2025/11/28: The Gnomish Mines Part 2

Buzz, Kelsey, Knight, Malakai, Nimbus, Everett, Othar
  At the end of last session, the party went through the gnomish city (of about a thousand people) and made it to the mine. The city was set up like a sniper's paradise, full of shooting holes and hiding places, and there were signs that the populace was readying defenses and preparing to fight to the last.
  The entrance was roughly 30'x20', with surprisingly good lighting from suspicious blue torches. As the party entered the mine, there were visible sparkles of silver, tin, copper, gold, and more visible in the walls. The amounts were not spectacular, but seeing all of them in the same place, intermixed? That was the result of the divine blessing.
  The tunnel opened into a crossroads, with evil glowing crystals spread around the room. A bit of a ritual circle was visible further into the room, and Heroditus noted that it was new. To those with spellcraft, it was clearly a sacrificial ritual intended for blood magic. Othar and Malakai recognized that the circle was linked to the elemental plane of fire somehow. It seemed to be designed to channel ritual power to a god or other extraplanar entity.
  Othar opted to blow it up. As Othar, Malakai, Kelsey, and Heroditus broke the circle with the combined power of their weapons, the wide platform the circle was placed on cracked across its width, and a high-pitched cry of rage echoed from down one of the tunnels.
  Knight led the way down that tunnel. The group came across what looked like someone's living area, with a supply shed, cages for prisoner storage, and more. It was unoccupied, but Othar's draconic sense of smell identified that it had been in use until at most minutes before.
  Knight, with blindsense thanks to Hearing the Air stance, detected a gnome-thing with distended limbs crawling past toward the exit on one of the walls. Knight immediately responded by dashing to melee range and burying all four swords in the wall around the gnome-thing, caging it in. It screamed and exploded. Knight shrugged off the blast, but the thing was gone. Coincidentally, the strikes on the wall caused a softball-sized chunk of gold to fall out of the wall. Unlike the crystals in the last room, this gold wasn't evil.
  (Nimbus was the one doing the detecting. The crystals in the last room were so evil that she couldn't even detect Othar unless she was within his aura. He found this shocking and insulting to his reputation.)
  During a subsequent discussion on what to do about this place, Heroditus mentioned that this dungeon was sort of interposed with the Elemental Plane of Earth, but only a little. It might interfere with teleportation.
  The party continued to the end of that branch of the mine, but found nothing more of interest. On their way back out, at Knight's prompting, Buzz stole all nine crates of spell components the mage had left in his hut.
  The adventurers headed back to the central room. This was where the evil crystals grew. There were some 110 of the three-foot-tall crystals growing from the ground in the room. Othar told Kelsey to get big and pull one of the crystals out of the ground. She did. This caused a physical hit to her alignment that would likely take an atonement and a quest for one of the Greek gods to remove. The party decided to not do that anymore.
  After further discussion, Nimbus heard quiet tinking sounds from down another of the corridors. She led the way as the party headed that way. There was another hovel area down that way, and there were several gnomes there, with one chiseling away halfheartedly at the semiprecious gems in a wall.
  On seeing the party, that gnome ran back to the other five and they hid. Nimbus and Othar tried to talk to them, but the gnomes were terrified and distrusting. Nimbus saw they were women and children and were visibly underfed, so she gave them three weeks worth of rations.
  "Nemblebee's Longmen retrieve anyone who escapes." They are the ones who run the city. They were likely the ones who attacked the dwarven caravan.
  At least "They won't let Ingar touch us anymore." When the party had a general response of "we're targeting that guy first", the woman who'd mentioned it got a vicious grin and used an illusion to give an image of him. Ingar looks like a gnome with really long arms and legs. He's the guy who exploded on Knight before.
  Othar scried on him. He was at the entrance to the mine, opening a gate to Hell, and was surrounded by a small army of spriggans and a growing army of demons and summoned monsters.
  The party decided to evacuate the gnomes and themselves, leaving to do a pincer attack or rest up and waste all the spells the defenders were casting. Heroditus, however, opted to stay behind; he wanted to reduce the defending numbers, and he was confident that he was in no danger thanks to his power and immortality.
  Malakai teleported the group to the Ragnarok, which they promptly learned was being chased by a fleet of magma dwarves.
