After killing two guards who happened to spot the party as they descended into town after the chaos of the stockpile explosion, Tenli wanted to find out what their best course of action might be from some locals. She spoke with an Innkeep, positioned in the doorway of his inn to watch the commotion.
The Innkeep explained that town has gone downhill, with most regular folks leaving as the Dellish military and some shady individuals began running the mining operation. He still turned a good profit on selling drinks to the soldiers who passed through, but something was strange with the miners, who were really the only civilians left in the town. They seemed drunk on their work, enjoying life too much to consume alcohol. And if a miner doesn’t want a drink, something’s wrong.
The party approached the mines, and felt a presence within. Two vampires stepped out from the shadows of the mines - Reeb and Barrow. Reeb looked like a bruiser, thick for a vampire, while Barrow seemed a more delicate type.
Combat began swiftly. Reeb, while engaged, mocked the futility of the groups attempts at halting mining production, saying even if they collapsed the mine, the Death Head would just keep digging. The fools didn’t even think to hit the processing plant!
Barrow, meanwhile, concentrated on alerting Superior Clysl using some kind of spell. The group focused their attacks on Barrow to stop that (and a thorough spanking) from happening. In the melee, Reeb grappled Fey and gave her a sucking. His needle sharp fangs pricked her neck, and he drew several gulps of blood before she wriggled free.
The fighting was fierce, and instead of flexing his actual muscles, wiry and small as they were, he flexed his brain muscle. He covered the vampires in blasting jelly and backed up quick as he could. Beorn then shot Produce Flame at the gooey vampires, and blew them to hell.
The explosion, which took a good quarter of their blasting jelly, only collapsed half the mineshaft. They decided, perhaps they should listen to the late Reeb, and go check out the refinery.
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The group split up, Orophor and Tenli sneaking into the refinery, while the others searched the rubble for any pieces of vampire flesh that might help them against necromantic abominations.
The processing plant was enormous, a giant water wheel powered by a stream from The Drink turning machinery over Tenli and Orophor’s heads. Tenli decided to hang back and take out the water wheel, coating it in forty pounds of blasting jelly. Orophor delved further.
Once inside the refinery, he saw seven chutes lining the ceiling, bringing raw ice stone ore into a central processing funnel at the middle of the large warehouse. And at that processing funnel, a cube hummed with a purple glow. A gem floated in the midst of all the machinery, emanating the glow. Around him on the floor, hordes of undead went about processing and packing the ice stone.
Orophor climbed up and rigged the seven chutes with blasting jelly and lined it with wick. He called out to Tenli, who came to inspect the gem with him. She detected an evocation magic coming from it - a powerful brand. Orophor reached for it, tempted by the power and possibility.
It hurt him pretty good. Tenli laughed and spotted 8 runes of evocation on the corners of the cube containing the gem. Wracking her brain for arcane knowledge, se realized these runes were wrought to contain a Dysik gem within the field of the cube. These dysik gems, she told Orophor, are hardly more than myth. Supposedly 3 gems were found when Lorten was a young continent, and doled out by the Spirit of the Earth. One for the dwarves, one for the humans, and another that was lost in the echoes of history.
Seemed an opportune thing to blow up. Orophor lit the wick, and he and Tenli scooted back. Explosions rocketed Orophor off the pillar he clung too, and in the chaos, his eyes lighted on a small shard of the Dysik gem, which he grabbed without Tenli seeing.
The two ran.
Beorn, meanwhile, found the last joint of a finger in the rubble of the mines. Fey wondered if she was a vampire now. The group high tailed it for a boat on the dock, pirated it, and set their sails across the drink.