In reply to Artor (msg # 417):

"Oh, I was supposed to climb down, not up." Alyssa mutters to herself. She starts to climb down the rope again.

Alyssa is able to safely reach the open door that Derrick has secured.

In the last few moments of the remote view cypher working, Artor can see a spattering of material land around the cracked sphere, black rain on a black landscape.  A second shape begins to move in the darkness.  While the first seemed inclined primarily to observe the fallen sphere, this second shape seems to be looking ... upward.

That is the last visible image before the power runs out.

Derrick helps Alyssa to get her footing and then calls back up. "Alright, we're ready for the next one!"

The rest of the party is able to safely descend the rope to the horizontal level below.  The air is a bit dusty from all the new activity, but it is otherwise still and unremarkable in the immediate vicinity.

Last to descend, Artor paused to chitter to his companion for a moment. Glancing down the shaft, he shivered, “Darkness below, stalkers we saw before the cypher failed. Perhaps a threat, to us or the settlement”

Having climbed down just before Artor, Breogh concentrated the most to avoid another climbing accident, this time he wouldnt survive. he kept thinking about that so much that he barely payed attention to the location he arrived into.. The voice of Artor made him go back to the scene at hand.. His mention of at least a second stalker alarmed him.. if there was another creature down there , he hoped they were not able to climb or fly , it could have been that the group already sparkled the curiosity of those stalkers below.

"It might be that they're trapped there. So we better be careful not to end up unleashing that threat to the settlement.. for the moment at least i promise i wont try throwing food at those things, by the way.. Didnt one of the cyphers we found after taking down the automaton function as some type of long distance comunication device? "

Once the rest of the group has navigated the climb down, Derrick ensures that the rope the is secure in case it is required for the journey back up before he joins the others.

"One way or another we have to investigate to find out." He looks through his pack before answering Breogh. "Not one of the ones that I took."

Once everyone has collected themselves, Derrick leads the way towards where he knows the staircase is located.

Below the surface now, the party has no light but what they bring (or create) themselves.  The floor layout is like the one they experienced above, only oriented to its original, horizonal format.  The doors seem larger than what they are accustomed to, and the stairs have a bigger drop at each step, as well.

The floor they are on is largely empty and dusty. There is no evidence of recent footprints or other tracks.  Most of the doors are empty or missing.  When they reach the center conjunction of halls, they can see wreckage to the south, where the broken tower above crushed some of the building below as it bent over.

The staircase, once reached, is broad and open, with hand rails on either side.  The steps are wide, often requiring several steps to cross at the perimeter.  The exterior is all stronglass, in the slow, undulating pattern they observed above the surface.  Only rare cracks are visible.  On the other side of the glass is stone and drit, with the occasional hollow where large rocks collapsed adjacent, to form an air pocket.  The party finds that they pass five vertical stories for each trip around the stairs.  The first three have open doors.  The fourth and fifth are still closed.

Below there is a gap of three stories, with the stairs opening up to an wide expanse, metal pillars supporting the apartments (?) above and the elevator shaft.  Odd structures dot the floor, with more affixed to the pillars.

OOC: You may explore any of the above floors or down to here as you see fit.  I didn't want to rush you but also didn't want to go into details you didn't want to bother with.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 19:48, Mon 20 Feb 2023.

Since, from experience, most of the floors have been empty, Derrick sees no particular reason to stop and explore each one as they pass. There is a long way to go down to reach the bottom after all.

When they reach the open expanse, he pauses and peers into the gloom in an attempt to make out what the strange structures might be.

Derrick rolled 5 using 1d20.  Perception (Trained).

The ones on the floor, from what Derrick can see, look like ... giant soup bowls?  The ones on the pillars look like smaller soup bowls cut in half and stuck to the structure.  And by smaller, they are about two feet in diameter.  The ones on the ground are easily six feet wide and over 3 feet deep.  They aren't entirely empty, though it would take a closer examination to figure out what's in them.

"I wonder what manner of beings once lived in this building. They must have been a larger than us" Alyssa remarks as she descends the staircase, careful not to trip when she changes steps.

Derrick agrees with Alyssa. "Yes, but do you think they were humanoid? Everything seems to be the same shape, just larger."

He cautiously approaches one of the strange half-soup bowls on a pillar to have a look inside.

