XAXA RIVER VALLEY 5: ROC-BREEDER KING

Finally, we return to Xaxa River Valley.

Be sure to read session 4 before diving into this.

At the start of session 5, I informed the players that 10 days remained until the Darkening, and thus, the coming of the Earth Eater. It can really get everyone on board & keeps the “game” in tact if you’re up front about some clocks, like the end of the world. Now, we’re all working together to tell the same story at a deeper level.

Anyways, the party discussed their next move. There were brief talks of heading south to Torance, so that Altair’s guild might be looked into further; this was disregarded for a unanimous focus on raiding the lair of the Roc-Breeder King. They reasoned they might find some ancient stratagem buried in the ruins of Castle Crater to aid in their slaying of the Earth-Eater. En route, they’d also pass the desolated solar host - - the dragged sun shrine could be retrieved and installed on their war-machine.

Before they crossed Xaxa River, there were other, more pressing matters to attend to. They were sitting at 2 T(itan)-HP so decided to make a stop in Pern. By the time they reached the outskirts, the throng from Torance had well arrived. Carmine sunlight cascaded over the canopies of hundreds of hastily-set tents. A thousand pilgrims gathered ‘round the dozen huts that made up Pern, all come to worship at the feet of the war-machine and the Scions of Fire who bore their deliverance from darkness.

For each pilgrim, thrice were there merchants. Desperate folk gathered in the wilderness made for excellent customers, & their religious fervor was no less beneficial to negotiation. The trader’s tents were a riot of colors, shapes, & textures — they had come from across what remained of Earth.

Laborers moved in hastily to tend the war-machine as the party arrived in Pern; they got a free d6 T-HP healed as sacrament for their protection. 100sp could be spent for each additional T-HP they wished to heal (100sp = heal +1 T-HP); they poured a bit of silver into this to get the titan back in fighting shape.

At this point, we went round robin & started zooming in on vignettes to allow each player a moment in the spotlight:

Kobek gathered deeper insight on the solar church, inquiring of their structure & rank; after speaking with an acolyte survivor, he learned the host across the river made up the entire cult. They were scattered to the winds. Further, the young acolyte told Kobek of their prophecies. One of her passages in particular stood out: “On the last moment of the last day, thy machine’s true purpose shall be revealed.” The scene ended with a cluster of downtrodden ecclesiarchs hanging their heads, proclaiming that their original prophecies were misinterpreted, and the PCs were surely the Scions of Radiant Fire sent by Nucleos to save the world from night.

Murazir perused the various merchant stalls to locate any items of arcane interest. One man, a fellow magician called Micah, caught his eye & beckoned him over. Micah had flecks of mercury embedded beneath his flesh that glinted in the latter-night moonlight as he smiled. “Come, come O’ Scion of Fire! Long have I awaited our meeting,” and the wizard hinted at time-traveling space wizard sponsors as he presented a tri-fold scroll to Murazir. “Our Illuminari benefactors wish to see your success this time, Lord of Dawn. Three spells to choose from, but only one may you keep!” exclaimed Micah. Pondering the cryptic event, Murazir still wouldn’t eschew a free spell & selected a “PILLAR OF RADIANT FIRE” scroll.

SPELL: Pillar Of Radiant Fire - Action. Spell check; calls a ray of burning fire from the sun to a point visible within far (150ft) to caster. Target takes 1d12 DMG + Save V. Death or turned to ash.

We also established that Murazir could amplify his spells using the war-machine’s hull as a focus. If he cast Pillar Of Radiant Fire from the titan, for example, he could cause the Night Angel 1d12 T-DMG + Save V. Death. Cast thru the Titan = Titan-LVL effects.

Altair disappeared into the bustling crowd, weaving between the press of bodies in search of answers. He found what he was looking for not much later in the form of a man he recognized called Jethro. Like Altair, this rogue was employed and burned by the very same guild in Torance.

Jethro’s eyes went wide when he realized Altair was one of the Scions of Radiant Fire. Instinctively he averted his eyes as was religious custom before returning his gaze. Pulling forth the Night Angel core caused the little man to recoil reflexively — this artifact was not of the world. First muttering a counter-curse, Jethro explained this item’s function.

MAGIC ITEM: Night Angel Core - Action. Step between shadows. You turn invisible in the material realm as you walk another space. In the material plane, the area you walk must be in shadow. When you take this action, you immediately take 1 CON dmg (temporary). For each round you stay between shadows, take another 1 CON dmg (temporary). If you hit 0 CON in this state, you vanish from Earth forever as your body runs out of life in the vacuum of space.

Both thieves pondered over the alien orb before it was bundled back up in its silken covering. Altair spoke more of the treacherous guild, inquiring what his friend knew. Jethro explained they were more than they seemed — the guild in Torance was a front for a splinter-cabal of time-traveling wizards who worked in the shadows to orchestrate the coming of night on this quieting earth. Fearfully, he checked over his shoulders.. “Even now, their agents move through the throng. Be vigilant, and make haste! The sun is not long for this world..”

