Session 30: Wrench in the Engine
??? High Summer, 498 CE
- Revana, Ekhart, and Sanglant at this point have a pretty good understanding of what is happening to them.
- Burden, the Elemental of Earth, is using the discontented dwarves to mess with the party's memories.
- They decide what they need to do is fix the dwarves' problems so that Burden can not manipulate them.
- RED SHIFT - The party decides to split up so they can cover more ground. Sanglant goes to the Lower Ring, while Ekhart and Revana go to the Upper Ring.
- In the Lower Ring, Sanglant decides to head to the Office of the Foreperson to talk to Maria Seigagardottr, the Forelady.
- Maria sees Sanglant's broken shift crystal and chalks it up to the ineptitude of the Consulate.
- She gives Sanglant a working All-Shift Crystal so that he can go to the foreign embassy to get the proper paperwork.
- With the All-Shift Crystal, and unfettered access to the trams, Sanglant decides to try his best to fix the shift completely.
- Sang starts by heading to the Mithril Mines to clear out the kobold infestation.
- He handily defeats all the kobolds with a single blow of his new handwraps.
- Sanglant then heads off to the Upper Ring to meet up with the others.
- Meanwhile, in the Upper Ring, Ekhart and Revana head to the Record Hall, hoping to find out more about Dwarfheim.
- There, they meet Sigvaldi, the Record Keeper, and with his help manage to find several useful books.
- Ekhart learns about aetherite, and that apparently they had been manufacturing it for hundreds of years.
- Revana learns that the last contact the dwarves have had with the outside was over a thousand years ago.
- Sanglant meets up with Revana and Ekhart, as all three of them arrive at the Foreign Embassy.
- They meet Jofrid, the Consulate, who appears to be the first lazy dwarf they have met so far.
- When they met her, she was taking a nap after eating a bowl of crackers.
- The party asks her about how foreigners are supposed to gain access to Dwarfheim, and she explains that visitors would be given an All-Shift Crystal when they arrived, and that typically they would send the crystal along with an invitation.
- She also mentions that she, personally, has never had a single foreigner visit Dwarfheim in her lifetime.
- They ask her to fill out the paperwork to allow them to get All-Shift Crystals from the Forelady, which she begrudgingly does.
- Sanglant tells the party that he believes that they need to enact their plan this loop, before Burden can somehow get these crystals from them.
- They travel to the Middle Ring, before the end of Red Shift.
- Revana helps out the Treants.
- Sanglant and Ekhart got to the Helforge, to talk with Forgemaster Grim.
- They manage to convince him and the rest of the Dwarves to stop producing the aetherite today, and that a fresh shipment of mithril would arrive tomorrow.
- Ekhart, Revana, and Sanglant return to Old Dwarfheim to retrieve Remy.
- The four of them travel down to the Lower Ring, where they get their All-Shift Crystals from Maria.
- They talk their way into the Storehouse, and descend the elevator.
- As they descend the elevator, they find the aetherite storeroom.
- The storeroom appears to just be a big, empty open cavern with nothing inside.
- Suddenly, they hear the low, booming voice of Burden.
- Burden tells the party why he is torturing them;
- Apparently, Sanglant is the reincarnation of Lenna, whom burden refers to as “The Little Monk.”
- Burden said that the Little Monk helped him when he had been possessed by a demon.
- In return, he made her his champion.
- Some time after that happened, the physical world and the Faerealm split apart, making it impossible for Burden to return.
- Burden then bode his time in Dwarfheim, until eventually they discovered aetherite.
- Burden realized he could use the magic of the aetherite to build a bridge home.