The Gangsters Campaign/Session 17

Random background

* Ethernet: there are two of them, so Imperium & Aeldrum ones are separate
	+ Communication still has to go through hubs, which are controlled by states
	+ Access is much more expensive than IRL
	+ Local internet is up and running on highly developed planets
	+ Generally a tool of states, large corporations, powerful institutions like universities, and very wealthy individuals
	+ Private servers are possible, though v expensive
	+ Rudimentary internet piracy is possible (concealed transmission routes)
	+ Internet navigation is culturally specific

Oracular cadavers

* How to talk to the Oracular Cadavers?
	+ Medallions are like hard drives – housing the cadavers’ souls, and then using the souls to investigate certain things.
	+ So: extract medallions from cadavers; reverse engineer how medallion has deviated from the basic form required to implant into a cadaver (would take several weeks)
	+ OR take soul from the cadaver and put it in a living body, which after the inevitable madness might allow quicker extraction of the information
		- When implanted into a person’s brain, medallions also change the way your brain works (e.g. Guy used one to make a cultist kill himself)
	+ So: can Guy use the cadavers to kill us all?
		- Yes, if Guy cuts someone’s throat, shoves a medallion inside, then sends that person down to the deeps to feed the cadavers, who can then emerge from the water and do some murderin’
		- They become most dangerous as the power degrades, because they become unable to distinguish between friend and foe
* What do we want to know?
	+ What defenses does the altar have (who’s down there, what are they doing)
	+ Where are the cultists located/distributed
	+ How’s the effort going to facilitate Hieranthotat’s return
		- + any vulnerabilities / what are their concerns
	+ Griphook’s story: I’ve been in deep cover for a long time; need to figure out how the progression is going and what are the threats that need to be dealt with
		- Aka SWOT analysis of the cult of Hieranthotat, plz
* Guy goes and talks to the corpses
	+ The altar is not where Hieranthotat will arrive. The altar is the key which will open the vault, inside which are the tools of Hieranthotat’s remaking
	+ Cadavers have been hearing about the vault… listening to echoes reverberating from 5,000 years ago of souls trapped in that vault, which have been waiting for the chance to remake their lost king
	+ Where is the vault, and once we’ve prepared the altar, how can we turn the key?
		- Vault is directly below the outflow of the East Fens dam
	+ How to protect the cult?
		- Cult needs to be able to safely operate, so shutting down the dam would remove the workers around who are witnesses / watching
		- Dam is the reason the cult was able to thrive in the first place, but now the time has come to step beyond the cradle
	+ Guy goes to escape; Cilla shoots him
		- Icheb has his trusty vial of coolant to assist extraction
		- Except he wants the Pontooner with a medallion removed to punch Guy, but Vec has just knocked him out again, so to enable him punch him later, Icheb removes Guy’s head and takes it with us, on ice alongside the medallion

At the altar

* we send down Watson in an oil lamp-turned-sub for recon
* Indentation around the level of 30-40 feet below basement of East Fens
	+ Active dredging over last several days (water is turbid)
	+ Marshbed “scarred” by dredging
	+ Granite slab that sounds like a coffin if the thing being buried were five times larger than any man; must weigh 3-4 tons. Not going to come out of the water in one go
* Slag heap is actually an enormous cache of medallions in very big nets (each net containing 500-1000 medallions)
* Sonar towers / antennae below the water -- will go off if anyone gets too close
	+ Appears to be stolen from General Etheric
* Dredging appears to be forming a canal line, to enable dragging the slab/coffin up to shallower waters
* 5-6 diving suits anchored at the altar
* Opposite bank across from coffin is a raised hill, 15 feet around level of coffin
	+ Spectroscopy readings of the hill suggest abnormally high metal content: it’s a buried hull of a ship
	+ Highly corroded metal & sandbar formation suggest it’s been there a long time
	+ but, appears to be fashioned of very modern materials (metallurgical processes recent to the last 50 years) … hm…
* All of this is ~200 feet below the water
* Shoot one of the frozen medallions out of a torpedo. The old, damaged tissue doesn’t set it off at all, just sloughs off
	+ Watson takes pix for Jerry. Two problems:
		- Exposure to blood at certain concentrations is quite important.
		- Dead blood doesn’t work as well – needs to contain the soul, so it needs to be fresh
* Sarcophagus: When they were dying, Thanaccids derived means to keep themselves comatose rather than dead (cryogenic freezing for the soul). Used devices to slow the passage of time almost indefinitely: seal inside their own extradimensional space
	+ Coffin probably contains souls that might help Hieranthotat return.
	+ Time actually moves very slightly faster around the sarcophagus
	+ From perspective of the gods, time is linear but probabilistic. (Time is a flat circle) (it’s all one big probability curve, only collapsed down to reality when needed)
		- Maybe the coffin has been constructed to keep that multilateral view on reality (Schrödinger’s cultist)
* Could we drag away the sonar sensors?
	+ Cover 360 degrees around plus above (but not below)
	+ Make the water all turbid enough to block the sensors?

Jerry & Icheb’s journey

* Inside those 6 diving suits, people all wearing The Veils
	+ One of them pins Jerry Swanwallow under it, against the muck
	+ Basically a medallion controlling brain as wetware running a guard routine
	+ Another one tries to pull off his helmet, yikes
		- Cilla shoots that one with the harpoon gun and Criss pulls real strong to get it off of Jerry
	+ Icheb tries to stop water inrush with coolant
		- Ice gets everywhere
* In the meantime, a subtle but unmistakable shadow falls over the light that is cast from the surface above. A ship – a pretty big-ass ship – is heading towards the sarcophagus
* Iko releases some mines, which all miss the big-ass ship, and they float to the surface unattached, bobbing menacingly
* Iko tries to shoot a torpedo at this big boat and gets a nat 1. “Congratulations, you get the sub stuck.”

Griphook’s antics

* Griphook tosses one of the (proximity-based) mines towards the engine, successfully starting the process of sinking it onto our ship
* Iko & Icheb work on freeing the sub (DM chants “nat 1, nat 1” to no avail)
* “This has been a disastrously unsuccessful outing, but Griphook’s the only one who got hurt.”
* “Wait, your dex mod’s +6?” “Yep, so is my charisma mod.” “Griphook is just wasting his time with you guys.”
* “Where am I bleeding, Christophe?” “just… generally”
* When there are fresh bodies, the diving suits with Veils just tear apart the current bodies from the inside and then replace them with fresh new cadavers

Inside the hull

* Someone intentionally buried it to make an air pocket / tunnel
* We get to a galley area paneled in ancient, petrified wood
	+ And there, poring over some papers … is Harriet!