After being helped down the yawning entrance of the war-machine (through heavy assistance by both orange psuedopods & an anti-gravity field bio-coded to the scions), the blind Endri Mortas made inquiries with several magicians & physicians regarding replacement eyes & their whereabouts. We rolled an Oracle check (1d6: 1-3 = no, 4-6 = yes); the dice told us there were none here who could help him, but many promised that the vat-wizards in Torance could grow him a new pair. Endri seemed resolved with this, stating that he may not want his normal vision back — communing with the machine was a different kind of sight more fulfilling than his human eyes.

After socializing with the throng in Pern, the party rested the night & pushed on to the Sun Shrine.

It was a mere day to cross Xaxa River & convene northward at ground zero. Annihilation of the past nights was clearly still evident. Sheets of black ice, steaming with malfeasant energies, rolled across the dunes casting weird shadows.

Corpses lay scattered in the sand, either torn apart by the Night Angel’s frozen un-reality, or lives taken by their own hands from insanity. Silken scraps whipped in the wind, remnants of the solar hosts’ tents. The party picked amongst the ruins, but found little in tact.

The Sun Shrine was the only thing left, its bulking machine mass lying heavy & reliable. A clutch of decaying camel-corpses lay tethered by rope, their dragging progress stopped dead. As the party’s war-machine approached, electromagnetic energies caused the shrine to vibrate & pulse. It whipped free from the desert like a skipping river-stone & came to float, poised between the two horns adorning the titan like an crown of holy fire.

With this boon, they pushed on to Castle Crater.

It was another three days to reach Crater Run again. They were heading for the castle to crack it open with the war-machine in search of treasure.

They met favorable winds and didn’t roll any (bad) travel encounters, arriving unscathed. There sat the castle on the bluff; encircling the tower was the giant roc, slayer of Blackfinger and the party donkey. It moved in with a swooping pass.

TITAN BATTLE VS GIANT ROC

Here’s how I ran it:

• Titan HP: The titan can take a certain amount of DMG from certain enemies, like a giant roc or a laser beam-shooting night angel. These enemies have a similar type of HP, or must be killed thru metroid-like puzzles
• They only needed to hit this thing once with the blast ray to kill it (having 1 T-HP), and they had their new laser which Endri Mortas put to good use. They missed the first shot; it sailed off and blasted apart a chunk of the sandstone bluff atop which the castle sat. In turn, the monstrous bird raked its wicked talons across the hull of the war-machine, causing some damage. They blasted it to bits in the next round and marched onward.

A cleft in the sandstone formed a ramp wide enough to support the war-machine; up the cliffside they ascended, til they reached the flat top & courtyard of Castle Crater. Vermin scattered as they shined their floodlights to survey the bluff.

A sole tower remained standing in the keep proper: Atop this once roosted the now-scorched roc. We rolled twice on a CASTLE CRATER MAGIC ITEMS table.. Inside the remnants of its cage they found a pair of miniature vat-bird servants in glass cylinders, suspended in fluid. The party were mostly repulsed by the creatures and kept them inside their strange jars.

Descending the tower they discovered a trap door leading into the dungeons below — rumor spoke of the roc-breeder’s strange laboratories hidden beneath. Into these catacombs they would descend after checking the second ruined tower across the courtyard.

Next, we rolled on a CASTLE CRATER ENCOUNTER table. The ruined tower housed a pair of giant battling scorpions, in a duel in the death. At the approach of the war-machine, one of the scorpions turned instinctively to react to this new threat. In that moment, the other scorpion slew its opponent. It then squared up for battle with the titan, but Murazir was quick with his bug-speaking charm. “I will slay you with pincer and barb, metal demon!” spat the scorpion.

“Ho there friend!” Murazir called down. The surviving scorpion, surprised he could understand this man’s tongue, said “Ho magician man, and scion of Radiant Fire! You honor me in breaking my opponent’s guard! Let us pass one another in peace.” Murazir asked the scorpion what it knew of the tunnels below Castle Crater; of which it knew not much beyond wicked hearsay. They headed back to the courtyard, disembarked from the war-machine, and descended into the trap door by foot. Dungeon time!

Below ground they went. Evidence of the technological superiority of the Roc-Breeder quickly became evident; bundles of cable and twisting tubes ran along the sandstone ceiling, winding to and fro like serpents and breaking through the rock at various integers. The upper catacombs appeared highly unmaintained - - no one had come this way in some time.

As their descent pushed deeper, more experiments came into view. They passed by strange half-creatures floating in silvered vats, their growth cycles abandoned prematurely. Sigils depicting grotesque bird-men hybrids patterned the walls in glowing symbolism. Still, there was not a sign of true life nor impending danger. Then, they saw a sickly light where the catacombs came to a head. A huge steel door separated their tunnel from some room beyond. A pale glow resonated through the cracks of the portal. They pushed through, and emerged into the laboratory proper.

