usir | March Event Log B: Einjar Excursion

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🜙 Mod Note

The Einjar Excursion's resolution is dependent on the choice of players who are participating in it. After you have read through this post, if your character is going to be part of the Einjar Excursion, please respond to This Comment as soon as possible with the choice that best matches the one your character would choose. The resolution is not dependent solely on players choosing one side over the other, but also on the actions they choose to take.

🜙 Preparation March 8th

Einjar's population is small in modern times, but the people who remain in the vast cavern city to maintain and protect it are usually in constant contact with Preciposte via falcon. None of the falcons Preciposte has sent to Einjar have made it back in months. The round trip to Einjar and back will take at least 8 days in total and no one is certain what they will find there or if they will even be able to get through the massive, heavily warded doors that can only be opened from within. But if something has happened to the people of Einjar, the threat needs to be discovered before it progresses to Preciposte and Krimnos.

It is sure to be a harrowing adventure for those willing to brave the treacherous cliffs to reach Einjar but the kobolds and dwarves residing there might be harboring even more secrets than anyone expected.

The excursion organizers recruit a company of Knights from Krimnos, as well as a variety of volunteers to fulfill multiple roles on the journey. Supplies are gathered and divided out among the large company before the journey starts out on foot, and three densely wooled llamas are loaded up with the spare supplies. The excursion team consists of*:

⤛	16 Knights of Krimnos, kitted out in their full armor and well-armed. Eight of the Knights travel at the back of the line while the other eight travel near the front. Twelve elves, three dwarves and a young snow leopard beastwoman.
⤛	6 Preciposte residents (3 tieflings and 3 dwarves) who are acting as guides and trackers for the mountain paths and Einjar respectively.
⤛	Healer & Cook: Christine
⤛	Hunters & Trackers: Katsa, Lauralae, & Robin
⤛	Survivalists & Scouts: Katsa, Trevor, Jon, Lauralae, Majima, Strange, Allen, Nike, Daud, & Robin
⤛	Guards & Defenders: Alucard, Katsa, Trevor, Jon, Majima, Allen, Daud, & Robin
⤛	Stealth: Alucard, Majima, & Lauralae
⤛	Linguists: Daenerys, Nike, Robin, & Tony
⤛	Wards & Trap Removal: Christine & Strange
⤛	Animal Specialist: Daenerys & Lauralae

*Other player characters can still be added to the team, multiple roles both listed and unlisted are filled by multiple characters.

🜙 A Journey's Beginning March 9th-12th

The trek through treacherous mountain paths is a dangerous and difficult one. The high altitude and freezing temperatures require the company to make frequent stops to rest their lungs and the llamas. Camp is made each night in five shared tents. The Knights split up between two tents, the Preciposte citizens in a third, and the excursion team split among the fourth and fifth tents. Meals of hot stew and stuffed breads are shared around several small magical fires before everyone hits their bedrolls for a rest. Night watches are broken into four rotating shifts so no one is out in the night cold for longer than 2 hours.

The night of the 11th the company makes camp atop the impressive ruins of the ancient temple of the mountain giants. The sheer scale of these ruins is humbling and daunting. Scorch marks from dragon fire still mar some of the marble and stone pillars. The descent down the mountain has brought the company to a lower altitude and the ruins themselves are devoid of snow or ice, almost warm under the midday sun.

The height is still dizzying and the land is a little more open than is comfortable. The company will have to fend off and defend the camp from cliff hawks, a tribe of porcupine-like carnivorous cave spindles, and a colony of six-foot-tall venomous cave spiders that make the ruins their home, all to get past the ruins to the massive stone and metal doors that bar the entrance to Einjar.

