3-30-2019 Game Transcription Notes
Recovery of the Crystal from Republic Central
It is night time. The train is still going, still chugging along. Every so often it hits a few bumps and rustles the passengers for a moment, but nothing ever too terrible. Eliza is jostled awake by one of these bumps in the tracks, and find she is resting on the shoulder of Rhys. His head is down, fast asleep.
Now that she is awake, and because she’s had experiences recently with strange people on train rides, she nervously looks around. The dim oil lamps running along the interior of the train don’t provide much definition and she doesn’t notice anyone out of the ordinary. It just looks like normal patrons heading to their destinations—one of which being Republic Central.
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she looks around again with a yawn. She feels more awake now. Two patrons, a man and a woman, sit two seats in front of her talking quietly between themselves. Eliza catches snippets of their conversation here and there, making out the jist of it.
“It’s well guarded, Central is. More regulated than many of the larger cities of the country. With all these new rules and regulations and curfews and all that… things are magnified there.”
She furrows her brow. “I suppose that’s to be expected… seeing as it was the focus of their assault.”
“…Those repairs sure happened fast. The Renenese are definitely efficient and quick at building things back up, that’s for sure.”
Feeling angry at that, she thinks, “What, are they trying to make it up to us? Trying to play nice after killing so many innocents, like nothing ever happened?”
Trying to move carefully so she doesn’t wake up Rhys, Eliza fishes the blueprints of the museum from her bag. Her movement jostles him lightly, and he groggily looks up out of the corner of his eye. After a moment he falls back asleep.
She pulls out a pair of fine reading glasses and peruses the blueprints in great depth. She sees several doors leading through different corridors and rooms. Knowing Luther had at least a few guards patrolling the premises way back when, she easily surmises there will be at least one or two guards in the longer corridors, and perhaps one or two in the rooms themselves.
As she is pouring over this map, Eliza jumps right out of her skin as a train attendant comes down the aisle with a pushcart and a tray of drinks and snacks. “Anything to drink, my lady?” Jittery, Eliza smiles the best she can and says, “Y-yes thank you very much, a… just a water is fine.” She nods gratefully to the attendant as she takes the glass bottle passed over to her.
Rhys jumps a bit when Eliza does. Groggily he asks, “You alright there?” She apologetically smiles. “Yeah, just… should be there soon, I suppose.” He nods, and leans his head back. Having been up for most of the journey thus far keeping an eye on things for the others, he falls fast asleep.
Mutiger, Armella, and Hikaru had seemingly taken another train to Central already. But Thorin, having also taken a detour, managed to end up on one of the same trains as these two. Currently relaxing in his seat nearby them, he eyes the sweets, popcorn, water, specialty sodas, fruit, and other treats that laden the cart.
He chimes in, “I’d like a water and an apple as well, Miss.” She cheerily nods and hands him a nice fresh apple and a glass bottle of water.
Thorin takes a bite of his apple and looks around a bit. In the dim light of the oil lamps, everything feels quiet and sleepy. Everything seems safe enough; no threats seem to be around, no weirdos in ochre colored robes. It’s a peaceful ride.
We all have one thing in mind: Find the missing crystal in the Museum of Art and Natural History in Alwyn.
The day dawns and the sun begins to rise. In the bright sunlight streaming in through the train windows they wake, finding things still peaceful. They can now see the sprawling city scape of Republic Central… Where it all happened… As the train pulls into the station, we can still see burn marks, pock marks, and bullet holes on buildings and in the streets where war was previously fought. Where once stood the mighty Alwyn Free Cantonry flag and statue to its first President in the center of the city there now stands a large monument in a cylindrical shape that reaches high into the sky. Draped across its round surface is the flag of the Rhen Autarchy.
The city is massive! The humdrum and constant movement is staggering to the senses. Some move slowly, but the pace of life here is extremely fast and unpredictable. They explore the city proper, trying their best to keep up with the pace of the crowds. At one point, however, they feel as if they are being tailed by cloaked figures, but as soon as they try to turn and look at them, they are gone, lost in the din of the crowd. But they’re just looking for crystals at the museum in the center of town. Aren’t they?
The group gathers at a local pub trying not to draw too much attention to themselves, and they begin discussing their plans.
“It’s daytime right now, so we could scope out the museum… see what changes have been made?” Eliza chews on a pen, looking at her notebook.
“As long as we don’t stand out too much…” Thorin shrugs. “Don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.”
