? An arrogant astronomer plucked it from a star in the sky.
    8. What is the name of the arrogant astronomer? Zakared.
    9. Where is the home of Zakared? I don’t know, this is back when we lived on the surface.
    10. How do you get to Colony West? He doesn’t know. You have to go to the surface to get there.
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    11. We were disloyal. It’s easier for us to remain pure and loyal when we are down here.
    12. What did you do to be disloyal? When we were free to roam on the surface, the gods depended on us for our astronomy, and for our labors. The astronomers colluded with each other to give the masters inauspicious days and to wage war. The workers killed some of the masters. The Maker was made ashamed by us and moved us underground.
    13. What happened to Zakared? He became invulnerable and arrogant. He stole lives, killed masters, eventually he was taken away because he challenged the gods.
    14. Do you know about the lanterns? Were they there in your time? Yes, lanterns. That’s what provides the light.
    15. Can you tell me any gods that helped Zakared?
    16. Lanterns?
        1. One was yellow, one was blue, one was red. All were white hot. Humans lived under the blue one. They were turned off and on regularly. He never heard of them being knocked over.
    17. Was Heaven’s Fang a human god? No, he’s a god of dragon-kind.
    18. What does the Shard of Zakared do? It made Zakared invulnerable. Not even the gods could hurt him.
    19. How did the city get light? The giant gods hung a lantern that provided light.

So it sounds like the light was gone, and then the vssgon put it back after a long vacancy.

    1. Does the lantern do more than just provide light? The lantern was like a miniature blue [azure] white hot sun. which is how we would describe the one down south. What does it do? The maker always said our goal as a race was to be more loyal than our masters, and smarter than our masters. But many people would die because of it.
    2. How did the sun kill people? Humans used to live longer, and they used to have fewer deformities and diseases.
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    3. How was the lantern hung up? It was on a platform.
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    4. Tell us the location of the platform, relative to the landmarks? Centrally located, squarish, several beams so the lantern could be suspended. There were some things set up next to it, and every once in a while strange creatures would come plummeting to the ground. Dog-like creatures, ape-like creatures, serpent-like creatures.
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    5. Does Colony West have a venom light? Last I heard… he knows of two ways to Colony West. He suspects that the mines all meet up underground.
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We can find footings for where the platform was. We hunt around. There was a giant mineshaft that goes deep into the earth. But we don’t see much evidence of plant life growing here for longer than 500 years.

Speeding things up… before leaving Central Colony we use the Phoenix to burn/cut through the strand rope, and it come crashing down to the ground. We can take it with us.

Colony West. We go to the stone spurs in the west. We find evidence of human activity. They worshipped the Maker primarily. There is a temple to Hinn, and a temple to the god that preceded him. No temple to the Boatman. There is an image of the Maker: a giantess with four huge feathers, 2 toward the front, 2 toward the back. We recall that there is a likeness like that in a plane called “the dead plane”. Al casts Immortal Eye to that plane, find a normal house with what appears to be the likeness of the Maker on the front door. The doors are open, and there is an inscription above the door. Three rooms. 16 smaller living spaces. Seems to be mostly human sized. There is a partially ajar trapdoor. Eyeball goes down into a dark room. There is a representation of a ceiling of stars. And the stars are miniature skygreen emeralds embedded in the ceiling. Al sketches the ceiling, shows it to the friends, it matches the chart in the maker mountain.

Al looks around the room for more stuff. There is a pedestal in the room, close to the ground. On top is the same star chart, only with names for each heavenly body. They are in a script we can’t read. Al copies them down on parchment. They have strange names, “smokey light” things like that. The inscription over the front door says Little Feather’s domicile. Inscription in first room says Little Friends Welcome. Third: be smarter than your masters. Be more loyal than your masters. 4th: reject tribalism.

Colony west has footings for a platform. There is no webbing.

Find the path to worshipper of heaven’s fang. Will play out Speak with Dead over email.

Then we will leave and go back to prep Operation Bird Break.

*Historically there have been two vssgons. One was menacing the 27. Elstir managed to slay one, so the story goes. The other one was here.

Anil’s notes:

We’re in the ancient human city.