🜙 Friends in High Places March 12th

During their journey through the ruins, the company is ambushed multiple times. One elvish knight is lost to a cave spindle attack, one of the Preciposte tieflings and one of the llamas are carried off by cliff hawks, a Preciposte dwarf loses his footing on some unstable rocks and disappears off the edge of a cliff with the second llama, and another elf knight is severely injured during a cave spider ambush. With only one llama and two tents left and night quickly approaching things begin to look bad for the company and only get worse once the sun sets. A pack of dire wolves appears from within the ruins, distant howls making their numbers impossible to guess but making it quickly evident the company is surrounded by predators still out of sight. As the oversized pack of dire wolves closes in to attack, a family of kobolds armed with slings and small hammer axes appears from the cliffs above. Their ruckus of calls and the metal-banging noise of their hammer axes against their shields drive back the hunting pack.

The kobold family scampers down from the caverns above the ruins and joins the excursion company, inviting them back to the warmth of their cavern home, breaking bread with them and sharing a friendly conversation. One member of the family is a strange sight among the short kobolds, towering above his siblings, but the entire family seems to be cheerfully good-natured and happy to share what is theirs with the excursion company. They don't know anything about the recent silence from Einjar, but they offer to lead the company along a safer path to Einjar's doors in the morning.

The knights seem uneasy in the cavern, keeping to themselves and discussing maps with one of the regularly sized kobolds. When questioned by one of the elf knights on what exactly he is, the taller kobold gives the company a confused look.

"Isn't it obvious?" He asks, head turning almost vertical with a wide, toothy smile and a confused expression. He clasps a hand on his four-foot-tall brother's shoulder, towering above the smaller creature by a full three feet and thinking nothing of it. "I'm a kobold of course." And were it not for the genuine pride on his tongue it would seem a bold-faced lie even to a half-blind dwarf.

🜙 The Doors to Einjar March 13th/14th

The next morning the kobolds press on through the mountain path leading the company of strangers after them with cheerful conversation and horribly off-key dwarvish mining songs. Several of the knights fall behind exchanging hushed whispers between them. Conversation around the campfire that night is tense and muted by all but the cheerful family of kobolds passing around mushroom and egg drop soup and a savory mushroom grog with a powerful, fiery kick. Distant animal sounds are heard throughout the night, along with occasional roars of a larger beast, but nothing attacks the company.

The taller Kobold's name is learned to be Monty, and he explains that their family hasn't lived in or even been to Einjar since shortly before the war due to a distaste for the rising demand for crafting armor and weapons and a disagreement with the dwarves that ruled over the city. They consider themselves artisans and jewelcrafters rather than smithies and call themselves 'people of the wild mountains'.

At dawn, the company realizes the doors to Einjar are within sight, and less than an hour's distance away. However, It is discovered that sometime during the night the remaining dwarves from both Krimnos and Preciposte have disappeared.

🜙 Open Sesame March 14th

The doors to Einjar are behemoths of metal and stone, built to keep dragons out of the massive mountain cavern city. A river runs at a high force out from beneath the stone doors in two channels, roaring over the cliff in a waterfall not far from there. Stone bridges cross the rushing rivers on either side of the path to the doors, eroded but sturdy. The doors can't be open by force and are covered in ancient dwarvish runes. The dwarves who built Einjar preferred working with their hands and tools over magic, and the Gates to Einjar were no exception. Usually opened from within, they remain silently shut to the excursion company.

A large circular depression in the door matches up to a pieced together symbol on the ground before it. Heavy pieces of a solid iron shield broken into seven segments sit in a depression on the path before it. Each is the same size and shape and can be slotted into any of the seven slots on the door.

The segments are labelled with the dwarvish runes for Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Birth, Sanctuary, and Death. To either side of the large door are two armored dwarf statues. The one on the left is a female dwarf standing on a carved rocky platform, wearing a winged helm and carrying a shield in her right hand. The statue on the right is a male dwarf holding a blacksmith's hammer and an axe in either hand, the platform beneath him is worn away by the rushing river. The runes around the depression in the doors reads down from top to bottom:
Within
Cycle
Horizon
Beneath
Below the depression is the symbol for "Pair".

🜙 Einjar's Halls March 14th/15th

Once the puzzle is solved the doors open to reveal the empty, silent city of Einjar. The great bellows and roaring furnaces are silent and cold and the halls are empty. No bodies, no sound, and no living souls. Food is left untouched and cold on tables, weapons half forged remain on anvils or partially melted into cold furnaces. Everything is left as if abandoned in the midst of a day of work.

