Aerois - Episode 7: Guardian Secrets

Kim Richards as Nova V'ger

Mark Hulmes as Aila

Rhiannon Frost as Sentry

 Tom Hazell as Qillek Ad Khollar

**Guardian Secrets** is the 7th episode of the Aerois Campaign. It was broadcast live on both the the Yogscast Twitch channel and highrollersdnd Twitch channel on 19th August 2018 from 5PM to 8PM BST.

*We continue our dangerous expedition in the sunken village of Dwalinden!*

## **Summary**

### **Announcements**

* Mark welcomes everyone and introduces the players.
* Katie is away this week.
* Sponsors this week are D&D Beyond and Brilliant.
* There is a new Aerois shirt (available in white and black).
* A fan art video is to be shown this week. Please send your fan art to highrollersdnd@gmail.com.
* High Rollers will have a new mini-series in September: Dragon Heist.

### **Recap**

"*Last time, you arrived at the town of Rosehall, a small country village in southern Suvonna, a continent that you have crash-landed on. You made some friends with the locals, you checked out the town, and you became aware of several opportunities to earn some coin, in order to resupply yourselves but also to pay for your friend Arval's injuries that he sustained during the airship crash. Investigating around town, you eventually decided to head back to a large chasm in the ground, about a day's travel south of Rosehall, which you knew contained the ruins of an old Dwarven village or town or city called Dwalinden. This was a town from something called the Founding age, a period of time long, long ago, before Aerois was split up by the fury of the gods themselves and the war with Kalus Starbane. You travelled to there, supplying yourselves along the way, and descending into the chasm there were a couple of things that went wrong. Quill ended up falling from a considerable height into the chasm, sustaining quite grievous injuries. You also fought off a pack of ravenous humanoid creatures, that seemed to spring up when they heard noise within the chasm itself and descended upon you. Healing up your injuries, you now find yourselves at the bottom of the chasm, your rope having dislodged itself from the top of the chasm itself, and coiling down at the bottom along with you. The chasm itself is about 250 feet deep, so you look up against this incredibly dangerous rocky-looking terrain into the daylight peering down. Much of the daylight doesn't quite reach down, the angle of the chasm is quite narrow, so the sunlight stops about half-way and you're really just using residual light down at the bottom. Lucius has four coloured globes around him, providing brighter light down at the bottom of the pit itself. Before you, you see a long thin chasm, and you can see that the walls have crushed buildings, over centuries buildings have collapsed, fallen in on themselves, and left it in ruins. You can see remnants of a strange time period that you're not really familiar with, metal poles that contain crystalline lights, you can see flagstone that seems unnaturally smooth and worn down, that runs throughout the centre of the chasm itself. The buildings have strange metal supports, struts holding up balconies and other parts. You can see in the vague area that you've climbed down in that there's not much left to explore, most of the town has been consumed by the earth and the mountains and the rock around you. But there are about three buildings, the first of which you can see appears to have some sort of short chimney and a sign embedded above the door. Then it continues on down into the chasm itself. Apart from that you can't make out too much more detail as it stands.*"
### **Part 1**

*In the dark, dark chasm we find a dark, dark house with some dark, dark loot!*

It is about midday. The party is at the bottom of the dark, 250-foot-deep chasm that now makes up Dwalinden – because it is so narrow and deep, the sunlight only makes it halfway down, and they rely mainly on Nova’s lantern and Lucius’ Dancing Lights spell for illumination against the gloom. Ahead of them is a long open tunnel full of ancient, collapsed and destroyed buildings: there are remnants of technology that is unknown to them – metal poles with crystals in glass globes at their apex (what they think were once lights), flagstones that seem unnaturally smooth as the central road, buildings with strange metal supports and struts. Much of the area that they find themselves in has been consumed or destroyed in the Sundering, when the chasm was formed, but there are three buildings that still (mostly) stand and can be explored.

