Invasion
After Holly’s rapturing story, the group beings settling in for the night. They agree to take turns on watch throughout the night with Helen and Jessie staying up together for the first watch. They talk quietly in hushed whispers as the rest of the party drifts off to sleep. Before long, Helen wakes up Ashton for his turn on watch. He spends his time fiddling with twigs, eventually whittling them down to paper thin strips and weaving them together with the goal of making a twig mat to add some space between the ground and his bedroll. The mat is of superb quality, its no masterwork, but any hobbyist weaver would be proud to create something similar. He gives most of his attention to the task, not catching the distant sounds of men whispering and soft footfalls. As his shift ends, he wakes up Holly who spends his two hour shift communing with the surrounding jungle, meditating on the pendant hidden under his cloak. He takes deep breaths with the rhythm of the forest to the beat of an owl’s wing, keeping pace with a mouse skipping along the forest floor, perfectly in tune to the anxious heartbeat of a warrior preparing for battle. When Holly hears in his head, a feminine voice:
“Look up.”
Arrows arc from the darkness, the flint glinting as they pass just over Holly’s head and make contact on a tree trunk on the opposite side of camp. Holly screams, alerting the rest of the party to the shadowy threat intruding in on their space. They scramble out of sleep and their bedrolls and the momentary chaos of thrashing limbs is enough for the party to avoid the arrows now finding purchase in the surrounding ground beside their bedrolls. Holly squints into the dense forest and suddenly feels very vulnerable - they are exposed by the light of the campfire and the shadows of the dense jungle serve as an ally to the unknown number of archers. “Let’s level the playing field.” He snaps his fingers, extinguishing the campfire to all but embers and crouches down. The bandits begin moving in, figures with clubs and swords invade the camp and find purchase as they bash and slash into the soft flesh of Helen and Jessie, wounding them both severely. Archers shoot another barrage of arrows, but are unable to make contact after their target has been plunged into darkness.
Nero opens their beak, singing their Song of Inspiration, targeting Ashton as the heaviest hitter in the party. Ashton feels the thundering of blood pumping in his ears and his axe feels lighter as he charges the nearest archer just outside the clearing. He slashes down, burying the blade in the hostile’s shoulder, crippling them. Fear flashes in their eyes, but their buddies are making progress on the other side of camp. Helen and Jessie are able to escape the threat of the blades, but leave themselves exposed to the archers. Jessie heals herself and Helen with a quick prayer. Nero has faded into the inky blackness as their feathers serve as a natural camouflage. Another sword wielding bandit approaches Ashton from behind, surrounding him, though as he approaches, Ash buries his axe into the neck of the archer, swinging them behind him, their freshly decapitated head rolling at the feet of their ally who was too late to help. The sword wielder calls for help from the other bandits.
Holly slips into the jungle hiding in the brush. He concocts a plan to deal with these archers. Until then, the party is pelted with another barrage of arrows. Helen’s head feels woozy and begins seeing spots in the corner of her eyes, quickly losing blood. She’s moments from being downed and is unable to pull her arm up for another shot. The juggernaut before Ashton stabs him in the side with gnashed teeth as he begins breathing profusely. Ashton takes the opportunity to inflict some psychological warfare. He grabs the blade with his armored hand, pulling it out of his own stomach, and rips it right out of the bandits hands. He points the blade at his throat and says, “Surrender now, or you’ll end up like him.” The bandit looks beyond Ashton’s unyielding gaze to the leader of the bandit group who has just stumbled into the brush to give some backup. He sneers and takes a swing at Ashton, but without looking, Ash throws up his shield behind him not breaking eye contact with the man in front of him. The leader makes the call to retreat - clearly this has gone far out of hand.
Meanwhile, Holly casts Hellfire Bolt, a serpentine flame bursts out of his hand and dexterously works its way through the labyrinthine branches separating Holly and the enemy archer at the north side of camp. The wyrm of fire seems to open its lifelike fiery jaw consuming the archer’s right arm and snaking up the right side of their head, leaving behind in its wake charred and blistering skin. Holly whispers an outright lie to himself, causing his shadow to become large, monstrous, and obfuscating the true source of the spell. The archer yells “Fae! There’s fae here!” Several bandits follow the order from the leader to retreat, and those who don’t change their minds at the word of fae. The camp is once again safe for the night.
To Progress
The next morning the party get back on track to their target. The road seems to disappear beneath their very feet, going from maintained cobblestone, to gravel, to near dirt, by the time they reach the skeletal ghost town and crumbling marble gate at the mouth of the bridge, open as wide and inviting as an apex predator’s rotting jaw left ajar. “TO PROGRESS” the sign reads in the common tongue, almost illegible from the wear and tear of time. Upon further examination, the parasitic vines that grow along the gate have been cut fairly recently. The vines aren’t of any species the group knows about, the dark green vines and blood red flowers appearing almost alien to them, but it is very clear, they were cut by a sharp object. Ashton recalls the legends of demons creating portals through ivy when they meat creating a complete circle. Someone has been here, and they believe in this myth. Holly also finds some bedrolls in what was once an inn, no more than a few months old.
Before setting foot past the threshold, Holly turns his shirt inside out. Before anyone is able to properly question him, he explains: “For fae.” Ashton sees the display as overly cautious, however does suppose some precautions are better than none. He removes some rings out of his chainmail to craft a small iron ring similar to the one Holly wears.
