Session 51 — Six Miles Down

Session Recap

Picking up deep in the burned levels of the Middle Tor mine late on the 21st of New Summer, the party turns the night into a marathon of manual labour and problem-solving. They poke through the drowned mage's fire-gutted office — a lanky, hollow-eyed ghost mimes writing an endless logbook that isn't there — while Magra and Lash spend four hours digging out the collapsed stairwell and Jex pours themselves, gearless, through the rubble as a slime. Down in the sealed living quarters they find a horror the fire left behind: ~40 mummified miners who survived the blaze only to die trapped in the dark, one of whom evidently went room to room ending the others. They salvage a scuffed gold wedding-ring necklace (~75–100 gp) and note an unclaimed, mold-rejecting magical bastard sword laid on a corpse, but nothing else can squeeze back up with them. With the main cage-hoist a one-way trip to a guards' firing squad — the party talking at the table as though a charm on the winch-men had expired, though in fact no charm was ever cast: Session 50's guard was won over by the forged decree alone — the party has no obvious way out — and turns instead to the great maxi-lift that drops toward the deepest mine.

That lift is dead: someone stripped its drive pin (and the spare) so no one could ever ride it down. Magra's recovered axolotl key slots perfectly into the handle and spins the gears, but with the drive pin gone they only turn uselessly. Reasoning the saboteur simply pitched both pins down the very shaft they guard, Jex abseils 95 feet into the second great vertical drop (called "another 10 miles" at first glance — their rope-count later proves 6+), confirms the horror of it, then climbs back. The party's answer is pure engineering: swing the broken lift platform out of the way, rig Magra's block-and-tackle onto the lift's own miles of rope, build a rickety bucket-lift, and lower Jex — who can't die from a fall — all the way to the bottom. Over five-plus hours of isolation they retrieve the buried drive pin, snipe down a wave of reanimating ash-undead as the bucket hauls them up, and count the rope: the shaft runs six-plus miles deep. They reassemble the lift with key and pin — it's finally a working, two-way elevator — and, along the way, Fenric fixes the ghost's smashed desk, moves the spectre aside, and reads the magical residue of its writing: Dilbert the Mage's journal, which reveals that Laewendas is after the "Godkiller Shard" — the Shard of the Autarch itself.

Riding the repaired lift down through the 22nd of New Summer, the party reaches the true deep mine. A first room holds fifty-plus burned bodies primed to rise; they slip past on a group stealth check (after a two-ash skirmish on the lift teaches them the dead here are immune to fire, weak to thunder). Down the fresh heavy-machine track they find the mine's real secret: barrels of glowing red powder identical to the "crystal" ore they've been hauling by the ton — it isn't treasure, it's high explosive (the party is unknowingly lugging ~800 lbs of it between them; Thalia had refused twice to let any of it near her hat) — and the colossal boring machine that dug these tunnels, watched over by a second, hate-filled spectre. Following the dig deeper, they reach a cordoned-off vein of a different, magical blue crystal in a lava-layered chamber; when Lash tries to chip one free, the crystal fights back — waking a creature the party barely gets to meet before time runs out. Still level 7.