Deeper in the caverns beyond Einjar's main city buildings, kobold mining tools are scattered about and carts partially filled with raw minerals and gems are overturned, footsteps disappearing unexplainably mid path. An open cavern recently blasted open sits in the deepest point of the mine and within it is a bizarre scene. Dust and lime covered life-sized statues depict a battle between much smaller dragons and very short dwarves with many of the faces carved into expressions of deep rage. At the center is a deep, black pool of water, devoid of reflection or ripples. Around it are the bodies of the missing dwarves that had disappeared from the excursion company earlier in the trip.

The depth of the pool can't be measured with sword or stick, and an uneasy sensation overcomes everyone within the excavated room. The beastwoman knight touches the liquid, attempting to examine it, and in that moment a low, ringing sound builds in the room. Chaos breaks out as the elves and the kobold family that unwillingly escorted the company into Einjar burst into a full-scale violent assault on one another, the origin of the sudden fight impossible to determine.

The water stills from the rippling touch several minutes later and the fight is broken up, but with both parties convinced the other side started the fight. The elves claim the kobolds know more than they are saying, and the kobold family insists they have never set foot inside of Einjar. The arguments escalate until one of the knights accuses them of harboring a dragonborn, pointing to Monty. They say that Monty needs to be taken back to Krimnos for questioning, to which the kobolds bare their teeth and threaten that Monty will only be leaving with them over the entire family's dead bodies.

Whatever decision is made, the overall agreement is that they need to leave Einjar and return to Krimnos with their findings before anything else happens.

🜙 Journey Back March 16th-19th/20th

Following the discoveries within Einjar's halls and some free exploration by the excursion company, everything is divvied up between the survivors and the trek back to preciposte begins. The trip back is tense and uneasy with larger night watch groups and tighter rations. Hunting is necessary to feed the company, and new tents are made from fabrics taken from within Einjar.

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[ Those children will get taught something, even if it's just 'do as I say not as I do.' ]

You're right, [ Strange admits, ] though honestly, I'm more interested in how the perception of magic has developed. I don't want to accidentally reveal just how old fashioned I am.

[Learning by example is very effective.]

Oh, I think some of your opinions will reveal that immediately. [Alucard, can you not?] At least as far as being old fashioned goes. There's been so many shifts in perception of nearly everything in the world that it often feels dizzying.

[He pauses, realizing he should clarify something:]

So many of them have felt like they're for the better though.

We'll have to agree to disagree there, [ Strange says, as he gives Alucard a look that's pure 'you're an idiot for even suggesting that.' So many of them for the better? Dragons are feared and he can't find his book anywhere! Those changes suck! ]

There are a few aspects from our time that I hope this time eventually copies.

Airships. Communication devices. Greater inventions yet to come. More open acceptance of goliaths and tieflings among others, and more beyond that. [Alucard. Stop. Stop because you know he can electrocute you now.]

Not everything is perfect, but it feels like progress on many levels.

I suspect you know what point I'll choose to rebut you. [ DRAGONSSSSS ] Honestly, it's not the lack of respect for the dragons that annoys me the most, but the complete and utter lack of information. You can't simply sweep away texts and tomes about an important part of history and pretend it doesn't exist.

You are predictable. But the war is still in living memory, and healing is a process. Biases are...biases, but I will absolutely concur with the matter of the written record. To pretend there is no history, or to try and wipe it entirely, that is wrong.

[He agreed about something dragon related!!! An Einjar miracle!]

[ Strange looks moderately surprised at Alucard actually agreeing with him on this. Still, he won't look a gift horse in the mouth and won't bother Alucard too much about that fun fact. ]

Especially considering that we now know dragonborn still exist. The two of us will be relatively prepared for whatever comes, [ said as he gestures from himself to Alucard. ] but what about everyone else? What the hell will people do if the dragon that made Monty decides to show it's face again?

