The Heart of the Matter

It was a normal day. Which means, weird shit happened. Some of it was fun and awesome and some of it was worrisome. We met Jewels this morning. (Not sure why we didn't invite him to stay with us. I guess in the wake of getting shot and all that we lost sight of our manners?) After a brief conversation we decided to explore the Evocation wing. We found four rooms, one for each year an Evocation-ist spends in school. The first was for Sorcerer's only. Second looks like an awesome testing ground where you can cast whatever you want without using blast cans (I wish we could take it with us) The third with automatons and metal. (My favorite room) And a room where unique spells were created. Under the third room we found a portal that goes deep underground. We found out that whoever was here was experimenting with with metals. Not too scary at first, but we found the all too familiar lotus and the red metal they discovered/ created. We also found something that looks like a docent and a heart (what the fuck is that?) . It looks like they found a way to capture a shit ton of energy that you can power an automaton with and, you can also cause that being to create a massively destructive spell. A bomb that you could hide in a tiny space, placing it in a B-U unit or gods knows what. Along with the portal technology that can allow you to cast anywhere we now know that these bombs can be placed and activated anywhere at any time.
 
We found a crap ton of unique metals, their locations in the world and how to create them. We found purchase orders and figured out a possible connection between Magana Vasquire and the Deremitrue. The fact that they have been extorting people for years points to a possible revenue source.
 
Of course when we brought everyone down to that "office" underground shit got crazy. We found out that the box holding the heart was made by a dryad. Who knew those were real? Ki' touched it the heart (of course) The heart was the heart of a keeper. Apparently someone tried to bring the keeper back to life. The dryad sacrificed itself, allowing itself to be torn apart to then encase it's own heart rather than telling any secrets.
 
Z'kar is the masked person who seems to have perpetrated this atrocity. What secrets do the keepers hold that the Deremetru so desperately need? I was willing to build a gauntlet to allow us to put the dryad out of it's misery. Fortunately, Ildrus had a better idea. Use the magic suppression system to remove the curse on the heart so the dryad was no longer suffering. Even in that altered state, without the fire there was sudden joy.
 
(Things to do next time - see if there is any research related to the docents and snag the models. Snag some security cameras for the Cindy/ recording devices from the monitoring room. Build some hollow point projectiles in my spare time, rig the larger cannon to the Cindy and create docks for the droids or just mount their guns on the side with swivel capability.)