  Duradain Alliance west-northwest. The rescued soldiers said the fleet needed to be lured there so the Duradain Alliance would see the fleet coming head-on rather than coming around unexpectedly from a flank. Buzz called ahead with summoning wind to warn them where the enemy was coming from.
  As the Ragnarok crossed the border, there was no sign of ships ahead. Then a fleet appeared on sensors. As the two fleets closed on each other, a greater air elemental appeared on the bridge. It formally requested that the Ragnarok turn north to get the pursuers into a better firing position. The Duradain fleet appeared in an intercepting path. The Zerakaz Empire ships didn't change their strategy in the slightest; as far as they were concerned, this was just an opportunity to kill more enemies. They had the firepower.
  A massive battle began to unfold in the air.
  Malakai piloted the Ragnarok, with Nimbus manning a ballista with her holy bolts and Kelsey bringing her ammo. Vrex similarly plugged away from the ship. Buzz joined the aerial melee aboard Othar in dragon form. Knight played one-being boarding party.
  The early fight was an unholy furball. Over the course of that stage of the fight, most of the small ships were blown apart. The Ragnarok, as one of the smallest ships remaining, became a priority target, and the enemies seemed very intent on boarding. The boarders were driven off, but the distraction gave an opening for ranged fire. The Ragnarok went down. But it survived the landing.
  370 magma dwarves dead. 5 hull points remaining. Also a bunch of dead black scaly lizard things.
  Othar survived the fight, dodging dozens of shots, but he took a cannonball amidst the the melee and just barely was able to stay airborne.
  Knight was initially playing defense, but got to go offense after the numbers stabilized. They ended up managing to board the enemy flagship and go on a rampage until the high-level generals and adventurer-tier officers partied up to halt them, and Knight still was able to match them and even kill several of them before being forced to jump ship.
  Net 6 enemies left, including flagship. About 30 friendlies remaining. The enemies limped off. The friendlies didn't chase, opting to recover downed ships and crew. The winning side took about 80% casualties. The two giant flagships had mauled each other in passing, both limping away from the encounter.
  The Totenkreuz arrived to aid in the later stages of the battle, expending practically all its ammunition in pot shots. After the fight, it offered the Ragnarok a tow.
  A delegation of higher-ups from the Duradain Alliance approached the downed ship and the party. Several dwarves with very fancy beards and armor, an elf, a couple of humans, and a halfling. A dwarf with a big two-handed axe stepped forward to act as the spokesman.
  Admiral Goldaxe. Malakai acted as spokesman in return.
  "They've got a weird prophecy about a black dragon. Apparently your ship's artwork set 'em off." "Oh, it's not artwork." The dwarf didn't know details of the prophecy, but he strongly recommended the party not let the ship be taken by the magma dwarves. Didn't want the magma dwarves to get ahold of it for some nefarious prophecy.
  The Duradain people sent over some engineers to help with getting the ship back together. With Buzz providing all the parts needed via wall of stone and fabricate, and with extra labor from Buzz's "501" mechanical minions, the engineers said they'd have it ship-shape in a week.
  About Rael-Aestra: "Never been, but I've heard it's full of asshole wizards who hate the gods." This was coming from a cleric, so grain of salt.
  The admiral healed Knight and Othar.
  Zerakaz empire: Has a religious capital, an industrial capital, a political capital. All are horrendously well-defended.
  Joke: To be engraved on Admiral Goldaxe's tombstone: "Mean, but fair."
  The gnomes accepted an offer to be taken to a safe location in Duradain territory.
  Othar remotely checked on Captain Heroditus. He was still standing, but one of his legs was partly gone, and he had wounds across all his body. Still, the way he was looking forward, he seemed ready for round 2.
  He went through another few rounds of life-or-death combat, regenerating and losing parts as he went, before the Ragnarok flew over and beamed him up.
  After some talking over solutions to the mine problem and the Totenkreuz's mage lady problem, Captain Heroditus was handed back to the Totenkreuz, where he explained the truth to the chief engineer. He got punched in the face and then hugged. The chief engineer then went and released the mage and last escape pod. A crew discussion ensued. After a while, the captain was brought in, and the discussion continued.
  Agreement reached: Heroditus is officially the captain, the chief engineer is functionally in charge, and the one actually making the decisions is the mage. (Who, partway through the discussion, was yelling that he was a buffoon, an ignoramus, an utter idiot. But she didn't try to kill him again.)