I Ran The Iron Coral #3

Previous Sessions : 1, 2. 

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Once again we have M. playing as...

 

Creed (Dex +1), locked inside their crimson armour (armour 1, defer blow onto an ally), armed with sword and pistol. Rendered listless last session, proscribed stimulants in order to function.

Doug (Wis +1), armed with a rifle.

 

Also featuring: Slob the dog. 

We open on Creed staring out the window of the party's new boardinghouse lodgings at the falling rain and the forest of ship's crosstrees. They are listless, their hair matted. Behind them, in the room's second bed, Doug is curled up with the dog. From a vial Creed takes some white powder and snorts it, immediately achieving a measure of alertness and awareness previously lacking. 

At breakfast (mostly fish and lard) the landlady gives Creed a letter from Doc. Cruette asking if they would like to give a small recounting of their exploits in the Iron Coral to some physician friends of his on visit from Bastion. (1) They decide they'll need a showpiece: an expedition is in order.

 

Asking around for recruits in the dockside pubs, they are met by two men--Suleiman and Piotr. They are rough sorts, washed up out of one of Bastion's armies by the look of their mismatched kit. But they've been in the Iron Coral before, as part of one of Nigel's expeditions. They don't like Nigel much--he got one of their buddies killed and paid them a paltry amount in spite of making it out with two crystal orbs. It's not the danger they mind so much as the lack of rewards. (2) So they agree, in part to spite Nigel, to sign on for no up-front pay but rather a share of the treasure. A seven-three split is agreed upon.

They ship out in Dorett's little fishing boat in the pouring rain. (3) It takes longer than usual to navigate the choppy waters but after an arduous amount of rowing the Iron Coral's jagged form looms and the party pulls into the cove in its side.

 

They enter the gaping passage and after an inordinate amount of time descending find themselves walking through a sort of cavern whose rocky walls seem to bear impressions of cyclopean machinery. (4) Then the tunnel narrows, crowded out by freezing pipes and they squeeze through and out into some sort of engine room thick with even more tangled pipes. They feel a rumble through their feet and the sound of distant machinery churning to life. 

Exasperated at yet another change to the dungeon, (5) they nonetheless press on and encounter a small, rodent-esq creature which spoke to them in oddly comprehensible gibberish. A helper beast: it asked to be given a task. Not knowing what else to do, Creed told it to come along with them and it let itself be scooped up and placed on their shoulder.

The room to the north was bigger, with a tangle of pipes on the ceiling leading into two massive tanks festooned with glowing gauges. The coral in this part of the dungeon has an odd golden color. As they stepped into the room however, Piotr stopped them with a hiss and raised fist. (6) Very slowly he indicated the ceiling and they saw the large, almost transparent, shape of an insectoid creature shift position in the pipes above. (7)

Slowly, Doug, Piotr, and Suleiman raised their rifles, training them on the glassy creature. At Creed's instigation, they began to sidle their way across the room to the door on the east wall, but the creature above shifted to intercept them. 

They made their decision. Piotr and Doug opened fire. The pipes masked it (and it was nearly invisible besides) so their shots didn't quite hit home (8) but the creature is hit nonetheless and falls from the ceiling with a panicked, chittering screech. The gunshots echo against the metal walls. (9) They have just enough time to see the gouts of translucent red blood and then the glass mantis lashes out with its clawed arms, grappling Piotr, who takes a nasty wound and loses his rifle. Creed yells at the other two to take the shot, even if it risks hitting Piotr, and another volley of rifle fire smashed into the creature, blowing its head open and, unfortunately, hitting Piotr as well, who goes limp. 

The glass mantis toppled and the gang rushes over, pulling Piotr free from its clawed embrace. Fortunately, he is till alive. (10) Just mangled and with a cleanly shot-through wound to the flank. A quick debate, then Suleiman and Doug began to drag Piotr back towards the entrance while the dog pranced about wildly and Creed bent over to examine the creature's body. 

Before he can however, they saw a ripple in the wall. Slowly, like a shark's fin breaking the surface, a golden clawed hand emerged and went racing across the floor towards Doug and Suleiman. (11)

In desperation, Creed pulled their sabre free and slashed--at empty air. With a massive swipe, the arm tossed Suleiman aside and he flew into one of the metal tanks with a meaty thud and resonant clang before crumpling to the ground. 