After some consideration, it’s agreed that Eliza and Thorin will go alone to scope out the building, and to prevent too much suspicion of a large group.
The two make their way to the museum in the center of town. It feels largely similar in architecture, however the name has been changed to “The Historic Museum of the Rhen in Alwyn”.
Eliza scoffs at the name, highly perturbed at the whole situation.
Thorin grumbles. “As they say, history is written by the victors.”
“Perhaps we’ll re-write some history of our own.” She states coolly.
They approach the building and head inside into the grand lobby. It is massive, with marble and fine redwood construction. Markedly different than the last time they were here, multiple stairs lead up to various portions of the museum all around. Off to the left there is a welcome desk and a friendly woman managing visitors.
“I liked Luther’s better…” Eliza mumbles under her breath.
Thorin nods, contemplative. “To remain inconspicuous… why don’t we take a guided tour, Eliza?”
She considers the idea and agrees, both of them thinking it’ll be a fantastic way to scope out any new changes and keep an eye out for a way to the crystal. They approach the woman at the desk, asking if there are any guided tours.
“Ah yes! Madame and My Lord, we have guided tours happening in ze next few minutes. If you wait here, I can give you two tickets. 4 silver pieces each.” Eliza and Thorin slide over the coinage, and she hands each of them a brochure with a ticket inside and a map of the museum.
“Why thank you, you are mightily helpful.” Eliza smiles, tucking her new map inside her bag next to the blueprints.
“You’re velcome! Ve hope you find this place to your liking! There are many artifacts and items of historical significance in ze museum. We hope you enjoy your stay, and hope to see you again.”
She directs them around the welcome desk to a group of people waiting nearby. A Rhenese paladin approaches shortly after, waving to the crowd. “Ahem, I vill be your tour guide for today. If you all ‘ave your maps, ve vill start our tour of ze museum. There vill be no flash photography allowed.”
He instructs the crowd to follow his lead and he starts taking them room to room. “Stay close and stay together, I do not want any of you to get lost.”
With that we take the tour. None of the original exhibits that existed in Luther’s museum exist any longer. It is markedly different and rather sad, knowing how much hard work we put into fetching different artifacts and items for this museum… and how short lived it was to see it. Now everything is unfamiliar and foreign.
In one room, statues of old Alwynian powers line the walls and flags of the old nation states—Dewar, Manchent, and so on—are pinned up with descriptions of each on a placard below them. The new maps on the walls show the same states, but with the new laws to abide by. So long as we are in any urban center, we have to strictly abide by those rules… just like in Trenfield.
We are led to other rooms, showing damaged and destroyed portions of buildings—super structures among other things—and the tour guide explains, “Everything that has happened vas done in ze name of ze Holy Land of Lenova. While the Alwynians fought bravely, they did not fight for a good cause. They vere not perusing the full might and glory of Tarj, his Holy Name, and ze Holy Domains of Lenova. These damaged items are just a taste of vhat happens vhen you defy Tarj.”
Eliza gets an incredibly bad taste in her mouth. This doesn’t feel like anything she’d learned at church, but a much more twisted, extreme version. But the two continue to bite their tongues. The guide takes them to another room, full of artifacts from Rhen that were brought over to help instill a new culture of Tarj and bring about a glory of his majesty and knowledge.
Led throughout the entire museum over the course of an hour or two, they are wrapping up the end of their tour. Having circled back around to the welcome desk, they notice a door near the lavatories; a metal frame with a mesh screen, leading down stairs… but it appears to be shut.
Heading back outside into the early afternoon sunlight, they consider their options. Eliza shakes her head. “Definitely not getting in that way… not with all those eyes watching us.”
Thorin looks around at the buildings surrounding them. “Well, let’s go see if that other building is still as abandoned as it was when Luther knew about it… for our alternative entrance.”
The two circle around to the back of the museum, to the building kiddy-corner to it. An abandoned three story building stands, a large padlock with a chain holding the two handles of the doors closed tight. It still bears the pockmarks and bullet holes from the bombing of Alwyn. Thorin steps back, looking at the building with a scrutinizing eye. About three stories up, perhaps 42-43 feet up, there is an open window that was possibly smashed out.
“Well it appears our way in may be unhindered…. If we climb up under cover of night.” Thorin grins up at Eliza. She smiles back in agreement and gives him a curt nod.