Key Events

• The mage's office and its ghost. In the fire-gutted upper office the party finds a ghost — a lanky, bald, hollow-eyed, long-bearded scribe — endlessly miming writing a logbook he no longer has pen, paper or desk for. He can't perceive people, only objects. Thalia tries to mimic his hand to forge what he's writing (a great idea foiled by her being left-handed to his right); Lash jumps on his desk and breaks it in half, leaving him staring dejectedly at the wall.
• Four hours of digging. Magra and Lash dig out the collapsed stairwell (the "three garbage cheerleaders" — Silithane, Thalia, Fenric — offering only moral support). It proves to be a square fire-escape stairwell switch-backing far down; four hours of hard digging clears two storeys.
• Jex through the rubble. Unable to dig faster, Jex strips off all their gear (even their darkvision goggles won't fit) and oozes through the gaps as a slime, feeling their way by blindsight. They reach the servants' living quarters — lockers, bunks, a burst toilet — then, an hour deeper, the officers'/wizard's quarters on the bottom floor.
• The trapped dead. The lowest floor is a quiet atrocity: ~40 gaunt, semi-mummified bodies of people who survived the fire, then died of thirst and starvation sealed in the dark — several with self-inflicted wounds, as if one was tasked to end the rest before weeping himself to death in a corner. It underlines why the mine's masters punished the scapegoated orcs so savagely: everyone who mattered here died down here.
• What couldn't come back. Jex wrenches a scuffed gold wedding-ring necklace (~75–100 gp) back through the cracks on a Sleight of Hand, but leaves behind a pristine, mold-rejecting magical bastard sword laid on one corpse (obviously enchanted; too big to fit) and the burnt-out fire-escape maps.
• No way out but down. The main cage-hoist would only carry them up into a waiting firing squad — the players reckon "the charm" on the winch-men has run out by now, but no charm was ever cast: in Session 50 the forged decree and its real seal did the whole job, and Silithane's 3rd-level Suggestion was held in reserve and never used. Silithane's bat confirms the hoist is still down — the guards aren't onto them yet. Escape by water, portal, or the lift is debated; the party commits to fixing the deep lift instead.
• The sabotaged maxi-lift. The great deep-shaft lift (a ~15×15-ft platform) is deliberately disabled: its drive pin — the reinforced shaft-and-cogwheel that bears the whole platform's weight — has been removed, along with the spare drive pin from its crate. The axolotl key fits the operating handle and spins the gears, but without the drive pin nothing engages. Someone sabotaged this so no one could descend.
• Chasing the missing pin. After ruling out the water, the boxes, the bone-pile and the stairwell, the party concludes the saboteur threw both drive pins down the deep shaft — the one place they'd never be recovered. Jex abseils 95 ft into the shaft on a rope: another enormous vertical drop (eyeballed at ~10 miles in the moment; his descent later measures it at 6+), sheer walls, with tiny maintenance ledges every 20–30 minutes of flight (a rest-stop for anything winged). He climbs back rather than free-fall it.
• Building a lift out of a broken lift. The plan comes together: cut two of the platform's four cables and swing the dead platform aside, freeing the lift's own miles of rope; Magra rigs her block-and-tackle (lifting 4× her own strength) and the party builds a makeshift bucket-lift. Jex — immune to fall damage — rides it down alone.
• The six-mile descent. Jex's lonely ride down takes five-plus hours (they count the rope with chalk and a tape measure: 6+ miles), rejoining Silithane's exhausted bat on a ledge halfway. At the bottom he finds the burned base-of-shaft littered with the bodies of miners who clawed at the walls trying to climb a five-mile vertical to escape the fire — and, within reach, the half-buried drive pin. They drag it onto the bucket without stepping off.
• The ambush on the way up. As the bucket lifts, the ash-dead rise and a third of them turn toward Jex. Dug in and using Sharpshooter, he picks off the nearest (~41 dmg, halved against dust) and rides up out of reach — one careful minute, exactly as planned.
• A working elevator at last. The party reassembles the lift with the axolotl key and the drive pin: it now runs both ways under its own power (~25 ft/round, vs. the bucket's crawl). Lash also repairs some Grabber Queen loot (a broken watch, a dented engraved goblet) and offers to forge custom weapons for the party — starting with a special upgrade of Silithane's Silvered Short Sword.
• Dilbert's journal — the god-weapon confirmed. Fenric rebuilds the ghost's desk (a 22 woodworking check), coaxes the spectre to a new corner so its own aura stops clouding the writing, and reads the glowing residue of what it has scribed for years: Dilbert the Mage's journal. It reveals that Laewendas is chasing the "Godkiller Shard" — the Shard of the Autarch, the god-slaying crystal — recasting the whole dig as her hunt for a god-weapon.
• Into the deep mine. The party rides the fixed lift down into The Mine proper: a burned base-chamber walled with sandbag fortifications, holding fifty-plus bodies ready to animate, with three exits — a heavily-used fresh machine track, an older, near-abandoned track, and a narrow person-sized corridor. A group stealth pass (+10 from Thalia's spell) slips them past without waking the horde.
• The explosive truth of the crystal. Down the fresh track sit metal barrels of glowing red powder — the exact hue of the "red crystal" ore the party has been hauling by the sackful. It is highly explosive fuel: the bulk crystal isn't the prize, it's the charge the boring machine can't risk detonating, which is why human diggers must clear ahead of it. The party is hauling ~800 lbs of it between them — Thalia having twice refused to let any of it into her hat ("keep your crystals to yourself and out of my house; my hat is my hat"), though the GM's later punchline is that she was loaded up with "500 pounds of C4."
• The boring machine. Beyond the barrels stands the boring machine — effectively a tank fitted with a giant spinning drill-bore, the tool that dug these smooth tunnels (and the likely "banshee machine" of Vara'nak Gar-Galdar's journal). A second spectral figure stands staring at the drill's nose with pure hatred, as if everything it ever loved died on that point.
• The blue crystal — cliffhanger. Following the dig deeper (past a dead-end side path and a branching mining-colony that's hollowing out the mountain), the party reaches a cordoned-off vein of light-blue/cyan crystal — distinct from the red, reading as more magical — in a lava-layered chamber where the boring machine's head was once melted by something harder than itself. When Lash tries to chip a blue crystal free from behind, the crystal strikes back, waking a creature. Combat begins as the session runs out of time. Still level 7.