As they progress across the gargantuan bridge, they find several more skeletal ghost towns on wide platforms at several points along the bridge. These small settlements are simultaneously more put together and falling apart, as the infrastructure has suffered greatly due to the inclement weather and strong gusts of wind, however, very few objects have been removed. Ashton and Holly poke around while the rest of the party makes their camp for the night. Ashton is able to find a one of a kind complete dinner set from a famous and old dwarven ceramics artist. While Holly only sees dusty and chipped clay plates. Ashton gathers them to take back with him to sell to a collector. Ashton also finds a drawer with a false bottom while looking around for more objects. He finds a letter - a white one, not yellowed with age - with a blank wax seal. He attempts to use his knife to open it without breaking it, but is unsuccessful. Once its already opened, he decides to take a look at what it says:
“Felix,
Do you suppose we’ve been cautious enough? Just think about it, after all the months we’ve spent going back and forth on this damned bridge we haven’t seen a singular non-authorized person attempt crossing it. And while I am willing to follow orders from the higher ups it doesn’t help that none of them have set even a foot out of the institution. No, from now on, I’m dropping the damned code. Good luck to Molar to have to explain it to Pedro, I know he’ll lose it once he finds out. Obviously it’s the “safe” thing to do, but I don’t think it is the best use of our time.
Perhaps we ought to develop a simpler code, one that doesn’t require a fucking High Archaic translator and three hours to sort out. I have some ideas, we can go over them the next status meeting. I’ve hidden something in this message so you can know it’s me. It’s not like it even matters. Anyway, report of the island. All is normal. As normal as it can be. We managed to break open one of the chambers in the purple tower and it was filled with spare Warforged parts. We’re taking as many we can carry back, though I suspect we’ll need several wagons to carry it all back. Fae portals have been quiet lately. They haven’t been bothering us as much, but I don’t trust that. Keep an eye out. The test seeds in the glass houses have been coming along nicely, Della says they’re growing even faster than they would by traditional means, but more tests will have to be done.
- Dargish
P.S. tell Molar to let Pedro know he left a rope ladder out on the bridge. Appreciated it, but it’s a bit sloppy to leave it out. I stashed it in the usual place.”
After reading the letter, Ashton writes a small note in the margins. He recognizes most of the names mentioned in the letter, and even worked with Pedro on a similar job in the past to find relics in the earth portal near the Hearthstone Mountains. His note reads “Pedro’s friend from the portals passed through - Ashton”. He carefully places it back in its drawer.
The City
The party reaches the end of the expansive bridges marked by a open gate and two 13+ foot tall golems with axes nearly as tall as themselves. Holly explains to the group the breach plan to get into the city. Despite the gates being wide open, the large golems are going to stop anyone who dares enter. However, the walls of Arkannon only go so far. Originally, the plan was to fully surround the island in these walls, but when it came down to it, no one approaches the city from the coast and the project was forgotten over time. Once they reach the beach, its only a few hours walk to where the stone wall falls off into wooden structure beams. They just need to climb down the rope ladder Kogen had left for them, but its now mysteriously missing. Very frustrated about the whole affair, considering this was literally his whole job, he angrily swears and paces back and forth. Nero, Jessie, and Helen attempt to fashion a much less safe way of getting down to the beach with their several coils of rope, but the drop is a bit too far to want to climb down. While the rest of the party is preoccupied, Ashton searches for where the “usual place” might be. There isn’t much of note on the bridge, but he’s able to find a large stone brick jutting out from the rest of the bridge. There he finds a hollowed out section where the rope ladder was hidden. He presents it to the party, saying it must’ve been blown away from where it was meant to stay.
With this, they are able to enter the city proper. They find themselves in a sort of industrial district, everything coated in thick layers of grime and soot. Large stone factories hang with inactive chimneys. Along the barren streets are odd pillars and strange technology. The group decide to seek out factories meant for warforged production. They find one such abandoned factory with automated machinery needing limited personal supervision. They find large molds and smithies, as well as an innumerable amount of half finished parts. They move to the offices of the factory trying to find some kind of blueprint for the warforged. Not quite finding what they’re looking for, they do find two receipts made out to the city of Arkannon itself. The receipts are itemized, breaking down the individual cost of materials, labor, and shipping for the order. They also contain a large cost for shipping some materials from Planak. These receipts are made out for infantry and scout class warforged - two of the most commonly produced. Holly uses his comprehend languages spell and with only 60 seconds to dig through the stacks of pages in high archaic, he finds one interesting letter that didn’t get a chance to be mailed out. It is addressed to a Castello Abbot and says “The next batch is ready. They are being moved to the magic district to be inhabited as we speak.” Ashton and Holly come to an agreement to not share these receipts with their boss, but to collect some spare parts instead.
They enter one final factory for the day, seeking other militarized forms of mass production. Holly finds an overly ornate rapier. It has some historical relevance, as it was engraved for a specific noble family in the city. However this sword was never made to see battle for a second. Ashton finds a finished greataxe head from a mold. It was largely saved from rust by being stuck in this mold for the last 400 years. It will need some TLC, some shaping and sharpening, not to mention the missing handle, but it will one day be a force to be reckoned with.