It was a hideous sight.

From their vantage, they stood on a landing with stairs that stepped down into the madness. On the north wall, a corpulent creature hung spread-eagle, dangling by chains from the ceiling. This was the tyrant King, turned self-experiment. Abominable wings obviously too-heavy for the King to lift (yet grafted to his cadaver) were instead pinned to the wall & further enforced by the hanging iron bands.

The only thing human left of him was a ragged torso, mutilated by countless hypotheses & now mostly skeleton. From a gaping hole in his chest, life-bearing tubes ran, trailing into chrome pools cast about the room. In these pools floated the Roc-Breeder’s many organs, and the party saw how this terrible creature lasted the ages.

From floor to cavernous ceiling stretched an onyx screen, encompassing half the western wall. A scintillating array of lights, switches, buttons, & dials glimmered with pulsing lights & strangesome beeps uttered forth from the ancient screen-machine. Out of this cumbersome contraption ran a wire, tipped in a rod of quicksilver; this instrument, the electric wizard Gargathus held in his clutches, effecting its power of telekinses & repair. The party watched as Gargathus emerged & re-emerged several times through the onyx portal.

Gargathus himself was a sickly creature, hunched in tattered robes, peppered with tubes and aluminum rods. He sang praises to his king in soft metallic chitterings as he attended the pools to & fro — Gargathus served as the Roc-Breeder’s court wizard for nearly a millenium. It was his strange necromancies that kept the King alive all this time.

After noticing their arrival on the landing stairs, the Roc-Breeder King’s telepathic voice boomed in their heads: GARGATHUS, WHO ARE THESE RATS TO DARE MY LABORATORY? WE SHALL GRAFT YOU INTO BEAUTIFUL FORMS YET! COME FORTH MY CHILDREN!”

This insane battle kicked off which I’ll now do my best to describe:

Immediately, the party exploded into action, flying down the stairs & moving to destroy the organ pools. It is little-known the Roc-Breeder King was himself a powerful psion. Unbelieving at their gall, the Roc-Breeder King projected forth mind-blasting waves of mental energy at the closest PC to threaten an organ pool.. They were rolling Save V. Death or taking 1d10 psychic damage to the face. I told them if they hit 0 in this way, their head explodes with no further save. Keep in mind, these are 2nd LVL PCs!

At the same time, three humanoid shapes stumbled forth from a cave at the eastern wall, hastened by the Roc-Breeder’s summons. They were skinny, like featherless chicken-men with blind eyes & wicked claws. Kobek & his dog Rosh took the responsibility of slaying these hobbling threats, and the fighting was bloody. Slow as they were, the creatures were strengthened by necromancy, and hit unnaturally hard.

The Roc-Breeder King wailed as Kobek cut down his experiments. These vat-birds were precious creations. He loved each one like children, and couldn’t bear to see them destroyed. If there was a dead vat-bird, the King used his turn to telekinetically move one of their corpses onto the conveyor belt at the west side of the room (thus saving the party a round of psionic mind blasting).

When the conveyor was full, Gargathus enabled the reanimation sequence & the vats would regrow any damaged parts via 3D printing. In 1d4 rounds, three more vat-birds would pop out of the eastern cave, dripping & fresh.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was blowing up organs as fast as they could. Endri Mortas, guided by directions from Altair, slammed down his mace into the fragile pools, spilling fluids and biologics across the floor. Murazir threw up a Darkness spell to hide him from the prying gaze of the Roc-Breeder under the shadow of another pool. Altair sawed at organ tubes with his dagger; both him and Endri took several mind blasts to the face, dropping to dangerously low HP.

Gargathus hurriedly bounced around repairing destroyed pools & operating the re-animator vats, but didn’t prove to be a threat otherwise. Altair made his way to the western wall, trying to shut down the conveyor, but instead passed through the black screen and found himself in a secondary chamber.

The cramped room appeared to be a sub-chamber for Gargathus. Machine parts & weird contraptions lay stacked up, the hoard of ages. A smaller, secondary screen sat on the far wall & showed bio-readouts of the Roc-Breeder. VR goggles connected to the computer by a wire; Altair snipped this & stowed the headset in his bag. He looked for some way to manipulate the machinery, failed his INT check, & passed through the portal back to the fight.

This is really where we left the session. The party needed to destroy two more pools to end the Roc-Breeder King, but Altair & Endri Mortas are both one hit away from death. I hate leaving sessions in the middle of a fight, but sometimes you do what you have to do. They have been talking about capturing Gargathus (especially since they need a crew replacement for Quintessa) so we’ll see how that plays out.

If you’re reading this now, we’ve already played Session 6, and thus wrapped up the first phase of Xaxa River Valley. If you’ve read this far, thanks for sticking with the program! We’re super excited to see this story through. After the S6 recap is complete, I will work on putting together a simply XRV doc so you can run your own phases.

Until next time, happy gaming!