Combat & Encounters

• The two ash-riders (on the repaired maxi-lift). Jex's bucket comes back up without incident; the fight comes after the repair, when the party summons the fixed maxi-lift back up for their descent — and two of the burned dead are standing on it when it arrives. "Sand boys," humanoid-shaped constructs of the ashes of miners who burned to death. The party learns their rules the hard way:
  • Immune to fire ("the fire can't hurt them anymore" — they died by it), weak to thunder, and only lightly hurt by piercing (ash lets arrows pass clean through). Silver and bludgeoning land; Silithane's Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade (silvered short sword) work once the thunder rider connects.
  • The party's absurd AC shrugs off their claws; Jex's crit and Fenric's claws finish the first, and Silithane's thunder blasts the second into a scatter of dust "painted in every direction." A trivial two-round fight — but a valuable preview of the fifty-plus waiting below.
• The blue-crystal creature (cliffhanger — unresolved). In the lava-layered blue-crystal chamber, Lash's attempt to harvest a crystal from behind awakens a crystal creature that reaches out and tries to "harvest her" back. The GM cuts the session as initiative would begin — a multi-round fight to open next session. No blows landed on screen. Still level 7.
• Non-combat hazards. A gag d1000 on Thalia's newly-confessed fear of cave-ins comes up 275 — just a light sprinkle of loose dirt, no collapse. The lift shafts, the rubble-squeeze and the six-mile descent are all skill/endurance affairs, not fights.

NPCs & Factions

• Dilbert the Mage (new) — the drowned mine mage (the hermit Pentuckle's "Mage-Man"), now a ghost haunting his fire-gutted upper office, endlessly miming the logbook he kept in life. He perceives objects, not people. Fenric decodes the magical residue of his writing into Dilbert's journal, the session's key intel: Laewendas seeks the Godkiller Shard. Whether he set the fire (as Pentuckle claims) is still unresolved.
• The deep spectre (unexplained) — a second ghostly figure deep in the explosives/boring-machine chamber, standing and staring at the drill-bore's tip "as if everything it ever loved" died there. Unspoken to, unnamed; a lead for next session.
• Laewendas (referenced — goal confirmed) — Dilbert's journal names her as the one "going after the Godkiller Shard," confirming the Middle Tor dig is her hunt for the god-slaying Shard of the Autarch. The GM signs off on "whatever the fuck Laewendas has been digging for."
• Pentuckle (referenced) — the hermit-crab man and his gilman companion are asked whether they've seen the missing cogwheel/drive pin; they haven't ("if it starts coming for you, let us know and we'll run"). Still squatting the flooded deep.
• Eldrich the Elder (referenced) — the party notes they've already learned more than their patron knew (a deliberate fire, a hunt for an "evil gem," the mine's true operation), and that they still owe him a report and are on his clock.
• Dr. Provostinalkov (referenced) — invoked again as the maker of the same god-crystal material; the mine's true prize (the Shard) is the substance he fabricates.

Locations

• The Menagoles Mines (delved deeper) — the burned mine's buried lower structure is mapped: a drowned mage's office (and ghost), a collapsed square stairwell down to servants' and officers' living quarters full of the trapped dead, the sabotaged maxi-lift, and a chroma-bird cavern. Below, reached by the repaired lift, lies The Mine proper — a fortified base-chamber of 50+ waiting undead, an explosives store, the boring machine, a mining colony hollowing the mountain, and a cordoned blue-crystal vein. The main shafts each run ~6–10 miles straight down.
• The chroma-bird cavern (within the mine) — a waterfall-misted chamber lit by giant luminous mushrooms and rainbows, home to a nesting Chromalia (a giant, rare "chroma bird" that sorts everything it owns by colour, guarding same-colour eggs) and its flock of little colour-drinking birds. Its back wall is a floor-to-ceiling biome of mushrooms — plain and exotic both, including a newly-classified "giant laughing mushroom." Thalia earns the mother bird's tolerance with a respectful bow.
• The deep mine ("The Mine") (reached) — the true dig at the bottom of the shaft: a burned, sandbag-fortified base-chamber of 50+ primed undead; a heavy-machine corridor storing barrels of explosive red powder and the boring machine; and a lava-layered chamber of magical blue crystal where the boring head was once melted by something harder than itself. This is where Laewendas's operation is really digging.