I'm more worried for that young man's well being and safety.

[The dragon isn't important. The dragonborn whose identity is so wrapped up in being a kobold though, that's more important.]

I have zero intention of breathing hide or hair of him to anyone, and if his own parents have not told him of his nature, I refuse to undermine that decision.

That's exactly why I want him to come back with us. I worry that the next adventuring party that comes across this family won't be so courteous as ours was.

[ he can easily see someone spotting the dragonborn, getting terrified, then murdering the poor thing then and there. ]

I'll go along with whatever the majority thinks, [ Strange quickly interjects, ] but it would be best if he learned of his own nature, no matter what his parents think. The scholars in the cities could help with that.

Oh, and you think that won't happen in any of the cities?

[Alucard does snap, because what a pants on head stupid idea.]

It's safer here, so far as I can tell. Beyond us, who has even traveled this way in some time, and who else have they interacted with? None to recognize him as a dragonborn, and it is better for all for it.

Taking him to academics, that means painting him as other. As a curiosity and nothing more. [Disgusted? Yes. Yes he is.]

We have an entire city that practically vanished overnight, [ Strange grumbles, gesturing to Einjar as a whole. ] When we return back with the news, more will come here, either to see for themselves, try to piece out what went wrong, or scavenge the city's leftovers.

[ says the man who's planning on stealing a shit-ton of silver from Einjar. ]

No place is safe for him. It's better that he ends up with someone who would paint him as a curiosity instead of kill him on sight.

That much is clear, obvious, and easy to anticipate. [The city scavaging gets a wrinkled nose and a noise of distate from the dhampir, but that's really not the point of it.]

Being made a curiosity is just as cruel. [Alucard scowls, folding his arms over his chest.] How would you like to be poked and prodded and judged for years on end, suddenly removed from your family and the only life you knew, hm? The living relic of some age you have no connection to, no memory of, and what for?

[Alucard's disliked a lot of Strange's ideas before but this one really rankles.]

Think about the long term consequences for him. Good hearts like that are rare, and it is beyond inhuman to destroy it.

Good hearts don't mean anything if someone's dead. [ Strange is scowling in return, looking over at Alucard with a frown. ]

And even if he doesn't end up dead, then what? Then he'll be found by a different group of knights and brought to the city. If he comes with us, at least he'll be taking charge and finding out answers on his own terms.

Or his family's smart and they go deeper into the mountains, away from likely contact.

[Alucard and isolation are firm and fast friends for so many reasons. He's a dhampir, it's part of the very nature of such an existence. He's chosen it in ways great and small, in traveling but never settling, in mourning apart fom the world, in trying to hide that identity.]

None of the outcomes are good. I don't think your proposals do enough to mitigate the risks. Nor do mine, but yours verges on too many other sister threats, like humiliation and destruction of one's own sense of self.

His sense of self took a hit the moment we showed up. I'm certain he now suspects it's built on a lie. [ for all of Monty's 'I'm a kobold, duuuuh' everybody's reactions show damn well that it's not so simple. ]

I can't imagine anyone would willingly go back to the life they had after getting a revelation of that scale.

[ holy projection, batman ]

It's on him to make a decision either way.

[Alucard's words are a little too cold. He'd like to finish this conversation, if at all possible. His posture's stiff, and his eyes are seeking literally anywhere that isn't Strange at this point in time.]

You're right, [ Strange admits. And, because he has a feeling that they're not gonna get back to fun times with electricity, he makes the smart decision to put a pin on this conversation. ]

I'll tell you if I find anything of interest in the city. [ Alucard may be an asshole, but at least he's a smart asshole: Strange would want to hear his opinion about something (and then they can go back to fussing at each other). ] I think I'll go investigate some of those mine shafts.

I've doubtlessly missed some elements of the treasury as well.

[Strange is an idiot, but he sometimes can read a room and know when to close out a conversation.]

Enjoy the mines.

I shall.

[ and then, with a small nod, he starts walking away. These two'll pick up their dumb fights another day. ]

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March Event Log B: Einjar Excursion

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