Doug tries to disentangle himself from his rifle strap, still half dragging Piotr as the arm circles round. Creed takes the time to pull out his revolver, aim, fire, and blow the arm into weird metallic droplets. It subsumes into the floor and all is quiet save for the ringing of the gunshot and the churn of machinery in the walls. 

Creed then helped Suleiman up, who is fine if badly bruised (maybe with a broken rib), and then put him back to the task of hauling Piotr out to the boat. Meanwhile, Creed bends over and starts hacking at the body of the glass mantis. After tense minutes of effort, acutely aware of how alone they are in the claustrophobic bowls of this waking edifice, Creed managed to gather up an arm and head of the translucent creature. (12) Its blood gets everywhere, staining his armour a deeper crimson. 

He hurries out after his comrades and, after jogging in darkness, emerged into the pouring rain. The sea is choppy and the little fishing boat bobs in the swells but they load Piotr aboard, covering him with a tarp. Creed gives Suleiman a handful of money, the arm and head (now wrapped up) and instructs him to row back to Hopesend, get medical attention for Piotr, and deliver the "specimens." Then come back and pick Doug and them up. Suleiman gives a salute and shoves off. 

Together, Doug and Creed turn back to the gaping dungeon mouth. They feel a shudder pass through the coral underfoot.

Entering back into the relative dryness, of the Iron Coral, they descend, once more squeezing their way through the cold pipes and into the engine room, then proceeding to the room with the huge tanks. (13) Two of the little helper beasts are there, fiddling with the gauges on the tank that Suleiman collided with. They chatter and ignore the party. At least until Creed tries and fails to snatch one up and shove it in a snack, at which point they scampered off. 

Shrugging, they open the door to east and find a hub-like room with some odd white "leather" chairs on the wall and a shaft in the ceiling dripping foam. Creed sat in one just for the hell of it. Then they tried a door covered in incomprehensible signage to the southeast. On the other side they found a small, bare room with three locked metal lockers on the wall. (14) Finding them locked, they tried a passage leading south that smelled of rot. At the other end was a crude chamber heaped with rotting flesh. They retreated back to the hub room and try, this time, the northeastern door (also covered in weird signage). That hatch opened up onto a long passage which they proceeded down. As they neared the end they noticed the sounds of an immense creature breathing. The dog whines and refuses to go forward. With trepidation, they look out into the huge room beyond. There is a passage on the far wall, but between them and it is a huge, black scaled, six legged monstrosity deep in slumber; nearly the size of a steam truck. 

They retreat quietly and carefully. Back in the hub room, they try the northern door, which opens onto a chamber with several dangling machines and two doors, one blasted open. 

They try the blasted door and find a small, bunker-like room with a splatter on the wall and a hatch in the floor. (15) Then they check the dangling machines, which are some sort of power tool--saws and the like--attached to the ceiling by thick cables. The dog is pawing at the eastern door, so they open it, getting a whiff of rot, and find a sort of dining room with white chairs and an ivory tabled heaped with mouldering foodstuffs. Creed and Doug extract some of the pseudo-ivory cutlery and platters, shoving it all in a sack, then decide they've pushed their luck as it is and began to make their way out of the Iron Coral. 

They pass through the hub, through the tank room, through the engine room, squeeze their way through the freezing pipes (the sounds of machinery are nearly deafening), trot through the dark passage, and finally emerge back into the cleansing rain. 

The boat is not yet back, so they wait in the passage-mouth and watch the choppy sea. Abruptly, Creed realizes that they can see a smear of marshland on the horizon--which should be impossible given the angle of the cove. The Iron Coral is, ever so subtly, drifting. (16) Perturbed, they hunch inward in their poncho, trying to keep warm.

Eventually, the boat returns, crewed by Dorett, and they board and quickly shove off. As they row away, the parry watches the jagged hulk of the Iron Coral slowly moving through the water. 

And that's where we wrapped up for the day.

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(note: sorry for the meandering tenses)

 

(1) Prepped this hook in advance. 

