- The foreshadowing encounters over the past two sessions have made Grant and Ethan very cautious. These Others are able to traverse worlds via the Stair, and they seem to be numerous. Grant and Ethan are Lords of Gossamer, but they are still only two. This section of Stair is warped, even ‘sick’. They tread carefully whilst they learn more about what dwells here. What they find is more monstrous than they expected ….
Major Characters
- Grant, Ethan
Adversaries
- The Others
Adventure Hook
- This session continues immediately on from the previous session.
Adventure Summary
- The new section of Stair looks less like a landing or staircase, and much more like a guttered ramp. It slopes unevenly both upwards and downwards. This section of Stair is cold and a little damp. A line of strange silk reaches from the Door that Ethan and Grant has just slipped out of, and extends across the ramp to another point, then it criss crosses back and forth off into the distance. Ethan feels the lack of Eidolon here. There is a sense of decay. The Stair is not ‘right’ here.
- The Lords of Gossamer tread carefully as they make their way downwards. There are many silk strands and both assume that if they are to trip any of them that they will alert someone or something. They pass more than one Broken Door. The whole place feels lifeless, but something is lurking. They reach a landing no more than four metres across with a depression in the middle, and Ethan sits down to craft a spell. He sends his Awareness out as a scout, following the ramp as it spirals its descent toward unknown depths. Ethan senses that most of the Doors here are broken. At least two thirds of them. There are many silk strands below. Some Doors seem to be covered with them, forming a sort of wrapping over them. The further into the distance he looks, the more vertical the Stair becomes. It becomes more like a chute. Ethan grimly describes this to Grant, telling him that it will be very difficult to climb back up again. It is as if the whole Stair has tilted in this section. Neither of them have seen anything like this before.
- As they descend carefully, they note that some of the Doors are ovoid, and some bulge out or in from the wall of the Stair. There are occasional decorations such as statues and pictures, but the faces in them seem arrogant and bored. Their eyes are black and beady. They don’t look like Dwimmerlaik. Whatever these people are, they are something else.
- After traveling for over an hour, they encounter their first junction. It is criss-crossed by silk strands, but away from the main descent, the branch seems clear of threads. Ethan hesitates and then suggests to Grant that they check it out. The side branch seems to be darker and colder than the main corridor. It feels different. It feels like a tomb. Even the wall hangings resemble drooping black flowers. At last they find a Door. There is no silk thread attached to it so they open it.
- The Lords of Gossamer find themselves on what looks like what was once a terrible battlefield. They have stepped out of a bunker and into a complex network of trenches. The air is cold. This place is deathly silent. Grant shapeshifts into a bird form and takes to the air to get a better look. He spies mummified bodies. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. The people here are six-limbed, and have three eyes in the heads. Every corpse has a terrified look on its face. Every corpse has been hollowed out surgically. Ethan inspects one of the bodies and finds that some sort of preservative was applied to the target, and then their bodies were harvested while the victim was still alive.
- Above, Grant finds the remains of a small city nearby. It is empty of life. He starts to investigate and finds pictorial evidence of their attackers. They are not a uniform race - they have different shapes but the same characteristics. The same arrogant and bored look, the same dark eyes - but there is something else as well. Something incomprehensibly alien about them.
- Grant and Ethan compare notes and then withdraw. They continue down the branch tunnel, looking for more Doors. They find many, and behind each is the same. A destroyed world. People butchered and harvested.
- The sixth Door is a high tech ovoid shape. A keypad is built into it. Ignoring the keypad, Grant opens the Door and they find themselves in an immense city, choked by vast structures extending up towards dark, starless heavens. But the place is completely silent. Barely a breeze wafts through this tomb-city. There are no animals. Ethan goes for a walk on one of the boardwalks. Grant takes to the air and surveys what he can.
- Again there are the tell-tale signs of a terrible incursion. There are bodies and piles of ash. Even though the battle here appears to be old, it is not as old as the other places that they have visited. The people here are still very dead though. It is a city of ghosts.
- Ethan feels a slight presence in this place. There is still some life here, somewhere. He goes looking for it. Occasionally an advertising screen pops into life, replaying an emergency broadcast. A human face reports that the barricades have fallen and the only avenue for survival is to get off the planet. To leave while it is still possible to do so. Behind the human broadcaster is some footage that shows a swarming tide of the Others. There are more than a thousand of them, rushing forward in some sort of coordinated wave. No two in the throng are the same but they all have rounded muzzles and beady black eyes. Some have two eyes and some have four eyes. All appear to be armoured, and some have strange trophy-like appendages stuck to them. They hurl themselves at the defenders and can be seen harvesting their still living victims.
