Session 97

As the party listens to the din of the conversations around them in the mess hall, Gardain throws a wild idea out there, suggesting that they need to get access to the restricted areas of The Nexus, and rather than grabbing random people's Runelinks until they find one that works and risk getting caught, why not just use the Overseer's? He elaborates by saying that the Overseer will undoubtedly have full access to the facility, and it's getting late, so she has to sleep sometime. He suggests that they wait until she heads back to her office for the night and rushing her when she opens her office door. Dain says it's a risky move, but agrees that he doesn't really have a better idea, so the group gets up to make their way to the Control Room. However, along the way, they are stopped by a Runeguard who addresses Dain by name, asking him to accompany him to the Control Room, saying that the Overseer has an assignment for him. Dain complies and follows the Runeguard to the Control Room alone while the rest of the group waits outside Overseer Kali's office. When Dain gets to the Control Room, he is led to a Forgeborn Control Unit where Overseer Kali is waiting for him. She fills him on the situation, saying that this Forgeborn is deployed in the service of a Vesperkin man in Myr who appears to be gathering tools that Overseer Kali believes suggest he intends to tinker with the Forgeborn. She tells Dain to monitor the Vesperkin for any suspicious behavior, and if necessary, hit the panic button to detonate the Forgeborn. Dain agrees and Kali walks away, leaving the Runeguard standing nearby. Dain dons the surveillance equipment and is taken to a vision of a Forgeborn carrying tools into a Vesperkin man's workshop where the man begins to lay out the tools, which Dain agrees are not optimal for, but could be used for disassembling the Forgeborn. He watches as the man begins to make marks on the Forgeborn's body with a writing implement and begins to bring tools over to the Forgeborn's body to do something to it. Dain makes a motion to try to swat the tool out of the Vesperkin's hands and notices with alarm that his movements are not mirrored by the Forgeborn. He focuses his vision and notices that at some point, what he thought was a live feed has been replaced by an illusion. Suspecting this to be some sort of test, Dain immediately hits the panic button, ending the feed with a flash. Taking off his visor, he sees Overseer Kali who begins a slow clap. Dain says in an annoyed tone that she didn't need to test him, and she replies that she just had to be sure. Dain suggests that they don't need to kill everyone who investigates the Forgeborn and they could simply have the Forgeborn resist -- however, Kali says that this would just alert the "owners" to the fact that the Forgeborn either have a will of their own or are being controlled, which is not desirable given that they are primarily for surveillance. She says she will have another assignment for him soon and returns to the Master Control Room to grab something before leaving the Control Room. Dain follows behind her and notices she is moving in the direction of her office. As she gets to her door and waves her wrist past the Runelatch to open the door, Dorin uses Suggestion to say "Have a good night!", putting Overseer Kali to sleep. Dain then rushes forward, catching her, and dragging her into her office with the party in tow, before shutting the door behind them.

In Overseer Kali's room, they see a desk with some scattered papers on top, a control panel of some sort, and a door leading to a small makeshift bedroom. Investigating the papers on the desk, they see that they are orders directly from King Rangrim ordering Kali to produce Forgeborn Infiltrators to deploy in Myr, specifically mentioning wanting to position them in Elysara, the capital of the Rathmore Empire, to try to infiltrate King Colton's court. They also see orders to archive all activity of interest that is observed when monitoring the Forgeborn. Moving to the control panel, Dain sees that there are controls that apparently have the ability to set the access level of the various rooms throughout the facility, as well as a protected panel with two special buttons underneath, with one saying "Emergency Transport" and the other saying "Panic", with a small hole that appears to require some sort of key to activate. Searching Kali's desk, Dain finds the key and pockets it. Just then, the group hears a Dwarven girl from the other side of the door knocking and asking Kali to approve a couple more reports, apologizing for the late visit. The group recognizes this voice as the young Dwarven girl who had been going to and from the Archive room earlier. Merrick uses Minor Illusion to produce Overseer Kali's voice to tell her to come back in the morning. After a moment, the girl agrees and shuffles off. Dain then decides to systematically override the access level of every door in the facility so that they all accept a level 1 Runelink. Afterwards, they decide to head to the Flow Repository room. The group leaves Kali snoring in her room before closing the door behind them.