(2) Vaguely had some dissatisfied former-hirelings of Nigel in mind before the session then improvised the rest on the spot after M. said they wanted to hire some mercenaries. 

(3) Random weather roll. Rain and then rain again. When they get back to Hopesend there will be flooding. 

(4) Rolled echo #3: engines.

(5) M. was both exasperated and delighted at the way the dungeon's shifted between sessions.

 

(6) Made an opposed d12 roll for surprise and M. won it. 

(7) So echo #3 states that each room should have an encounter as the Iron Coral "awakes" and this was my initial result, but after the mantis fight I switched over to rolling more conventionally as it felt weird insomuch as pacing was concerned to be having an encounter every room. 

(8) I gave the Glass Mantis 8 hits and had its claw attack do 3 hits. The players would have done 6 hits with their two rifles but I gave it armour 2 for being nearly invisible and also hidden up among the pipes. So it was badly wounded, fell from the pipes, lashed out, and then was finished off. Guns are powerful. 

(9) Prompting encounter checks. 

(10) Dropped to 0 hits. When the party checked on him, M. flipped a coin and called it correctly so he lived.

(11) This whole thing was a pretty brutal series of encounter checks. 

(12) This begins a streak of very lucky encounter rolls (nothing) that lasts for the rest of the session. 

(13) If I were to run the same situation again, I might bring the "explode if any damage is done to them" factor into play what with all these shots being fired. 

(14) No idea why they didn't try to bust these open. 

(15) M. also refused to open the hatch, citing caution. 

(16) Seemed like a good way of making the "waking up" of this echo have a bigger impact. I will figure out what this means for the next session. Maybe it crashes into the marshland or even into Hopesend. 

So far, this was our shortest session, but it packed a punch. About three weeks have passed, in universe, since the party's first foray into the dungeon. M.'s characters are all professionals at this point. One more expedition and they'll be experts.

I Ran The Iron Coral #2

This write-up will be a bit on the loose side as I wrote it up almost a week and a half after the session and then procrastinated tidying it up, so some detail was lost. Likewise, I don't have as thorough referee notes. 

 

Previous Sessions : 1.

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My friend M. played as... 

Creed (DEX +1), locked inside the Crimson Armour (armour 1, may defer a wound onto an ally) and armed with sword and pistol.

 

With their companions Bob (halberd, crude armour) and Doug (WIS +1, rifle). 

We open on a dreary day. The party is moping about at a table in the Pickled Goose Tavern & Boardhouse. Bob is massaging phantom pains out of his new peg leg, while Creed keeps an attentive ear out for rumours of note.

Three looming men approach the table, almost bulging out of their suits. One removes a little black notebook from his pocket, opens it to a page, and asks: "Messieurs Creed, Bob, and Doug?"

The three look at each-other. "Who wants to know?"

The goon shuts his notebook with a snap and returns it to his breast-pocket. Then, with one swift move, his fellow sweeps all the glasses off the table, sending them smashing to the floor. They lean in and say: "We've heard that you've recently come into some money. Yet you have not begun paying off your debt. Curious. We hope you will heed this reminder." 

 

They left.

Rattled, the party pays for damages and leaves, now uncomfortably aware of the thirty shillings burning a hole in their pocket.

Purchases: prybar, lockpicks, fire oil, and a mutt (named Slob). 

 

While walking the dockside they pass a couple of funny men in cerulean robes hawking pamphlets in front of a blue painted ship. "Join our voyage to the stars beyond! Where you shall transcend and join in the congress of enlightened alien intelligences! We are sure to succeed this time!"

The party decide to engage an expert: Gullwin, the man who'd identified the poison when Creed asked the Pickled Goose's clientele the week before. He asked to be paid up front, at an expert's going rate, and they settled on five shillings upfront, five on return from the expedition, as well as one shilling bonus if any treasure was gotten.

Thus they assembled in the early morning on a mist shrouded wharf. Dorett was there to see them off and Gullwin arrived, out of the fog, polishing his glasses, a hefty revolver stuck in his belt.

After some time on the water...

The Iron Coral sat, a jagged island looming out of the sea. They land on the metallic sand of the cove and find, to their surprise, another little yawl already pulled ashore with footsteps leading into the gaping entrance-mouth.

