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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. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| 🜙 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*:
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| 🜙 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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parallel: finding the dragonglass blades and arrowheads in the books
Finally, he nods his assent. This isn't any different from times when he's found things in the woods -- some that he's left, some that he's taken, depending on the need for them and whether or not he had any reason to think anyone was coming back for them. It's not any different from the crate he'd found the spyglass in to begin with, or the one where she found the staff that's already healed him and that he knows may heal him again.
And they do need to find the dragon, and the people who abducted them, and learn what's going on. This wouldn't be just for them, it would be for Idan.
"All right. We do. I'm not a man to creep into the dwarf queen's treasure room and steal her gems when I'm her guest. But we're no one's guest here." He pauses. "The books... what did you read in them?"
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Which all returns to the fact that they lack enough gold to manage these things.
"We can return it, you know." A step closer, and she can press her palm to his chest. "When it's all done, and we find the dragon and our kidnappers."
Or they could find another way to repay the city for its treasures. More dwarves out in Idan means there are just as many who could benefit from the gems here, most likely. And if a war is coming with that dragon and their kidnappers....
She shakes her head.
"I like the kobolds. The young ones have been following me around all day." They've long since called her Diamondscale since she told them stories of the cities. Following her around, chattering about their lives and the stories they've heard of things. "One book outlines the belief that they're dwarves."
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As to the kobolds....
"They are sweet things." He likes children; they remind him of his brothers and sisters, before they went out into the madness of the world and didn't come back whole, or at all. And he likes that they've given Dany such an affectionate name. "But how are they dwarves?"
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"Strange, isn't it? They believe it's dragon's blood." The way she says it is meant to be answer enough. "It's like my family. Except... there's a clear difference. I don't look like a dragon and my brother didn't, either.
"But they believed dwarves exposed to dragonblood, combined with generations of breeding and cross-breeding half-dragon offspring is how the race was created." She falls quiet, watching him, her look thoughtful. What differentiates the two groups? Perhaps less exposure on her side. "I wonder if there are other elves who experienced the same as my House."
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"They held dragons, to give fire to their forges. Were they trying to create their own dragonborn? Does it say? It could have been long before the dragonborn in Atromitos."
And it goes without saying that this tells them much and more about where Monty might have come from.
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Her hands fall to her hips, brows furrowing in thought. There was a rumor she recalls Viserys speaking of when she was a girl about dragonborn. He made sure she knew whatever he did when it came to their family and the dragons.
"Viserys told me of something strange. Well, strange when I was a girl." She looks at him, the faintest of frowns furrowing her brows. "It was about the pact between the dragonborn and a dragon. If it was done by force, the dragonborn nearly always went mad.
"I'd thought it strange at the time because who could force a dragon into that pact?"
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"If they held the dragons here against their will, made them fire the forges, it would have been nothing to take their blood. But we don't hear about mad dwarves. Maybe they knew better, or maybe some things were too cruel for them."
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Suddenly, the city doesn't hold the same amount of wonder it did earlier. The gems all around them feel less like they're taking from the dead, and something they should take to help the dragon from the pit.
"One of the books had a theory about the current kobolds being maddened dragonblood tainted dwarves."
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"... Do the kobolds seem mad to you?"
They don't to him, and that's his point. They seem like people; like any other people. They had offered their aid to the excursion party. He doesn't think that the kobolds could have been setting cliff hawks and cave spindles and huge spiders on them on their own, only to look like saviors on calling them off; those are some of the dangers of mountain travel, and the kobolds have gotten nothing from it so far, except maybe entrance to Einjar.
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The subject of it never sat well with her: that dragon blood could be a taint versus something to be celebrated. That she was more likely to be mad, or to inherit that madness as she aged. Though she looks like an elf, she knows all too well the whispers spoken behind her back when the Targaryen name was still something to be remembered.
"I've no doubt the dwarves tried using dragon's blood to their advantage," she says, knowing full well many things abhorrent are less so during war, "If they used other parts of them."
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"Not mad at all."
The brightness fades, though, as she continues. "So would they have done it in the early days, or would they have done it after they learned about the Dragonborn in Atromitos? They sold things to Atromitos in those days, everyone knows it, but -- "
What would have made them try it? Merely a desire for more power, or a desire for protection from the other cities when they were new? Or something else?
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"Biased." But she's fine with that. He knows her better than anyone else alive, now.
The next line of thinking has her pursing her lips in thought.
"What would any king or queen want? I know what I would." Vengeance for her family, and she'd not been a queen. Protection for those she claimed as hers. "They moved into a mountain and warred for the land. Those books detailed how they attacked the dragons they encountered. I don't think it was all self-defense."
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Beasts, in her mind, are those that have little thought. More animalistic than a creature able to . Humans and elves weren't the only intelligent beings in Idan.
"We should consider what we'll take back with us. I'm sure some of the things here would help buy us information."
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“No. They’re dragons,” he says, simply. What he means is, they’re not beasts the way hare and hind are beasts, but there’s something about them — their long lives, their fire or lightning, their great magic, the bond of their blood — that makes them different from people.
He is not sure, now, whether or not a true god can die.
They wander deeper into the room, a treasure house within a treasure house. Some of this wealth comes from simple delving into the earth, and from ingenuity. Some of it comes from the misery of dragons, or from making armor and machines of war. Did the dwarves of Einjar make the world a better place or a worse one than it had been before?
“We can’t take enough that anyone else will notice that we carry it, and — “ He looks around. Everywhere his gaze falls is gleaming or sparkling. “I don’t want to take more than we think we need. It wouldn’t be right. But if that creature of yours breaks from its shell, it will have to be fed.”
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With a sharp exhale, she releases his hand and crouches down in front of one of the chests. There are sparkling gems, but as she carefully pushes some of these aside, she notices runed items. This one looks like a coin.
"We'll need some for the dragon, some for the merchants, and some for a home." She doesn't look up at him until the third, and her look is pointed, daring him to argue. The dragon would need a place that isn't the inn. Somewhere more private. "I don't want to live in Krimnos again. Or in the City of the Free People."
She doubts he wants to return to Didymos.