17th of Nuwmont (month 1), 1031

(continued - Skandharian Void Command)

We advance into the complex.

We find some frozen tables and some frozen documents. We send them outside for translation. The first document has a report about voidcircles. We don't seem to have a word for it, so we're not sure what voidcircles are, exactly.

The second document is a personnel report.

The third document is a listing of numbers and two letters next to them.

They are all extremely neatly written.

We also find bathrooms with obviously magical methods of waste disposal, no longer working. We also find a damaged, collapsed section.

We then find a corridor with metal doors. But an explosion has damaged the doors and the walls. There's a series of doors which have been blown down. They've been blown inwards towards the defenders.

We then come to a section where the doors have been dismantled in a hurry. From the inside, and carried away. It appears they've been used to reinforce a collapsed section? We find picks and shovels in the second collapsed area. They were used as supports for a tunnel through the snow, but we're not sure when. Either someone used them as supports on the way out through the snow, or after the tunnel had been dug in.

We dig through this collapsed area.

24th Nuwmont (month 1), 1031

They've dug through to another section (where the doors were used as supports). Divots of rock have fallen from the ceiling, suggesting it was subject to a great shock.

The tunnel goes down down down in a zig zag. It goes down several hundred yards. We come out to a larger room. Metal supports the dome that makes up the ceiling. There are signs of battle here.

The are crates here (with code numbers) and metal double doors that are ajar. On the other side is a really deep shaft. About 200 feet deep.

There's a point about half way where it looks like water has come in. We use that as a staging point for lowering us down. It'll take some time to set up the proper pulley system.

27th of Nuwmont (month 1), 1031

We get lowered all the way. There's a metal platform at the bottom - the carriage. It appears to have dropped from a great height.

The shaft is not in the best condition, and might collapse given sufficient shock.

There are double doors at the bottom. We chop open the doors to find a murder chamber. Easily defended. There has been a fight here.

Further in we find three bodies, laid out in a row. One is some kind of golem, the other two have armour. We examine them, carefully.

One has the visor closed. The other has the visor open. Incidentally the armour is very heavy armour. The armour seems to have been struck by some sort of giant spear or something.

The one with the open visor has a women with nordic features inside. She shows no signs of decomposition.

The extremely heavy full plate she wears looks magical.

The thing which took out half the golems torso probably killed it. It isn't a standard golem. It appears to have been assembled. Component based. Interesting.

We remove the visor from the other individual. They have an expression of surprise on their face. The visor has runes on it. We get the bodies taken to the surface.

Lani examines the golem before it's taken to the surface. The big chunk taken out of it has damaged its power, and the damage to its head has damaged some of the cystals inside. Probably the controlling bit. A shame that it's been damaged.

Unfortunately, as we move to explore further, the tunnel collapses behind us. We have no supplies nor cold weather gear. Hmm, suspicious timing for the tunnel to collapse.

With not much else to do, we explore. Unlike the area up top, there are random bits and pieces here and there. There are pipes and vents in the ceiling. The area seems to be more functional than the area up top. More utilitarian.

Further in we find a two foot thick door. It's open. We explore. We find many doors. Sixty doors in total. They all appear to be quarters.

In a few rooms are crystal plates, metal around them, with the writing: IMD on them.

Further in we find some more meeting rooms, and a small greenery. No food plants.

In another room we find a row of benches, and figures in the wall. A training room, by the looks of it. There's also a locker, with a smashed lock. The lock is like a normal lock, but magical.

Later, we find a large room. There's a very large crystal map of the world there. Things seem to be rotated 90 degrees.

We go to the glass room located above this one. There's benches with a variety of chairs. Nothing on the benches.

There's another meeting room. A big table, with some decanters (containig frozen water) on top. In the next room is carpet. It crunches underfoot.

Another room has the corpse of a highly decorated officer. He's committed suicide on his sword. He is slightly decayed.

There are a variety of books in here. Some look like they might be journals. There's also a weird metal object connected to something with writing. Hollow.

On the table before the officer is a journal, open. The writing on the open page is written in a vaguely norse like language. We puzzle over it. We get the gist of it. It says something along the lines of: "We're not sure how many people have survived outside. They struck us, we struck them. They must be in as worse shape as we are.

"Due to the titanic forces unleashed, the world is turning on its axis. Soon this place will be covered in ice and snow. The others are trekking southwards, I hope they survive.

"As commander of this base, I cannot abandon my post.

"What have we done?"

Further in we find kitchens and a mess hall.

