The Black Pyramid Campaign

**The Black Pyramid Campaign** was an expedition to the planet A11 by the Academy of Saldan that led to a clash between the Saldanese, the Aeldrum Trade Company, a faction of the Knights Mercantile, and the Skinchangers over control of an ancient superweapon.

## Background

While the rest of the cosmos is embroiled in the Fialta-Shantine War, the Academy of Saldan sends an expedition of academics (accompanied by soldiers and laborers) to the frontier world of A11 (later dubbed "New South Saldan" by the expedition leadership). A11 is a barren, seemingly-lifeless world that was ravaged during The Pantheon War and left abandoned thereafter. In addition to seeking new lore and ancient artifacts, the Saldanese expedition's mix of archeologists, ethericists, and occultists hope to investigate etheric evidence that the newly-rediscovered world may be home to a second Etheric Gate, potentially leading to the discovery of a new Ley Line.

## Summary

### Session 0

Details on the makeup of the expedition:

* **Leadership and Specialists**:
	+ **Chief Scientist and Senior Occultist:** Dr. Lungren - a well respected gnomish occultist who managed the astonishing feat of reaching his twilight years without ever seeing the inside of a padded cell (although he conversed with many resident colleagues in the Academy's Reality Rehabilitation Center by standing on a high chair and talking through the door bars).
	+ **Senior Ethericist:** Dr. Niels - a human scientist in the middle of his career, Dr. Niels is gambling heavily on this expedition. It may be a career-slumping distraction from the high theory practiced by his department, but unveiling a new etheric lane could mean a lofty place in the history books. Like most ethericists, he has a deep distaste for the Occult, which he considers a paltry attempt to achieve by smoke and mirrors the purity of understanding that comes with his discipline. Matters are not assisted by the serious rivalry between the Etheric and Occult departments, which boiled over into a bout of violence half a century ago when the Codex Exilium was stolen at around the same time as a string of deaths and disappearances in both departments — a whirlwind of mutual accusations ended in an embarrassing brawl resulting in three deaths from heart attacks due to overexertion.
	+ **Senior Archaeologist:** Dr. Jonessi - an elf of academic parentage whose father died defending a dig site from grave robbers. Dr. Jonessi has garnered attention as an advocate for the conservation of artifacts; though dismissed by many as a sentimentalist, a meaningful archaeological find on World A11 could give her the prestige to make her case more forcefully. The disaster that is the Gate Town scavenger community is a ready-made exhibit.
	+ **Senior Physician and Engineer:** Dr. Sera - the daughter of influential elvish aristocrats on Aeldrum, Dr. Sera defied convention by leaving the life of wealth and politics promised to her by birth to study at the Academy of Saldan. She has spent much of her career trying to find the great discovery that will surely demonstrate the value of science to her disapproving family. Unfortunately, her enthusiastic focus on Trans-Carnism (colloquially, Cyborging) has done little to convince her relatives that she is anything other than slightly insane. A recent lecture by the cosmically famous Mr. Royce Poindexter, one of the academy's most successful non-academic alumni, led Dr. Sera to consider drones as a feature of her research; this particular expertise, combined with her medical background, earned her a place on the expedition's command board.
	+ **Chief of Hostile Asset Disposal:** Marcel Rey - the expedition's resident antipersonnel operative, retained in the event that the party should encounter either hostile indigenous life or rival expeditions. The unspoken threat, however, is that Marcel may be the insurance policy of the Occult Department should things go terribly awry.
	+ **Consultant for Archaeological Retrieval:** Godehard Makiah - Frequently contracted by the Academy to obtain valuable artifacts from independent build sites, the expedition's Retrieval Consultant is a helpful means of bypassing
* **General Personnel:**
	+ 20 laborers w/ demolitions training, led by Jenkins the Foreman
	+ 5 Saldanese Janissaries
	+ 1 junior physician
	+ 2 nurses
	+ 3 auto mechanics
	+ 1 troll, property of the Occult Department, retained by Dr. Lungren as a bodyguard
	+ 3 human mercenaries, contracted to Dr. Niels (second and third contracts added after discovering that Dr. Lungren had brought along a troll: quote from memo to Head of the Etheric Department, Dr. Sulando: "If the gnome gets a fucking troll, I want enough guns to take it out.")
	+ 2 graduate students: 1 employed by Dr. Jonessi, 1 employed by Dr. Niels
* **Assets:**
	+ 2 Rolls Royce Armored Convertibles (1 w/ machine-gun mount)
	+ 8 cargo trucks
	+ 24 mules
	+ 8 horses
	+ 200 lbs dynamite
	+ Vast quantities of fuel
	+ 2 years of food and 2 months of water
	+ 100 cases of tea cakes (reserved for expedition leadership)
	+ 20 boxes of cigars (reserved for expedition leadership)
	+ 20,000 ft. of rope
	+ 30 Schulz-pattern rifles
	+ 200 boxes of ammo (100 rounds each)
	+ 30 mining kits

### Session 1

Not long after arriving at Gate Town (the Saldanese staging area near A11's etheric gate), the expedition fought off a mob of maddened workers, apparently under the hallucinogenic effects of a strange purple dust deposited by the westward winds on the eastern side of the scavenger camp.

