Session 1

So I guess just let me know what you want to do.

You won’t necessarily be able to do it, but we can at least get you going in that direction.

You can ask questions about anything you think you might know about or details you want to try to pick up.

“Why is this happening to me?”

----------------------------------------

It's late afternoon and you’re approaching the entrance to Port Orbital. It looks like it once rested on the top of a mountain, but that the Mill Stone that the city is built on has drilled down into the mountain with its daily clockwork rotations. So now there are vaulting natural walls of stone that surround most of the outside of the city.

The entrance is a channel cut vertically through the stone, a gap in the surrounding stone where a large dirt road leads to a stone bridge and the city beyond.

Didn’t you say there were towers and tall buildings looming over the plains? Wouldn’t they be covered by the wall?

The buildings are tall enough to poke out over the lip of the crater. They seem to spill out over the rim of it, arching outward in a tangle.

Accretio keeps walking toward the entrance.

I sit at the front of his shell to give the impression I’m controlling where he goes.

There are some small buildings constructed around the rim of the crater, where it begins to flatten out. A lot of them are built partially on supports to account for the differences in elevation. Some rough looking boarded walkways are built into the rock, overtop of the buildings, as the walls ascend.

“Do we stick out here? Are people watching us? What do they look like here?”

There are a few people milling about, catching some sun on the outskirts. You see a few fur laden folk similar to Thremp. Some humans. It looks like a lot of the structures here at the entrance are barns or stables, so there are some folk tending to various beasts of burden. There are some storefronts that look to be selling traveling supplies. A dusty tanned man in overalls is heaping sacks of something onto a wagon.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

A Thremp-like thing blurs past you into the city, its fur a bright white with patches of gray and brown.

‘Stick to the sides please,’ it says as it brushes past Accretio. It bounces and bounds quickly, saddled on another furred animal much larger than it. A thick shouldered goat with a saddle.

No one seems to react too strongly to you or Accretio, but seem a bit bothered by the sheer space you take up. You’re bothersome, but certainly not shocking it would seem.

You cross the stone bridge, past the walls and step into Port Orbital.

This particular sector of the city is immediately filled with low canvas-sided buildings, all fairly uniformly built to create a segmented snaking footpath through the fronts of as many stalls as possible. It's a bazaar or open market of sorts. There's a wider path to the left that bypasses the market and cuts through the sector directly. A street for vehicles, perhaps.

People mill about in sparse crowds, but the front courtyard you’re in now is cleared mostly out. There is a more permanent looking stone structure opposite the entrance you just walked through, with an open front and reception counter. Two figures behind the counter look directly toward you, expectantly.

I’d like to try to move Accretio around. If I let them keep moving themselves around then I won’t be able to get around the city.

Okay, what does that look like? What are you doing to try to control or drive Accretio?

I look at the inside of the city wall. Can I see where the ground meets the wall? Is there any goo or gunk from all the grinding when the city turns?

You see some, yeah. Where the freight path on the left side starts there aren’t any buildings, so right before it hangs right toward the middle of the city, there's a stretch of seam between the walls and the stone where a line of black stuff is collecting. It looks like tar or a dense mud or something, but also with a sandy quality to it.

I hop off of Accretio and scramble quickly to it and scoop some up. I climb back up to the foremost and highest cliff on Accretio’s shell and find a spiky rock that’s sticking straight up. I grab the stone plate I got from the goblins and smear a fat ring around the outside one one face, and paint a dot right in the middle of the other side. I Spike the dot on the plate right onto a spike of shell-rock that's sticking straight up.

I want the magic painting thing you described to turn it into a control wheel. I want to try to tilt it around and point and move Accretio with it.

You do that. And it works. You feel Accretio lumber forward, trending in the direction you tilt this plate.

Very clever.

The two attendees at this courtyard reception building have stepped out, armed with weapons, to attend to you as the two of you approach, Accretio’s Shell arches over the windows and past the thatched roof of the building.

We will need some time to consider how Accretio will react beyond that.