Session 50 — Into the Burned Deep

Session Recap

Picking up on the rim of the forbidden Middle Tor mine on the night of the 21st of New Summer, the party discovers the "burnt-out, sealed" mine is nothing of the sort: over the cliff sprawls a busy, floodlit Laewendas crystal-mining facility — four or five buildings, a captive-worked smithy, an alchemy shed, a barracks, minecart tracks and an artificial ore-flume — presided over by a many-titled noble, Montague Fitzburg, who is midway through a public trial-and-beating of a miner accused of faking his dig-weights. With ~30 guards and workers about and no way to fight or sneak through, the party runs a patient disguise infiltration: Lash climbs into the barracks and steals miner and hauler clothes, Silithane (finally at his desk after ~100 minutes AFK) uses a lucky disguise kit to strip Magra of her orc features, Jex rides in hidden inside a backpack on Salamandine, and the group's real armour and weapons vanish into Thalia's bottomless hat. They simply walk in with the returning shift through the mine's three great doors. Thalia's Primeval Awareness reads the depths first — burned undead miners, a wall-passing ghost, fae, and an undead "giant" puppet worked at the forge — and the party works out the mine's true purpose: it digs a glowing crystal that Fenric thinks looks like the material Dr. Provostinalkov fabricates — the GM allowing only "similar colour, similar energy" — with a captive mole-man alchemist forced to refine it, and failing. To reach the deep shaft, Silithane buys the beaten miner's real, sealed decree of punishment for 40 gold, forges it into descent-orders, and bluffs the guards into lowering the giant cage-hoist. It comes up fire-scorched — proof the disaster happened below — and the party rides it down into the burned deep.

Below, they are the first to descend since the fire. A pile of swept-up bones animates into a mob of charred miner-skeletons and a bull-skeleton — a trivial fight the party ends fast (silver disintegrates the undead on contact; hammers crush what arrows can't). Past the ruin lies an impossible sight: a flooded cavern fed by two springfalls, home to blind cave-fish, tiny applauding crabs, a stubborn shark, and glinting cave-birds — crossed on haphazard burnt-wood-and-rope bridges. Lash tames the crab swarm and scares off the shark to save Salamandine; they reach a pair of friendly cave hermits — a pipe-smoking hermit-crab man, Pentuckle, and a bubble-speaking gilman, Walter Gilman — who share pork sandwiches and hand over the layout: a locked cage, the drowned mage's "office" (and ghost), a nearby underwater city, and a "scary hole" at the very end of the track. Following the tracks to the lowest level, Silithane picks a padlock into a cage guarded by the first orc skeleton they've seen. The guardian stands down the moment Magra sets foot on the ladder — kin, not ritual — and only then does she kneel to her Orcish rites over what it reveals: the fire's real victims, Vara'nak Gar-Galdar, the orc scapegoated for the blaze, and two luggers who died shielding his curled-up body around a parcel: his journal and a strange machine key. The guardian presses its forehead to Magra's, passing on its charge, then lays down and dies, its purpose finally complete. Still level 7.

