48 AL: SARAH

The hall ended with a turn to the west. It was four days after their departure from the ocean rest. They were following the hallway south for about an hour. They passed several sets of large double doors on the east side of the hallway, but there were no hallway branches heading in that direction.

“Should we backtrack to the last stairwell and try up or down?” Todd asked, as the group paused at the corner in the hallway.

“No,” Grandmother responded. She was looking at her map. The way she moved her hands indicated she was giving it a thorough inspection. “I think this is the edge of the industrial section,” she explained. “I hoped we would find a broken or missing door, but it looks like Control is not giving us any breaks. The doors two back opened out into the hall. We’ll enter there.”

The group turned around and retraced their steps, traveling north. The second door did open up into the hallway. They preferred to make entry through doors that swung out when they could find them. It was easier to push them closed, making a choke point, if the group got overwhelmed.

The room beyond the door was a maze of overhead tracks and huge mechanical boxes that were fed with pipes from below. A series of catwalks crossed the tangle of piping below. The catwalks were made of rusty expanded steel, cut in an odd pattern. The catwalks creaked and groaned under their feet, making it almost impossible to travel forward with any stealth.

The first time they saw a room like this, Grandmother insisted on taking one of the mechanical boxes apart. They found that it was extremely hard to do. Although they looked like a device with gears and hydraulics, they were actually a single piece fused together. There were some small pieces on the outside that could be pried off, but these were few. They added depth and texture to the solid core of the simulated machine. Grandmother mumbled something about how history would be different if only the first explorers had found a similar room. It would have been obvious from the start that the structure was only a stage.

Grandmother went on to explain how she believed the original builders could have just as easily built a real industrial complex. They didn’t do so because they did not want the players to have access to that kind of technology. Even worn and broken machines could be repaired, one machine salvaged to become the parts to repair another. The industrial way of life held no role in the narratives and goals of Control.

As Sarah took her turn to peek in through the crack in the door to survey the room beyond before entering, she experienced a rather surprising realization. This room was designed to be discovered by someone who knew about automated industry, but was not too familiar with it. The detail she missed before this moment was that anyone who was born and raised in the structure would not be among that number. The structure wasn’t built to be lived in, it was meant to be visited by outsiders.

There were three groups of walking bears in the room. The group went in with Sarah’s full cast of cloaking spells. They managed to take out the first group before the second two groups noticed, even with the noisy catwalks. They chose the first group because its location forced the other two groups to approach them on the same path. As they collided with each other on the narrow catwalk they became disorganized.

They went out the east door into a similar room. The fight in this room did not go nearly as smoothly. The bears were expecting their arrival. They attacked smoothly. A large number of them were armed with crossbows and effectively used the machines for cover. Todd was hit by a crossbow bolt in the shoulder, but the brigandine he wore turned it aside. He ended up bruised with a few bent plates.

When the room was secured, Grandmother healed his shoulder. Ellen pulled the small repair kit she carried with her out of her pack and used it to work on his armor. Using the tools in the kit coupled with the correct spells and Ellen straightened out the plates mended the small rip in the covering cloth.

While they waited Sarah and Alex looked over all the weapons the bears carried. In the hands of the bears all the weapons were quality and in perfect condition. As soon as the owner died they transformed into dull, weak items that broke on the first use. Very rarely this didn’t happen and the weapon remained the quality item it was in the bear’s hand. They were looking for a working crossbow. Ellen and Sarah both carried bows. Ellen expressed a desire to try a crossbow. So far they failed to find a working one, although they did gather a fair number of bolts.

In this room Sarah found a quality knife on the belt of one of the crossbowmen. The sheath it was in was on the verge of falling apart, but she could craft something herself from some spare leather she carried. She showed the knife to Alex and asked him to keep an eye out for a usable sheath. Alex agreed, but commented that he hadn’t seen many knives at all. Sarah realized that was true for her too, but almost half the crossbowmen in this room carried them.

The only door out of this room, aside from the one they came in through, was on the south wall. They gathered around it in preparation for entry. Todd peeked inside. These doors opened in, making them harder to close in a hurry.

“I can’t see anything,” Todd commented with a frown.

“Is it dark?” Grandmother asked.

“No, I mean it looks empty. I can see catwalks level with the door, but no machines or tracks. I can’t really see what is below. There is a small landing just past the door that has a solid floor,” Todd explained.

“Hmm…” Grandmother mumbled. “That makes me think the threat is from below. Make entry, but stay close to the door.” Todd slipped silently into the room beyond. The rest of the party quickly followed.

They all crowded onto the platform Todd mentioned. The surface was made of a dark cast iron. The catwalks were bright steel. Todd was standing at the beginning of the south facing catwalk. The surface was bright steel, without any sign of rust. There were no handrails.

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Under the catwalks there was a series of open top tanks. The tanks were filled with a variety of fluids. Sarah didn’t know what the fluids were, but it was clear from their colors that none of them were water. There was a haze rising out of one of the tanks on the far side of the room.

“I don’t like how all the catwalks go over the center of a tank,” Alex said, sharing his concerns with the group.

“I only see one other door, on the far side,” Ellen observed. Sarah looked down. The floor was at least two stories down and possibly three. There was a lot more distance between the floors of the structure than could be accounted for by ceiling height alone. It was a long way down.

