Session 16:

Hotfix incoming:

The previously described rules for using “facets” have been updated.

Instead of the previous “1d10 + bonus” each facet will be a die rating indicating the capability of that character with that facet.

Elk’s Facets have been altered thusly:

Cunning: 1d10

Charm: 1d6

Muscle: 1d4

Guts: 1d10

Usable assets have similarly been given dice ratings. These can be rolled alongside facets with the higher result taken, or focus can be spent to add them both to a roll.

* Admin

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Arm rental - (1d4) 2

Little City Upkeep - (1d8) 7

Filigree remaining - 53

Focus: 4

The climb down into the basin where Broadway begins is basic enough. You see the woolings find comfortable hoofholds in almost nonexistent juts and contour of the rock face.

With the Dreadcoil arm, you can swing easily from platform to platform, as a rough pathway has been hewn from past travelers. Forgotten pitons and occasional improvised stairs frame a switchback decent to Broadway.

Deposits of glass, globular and amorphous, have formed among nests of intertwining rebar, the result an approximation of porous volcanic stone. Crafted heavy slats of wood have been fixed in places to fill in gaps and couple with the glass that breaches the lower nest of rebar to create a broad path weaving through a deepening branching canyon of felled city buildings.

You join the Woolings at the base of Broadway, bringing up the rear.

“Where are we going first?” I ask.

Redarn is thumbing through a ledger book until he reaches an earmarked page bookmarked with some folded up map pages. He runs a finger down a yellowed page.

“Apparently there’s a spot past the Wall Mall,” He says, and points to a series of flat triangular slabs that rise over the canyon to the east. “A mad tangle of old magic contraptions boxed in by sideways rooftops. That's where the Emitter Apes make their dens. We need their antlers.”

I point to the overhanging girders that come out over top of the path ahead. The cables that suspend them from the walls.

I ask, “Is that chorded rustwood?”

Pattern: Fixate (4d6)

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Prospecting:

Portable Orbital Checklist 1/3

Reasonably accessible:

Standard challenge 1(1d12) or treacherous 10(1d10)

10

vs

Cunning (1d8) or Wooling Experience (1d8) + Fixate (1d6)

12 (6 + 6)

“That’s a good eye,” You hear from Boppen. “The dynamic makeup of the canyon here means that a lot of material is shifting and weight is redistributed frequently. This causes materials like those girders to, over time, shift their way to the high edges there. The rustwood grows to accommodate the stress of overhanging material. There’s some magical drive for these structures to remain intact, so they adapt new forms of structural life to accomplish that.”

“Can we go up there and get it?”

Redarn starts trodding down Broadway while Boppen is midway through his explanation, but calls back. “We have to climb the Wall Mall regardless, so we can either gain some height now and work our way over the tower cliffs, or get in through Broadway a ways, climb the Wall from its base and hope there’s a spot to hop out for your rustwood.”

Can I use the little city to see which way is better?

Yes.

The group of you make your way through Broadway to the tower cliffs from which the girders are hung with chorded rustwood, and pause a moment. All of the Woolings take interest in the workings of the little city in different ways. Many notes are scribbled and there’s a narrow eyed distrust of it from Baskins.

Orienteering:

Facet: Cunning (1d10) or Little City (1d10)

Fixate: 1d6

4 (2 + 2)

I’ll use a focus to reroll Fixate (1d6)

1

And another. (1d6)

2

Your total remains 4

Vs

Standard Challenge (1d12) 4

Or

Chaotic Environment (1d8) 2

4 (Highest)

Manipulating the little city as it rests upon the Baker’s Peel in your lap, you find possible pathways for both proposed routes. You spend a moment with some nitpicking and questions from the Woolings to assess the details you see provided before you.

You spot a stairway formation within the tower cliffs behind a cover of brick wall that would save you some time, and eventually notice a recent rockfall blocking the Wall Mall entrance that was the last documented entry point.

It would seem as though the faster route is to ascend the cliffs now and work your way to the wall from there.

Then that’s the way we go.

The Woolings agree.

You skirt the cliffs until you find an opening beyond the brick facade, and make your way to the staircase. They’re neatly carved stone, with a small square platform midway between floors where the stairs cut back to the opposite direction. As you round the first of these platforms, you see a broad smear of a dark sludgy liquid.

It looks like something large and covered in this stuff was dragged across the walls and stairs going upward. It has had time to dry, and only a pasty oily substance remains, with a dry caked layer on the pools and patches.

Do the drag marks go upward?

They do.

I follow them to the next flight of stairs.

As you get to the top you see the hand print of a right hand where in a typical building there might be a handrail. The print has a splash of the oily substance outlining it, then the print slides downward, to the floor, leaving a long smear of the stuff.

A bit of it collects in the heavily chipped ground at the base of the step.