Key Events

• The mine is alive. Cresting the rim, the party finds the "sealed" mine is a working Laewendas operation: a smithy staffed by a half-giant and a badger-man under a whip-cracking overseer, an alchemy shed, a barracks, minecart tracks, and an artificial ore-flume where waders-clad panners sieve the shiny ore. There are no orcs here at all — fitting the "orcs burned it down" cover story.
• The public trial. On the cart-stop stage, the noble Montague Fitzburg — "his rightful lordship, the kind and beloved… Montague Fitzburg," a name so long it "travels 60 feet" — sentences a miner beaten near to death for slacking and standing on the scales to fake his dig-weights, flanked by two Menagoles Clerics of the Crown. He flips ~20 workers into cheering with a "the cheat cost your targets, but pay's going up — isn't Laewendas great?" speech, then withdraws to a room in the alchemy building under a mounted Queensguard escort (a mark of his real importance).
• The stolen wardrobe. Unable to find guard uniforms (kept under lock and key), Lash climbs a tree into the barracks' servants' quarters — rows of bunk beds, sleeping and waking labourers — and lifts a set of miner and hauler clothes (4 miners, 2 haulers) from the commoners' dressers.
• Disguising the party. Silithane, AFK for the opening ~100 minutes, has (GM-run) already used a disguise kit from a burgling pack — found on a double-20 — to turn the green half-orc Magra into a different race for ~24 hours. Jex, unfixable orange goop, is smuggled in inside Lash's backpack loaded onto Salamandine; everyone's plate and weapons go into Thalia's bottomless hat (108 lbs of Magra's kit alone). They walk in with the returning shift.
• Primeval Awareness. Before entering, Thalia channels a supernatural sense of the mine's depths: undead (a wall-passing ghost/specter below, plus lesser burned skeletons of the miners who "didn't get out"), lots of fae, a couple of half-devils, and — asleep on the barracks' second floor — a half-angel who doesn't know it, descended from a celestial bloodline. Most chillingly, the giant working the forge reads as undead: a puppeteered corpse with its face replaced by a screen and an anvil driven through its ribcage.
• What the crystal might be. Sneaking a look at the faintly glowing ore, Lash determines it is not metal but a natural crystal growth — a gemstone. Fenric asks whether it's "similar to that stuff that scientist guy makes," and the GM allows only "similar colour, similar energy — seems like a whole lot of people are trying to cook up something similar to what he apparently succeeded in doing." A strong lead, not an identification: the words Shard, Autarch and Godkiller are never spoken this session. (The naming comes in Session 51 via Dilbert the Mage's journal, and the substance is only settled in Session 52.) The mine exists to dig and refine it, and refining is what keeps failing.
• The alchemist, or alchemists. Through the alchemy-shed window Lash watches an unnamed mole-man consult a book, grind ore-dust and herbs into a glowing bowl, and curse as the mixture collapses into black sludge — then rinse out and start again. Separately, deep in the mine at the ore vein, a blind, star-nosed mole-man whose token reads Snuffles works alongside Lampy and Big Dig Gav and sniffs Lash out when she pockets a sample. The party puts the two together with the Menagoles' missing alchemist (the GM confirming only that "you've seen both an alchemist and a blacksmith here") — the identification is their inference.
• Buying the decree. The deep shaft needs Fitzburg's written orders. Silithane approaches the beaten miner — first bungling a heal attempt (parried as a "death spell"), then flailing through lies — and the miner simply sells him the sealed 42,000-word decree for 40 gold (declining the alternative price: slitting the mine-guard's throat). Rain has already smeared the ink; it can be rewritten in Fitzburg's own hand, on real parchment, with a real seal.
• Forging the way down. Silithane doctors the decree with a never-used forgery kit (a shaky 8), then presents it with a feigned shaking fit while Salamandine gnaws the trailing end, a 3rd-level Suggestion held in reserve. The guard can't make sense of it but accepts the seal and "hoists the hoist." The 20×20-ft cage-hoist grinds up fire-scorched — the burn happened below, deliberately, "so nobody's getting out of this mine." The party rides the platform down.
• The burned deep & the skeletons. The lower level is a fire-gutted ruin, its dead swept into a single pile. As the party steps off, the bones rise — charred miner-skeletons and a bull-skeleton — and are cut down in a few rounds (see Combat).
• The flooded cavern. Beyond the ruin, ~50,000 gallons of fresh water fill a chamber fed by two springfalls, with a whole cave ecosystem: blind cave-fish, a swarm of tiny crabs, a stubborn shark, and glinting cave-birds hinting at distant light. The party crosses on a jury-rigged burnt-wood-and-rope bridge, then a bare rope, one at a time. Lash tames the crab swarm with a crab orb (~80 follow her) and scares off the shark that bites Salamandine; Magra catch-and-releases a cave-fish.
• The hermits. On the far heights the party meets two cave-dwellers roasting a stolen pig: Pentuckle, a pipe-smoking hermit-crab man who speaks Common, and Walter Gilman, a claw-and-bubble "gilman" bound for a nearby city. They're friendly, hand out pork sandwiches, and lay out the deep mine: a locked cage, the drowned Mage-Man's "office" (whose ghost can be asked about the fire — "the last thing the Mage-Man did"), an underwater city reachable only by water ("all water's connected"), and a "scary hole" at the end of the track that even Pentuckle won't go near.
• The scapegoat's grave. Down at the lowest level, past a fire-wrecked crane, Silithane picks the padlock (a casual 26) on a cage guarded by the first orc skeleton the party has seen — armour-clad, its pickaxe-head honed to a punching point, standing over a back corner. The instant Magra — an orc — steps down the ladder, before a word is said, the guardian tucks away its weapon and steps aside, pointing her to the bodies; only then does she kneel and speak Orcish words of mourning over them. Beneath: two burly luggers charred to almost nothing, shielding a third, leaner corpse curled around a parcel — the remains of Vara'nak Gar-Galdar and his fellow orcs, thrown in this pit and burned alive as scapegoats.
• The journal and the key. The parcel holds Vara'nak's journal (its latest entry, "Journal 5," mentions a "banshee machine that barely fit in the tunnels") and a machine key — no door-key, but a well-handle-like piece that operates a machine. The guardian orc steps to Magra, gently touches its forehead to hers to pass on its charge, then sits down and dies, its bones clattering loose — its purpose finally over. Magra takes the journal, the key, ~7 gold and the sharpened pickaxe-head. The GM flags the key as important — "the axolotl key for a machine." Session ends as the party pokes deeper. Still level 7.