With the access levels now reset, the group is able to use their Runelinks to enter the Flow Repository room, where they are greeted by the sight of a Dwarven woman standing faced away from them looking over a large machine which Dain recognizes as the Flow Repository, with a control panel off to the side. The group freezes in their tracks, and after a moment, the woman turns around and is slightly startled by their entry and asks if they're the new Runesmiths that Overseer Kali has recruited to help her, to which Dain confirms. The woman is initially skeptical, wanting to confirm this with Overseer Kali, but Dain manages to convince her to wait until the morning since she's so tired. The woman seems relieved and says that she is tired of being the only Runesmith on duty to watch over the Repository, saying that she has been trying to repair a leak in the Repository that is siphoning "15 Flow Units per hour" out into the air. She asks if Dain can try to locate the source of the problem while she gets some sleep, but not to touch anything until she can confirm his findings. Dain agrees and the woman shuffles past him down the corridor. Moving into the room, Dain takes note of a panel that seems to have slots for Flow Cells connected to a conduit providing power to the panel. Dain collects the Flow Cells from the rest of the group and one by one, inserts them, charging them. He notices that after charging all 13 cells of theirs, the light coming from the Flow Repository becomes noticeably dimmer. He then moves over to the control panel and notes a similar interface to the one noted in The Vault allowing him to control the flow of power to the different rooms in the facility, as well as emergency buttons with a similar "Panic" button as in Overseer Kali's room and one that says "Emergency Release", suggesting a way to vent all of the Flow stored in the Flow Repository. Balvin suggests not venting the power because even though it would cut power to the other rooms, that wouldn't shut down the Forgeborn and would merely cut off The Nexus' ability to control them temporarily until the Flow Generator gathers more Flow to refill the Flow Repository. The party decides to leave this for later and to make their way back to the Control Room to try to gain entry to Overseer Kali's Master Control Room.

Entering the Control Room, the party makes their way over to the door to the Master Control Room, but notes two Runeguard patrolling the room. Slowly and stealthily, they manage to open the door now that the Runelatch has been reset and close it behind them while the Runeguards' backs are turned. Crouching down to avoid being spotted through the window, the group sees a control panel near a large array of screens displaying the perspectives of dozens of Forgeborn in various locations around the world, seeing some mundane things, as well as some things they wish they hadn't seen. They take a look at the control panel and note lights for each of the pilot suits in the Control Room and buttons for enabling / disabling or disconnecting those suits, and swapping the monitors with the perspective of a particular suit. They also find a protected panel locked behind a Runelatch which despite Dain's reprogramming, does not seem to respond to his Runelink. With annoyance, he decides to check the reports scattered about a table at the back of the room and finds stories of several encounters other pilots have had that are distressing:

• One report mentions a suspicious rendezvous a Vesperkin woman in Myr by the name of Speaker Cora had with some "shadowy figures" in Catarvoss, describing how despite the Forgeborn's enhanced sensors, the mysterious men were able to approach invisibly without being seen. Speaker Cora then had a conversation where she agreed to pay a contract to have King Colton Rathmore assassinated. The figures then vanished.
• Another report seemed to suggest that Shael Erevyn, the new magistrate of Eldham, was seeking dirt on Tordynnar Veverell, the magistrate of Mythwell, in an attempt to blackmail him so that she could succeed him as magistrate of Mythwell.
• A Vesperkin named Liek Rootbelt who the Imperium Arcanum had approached twice about wanting to install Flow Generators near Umos' Wellspring had twice refused, and The Nexus had recently conducted an assassination using his Forgeborn to eliminate him.
• An "alarming number" of wealthy individuals in Odracanath were purchasing Forgeborn to use for "inappropriate purposes", with the pilot asking for guidance on how to handle the situation, and an attached note saying "That city needs Aellor…"
• A Human man named Belor Belltower who had brought his Forgeborn into a room that blocked The Nexus' visual feed for a brief period was assassinated for suspicion of tampering.
• And finally, a dossier with a very detailed list of Dain's movements over the last two years, with information about each time he has been spotted by a Forgeborn, going all the way back to his encounter with Gloin at the trade festival in Eldham. An attached letter from Glondor indicates correspondence between him and Overseer Kali with Glondor telling Kali to alert him immediately if Dain returns to Shimmerwind, and the latest correspondence being Glondor ordering Overseer Kali to produce a batch of Forgeborn using experimental designs from the Runesmith College to ambush Dain on the road, referring to the group that attacked them as they were trying to intercept the convoy of Forgeborn Infiltrators.

Unnerved by these findings, Dain pockets the reports and decides to have Merrick make him invisible so he can sneak back to Overseer Kali's office to retrieve her Runelink. He manages to use the Forgeborn Control Units as cover and sneak past the Runeguard and return to Overseer Kali's room unnoticed, and quickly removes her Runelink before returning to the Master Control Room. Using it on the Runelatch on the control panel, it is unlocked, and Dain finds two buttons: one labeled "Master Kill Switch" and one labeled "Master Recall". Dain asks Gardain and his father to cause a distraction so that the Runeguard won't come after them once the switch is pressed. Gardain and Balvin move out into the Control Room, and following Gardain's lead, the two bonk the Runeguard on the head and take off running, leading them away. With that, Dain throws his palm down on the Master Kill Switch. As his hand reaches for the button, Summer notices a strange visual glitch on the monitors displaying the Forgeborn perspectives, and then feels a rumbling in the ground just before the button is pressed. An alarm begins to sound, and the Dwarven pilots begin taking off their suits in confusion and fleeing the room in a panic. A confused Dain says that they need to get out of there. As they flee from the Control Room, Dain drops all five of his charged Flow Cells on the ground around the Control Room before hitting them with an upcast Lightning Bolt, causing them to begin to spark and overload. He flees back to the Overseer's office where he finds a Runeguard pounding on the door asking the Overseer what's wrong. Dain quickly runs up and bashes the Runeguard across the head with Stormsmasher, crushing his skull. He then enters the room with the rest of the party and drags the Runeguard inside. Shutting the door behind them, Dain quickly runs up to the control panel and presses the Emergency Transport button. A previously unnoticed pylon on the wall flashes, and the party begins to glow blue briefly before their vision goes white. When it returns, they appear to be on the edge of a forest near the shore. However, they are startled by the sound of thunder crashing and the ground rumbling. They rush out to the cliffs above the shore where they see a darkened sky with storm clouds spreading outward from a distant point on the western horizon, radiating outward from a large column of red light shooting toward the sky. Though they had never seen one give off a red light before, they recognized it for what it was… a Wellspring eruption. Red lightning began to strike all across the sky as far as they could see, including several bolts that struck around the town of Frostport nearby.