Loot, Items & Rewards

• ~800 lbs of raw red crystal ore — "Red crystal from Menagoles Mines*," scooped by the sackful from a minecart (50 lbs Fenric, 25 lbs Silithane, the rest split; Thalia refused to let it near her hat). Revealed this session to be high explosive — the boring machine's fuel, not a gemstone. The party is now unknowingly hauling a mobile bomb.
• Scuffed gold wedding-ring necklace — a dead miner's keepsake, Jex wrenches it back through the rubble; worth ~75–100 gp.
• A "giant laughing mushroom" (Gymnopilus) and assorted exotic fungi — Thalia harvests the mushroom wall and presents Magra with the "funny mushroom" she asked for; other caps in that biome can reportedly blind, poison or heal.
• The repaired maxi-lift — no longer loot so much as infrastructure: with the axolotl key and the recovered drive pin reinstalled, the deep-shaft lift is a fully operable two-way elevator (the key stays with the party, so only they can run it).
• Repaired Grabber Queen loot — Lash fixes a broken watch (new hands) and a dented, engraved goblet (re-engraved "Lash-ified"). She also banks time toward custom weapons, first up an upgrade to Silithane's Silvered Short Sword.
• Left behind (unclaimed): a magical bastard sword (mold-/dust-rejecting, laid on a corpse in the officers' quarters, too large to retrieve) and a mountain of the magical blue crystals. No level / no pip — the party remains level 7.

Decisions & Open Threads

• The dig is a god-weapon hunt. Dilbert's journal makes it explicit: Laewendas is after the "Godkiller Shard" / Shard of the Autarch — the same god-slaying material Dr. Provostinalkov fabricates for Eldrich the Elder. Both sides of the war are now openly racing for the Shard, with a mountain's worth of raw material under the Middle Tor.
• Red vs. blue crystal. The bulk red crystal the party has been hauling is now revealed as explosive fuel, not the prize — while a distinct, cordoned blue/cyan crystal reads as far more magical and is what the dig is really after (and what just woke up). Which one is (or refines into) the actual Shard, and what the blue crystal is, are the live questions.
• The boring / "banshee" machine. The giant boring machine in the deep is the likely "banshee machine" named in Vara'nak Gar-Galdar's journal, and the thing the axolotl key was made to operate — now sitting idle, drivable if the party dares.
• Who set the fire? Still open. Pentuckle blames the drowned Mage-Man; the party can now question Dilbert's ghost more, and a second, hateful spectre waits by the boring machine.
• The fifty-plus waiting dead. The deep base-chamber holds 50+ burned bodies primed to rise (immune to fire, weak to thunder); the party is threading past them for now, but a big fight looms if stealth breaks.
• Getting out. The party still can't leave via the guarded upper cage-hoist without a fight; the repaired deep lift only goes deeper. An exit (the underwater city and aqueduct, the water tunnels, or fighting back up top) remains unresolved.
• Carryover: the strike on Knucklebones at Lambert's Crossing; the reunion's other business with Eldrich the Elder; the underwater city and the mine's "scary hole"; the sleeping angelborn and the undead puppet-giant at the upper forge; the captive alchemist Snuffles; Thalia's undelivered druid tomes; the Grey Man's nature; the held soul candles, cursed mask and cave symbiotes; Jex's 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), with Salamandine and the bat. Neko has no active PC (Valmora left in Session 44); Ashlyn's player and Draak remain away. Still level 7.

Memorable Moments

• The loneliest elevator ride. Jex volunteering to ride a rickety bucket six miles straight down into pitch-black isolation — because they're the one who can't die from the fall — counting the rope with chalk the whole way, and scooping up Silithane's winded bat from a ledge on the trip.
• "You loaded Thalia up with 500 pounds of C4." The slow, dawning horror as the glowing red "gemstone" ore the party gleefully stuffed into every bag turns out to be high explosive — and the GM's punchline landing on the one person who had flatly refused to carry any of it. "Leave me!"
• Fixing a ghost's desk. Fenric rebuilding the smashed desk from a burnt bookshelf, then gently relocating an oblivious spectre to a fresh corner just so it would stop standing in front of its own handwriting — the only way to read Dilbert's journal.
• Cheerleaders vs. unionists. Silithane, Thalia and Fenric doing a "drunk-jester" cheer routine (and blowing an Inspiration) while Magra and Lash — the "two professional extraction-team unionists" — do all four hours of actual digging.
• The Michelangelo of mushrooms. Thalia bowing hippogriff-style to a nesting giant chroma bird, being accepted as "just another colourful thing that lives here," and harvesting a giant laughing mushroom off a floor-to-ceiling wall of fungus for Magra.
• Magic bullshit. Fenric demanding to know how a creature made of ash can be immune to fire, and getting the only answer that matters — "Magic bullshit." "You tell them, Fenric."
• The murder-suicide of the trapped floor. Jex oozing, blind and gearless, into a sealed room of ~40 people who survived the fire and then died in the dark — one of them sent to end the others — the session's quietest and grimmest scene.

SUMMARY: Trapped in the burned deep, the party repairs the sabotaged mine-lift — Jex riding a bucket six miles down to recover the stolen drive pin — reads Dilbert the Mage's ghost-journal (Laewendas is hunting the Godkiller Shard), discovers their hauled "crystal" is explosive fuel, and reaches the deep dig's boring machine and a magical blue-crystal vein, waking its guardian on the cliffhanger.