* Image sourced from Google. These are obviously Tyranids from Warhammer 40K. It’s the best that we could find when searching Google for something to match our mental image of these creatures. (I don’t particularly like the idea that the Others are Tyranids but it’s the best we could find.
- This world proves a trove of useful information. Grant finds data pads, and last messages. Ethan finds a way of accessing more news items regarding the invaders and together, they start to piece together what happened here.
- The original encounter was via a single Door. The Others came, attacked, but were driven back. The images of these creatures show that they lacked some of their armour plating and projection of their joints. The second encounter with the Others was different. The creatures sent this time were covered with plating that absorbed the defenders’ energy bolts. Nevertheless, the people here used different weapons and the Others were thrown back. On the third assault, the Others were more diversified, and used dozens of Doors, attacking dozens of places at once. Ethan feels a chill at this thought - this means that a Master of the Grand Stair is amongst their number.
- The Others show no interest in technology which is why so much information is able to be collected here. They are only interested in harvesting organic material. They are after the people.
- Grant and Ethan grimly assess the situation. These Others are monsters. They clearly have the ability to traverse the Grand Stair, and to open multiple Doors. They threaten and have threatened many worlds. But they don’t know enough about their adversaries to know how to proceed. Ethan still senses life in this place, so he asks Grant to investigate. As Ethan heads out on foot, Grant flies ahead and finds a section of this city-planet where the buildings have collapsed in a ring. In the middle, a single building stands. Astonishingly, it has some power reserves as some lights can be seen, and the ground around it is glowing green. There are no walkways to or from the structure.
- Grant flies ahead, and then uses an Icon to contact Ethan and bring him in. Ethan uses Mental Invisibility and together they sneak around the complex to find out more about these people.
- The people here are the desperate, wretched remains of the population. Their power supply is jury-rigged. They are living off reconstituted paste and a dwindling supply of canned food. They have a barely working still, but the filtration system has failed and toxins are building up in the water supply. The people are sick. They are without hope. The people here are stressed, exhausted, malnourished and slowly being poisoned. Many need medical treatment, and there are no supplies.
- Ethan thinks of Abbie. He knows that she could not turn away from such a situation, and he feels unable to leave them. Grant asks Ethan what he wants to do - there are so many people here. Ethan decides to repair the water filtration system using Eidolon, and using his command of storm-magic, he generates rain to replenish their reserves. While he repairs the unit, he comes across Pell, the exhausted technician who has been maintaining the unit and he takes pity on him and heals him. Pell is grateful - he assumes that Ethan has come from one of the off-world colonies to save them all. Ethan asks for more information about what happened here, and Pell explains that they survived the catastrophe that affected their world by clearing a ring of buildings, and smashing all of the openings that the Others may have been able to turn into Doors, and then killing all of the creatures who remained. Pell asks timidly if Ethan has a ship to take them all to safety.
- Unfortunately Ethan has no such ship, but in talking with Pell he realises that he cannot abandon these people. Grant rejoins Ethan and they discuss the situation. Grant seems pleasantly surprised that Ethan has decided to stay and help these people - he expected him to want to move on. Pell introduces the two Lords of Gossamer to others in the community. There is no leader here, but there are many who are inspired by the Lords’ presence and word sweeps through the community that there is hope once more. Ethan works hard to heal as many people as he can, and then to restore vital systems whilst Grant looks for a suitable ship which could be used to assist with their escape off world.
- This escape is further complicated when Ethan restores their radio (which has not been working for two years) and finds that there are three other communities on the planet that have survived (two are repeating distress calls), and also one from the nearby moons. The task is much bigger than expected, and Grant takes a leadership role to organise the people. Meanwhile, Ethan works hard to repair a serviceable heavy cruiser with help from the natives. He wishes that Isabelle were here to help him. He wishes that he could talk to Abbie. He knows that Abbie would approve of what he was doing. He misses her.
- Their simple decision to help takes them four months of work. During that time they rescue the other communities one by one, and repair two other ships for the journey off-world. They find out that the other settlements isolated themselves in similar ways - they destroyed the walkways to other structures and left no doors in the buildings. They sealed off the lower floors. However it is the military base on the nearby moon that is the most interesting. The troops have been living on algae for almost five years, and are very happy to be reunited with the rest of their people. They sealed the airlocks and removed doors in order to survive.
- Nine weeks of hard work and the Lords of Gossamer feel that they have done enough. They could stay longer but the remaining population is safe, and will survive. They have learnt a great deal about the Others and how they operate, and they have had plenty of time to plan their next move. Ethan is determined not to simply keep walking, but instead to do something about these monstrous Others.
Other Impacts
- As per Session 129, they are unable to contact their friends and family back in the main section of the Stair, so some events will occur of which they have no knowledge.
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