In reply to Derrick (msg # 429):

"Hard to say really." Alyssa thought about the automaton they fought earlier. "Perhaps their shapes where similar to that automaton we met earlier?"

Inside the "bowl", Derrick finds dust covering a hard conglomerate that may have once been drit of some type.  It's inert, whatever it is.  In a few of the larger bowls, an occasional stick or stem might remain, one that crumbles to dust if touched.

Derrick continues down into the wide open area and searches for where the stairs continue. As he searches he considers Alyssa's suggestion. "Maybe, but that thing didn't look like it was made to handle stairs no matter what size they were."

Breogh walked behind Alyssa and Derrick while hearing their conversation.. unsure of what to think of those bowls.. he got closer to one of the bowls and even though he suspected that any scent would be gone by now he tried to percieve if there was some smell on them.. maybe those remnants were once some kind of food, or something worse.. like when he explored with his nomad family and they usually analysed dung they found on the way..


09:22, Today: Breogh Nah Hut'l rolled 7 using 1d20.  Perception (Intellect?) .
I have an asset but i still think im under the DC
This message was last edited by the player at 12:28, Tue 28 Feb 2023.

Derrick finds that the stairs continue across the room, on the other side of the building.

Breough smells only dust and ancient air.  Nothing is particularly familiar.

As the party moves through the space, they leave tracks in the dust and clouds of it become airborn, dancing in the light.

When he finds the stairs, Derrick turns back to the others. He pauses a moment before he calls out to watch the motes of dust in the air and comments, mostly to himself: "I don't think anything is living on this level with that amount of dust on the ground."

After a moment, he shakes his head and collects himself before waving an arm over his head for the others to come to him. "The stairs continue over here. We've got a long way to go yet to get to the bottom."

In reply to Derrick (msg # 435):

"A reasonable assumption, but what about other unliving threats? Perhaps there's machines or other things at this level which can explain what the building originally was used for? But then again, we might assess that at a later date when we know it's clear."

As the group is crossing the space, their various lights glint off the remaining metallic and crystaline surfaces of the vast space.  Two of these glints catch Hoa's eyes as she assesses their situation.

The first glint is on the ceiling, which seems to have a network of pipes or conduits attached to it.  On the far side of the room, at the meeting of one of the pillars to the ceiling, is a device of some kind.  It looks vaguely like a fountain, only upside down.

As she is casting her eyes about for similar installations, another reflection catches her eye.  This one is along the exterior wall, only ... its on the other side of the glass.  A quick glance shows it to be some type of silvery metallic construct wedged in a gap among the rocks and wreckage pressed against the stronglass. It's at nearly eye level.  As Hoa approaches to get a better look, the thing moves!  It is a centipede-like automaton, nearly two feet long, that quickly wends its way along an irregular tunnel just on the exterior of the tower.  Soon, it descends below the floor and is lost to view.

Hoa's instinctive step back is at least controlled. "There's something here! More automata. Slithery ones, insectile." She settles into a ready stance, eyes bouncing between the space where the 'centipede' disappeared and the fountain-like installations.

A few metallic clinks and the scattering of drit beyond the glass is all that can be heard, and that only briefly and receding.  Nothing else moves.  The cavernous space is silent but for the party.

Derrick hurries over to where Hoa is standing looking out through the stronglass, but he is too late to catch a glimpse of whatever she saw. He stands there with her for a moment listening and looking around, but when everything is quiet again he looks at her and shrugs. "Whatever it was it seems to be gone now. Maybe the glass keeps it out or maybe it's afraid of us. Either way not much we can do now."

At the base of the stairs, Artor reached out a bandages hand to comfort … either himself or the critter he has adopted, it wasn’t clear. He was quiet, thoughtful, as he followed the others through the giants tower

OOC: 14:27, Today: Artor rolled 9 using 1d20.  Perception (trained)
This message was last edited by the player at 14:28, Sun 12 Mar 2023.

Hoa shook her shoulders. "I don't like it. Something seems...askew. I just can't say what it is." She looked around, but the irregular light and oddities of the space kept her from feeling that she could make any sense of what she perceived.

OOC: 09:39, Today: Hoa Sen rolled 6 using 1d20 ((6)).(Trained Perception)