When Lucius sends his lights towards the building with the sign outside, Quill can see that there are dwarvish runes, but he cannot read them. Sentry sends echo, a twist of metal, wood and crystal, looking like a bird’s nest with a purple gem in the middle, to go and look: just outside the building, some of the walls have collapsed and there is the body of a Guardian partially collapsed and buried under stone. It has metal plates with a wooden skeleton beneath them and a single, lifeless, central black eye – only one of its arms and the top half of its body remains unburied by the rubble, and the notice that the metal has rusted, and the wood started to rot with age. Sentry recognises the runes on the sign as an ancient dwarvish script – it reads “Gadwin’s Steel”, and she believes this was a blacksmith’s shop.

The door to the building is about 5 feet tall, there are window slots with no glass. Nova, Aila and Sentry move up to investigate the body: it quite different to Sentry. It has no human face, just pure metal plates with a line running down the centre, it also has a single central eye made up of a gemstone that is now blackened and lifeless. The body is squat like a Dwarf, and is mainly wood rather than metal plating, giving the impression that this was built as a labourer rather than a soldier. Nova babbles excitedly about the body with the noise echoing multiple times around the chasm.

Aila moves to the door and tries to open it, but it appears stuck or locked – it is a wooden door, heavily inlaid with metal strips that look something like iron but are not. The windows are only arrow slits, so Sentry sends echo through to investigate. While it is very dark, Sentry can see through echo’s eye that half the room has collapsed, but the other half is some sort of workshop – there are long stone and metal benches, an anvil and a forge, now stone cold. There are also two dark grey metal chests tucked under one of the workbenches and perfect metal sphere with a tiny blue gemstone in its centre sitting on a shelf at the back of the room – Nova thinks this may be another Guardian’s echo. Aila, hearing that there is treasure inside, almost pulls the door off its hinges. Quill takes Nova’s lantern and throws it behind them and away from the building – the lantern smashes and the oil catches fire – there is nothing there, but Quill thought that he had heard something behind them.

They enter the building and notice that the two chests are sealed and probably airtight; Lucius glances at the echo on the shelf and thinks that it moved and that the gem glowed for a second. Nova is still outside examining the body of the dead Guardian, wanting to try to revive it. From what she has read, there is no known way to restore a Guardian to life once its Matrix of Will (the core that brings them sentience) degrades: they either shut down and turn into statues or turn feral. The knowledge of how to build Guardians and how to replenish their cores is lost to Aerois: there have been many experiments (trying to apply magical energy, trying to tinker with the Guardian’s matrix), but these have not ended well. Lucius asks Sentry what would happen if someone were to touch another Guardian’s echo, but she does not know.

Lucius touches Sentry’s echo…

> *Lucius feels a split-second connection between his own arcane well of power and whatever powers the echo. He gets flashes in his mind of a beautiful kingdom of glass towers and metal carriages pulled without beasts, as well as people in strange uniforms that he has never seen before. He gets a flash of a fresh, newly created Sentry being given a shield by a human man that he cannot quite make out. He sees swirling earth, sand and stone all around him…* before the vision stops.
>
>

Lucius tells them all that he has seen – Sentry’s memories of Solwynn and her early life. Nova, excited, touches echo hoping for the same vision, but feels nothing but a cold surface and a tiny pulse in Tiangong as if it senses something. Lucius wants to touch the echo on the shelf. Aila wants to open the chests, but the locks are rusted, so Quill suggests that she breaks the locks.
Lucius touches the other echo…

> *There is the same brief connection between the sorcerous power within him and the echo’s power source. These visions are hazy and less vivid, as if he is in a dark mist or shadow – these memories are more grey than coloured. He feels intense heat over long periods of time, working and hammering metal on an anvil for a long time. He sees Dwarven faces, but their features are blurred and obscured. There is a terrible earthquake, the ground shaking, followed by great waves coming out of nowhere across the landscape. People are shouting and screaming. He dives into a building, sees a sudden golden flash of light and hears a voice saying, "Find the Prime", then there is only darkness…*
>
>

He tells the rest about the vision. Quill wonders how the echo had power if its Guardian is dead, and they suggest that maybe Lucius powered it. Aila has attempted to open the chests but has failed because they are too badly rusted – she has tried to use her hammer to “open” them, but only managed to bend some of the metal. Nova picks up the echo on the shelf, Quill sees the gemstone light up, then fade quickly: they think that the owner of the echo may be watching them.