The expedition members further discovered that some of the people most severely affected by the dust (e.g. Mr. Gunderson, the missing miner who reportedly visited the City of Ashes to the far south) regenerate themselves in direct etheric (i.e. natural) light, even if apparently dead; this appears to be an accelerated healing factor rather than a perfect regenerative process, as there is scar tissue.

This phenomenon is comparable to the strange six-winged bat discovered by the Saldanese Librarian Executor Dr. Casimir; the bat's limbs and tail could be severed and reattached when exposed to a magnified beam of etheric light. It is also similar to the rapid healing of the dwarf and the human apparently slain by Marcel — though not obviously insane, they both bore marks in Elder Script upon their flesh, which disappeared when Marcel attempted to cut away the skin as a sample. The two were seen during the assault on the expedition's void-ship, though whether as observers or as commanders is unclear.

After these strange and horrifying events, the expedition leadership elected to head in the direction of the rumored second gate on A11.

### Session 2

The expedition spent some time exploring the black pyramid at the center of the glass crater, which they had discovered after leaving Gate Town and spending the transit either studying the eldritch briefcase (which was determined to be some kind of mechanical cipher meant to approximate Elder Script) or chasing after Dr. Lungren, who mistook a dust cloud for enemy activity and decided to take the wheel of his armored car and drive headlong into it.

After these misadventures, the expedition found what seemed to be the shadow of a city, frozen in time under the astonishingly clear glass surrounding a great three-sided pyramid; the pyramid itself seemed to absorb all light and even sound, to the point that one could not readily navigate the inside of the structure without painting over the walls to give the gaslight something off of which to reflect. There was also a marked disruption of the expedition's radio equipment and other technology (Dr. Sera's cybernetics stopped functioning inside the pyramid).

The expedition discerned something of the internal design of the pyramid, whose corridors appeared to form a lattice of triangles sloping up and down within the larger superstructure. They also discovered a deep pit running up to the open vertices of one of these triangle-corridor arrangements, inside of which were vast heaps of defunct automatons. A quick examination of one of the machines (removed from the pile and taken outside of the pyramid) revealed that it was an ancient design, probably belonging to the god Baradun. More surprisingly, however, was the fact that the automatons seemed to have been clambering over each other in a bid to escape something at the bottom of the pit; those expedition members who clambered down the great machine heaps were confronted with a sanity-testing deprivation of light and sound, which they fortunately passed.

Marcel also disposed of the remains of Mr. Gunderson, whose peculiar regenerative qualities had become unregulated confined to storage jars, with appropriately horrifying results. Marcel reported seeing the shadows of countless birds in the flickering light of the fire in which he disposed of Mr. Gunderson's earthly remnants. That same night, several of your men complained of awful dreams, perhaps similar to those experienced by the scavengers in Gate Town (Dr. Sera checked the workers for signs of contamination by the mysterious purple residue and found disconcerting evidence to that effect).

In the morning, after investigating the pyramid for some time, the party returned outside to see an unnerving shadow rippling under the glass surface of the crater; as the shadow passed over several of the workers, the men were torn to shreds by a terrible force. The Janissaries and workers scrambled to form a defensive perimeter, and the expedition leadership was left to decide how to respond to this strange and lethal threat.

### Session 3

The session began with the expedition being assailed by strange, shadowlike monsters. Doctors Lungren and Sera decided that the sanest course of action was to ram the invisible horde with an armored car. Dr. Jonessi, Marcel and Godehard instead congregated around the machine gun, which was manned by the five janissaries. Sera and Lungren crashed, badly, and were nearly torn to shreds as they retreated toward the rest of the expedition party. Lucio, the troll, was getting chunks torn out of him about as quickly as he could regenerate. With the workers either fleeing into the pyramid or getting ripped apart by the shadows, the expedition leadership decided to enact a tactical retreat and ran into the pyramid after their men.

After a bit of running and gunning, they reached the center of the pyramid. By this point, a clever application of a peculiarly occluded glass shard to the front of an electric lamp allowed everyone to see the shadows for what they were — a horrifying mixture of bird and man. after expedition members reached the top of a gantry rising up over a deep pit, Lungren followed a chute directly above and reached some sort of panopticon (he failed his senility roll, though, and reached some highly erroneous conclusions). Everyone eventually followed him when it became clear that the shadows, though moving more slowly, were still giving chase.