Combat & Encounters

• The animated dead of the burned deep. Stepping off the hoist wakes the swept-up bone pile: a mob of charred miner-skeletons wielding the non-flammable heads of their pickaxes, plus a bull/cow-skeleton that gores with its horns. The GM built it for level 3 — for a level-7 party it's "an absolute shellacking."
  • Silver = instant death. Silithane's Silvered Short Sword disintegrates any skeleton within 5 feet on the draw — "the least of all undead" can't survive the touch of silver. He also lands a Green-Flame Blade that jumps to a second skeleton.
  • Bludgeoning over blades. Arrows and piercing barely scratch the hollow skeletons (they "clatter around inside"); Lash's hammer and Jex's fists do the real work. Magra hesitates over the bull's "don't-shoot-me eyes," relents, and puts a bolt through its skull for 22 — leaving it "looking rough"; it gores at Lash, who parries on her hammer and then kills it with an 11-damage blow ("Lash, finish the cow") before landing the finishing crit (a 9-damage bludgeon) on the last skeleton. The party takes only chip damage. The GM's takeaway: a perfect low-level teaching fight about silver and hammers vs. the undead. Still level 7 — no level-up.
• The flooded-cavern hazards (non-combat). The shark takes an 8-damage chomp out of Salamandine mid-swim before Lash drives it off with Aquan intimidation (a 20 — a bop on the nose). The rope crossings are skill checks, not fights: Jex slips and amalgamates onto the rope as a jelly-blob, Fenric hand-over-hands underneath, Magra sprints across a tightrope at full dash (a 28), Silithane cartwheels across to a standing ovation from the crabs (the fish come to watch), and Thalia simply walks it on an 11, helped by her wings.
• The orc guardian (stood down, not fought). The first orc skeleton guards rather than attacks — it only threatens if approached wrong, and stands aside for Magra's mourning-rites before peacefully expiring. No blows exchanged.