They stake out an area to watch for the frequency of paladins passing by the building, but can’t seem to find a pattern as to when it happens. The paladins literally pay it no mind though, and the two feel confident they can get into this building unseen... especially with Thorin’s drones as lookouts.
They return to the pub to find the others, and update them on the events. Daytime melts into night, and now it’s about 10:30-11:00pm. Ruby has chosen to switch between Eliza to Sarah, thinking she’ll be less conspicuous and easier to get around as. She was able to gather up some rougher looking clothes from town, and makes a crude disguise in the meantime.
The time to move is now. Feeling a smaller team might be best for this mission as well, Thorin and Sarah head out.
Thorin sends out his drones to quietly peer around corners, looking for any night watch that might notice them out after curfew. The team makes their way stealthily down the streets and up to a fence nearby the abandoned building with ease. Sarah parkours nimbly up the side, and Thorin hoists himself up easily, landing with a thud on the ground.
They make their way through the alley there, coming around to the other side. Now underneath the window, they stop.
“Heh, watch this.” Thorin grins. He pulls out what appears to be his “walking stick” and presses the 4th button on the side. A large ladder springs from the top firing up 50 feet. The base becomes a spike and he sticks it right into the ground.
The drones beep, indicating paladins are coming down around the end of the block. Without a word, they shimmy up quickly, and Thorin taps the button to collapse it back into his hand as his walking stick.
Sarah stares at him incredulously. “What the… you’ve been holdin’ out on us!”
“Extreme circumstances…. I don’t want to make it too public that I have something like this. You know…” He imagines Armella and smirks. “Oh this thing has so many wonderful things it can do…”
The two make their way down through the building, treading the steps quietly and as carefully as they can. At the bottom floor there are several rooms. Sarah peers about, finding one with a trap door leading down into a cellar. This is most assuredly the secret entrance into the museum.
Sarah walks up to the side. “Would you like to do the honors?” She chuckles, motioning to Thorin. Somehow, after this much time working together the last year or two, she finally is starting to feel comfortable around him. He happily lifts it up, sending a drone in to scope it out before he heads inside. No strange traps seem present, and he carefully lifts it to the side, its hinges squeaking loudly. “I’ll need to oil that later before we close it…” He grumbles.
They head down into the cellar and find a winding corridor leading underground. A small bridge spans over the sewers below, the smell overwhelming. “Stand back just a moment.” Thorin holds out his walking stick again, pressing the first button.
A flaming sword sprouts from the end, lighting up the area with flickering light. The shadows jump wildly down in the dark, but they walk forward in its glow. Along the far wall they see a leaking gray water pipe and a narrow wooden door.
Sarah goes up to it, opening it. Peering inside, it leads to a staircase going up… right into the basement of the museum.
Taking out her map from earlier and comparing it to the blueprints from Luther, she thinks for a moment. Then Sarah says, “Well I think it would be prudent to extinguish our light, and for you to lead the way? You seem better in the dark than I am, and I think there is a larger room to the right up ahead.”
She stops, listening. It sounds like someone is coming down the corridor from their left. Backing into the hidden room again with the bridge and the sewers, the two consider their options.
Thorin suggests, “I’ll have my drone stand watch for us… let us know when the coast is clear.”
The drone hovers up in the corner of the new hallway, and as the guard passes, Thorin nods to Sarah. “Let’s make it down that corridor they came from, and see if we can make it to the next room.”
They rush down the hall as quickly and quietly as they can. Seeing another door, Sarah peers inside the room, noticing two chests and a lot of empty space. Thorin hurries in, no guards to be seen. “Come in and close the door behind ya, we’ll check here first.” He pats his floating drone. “Good job!”
They peer at the chests, Thorin opening the larger of the two. He finds old medieval Alwynian weapons and items inside. “I think I remember that from one of the rooms in Luther’s museum…” Sarah glances over.
She pries hers open, and inside… is a floating, magenta crystal. Their eyes grow big.
She snickers, “Well, score! Glad we came this way first… let’s get ourselves out of here!”
Thorin smiles, nodding. His compass helps to confirm the crystal is the real deal.
Sarah stuffs it into her bag, and the two hurry their way back down the corridor. They rush along the bridge, up the stairs, and come back out to the first floor of the abandoned building.
“That went SO much smoother than I thought it would.” Sarah exhales, excited and happy. “I’m so glad you’re a tinkerer and that make so many awesome things, Thorin.” She smiles at him, admiring his extremely helpful drones even more now.