  • Carrock finds the path to find an intelligent undead, and we go through the walls of the city to a mineshaft that leads to the surface. We find the inside of the immortal seals.
  • We look for remains, and find that the tombs are all empty. But we do find that there are some human remains at the bottom of a ancient well, filled in millenia ago. We excavate and passwall to reach them. The man is 25 years of age, but is hunched, and has a strap with a bag across his back. Only two gods were worshipped in this town, Mauskal, the Maker, but some secretly worship Heaven’s Fang. The giant priests grow them. We ask him about five powerful people in town: Chieftain, Prostitute, Two Priests, Torchmaker.
  • We use gelatinous cubes to clear up the venomous light. In the end we have 14 pounds of flakes and dust from the venomous cube.
  • We explore town a bit — really old buildings. Not much writing, no complete sentences. Can identify buildings by their function, tanneries, smithies etc. The vegetation is definitely growing since the Vssgon arrived.
  • We find the path to the temple of where the high priest of Mauskal are. It is a grant building with arches, airy. There is writing in the Ancient Tongue, Hinn is the god who is worshipped here. No secret doors are extant any longer even though they once were secret rooms. X-ray vision reveals that tiles with holy symbol of Hinn cover up another holy symbol that is gold poured into. Further exploration suggests at least four foundations. Find three different holy symbols in different layers — two of them I can’t pronounce, the oldest one was Mauskal’s. We then do the same for the Maker temple. This one is much less grand, it just looks like a home. Only two gods have been worshipped here. Older one is the Maker, the newer one is the Boatman.
  • We question the guy again and ask about the tenets of Heaven’s Fang’s faith? Get wealthy and defeat giant kind. The chieftain answers to the high priest of Mauskal. Mauskal’s tenents: Protect stone giant kind and innovation. What are the other major human towns: the two biggest are this one “central colony” and “colony west.” He hasn’t heard of the Shard of Sakkrad, he’s heard of another one — he says an arrogant astronomer went and plucked the shard from the sky, its a piece of star. The name of the astronomer is Zakared. When we ask where Zakared lived, he answers “I don’t know, this was before when we lived on the surface.” When asked about what caused the humans to go underground, he said that he was disloyal, and it is easier to stay pure down underground. When asked about what he did that was disloyal — “when we were free to roam on the surface, the gods depended on us for our astronomy and other labor. The astronomers colluded to give the masters inauspicious days to conduct sacrifices and wage war. The workers rose up and killed some of the masters, the maker was ashamed (??). What happened to Zakared? “He became invulnerable arrogant, stole wives, killed his masters, stole from his kings, and eventually he was taken away by the gods.” How far away is colony West? He doesn’t know, you have to go the surface to get there, the mines all connect up he thinks though. The lanterns already existed back then there were three lanterns; yellow blue, red (?), humans lived under the blue lantern. Heaven’s Fang is a god of dragon kind (Ray speculates that this is because dragons were pissed, could this be Natane?). Heaven’s Fang supported the uprising, he doesn’t know if Heaven’s Fang helped Zakared. “The shard made Zakared invulnerable, he couldn’t be hurt, even by the gods. So they took him away.” We ask whether he knew about the venom light: giant gods suspended a lantern to give light to our city. It is like the blue lantern. About the venom light: “The maker always said that our goal as a race is to be more loyal than our masters and smarter than our masters, but many people died because of it. Humans used to live longer, and have fewer deformities and diseases. The venom light was on a platform, squarish platform with several beams, there were things set up right next to it, sometimes strange creatures would come plummeting to the ground dog-like, ape-like.”
  • We manage to get 35’ of the rope.
  • We go to colony west. We find evidence that they worshipped the Maker primarily. Also a temple to Hinn and the unknown god between him and Mauskal from the other place. We see an image of the maker: giantess with four huge feathers from her shoulders. This reminds us of a plane on the way to demigods hearth — the node that we came in from is a citadel, the node we left from in a poisonous garden, along the way there was a building with a woman of that description; its a dead plane. Al immortal eyes there to plane W “Ghost Town”. The house has a trap door with a room above it that has a sky green emerald stars; there is also a star chart with the names of each constellation/star. They have strange names. Inscription over the front door “little feathers domicile”, inscription in front room “little friends welcome”, inscription in second room “be smarter than your masters, be more loyal than your masters.”, third inscription “reject tribalism.”
  • Speculation on the Vssgon — two known Vssgon’s — one was menacing the 27 until Elstir somehow managed to slay one.
  • We find the path to a worshipper of the Hinn, the Boatsmen, to last worshipper of Heaven’s Fang.