“Sarah,” Grandmother called, “come look at this.” Grandmother was kneeling along the edge of the platform where it was attached to the wall. She was holding the door open and held a wedge in her hand. She was obviously thinking about propping the door open.

Sarah knelt down next to her and looked at the edge of the platform when the older woman indicated. A series of symbols were engraved along the edge. They were very small, laid out in rows. They were deeply cut but on the dark metal they were hard to see.

“Is it an inscription?” Grandmother asked.

“No,” Sarah responded, “I don’t think so.” The symbols were contained in a band that ran around the edge of the platform. Every inscription she knew needed the symbols distributed across the entire surface. The rows were heavily padded with zeros, it was a technique that usually gave the timing of a spell. Looking at it that way, Sarah could see that this was a six symbol cast that included timing. That would make it a tier three cast.

“It reminds me of the spell ribbons on the grand staircase statues,” Sarah said. “This looks like a tier three cast for the third tree or sixth tree, depending on if you read it in a right turn or a left turn.”

“If you read it with a left turn, is that the sixth tree?” Grandmother asked.

“Yes,” Sarah clarified.

“Hmm…” Grandmother murmured. She jammed the wedge under the door, holding it open. She rose to her feet and took a couple steps to join Alex in his observation of the catwalks. “I don’t like how they look so new,” Grandmother said to Alex. “They were rusty in the other rooms.” She reached out with her staff and poked at the surface. The surface appeared solid enough, but Grandmother did not like the idea of falling into one of the tanks if the catwalk failed. That could be instant death, just like the molten metal river they found to the north.

“There were other doors out of that first room,” Todd observed from his position in the doorway, watching their back trail.

“That inscription band makes me think that this is just like the grand staircase, a test,” Grandmother explained.

“We have never actually ‘passed’ the staircase test,” Ellen observed. “Eventually it wants a spell with the sixth symbol in it.”

“True,” Grandmother conceded, “but there is always more than one way to do a thing. Maybe the spell is just a hint to what path we can take.” Grandmother shifted her weight as she thought about the problem. “So, sixth tree. Do we think it is a swiftness spell? Do we need to cross fast so the catwalk doesn’t fail under us?”

“No,” Sarah said, studying the number sequence under her feet. “I would lean toward it being something about reducing mass.” After their failure to cast with sound, Sarah became the only one to have any success with the sixth tree. Sarah knew how to enchant boots that let the wearer walk longer before getting tired. She also knew an enchantment that reduced the apparent weight of a pack. The training statues on the grand staircases hinted at spells to increase speed, which is what Alex thought the orange player cast. All of these indicated that the sixth magic tree was something about stamina or mass. Or maybe momentum, Sarah thought to herself, the energy of a mass in motion. “Maybe reducing momentum?” Sarah added, giving a voice to her thoughts. She pulled her spell diary out and jotted down the code and a description of where they found it.

Grandmother looked at the inscription again. She walked the edge of the platform, inspecting the full length of it. She leaned and looked down.

“Perhaps it is the opposite of a swift spell. It could be something like a slow fall. Do we have a rope long enough to reach the bottom?” she asked the group.

“Yes,” Ellen commented, “but I don’t see anything to attach it to.”

“We might be able to feed it through the expanded metal of a catwalk,” Alex offered.

“I think we are avoiding them,” Ellen countered.

“We could tie it to something in this room,” Todd said, from his position at the open door. He gestured to the room they just came from. Grandmother turned to look at the last room. The overhead tracks, piping under the floor and even the guardrail handrails gave them plenty of choice. They would have to test the strength of the item they chose thoroughly to ensure it really possessed the strength of steel and wouldn’t fail under the first loading, but they were all familiar with that precaution.

Grandmother agreed to this plan and indicated that she wanted to go down on the left side of the platform near the wall.

“Todd and Ellen stay up here for now. Sarah and Alex let’s go down and scout it out,” Grandmother said after the rope was in place. Alex took a hold of the rope and used the wall to walk down to the floor below. Grandmother tied a length of cord through the hole in one end of her staff and used it to secure the staff to her belt in order to free her hands. She followed Alex down with a display of strength and agility far beyond what a woman her age should possess.

Sarah went down last. She did her best to copy those that went before her, but at her lower tier she found the task much more difficult. She dropped the last few feet and landed hard on her feet. She swung her bow off her shoulder, where she secured it for the descent. One look around the crowded space she found herself in and she swung the bow back onto her shoulder without ever stringing it. She rested a hand on her knife as she followed Alex in between the tanks. Grandmother brought up the rear.

The tanks were set in a tight offset row pattern, making it impossible to see very far. The spaces between the tanks were very narrow and it was hard to squeeze through, especially since Grandmother requested they try not to touch the tanks. They circled around and through trying to scout out the entire space. Sarah wasn’t certain they accomplished that, when Grandmother called a stop at the far end of the room.

Grandmother studied the doors far above. It was hard to see them since a tank sat just below. There was no platform in front of the door, instead the catwalk that crossed the top of the tank continued to the wall.

“I don’t like the look of that,” Grandmother observed. Sarah agreed. One step out the door and you would be on the catwalk over a tank. If the catwalks were rigged to fail, it would be a death sentence.

“I am glad we didn’t come in that door,” Alex commented.

“We need to remember that and look down at the doorways. Control seldom gives you a warning twice,” Grandmother replied. They turned and headed back towards the rope. Alex once more set the path, circling through the tank field.