Sentry picks up the echo and sees a very similar vision to that experienced by Lucius. Lucius casts Acid Splash on the lock of one of the chests, and manages to open it, but gets acid inside it – there is a magic item with transmutation inside, the other chest has no magic items inside. The echo is also magic. Inside the chest that Lucius has opened are 5 steel bars, 3 of very high quality and 2 that are now ruined, pitted and destroyed by acid; there was also a bundle of interesting looking wood that has been broken by Aila’s attempts to get into the chest. The last item in the chest is a beautifully-crafted blacksmith’s hammer, 18 inches long with a large heavy head engraved with multiple Dwarven patterns – the handle is wrapped in wyvern hide – it is highly magical. Quill also notices very strong magic emanating from the spear tip that they carry, Tiangong, very minor magic from the Howling Gale that Aila carries (almost as if it was once magical but has faded), and Sentry also glows with magic.

Nova steps outside to look around, and they hear from within the hut, the sound of heavy metal slamming onto stone. Nova sees a hulking figure, short and wide, much larger than a humanoid, crouched on top of the roof; it looks like it was once a Guardian, but it has had metal and stone grafted onto its original frame, and now has a chimney-like vent on its back. Its eyes glow orange like embers in a forge, and it appears to have fiery energy running through its whole body: it leaps off the roof and slams its Warhammer onto the ground, injuring Nova. It calls on her to leave, its head twitching as if with a tic.

After Lucius hits the creature, flames start to billow from the creature, like it is a living forge. The heat eventually builds up in its body and it explodes in a gout of flame as it jumps and rockets a distance away, doing fire damage to them. It holds out its arm, and with a whir, and some movement of parts in its wrist, a wand-like protuberance emerges and fires a beam of intense heat. It has taken acid damage from Lucius, a physical attack from Aila, and is now perched on top of a column that is teetering after a powerful blow from Sentry. Quill attempts to blast the column with the thunderstone pistol, but instead, it blows him back and knocks him prone. Aila smacks the column again, which teeters, but does not break.

The Guardian uses his jets to leap off the column and into the midst of the party – it then opens vents on its body and releases an acrid cloud of smoke in a 10 foot radius (within the 10 feet, breathing is impossible). After taking a large hit from Sentry and some Magic Missiles from Quill, the foe slumps onto one knee before falling to the ground.

### **Part 2**

*We continue our exploration of the mostly dangerous (but mostly unlooted) Dwalinden!*

The smoke clears, and they hear the stone pillar nearby starting to crack and see it starting to fall. Sentry and Aila try to push it back away from them, but they fail, and have to try to avoid it, but fail as it falls and destroys the dead Guardian’s legs. On examination, the vents on its back have been crudely constructed and were clearly not part of the original design, but a later modification to allow it to use its body heat like a jet pack. Quill realises that the dead Guardian was built for a specific purpose – to be a blacksmith and to forge items – Sentry, on the other hand, is special because she is able to change and adapt to her purpose, therefore she has greater potential. He thinks that the heat device could probably be removed and salvaged for Sentry to use, but Nova thinks that in using it, Sentry may have to use some of her own energy source, so it may damage her every time she uses it: Sentry agrees.

Quill tries to use the blacksmith’s hammer to open the lock of the second chest after telling Aila how easy it should be – he fails, so Lucius uses acid to open it. Inside is a leather pouch full of coins, but most of them are destroyed by his acid that has gone through the lock into the chest again. They manage to recover 20 ancient gold coins – they are pre-Sundering coins (worth twice as much as normal), and cloth-wrapped squares of thick scaly hide – it is wyvern skin, and if made into a set of armour, will give resistance against poisons: there is enough to make one set of leather armour.