Inside the Panopticon, they discovered what Dr. Jonessi identified as an Angel of Baradun (a nine-foot tall, mummified corpse with wires and gears still turning under its desiccated skin) seated inside a massive control throne. The party was running out of ammunition (this prompted a ridiculous one-liner from Lungren "They'll run out of blood before we run out of bullets" (Imagine this coming from an elderly gnome with a rifle bigger than he is...)) when the shadows suddenly began to recede. Then, a horrible dread took over the party members, an almost compulsive "call of the void", beckoning all into the pit far below. A strange shaking from the half-dead angel led Dr. Sera to conclude that the pyramid, which was apparently a superweapon that would generate a negative etheric zone and destroy vast areas in the ensuing calamity of reality, reshaping itself, was about to fire.

The group then saw Dr. Niels and his three mercs (who had been oddly absent for all of this) running up the gantry. Marcel and Jonessi overruled Lungren and kept the Panopticon open long enough for the four of them to rejoin the group. Unfortunately, this meant that they spent a crucial few seconds exposed to the full horror of the fabric of space and time being punctured somewhere below. Everyone made will saves, and everyone took sanity damage except Dr. Sera (who rolled a nat 20, and gained forbidden knowledge). Several members were suddenly exposed to a horrible absence of feeling when the chamber was finally sealed, and afterwards found themselves suffering from sensory overload. In essence, their senses become so heightened trying to find some sort of stimulus during those horrifying few seconds that they overcompensated (those affected now get +4 to perception, but intense light or sound requires a fortitude save to avoid being dazed (+4 to listen/spot)). They also took some sanity damage (11 points each).

When all this was over, the party took stock of its situation: Most of the workers were dead, one of the Janissaries was catatonic, and another was in the same sensory overload condition. The surviving workers, who were outside the Panopticon chamber when the firing occurred, had all gone irreperrably insane. All of Dr. Niels' mercenaries became hypersensitive (Niels seemed fine, as did the other scholars (high will saves, after all)) and, using the strange magnifying properties of the Panopticon, the party saw that the settlement of Gate Town was set ablaze by the firing of the weapon (Gate Town is about one hundred and sixty miles away).

The party gathered itself up and tried heading back. The radio came back online, and they tried hailing the airship's captain. He was incoherent and eventually hung up. They managed to reach Dr. Casimir, the librarian, but he was killed by two assailants, whom Marcel recognized by voice as the dwarf and the man he had slain at the tower. The Panopticon also revealed an oasis a few days' walk from the pyramid so the party headed there. En-route, the group broadcast a general distress call, which was was finally answered by, of all things, an officer of the Aeldrum Trade Company. It seemed that the ATC disembarked not long after the pyramid was fired. With few resources and almost no men, the expedition leadership told the ATC the party's current location and offered to trade knowledge for their assistance.

The ATC reached the oasis a few days after the party (in the meantime, Godehard and Jonessi concluded jointly that the oasis was actually the reflecting pool of a massive Church of Kirva). On arrival, Dr. Sera realized that the commander, Captain Pascius, was her former fiancee. What was already an awkward reunion was made still worse when Pascius arrested her on charges of "Dynastic Complicity in High Treason" (namely, her father and brother were implicated in an assassination attempt on the Serene Doge of Aeldrum, and later also convicted of laundering money for a separatist movement on Aeldrum).

So now the Saldanese expedition has joined up with the ATC for the time being. They seem to be interested in the pyramids and a possible etheric route over the planet's wastelands. Cpt. Pacius appears to be advised by a mysterious elf (definitely not Aeldman) in black, silken robes named Chenueva, who appears to owe the Company some sort of debt.

So to summarize this summary,:

* The party was attacked by what seem to have been the negatives of long-dead souls, flash-burned into the background ether by some massive release of energy
* The black pyramid is apparently a source of negative energy, used to rip apart the farbic of the ether and trigger a chain reaction of destruction as reality re-stabilizes (Sera and Jonessi theorize that a full blast could literally set the atmosphere on fire — what the party saw was a very, very, small taste of the destruction)
* The pyramid fired again shortly after the party's arrival; whether the party triggered it is unclear. In any case, a lack of etheric energy avoided the full chain reaction of the original firing (there may also have been other pyramids involved the first time)
* The ATC showed up, and the Saldanese expedition has now joined them as a survival measure
* The sky is now dark even during the day, and there's a massive rift far to the north

### Session 4

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### Session 5

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### Session 6

Suleiman, Ottokar, Herman and Marcel made contact with the Knights Mercantile on world A11 and met their leader, Dr. Ingrid Gewerschmidt; Ottokar also realized that several of Ingrid's men bore the uniforms and insignia of the dreaded Black Cell Lab.

Doctors Sera and Jonessi are at the black pyramid with Tamarak and the Telranians and a force of ATC grunts under the preening Lieutenant Caylen, looking for evidence to build a case for Cpt. Pascius to claim that the KM and Cult of the Unnamed pose a national security threat to Aeldrum. Niels and Godehard are still at the ATC camp near the Oasis, with Godehard and Sgt. Janus beginning a massive excavation project along the buried trench lines.

### Session 7

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### Session 8

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