The Deep Ether Campaign/Session 3

The party had just crashed on planet and themselves in a spooky tiled bowl-thing. All around was the sound of a horrible chant and a thick cloud of black smoke rising towards the now shut gate. After some deliberation on whether to go towards the obsidian mountains in the distance or the blood red river, the party clambered out of the mile-and-a-half-ish wide bowl. Discovering on the way that the optics of the planet weren't quite right, everything seemed much farther away then it actually was, indicating some horrible non-euclidean geometry was at work.

On the edge of the bowl, the advance elements of the party discovered an immaculate marble surface ringing the bowl. They also discovered where the chanting was coming from - a horde of gul'dan were occupying a set of ruins just outside the bowl and began attacking. Just as the first few lizards were easily dispatched, the marble ring began to discharge aetheric energy. Most of the party escaped intact, but Hrymn (with Lumbergh on his back) were caught in the aetheric wave emanating from the ring. Hrymn avoided damage, as his body converted the energy to heat, but Lumbergh as a result had his arm melted off as he tried to clamber off the now superheated Hrymn.

With the bowl now too dangerous to return to, the party had no choice but to press on into the ruins. Hrymn used his heat to flash boil the insides of rooms, while Dundee swept through with Notan riding on his back, skewering Gul and Dan as they went. Dundee was wounded by an aetheric lance fired from a tower while Notan attempted to push off the Gul swarming over his back.

Meanwhile, Allie and Garrel investigated the series of cauldrons which were billowing smoke into the aether of the gate — these were Soul burners, hundreds of them, feeding the soul energy of the bodies trapped inside to keep the gate closed. Regi discovered that the burners could effectively be turned off by eliminating the body inside after shooting one of them. But since no effective way of shutting them all down could be thought of, the party moved on. After a harrowing adventure in which Jessie was almost killed by a dogpile of Gul and Aggron almost learned the number two, the party came to control the Basilica at the center of the ruins.

Banshee was immediately beset by the unnerving feeling that not only was his father Sigvald (whom the expedition sought for fun and profit) here on the world, but that he had just been in the very spot he was standing. Some psionic events revealed that Sigvald was in the mountain range, and that the mountains (now that the party had a better look) were not mountains at all, but a series of Black Pyramids, the dreaded anti-matter weapons discovered by a Saldanese expedition many years prior.

Meanwhile, Allie set about discovering the purpose of this Basilica, and came to the conclusion that the Basilica, and indeed the ruins around it, were not so worn or random as they thought. The entire complex in fact had been created to serve as a switchboard for an artificial ley-line which ran through the planet. It did so, at least in part, through a finely tuned system that produced an aetheric wind through the "ruins". Effectively, the whole system was some sort of aetheric musical instrument. Clearly it had been in disrepair for some time, however, and although it still amplified sound and made the chanting seem omnipresent, the soul burners clearly had been placed to make up for some deficiency. Indeed, Allie discovered that the controls had long been destroyed.

All this tarrying about had allowed the Gul'dan to regroup, and it seemed that some method of escape would be necessary. Allie, like the classic Irishwoman she was, suggested that they blow the basilica up, arguing that the resulting dissonance and aetheric hazard would be a perfect cover for their escape and subsequent journey to the pyramids. This demolition caused some problems. First, the party was wracked by some terrifying psychic damage from the dissonant winds. Second, the gate seemed once again to be in flux, and, confusingly, a second gate opened just above the pyramids. And third and most worrying, Hrymn and Garrel detected fluctuations from the Pyramids consistent with their known firing sequence, provided helpfully by the writings of Dolf Lungren (heavily plagarized from the notes of his dead compatriots as they were).

The party quickly set about building a makeshift bunker in a nearby sand dune (having escaped the gul'dan fest in the ruins). Each party member did their part, Hrymn acting as a lightning rod, Dundee sealing the front with his massive armored bulk, and the others rigging up and supporting various tentpoles and structural elements, with Garrel using the steam engine to pressurize the bunker a little bit for air safety. When the pyramid fired, the resulting aetheric storm was enormous. Though the main blast headed towards the gate, resealing it, the party was buffeted by enormous winds and aetheric blasts. Hyrmn did his job admirably, absorbing energy and discharging it away from the bunker (and mostly without harm to himself). Dundee held firm for most of the storm, but having been wounded already, was on the verge of death by its end. Six times he nearly died instantly (owing to a heart problem), but Dundee lived, and with the help of Notan and Banshee, who psionically reinforced his immune system, he stabilized without losing consciousness. The bunker had been hit many times, but through good fortune and the engineering prowess of Garrel and Allie, it held strong through the storm.

As the fires outside receded and the bunker could be safely opened, the party had to decide what to do. Lumberg and Dundee clearly could not continue in their heavily wounded state, but Banshee heard the call of his father, and the party agreed that avoiding him was likely to cause the party trouble. So Notan was left to guard and tend the wounded in the bunker, while the others trekked out to the pyramids. Banshee guided the party inside one of the pyramids, following his father's voice. Garrel and Hrymn stayed outside, neither liking the effect of the Pyramids' internal aetheric null space.

At last, the party met Sigvald, who monologued patronizingly at Banshee for an appropriate amount of time before revealing to him the true fate of his mother, whom he had killed for trying to hold Banshee hostage as a baby. Sigvald told Banshee of what high hopes he had for him, insisting that it would be glorious if they were to work together. He then revealed another secret. Tenku, the masked pilot who had brought the party down to the world, was in fact one of his agents, a tortured and deformed nipponese woman named Miri. Sigvald heavily implied that it would be good of his boy Banshee to kill this woman. Sensing Banshee's doubt, Allie resolutely placed herself in front of him, drawing her sword with one hand and reassuringly grasping Miri's with the other. Allie and Banshee locked eyes as Sigvald steepled his hands in delight at the confrontation.