After a few minutes, the rumbling and red lightning in the clouds died down. Once the sky color returned to normal, the party noticed that Overseer Kali had awoken. Fortunately Dain had the forethought to hog tie her before transporting them out of The Nexus. He began to interrogate her, wanting to know why she was helping King Rangrim do this, wanting to know his end goals. The woman began to spit vitriol at Dain, saying that King Rangrim would usher in a utopian age for the Dwarves. The others wondered aloud if this meant getting rid of the other races of Aellorah, to which the woman responded that they wouldn't do so, they simply wanted to elevate the Dwarves and let the other races kill themselves off once magic belonged solely to the Dwarves, claiming that the Dwarves were the children of Aellor, and as such, should be the only ones to wield it. Dain made mention of the Ashenfolk and their superior magic, referring to how their magic was not only able to conceal them from Runetech, but to disable it as well, telling her of Jeryl from The Vault and showing her the usage of one of the talismans Jeryl provided him. Overseer Kali seemed put off and disturbed, suggesting that perhaps they should focus on eliminating the Ashenfolk, but was unbothered. Seeing no point in continuing the conversation, Dain decided to leave Overseer Kali for the Yetis. Summer quickly shot and gathered some small critter carcasses, spreading their blood on Kali and around her to lure the Yetis, and left her squirming tied to a tree. The party then moved to reach Frostport to learn what the red lightning could possibly mean.

Nearing Frostport, the party heard a terrified scream from nearby and ran to the source of it. Arriving, they found a group of Runeguard standing in formation near some Forgeborn, with townsfolk huddled behind the Runeguard. Dain immediately took notice that the Forgeborn seemed to be behaving strangely, with their posture no longer rigid, but hunched, with one looking at its hands. As Dain wondered about the source of the confusion, the lead Forgeborn looked up at the Runeguard and said… "What… am I?" Startled by this, the townsfolk began to flee while the Runeguard advanced with their weapons drawn. The party moved in, trying to defuse the situation, but the Runeguard were unmoved by their pleas, stating that the Forgeborn were the property of the Imperium Arcanum and must be brought to the Runesmith College to be studied. Finding that they would not see reason, Dain appealed to the Forgeborn, telling them that the Runeguard meant to take them and imprison them. The Forgeborn seemed to not understand and Dain had to break it down to terms a three year-old might understand for them to get the message. He suggested to the Forgeborn that they should attack the Runeguard. The Forgeborn began to babble to each other in some sort of gibberish that vaguely sounded to Dain like Aurum. The Forgeborn then rushed the Runeguard, overwhelming them who seemed not to be trained well. Dain told the Runeguard to leave, which they did after a moment's hesitation. Merrick then addressed the Forgeborn, asking if they would like to come with him. The three Forgeborn, a Soldier, and Axeman, and a base model, agreed and moved to accompany them back to Thovil's ship.

Arriving at Thovil's ship, the confused Dwarf asked Dain what all the ruckus was about, apparently having not witnessed the incredibly event. Dain explains the eruption to a confused and perturbed Thovil. Afterwards, Dain heads down to the ship's hold, nervous about what he may find when he recovers his own Steel Defender, wondering if it too was affected by the Wellspring. However, the Steel Defender appeared to be no different than before. Dain explained to the Forgeborn that he created them and that the Steel Defender was the first model he created a decade prior. Meanwhile, Merrick decides to Commune with Estrea. As she appeared, he began to question her about the eruption, learning that the effects were as yet unclear, and Aellor was investigating. Estrea confirmed that the eruption came from Lys' Wellspring, and that the party using it to destroy the Chronicle of the Dead several years ago indeed appears to have affected the eruption. Estrea mentions that the Wellspring was the only tool they had available to destroy it, so they are not at fault, but in hindsight, they should have found a better way to contain it, and possibly just seal it away. She also mentions that the voice they heard when they cast the Chronicle of the Dead into the Wellspring was indeed the one responsible for orchestrating all this, but refused to elaborate on who "he" was. Merrick briefly wondered if it was The Deep One, but Estrea confirmed that he had nothing to do with this, but told Merrick to amend his list of topics to not discuss with The Deep One to include the Forgeborn.