NPCs & Factions

• Montague Fitzburg — the many-titled Laewendas noble running the mine, met on-screen this session. Presides over a public trial-and-beating, works the crowd with a pay-raise speech, and rates a mounted Queensguard escort. His sealed decree of punishment is the key the party forges to reach the deep shaft.
• Snuffles — a blind, star-nosed mole-man working the ore vein deep in the mine (his name read off the token), alongside Lampy and Big Dig Gav. A second, unnamed mole-man is watched through the alchemy-shed window refining the glowing crystal and failing, the mixture collapsing into black sludge. The party takes both for the Menagoles' missing alchemist; the GM neither confirms nor denies that they are the same mole-man. Either way, it shows where the town's vanished skilled folk are going.
• Vara'nak Gar-Galdar — the orc scapegoated for the mine-fire, his fate finally uncovered: he and his fellow orcs were thrown into a pit and burned alive, and his body, journal and a machine key were left guarded by an animated orc sentinel deep below. The find effectively clears his name — the fire was set deliberately, not by him.
• Pentuckle (new) — a pipe-smoking hermit-crab man who's made the flooded lower mine his home ("that was before my time… it's water place now"), having washed in through the little under-aqueduct. Common-speaking, friendly, and a font of directions: the mage's office and ghost, the underwater city ("that way, up a little and left"), the locked cage, and the "scary hole." Calls himself an outskirts-dweller and defers city questions to "the city slicker." Shares his roast pig with the party.
• Walter Gilman (new) — a claw-and-bubble gilman (half-lobster) with business in the nearby city, who won't be staying long. Speaks only in floating bubbles that pop on the ceiling; answers yes-or-no by raising and clicking a lobster claw. A one-scene companion of Pentuckle.
• The mine's captive workforce — the whipped smithy crew (an undead puppet-giant, a half-giant, a badger-man), the panners and luggers, the ore-vein diggers, and the beaten scale-cheat miner whose decree the party buys. Slaving labourers, mostly one-scene colour, held in line by Laewendas overseers and a small garrison.
• Dr. Provostinalkov (referenced) — not present, but the obvious comparison: Fenric takes the glowing mine-crystal for the stuff "that scientist guy makes," and the GM grants only "similar colour, similar energy… a whole lot of people are trying to cook up something similar." If the resemblance holds, the Menagoles occupation is a race for the same material — but the identification is not made this session.
• Eldrich the Elder (referenced) — the party recalls their patron's charge to learn the mine's truth; the crystal's purpose and Vara'nak's innocence are exactly what he wanted uncovered.

Locations

• The Menagoles Mines (infiltrated) — revealed as a live, fortified Laewendas crystal-mine, not a ruin. Its upper level (untouched by fire) is worked by disguised-in labourers and a captive smithy; a colossal cage-hoist drops a shaft Lash judges could run 10–30 miles deep. Its burned lower levels — where the disaster actually happened — hold animated dead, a flooded cavern-ecosystem, cave hermits, locked cages, a drowned mage's office, and, at the very bottom, a still-guarded pit where the scapegoated orcs were burned. A "scary hole" waits at the end of the track.
• The flooded cavern (within the mine) — a fresh-water chamber fed by two springfalls, slowly filling the burned mine, with a self-contained ecosystem of blind cave-fish, tiny crabs, a shark and glinting cave-birds, crossed by jury-rigged rope bridges. An underwater aqueduct connects it to a nearby city — reachable only by water.
• Menagoles (off-screen) — the occupied town above; the mine confirms its darkest rumours (kidnapped smiths and alchemists, a Laewendas crystal project, an innocent orc scapegoated).

Loot, Items & Rewards

• The Axolotl Key (new) — the well-handle-like machine key recovered from Vara'nak Gar-Galdar's body; operates a machine, not a lock (the GM: "the axolotl key… that's really important"). Magra carries it. Likely tied to the "banshee machine" named in Vara'nak's journal.
• Vara'nak's journal — five-entry diary of the scapegoated orc's life; the latest entry mentions the "banshee machine that barely fit in the tunnels." Held by Magra.
• The sharpened orc pickaxe-head — a burned mine-guard's pickaxe honed over undead years into a stabbing point; no real weapon, but a good crowbar (or a second head for Magra's shovel). ~7 gold off the body.
• Unidentified red crystal chunks — Fenric chips samples off a funny-looking orange/red crystal on a cave wall past the flooded cavern, logged in his inventory as "unidentified, from the water area, second mine map." Not the mine's glowing ore, and revealed in Session 51 to be highly explosive.
• A pork sandwich apiece from Pentuckle's stolen roast pig. No level, no pip — the party remains level 7.