Nova removes the heat wand from the dead Guardian and attaches it to Sentry (see trivia for information). Sentry, intrigued by what happened when Lucius touched the other Guardian’s echo, touches the forge Guardian, but nothing happens: its echo is now inert.

There are two more buildings that they can explore further into the chasm, but it is darker because some of the chasm has collapsed in on itself creating an artificial ceiling. There is a very long, rustic-looking building, and a store, “Ergot’s Emporium” which has partially collapsed, but there are some things remaining inside including shelves and a stone desk. The long building has a terrible stench coming from it – the smell of rotten meat – and they are concerned that they may be attacked by something should they try to rest. Sentry sends echo to reconnoitre the long building: there are rows upon rows of rotting piles of meat that appear to have maybe been partially eaten people. There are also four of the same creatures they first saw, quietly starting into space and stuffing offal into their mouths. On a chair looming over them, and gnawing on a skull, is a larger version of them. Nearby, there are two fresher bodies that still have their packs, lanterns, crowbars, a fine-looking dagger and a longbow on them.

They make a plan for Aila to sneak up on the monsters and lure them out, at which point they would ambush them: this plan goes badly from the outset as Aila makes too much noise trying to stealth towards the building. The ghouls get pummelled as they attempt to leave the building through the single doorway, but then manage to paralyse Lucius. The larger ghoul is killed after taking massive damage from Quill’s Guiding Bolt and Nova’s Eldritch Blast, sending the four smaller ghouls into a frenzy. Sentry protects the still-paralysed Lucius while the others attempt to mop up the remaining ghouls. Lucius is knocked unconscious by another ghoul attack, eventually the remaining ghouls are destroyed, and Lucius is stabilised.

## **YouTube Timestamps**

00:00 - Episode Start
09:33 - Intro
13:10 - Part 1
46:59 - "You touched me and it felt good" Lucius to Quill
1:23:11 - Break time/Fan art video
1:27:20 - Part 2
2:37:22 - Outro/Donations

## **Featured Characters**

#### **The Adventuring Party**

* Aila (played by Mark)
* Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto
* Nova V'ger
* Qillek Ad Khollar
* Sentry

## **Trivia**

* Quill tries to heal himself and Lucius at the same time, but only heals Lucius.
* This is the first time that Lucius has touched a Guardian’s echo or matrix.
* Lucius uses a new spell that he now has: Melf’s Acid Arrow.
* Mark said that he will only roll on the injury table for bad guys if they are regular villains: it also means that they will not die at 0 hit points but will make death saving throws like everyone else.
* Nova attempts to use suggestion on the forge Guardian but fails: its mind is so fragmented and decayed that the spell has nothing to take hold of: its madness is almost protective.
* Mark snacks on some ginger nut cookies during this episode.
* The wyvern skin that they discover in the chest will create a huge headache for Mark for almost 100 episodes because of fan obsession.
* Mark says that Nova wearing her goggles makes her eyes look huge “like Maz (Kanata) from Star Trek” – Kim corrects this to Star Wars. Ironically, Mark is wearing a Star Wars (logo) shirt this episode.
* Sentry’s arm laser: once per day, Sentry can fire a 30 foot long, 5 foot wide beam of fire damage. Any creatures in the beam (including allies) have to make a DC12 Dex save or take 3d6 fire damage. When she fires it, Sentry takes 3 cold damage because she is drawing on her own body heat to fire it. Nova thinks it possible to find additional power sources to increase the number of uses per day or to be able to increase the damage it does by exchanging the crystal or the enchantments on the wand. It is an attuned item.
* Tom wanted to call Sentry’s new arm-mounted heat beam “Occam’s Laser”.
* Mark was very clear that there are no such things as lasers in Aerois.
* Idunyken suggested during a dono that Sentry’s new weapon could be called a Luminous Arc Sentry Enhancement Ring (LASER).
* Mark added a retcon in Episode 19 so that Lucius "had a glimpse near the end of something about the Prime (I think). If not, there is now".

## **References**

1. ↑ Mark added a retcon in Episode 19 (1:28:53) that Lucius had a vision regarding the Prime when touching the second echo.