Then a big open room, with an icy floor. We're walking along, when Turia falls through the ice, and splashes into water! Arni and Remus dive in after her. Remus gets a rope to Turia, and she gets back up.

Whilst down there, Remus spots something glowing. Lani explores, and finds a rune glowing faintly orange. Some sort of control rune. It's warmer than it should be down there.

Some sort of flooded section.

Zim sets up a fire in the kitchen to warm people up. We also start thawing some clothing and frozen food.

Lani explores the water area more thoroughly. Lani finds one wall that seems warmer. Warm water flows out.

Lani presses the button. It flickers.

A female voice says some gibberish, and some of the crystal panels flicker and come on, shedding bright light everywhere. The control room also lights up. There are runes everywhere. Amber dots on the map are turning red over time.

There seems to be a teleport console. It seems to indicate it's functional.

We look at things. The teleport panel: it is not a status of something here. It seems to indicate something is ready somewhere else.

There is a ready rune on the golem, but there are two red blinking things on the spear. (We earlier took out two fuel cells from the spear.)

There's also a star map. It is not of the current night sky - things are subtly different. There is a red dot next to a star. Poking it zooms in to a planetary system. One planet is marked. Poking it zooms in on the planet, a featureless globe.

We poke various things in various places. After some fiddling, we seem to find a fuel indicator. After some more fiddling, Lani manages to turn everything off. (Accidentally.)

We hunker down, and try to survive.

1st of Vatermont (month 2), 1031

We hear the sound of picks. The sounds are faint.

2nd of Vatermont (month 2), 1031

We try to eat the defrosted food, but it's totally unpalatable. We're feeling weak.

Thorhilde isn't going too well.

7th of Vatermont (month 2), 1031

More days of starving.

9th of Vatermont (month 2), 1031

We're finally rescued. We get some stuff translated. EMS for emergency magical system. It also seems as though the anti-magic zone was effecting the power system. There was also a lift blockage detected.

The teleport stuff seemed to be some sort of launcher. Perhaps for some sort of nasty weapon?

The golem did not have any indicators for the batteries in the thigh. There were controls for targeting it. You could point it at stars if one wanted to.

We find various other interesting bits of information.

We cast some past life's on the bodies. We get a view of the battle. The armour is cool, as there is a complicated HUD. They have interesting wands. The enemies have some sort of shield that deflects blows that aren't dead on hits.

He, in the armour, is a nordic elf. Fairly normal in appearance, as for an elf.

Neither of the people in the armour are particularly strong.

We cast analyse dweomer on the armour. The armour has the ability to cast healing spells (cure light wounds three times per day), and will do so immediately on being injured. On command it can do cure serious wounds once per day. Enhancement bonus to strength +6. Enhancement bonus +4 to dexterity. +6 enhancement bonus to constitution. It is +4 armour of some strange make. It only resizes to a limited degree. One was designed for an elf, the other for a human female.

We can probably fix it to a degree.

It is a superiorwork item. It's straight armour bonus is better than full plate. You can also close it up and it will function without air for some period of time. Max dex +4.

The HUD is mostly useless, but can also detect when you are charmed, etc.

Lani also took an ice crystal out of the base. It turns out to be a spontaneously formed magic item. It can do ray of frost at will, cone of cold 3/day, fog cloud 3/day, ice storm 3/day, sleet storm 3/day, polar ray 1/day, and automaticallly, every night, it creates a winter (blizzard conditions?) within a 15 mile radius, which lasts for one day. You can activate this last effect earlier in the day if you wish. Market price 140k.

Grey indicates he wants to dig out the golem's spear so that Lani can cast analyse dweomer on it. The party convices Grey that doing so would be a bad idea. Grey settles for gutting it, leaving it unusable. The same goes for the golem.

A divination by Thora indicates that there is neither weal nor woe in resurrecting these people. Attempting to resurrect them will not be bad.

We discuss at length whether or not we should try to bring them back. Zim is ardently against it (he doesn't think it is fair on them), Lani is also against it (they might want the armour back). Grey is for it (they can choose to not come back if they don't want to), and various other members of the party have various other opinions.

Leo does a commune for us, to help clarify some information:

On the side, T'zaz finishes casting legend lore. But by now it's kind of pointless anyway.

Thora agrees [as indicated by earlier discussion with Thora on OpenRPG] to use the staff of life in an attempt to resurrect the female norse-like defender. We go back to Thora's village, which is very peaceful - much better than being resurrected at the north pole.

Thora attempts the resurrection. Thora staggers [read: lots of spell levels required, more than are normally required]. A tunnel forms. A spirit goes into the body. She breathes.