He grins. “Of course!” The two hurry back to the 3rd floor, his drones keeping a good lookout on the street below. The two use the ladder again, shimmying down to the street level.
Thorin presses the button again, his ladder folding back into a walking stick once more. The drones beep, alerting them of paladins coming from both sides of the street.
Startled, the duo rushes back to the alley in hopes to jump the fence again. Thorin hoists himself up over the fence without any trouble at all, landing hardily on his feet. Sarah tries to climb over the fence, struggling to get over.
Getting caught on part of it, her bag pulls open, spilling contents all over the ground. “Sorry, sorry!” She whispers, hushed, scrambling to get her things—and the crystal—back up as quickly and quietly as possible. She hurries back over the fence, much more carefully this time, and they rush down the streets back to the pub.
What they don’t notice… is the pair of eyes that saw that happen.
Hurrying down the street, the two are shaken at a loud boom in the distance on the other side of the city. “BOOM”. The look at one another, the ground rumbling. Another one. “BOOM.”
Suddenly a large crack and pop go off nearby, and smoke and mist fills the entirety of the space they’re in, billowing down the street an additional 60 feet or so.
Thorin feels hands reach out in the fog and they roughly throw him to the ground. Booted feet start to kick him mercilessly.
Sarah backs up, wide eyed at hearing her friend attacked. Suddenly a heavy boot kicks her hard in the stomach, knocking the wind from her. Hands grope out at her bag, trying to rip it away from her arms. She grits her teeth, holding her bag tightly, refusing to let it go. “N-no!!” She struggles, but then she feels a stabbing prick in her neck.
Her body goes completely limp, her muscles unresponsive. At the same time, she feels her mouth opened forcefully, and a vile liquid is dumped down her throat. She splutters and chokes, swallowing most of it. Her voice is now gone. She cannot scream. She cannot move.
Eyes wide, she remembers back on the train—a man that looked up and smiled at her slowly, creepily, before he disappeared—he is staring at her now through the smoke.
His smile grows as he whispers to her, “You’re coming with us, little girl.”
They take her belongings, they take ahold of her. And with a crack and a pop…. She is teleported away.
Thorin, now surrounded by three fellows in ochre robes, is being kicked by the flats of their boots in his side and in the stomach. He rolls, trying to dodge the blows and recover himself enough to stand.
One boot flies up and kicks him right in the jaw. It feels loose and sprained, but thankfully not broken. Thorin’s eyes gleam angrily. With his magitech staff held tightly in his hand, the energy lashes out, a powerful pulse pushing his assailants back five feet from him and roughly knocking one of them down into the mist. Thorin hurriedly scrambles to his feet.
The first man, the one who kicked Thorin in the jaw, glares viciously and suddenly disappears with a crack and a pop. In the wake of his disappearance, black tendrils, rips in reality, shimmer in the air after.
The second looks at Thorin and smiles. “It is complete… you cannot stop us now, dwarf. Bye bye…” He disappears in a flash like the others.
They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Weren’t they? Eventually the smoke clears, and Thorin can see Sarah—Ruby—is no longer there with him.
She has been taken, kidnapped, by the strangers who’ve been tailing them the entire time they’ve been in Alwyn. Who they are has been a mystery. But they have been ruthless in their pursuit of crystals.
With a realization suddenly dawning, they are in fact the same organization that Hikaru and Roderick came across those many months ago in Orzammar. Devil worshippers, in strange clothes, looking for the crystals.
Looking around, Thorin notices the third assailant he knocked over earlier had hit his head, cracking it on the ground. Too slow to escape, Thorin rushes up to grab him and pulls him close. He breathes on him menacingly.
“Ooooh, we’re going to have some fuuuuun.”
The man struggles poorly. “Whaa.. what’s going on?? My head…”
Hearing paladins starting to approach, Thorin gives the cultist a rough crack on the head, knocking him out thoroughly. He hefts him up over his shoulder and carries him back to the pub to find the others.
Meanwhile…. Ruby jerks awake. She sees she is surrounded by individuals in these same ochre colored robes, and they’re jeering and leering at her.
One of them says, “Poor poor girl, she has little idea what she has just gotten herself into…”
A hissing voice responds, “I know right?” A bigger, huskier man lets out a loud guffaw.
“Well one things’ for sure… Mephistopheles will feed on blood when we get to the Helots.”