The party sorted themselves out and proceeded into the depths.

After an indeterminable amount of time spent trudging down the sloping tunnel, they emerged, not into the hub chamber they were expecting, but into a space whose edges their lamp light cannot reach, nor can they feel it. The floor is soft underfoot. They creep about and find, dangling from some sort of shaft leading upward, a rope.

Upwards they climb (Doug hoisting the dog up after them). As they do, a rusty residue accumulates on their joints. At long last, they emerge out of the shaft and find themselves in the pit room where they slew the carapace beast. Sure enough, its corpse was where they had left it in jumbled pile on the floor. They noted that the rope was tied to a grapnel sunk into the pit's rim.

They move north and north again into the room with the metal boxes, retracing their map. North again, through the room with transparent walls and the mouldering corpse. They skirt the psychic ball-sack and enter the room with the bulging class dome only to hear a BANG on the doors at the top of the room. 

After some argument, they decide to open the doors; weapons at ready. The metal doors grind apart, revealing a small room with three crystal spheres on pedestals surrounded by shuffling, pallid humanoids who hardly react to the intrusion. Cautiously, the party sidles into the left side of the room.  

 

They observe the pallid husks for a few minutes, poking them a bit, and determine that they are fairly non-responsive. Creed decides to go for the leftmost orb only for the two husks guarding it to frenziedly attack. They wrestle it from them and the party blasts and hacks them to pieces, only to notice that Creed is now nearly catatonic wrapped around the orb, staring fixedly into it.

Bob pries it out of Creed's hands and shoves the crystal orb in a sack. The party flees, dragging Creed along with them, taking the stairs downward. 

They catch their breath in the colorful coral room and watch some skittering fishbugs. Bob decides to re-enter the gladiatorial pit and this time fight the half-man, half-coral gladiator. His proposal: a grid of flaming oil upon the ground. The combat is tense, but Bob wins and collects the dead gladiators gear. 

They head east, into the sticky room again, and hear slithering from down the dog-legged passage. They prepare themselves and blast the coral snake apart as it emerges; gunshots echo through the dungeon. They take the time to skin the snake and roll the long strip of leather up into a bundle. Then they continue and enter the room where they'd found the crimson armour. They are met with seven or so fish-men all clustered around poking at the corpses on the ground! 

Both sides regard each other tensely but no one yet acts. 

The party decides to slowly advance into the room. The fish-men respond by backing up, but flow around and suddenly the party is blocked off from the way they came in. Cursing themselves, they head north, and three fish-men followed while the rest split off down other routes. 

The party follows the corridor north, dogged by the three fish-men, and end up pushing their way through a bristle-wall into a room with a little salty stream. They try to the room to the east and note that it has weird flexing holes in the ceiling. Nonetheless, they try and cross only for spikes to shoot out! Bob and Doug are injured and quickly retreat. They decide, fuck it, and blast their way through the three fish-men and flee south. 

They make it as far as the dog-leg passage when they are ambushed. Bob, who was in front, puts up a fight but falls under the onslaught of hooked barb-chains. The rest of the party blasts away till the fish-men falter and the survivors retreat. Checking on Bob, they find he is dead. Doug retrieves some items from the body and then they flee back through the rooms and up the stairs, heading for the entrance shaft. 

Somewhere around the box room they hear a gunshot, but ignore. Back down the shaft and then out into the fresh air and they pile into the boat, push off, and leave.

 

Afterward, Doug paid Gullwin the rest of his money, disgusted with how little help the "expert" was. Then he hocked the snakeskin and met with Darius, the port overseer, who gave him a substantial sum (1g) for the crystal orb. Finally, the beleaguered and mournful Doug took Creed to Doc Cruses and got them proscribed a powdery white stimulant in the hopes that it would shake them out of the listlessness that had predominated since the orb incident. 

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M. enjoyed how things went sideways this session, though the loss of Bob was a tragedy. Gullwin could have been better run on my part. M. had stated that she wanted to hire a "naturalist or biologist" but within the dungeon I wasn't exactly sure how run that so he mostly didn't do much. The gladiator was a bit of an odd little diversion that didn't feel totally appropriate, and running combat as sport of that sort is tricky with the mechanics I'm using.