Decisions & Open Threads

• The truth of the fire. The blaze was set deliberately, from below, "so nobody's getting out" — the mine's own hoist came up scorched — and the orcs, Vara'nak Gar-Galdar among them, were burned alive as scapegoats. Vara'nak is effectively cleared; who actually set the fire (and why the deep mine was sealed) is the live question. The hermit's rumour blames the drowned Mage-Man ("the last thing he did").
• The crystal operation. Laewendas mines a natural vein of a glowing green crystal and has kidnapped alchemists to refine it, so far unsuccessfully. All Session 50 establishes is a resemblance to what Dr. Provostinalkov fabricates for Eldrich the Elder — "similar colour, similar energy." Session 51 names what Laewendas is really after (Dilbert's journal: the "Godkiller Shard," i.e. the Shard of the Autarch material), and Session 52 confirms the substance. If it holds, both sides of the war are racing for it with a mountain's worth of raw material in enemy hands.
• The banshee machine & the key. Magra holds a machine key and Vara'nak's mention of a "banshee machine" — a Zelda-style "this opens something" the party is meant to remember.
• Leads from the hermits. Still unexplored below: the locked cage, the drowned Mage-Man's office and ghost (a Speak-with-Dead lead on the fire), the "scary hole" at the track's end, and a nearby underwater city.
• The sleeping angelborn. Thalia's Primeval Awareness sensed a half-angel who doesn't know it asleep in the mine barracks — unnamed, unmet, and a possible future lead.
• The captive craftsfolk. The mole-man alchemist (or alchemists — see NPCs), a captive half-giant smith, and the undead puppet-giant at the forge are all being worked for the crystal project — the fate of the Menagoles' vanished skilled folk, still to be freed or investigated.
• Carryover: the strike on Knucklebones at Lambert's Crossing; the reunion's other business with Eldrich the Elder; Thalia's two undelivered druid tomes; the Grey Man's nature; the held soul candles, cursed mask and cave symbiotes; Jex's deciphering tablet and legal non-existence; the imprisoned Caressa; the missing mothers (Magra's mother Vianola Greysong and Thalia's Veilwood mother); and the eventual siege of Cathalon.
• Roster. Full table this week: Fenric (Fantom), Thalia (Cara), Lash (Kadie), Jex (Nat), Magra (Mia), and Silithane (Johan — AFK for the first ~100 minutes from a hospital waiting room, his character trailing as GM-run background before he took over around the cage-hoist), with Salamandine. Neko has no active PC (Valmora left in Session 44); Ashlyn's player and Draak remain away. Still level 7.

Memorable Moments

• The forehead of the guardian. The animated orc sentinel standing down the moment Magra came down the ladder — recognising one of its own before she had said a word — pointing her to Vara'nak Gar-Galdar's curled-up body, then pressing its forehead to hers to pass on its watch — before lying down and dying, purpose complete.
• "Isn't Laewendas great?" Montague Fitzburg beating a man half to death for cheating, then turning a crowd of his fellow labourers into cheering fans with a Christmas-bonus speech.
• Silithane's worst cover story. Walking up to a dying man to secretly heal-scan him, getting parried as an assassin, then digging deeper with "I'm a healer, mine… I'm interested in calligraphy… I was in a barrel" — and being sold the decree anyway.
• Silver against the least of all undead. A whole skeleton crumbling to dust the instant Silithane's silvered short sword comes within five feet of it.
• Jex, the jelly-blob bridge. Jex losing their balance on the rope, then simply amalgamating onto it and shlooping to the far side "as if there was never an issue," to a round of applause from ~80 crabs.
• Walter Gilman's bubbles. An entire conversation held with a gilman who answers only in floating water-bubbles that pop on the ceiling — the party counting bubbles and guessing, and Gilman raising a claw to point.
• The crab orb parade. Lash winning over a swarm of tiny cave-crabs that clap their claws in applause and follow her across the bridges like a tide before heading home to their waterfall with a "goodbye treat."

SUMMARY: Disguised as miners, the party infiltrates the Middle Tor mine — a Laewendas operation digging a glowing crystal with kidnapped alchemists — forges its way down the fire-scorched shaft, and in the burned deep finds the scapegoated orc Vara'nak's grave, his journal, and a machine key, guarded by a sentinel that passes its charge to Magra before dying.