The Lake of Woe

The Lake of Woe is a salt lake in an unpeopled corner of wilderness. It is fed by springs descending from the glacial peaks to the east. Five years ago the lake was fresh. When the dragon Brinewing was driven from the western shipping lanes by the sea kings she blocked the lake’s outlets and let it grow brackish. Now the lake is desolate, denuded of all but the hardiest plant life with shores littered with the mummified remains of creatures that have displeased her. The only movement on the shores of the Lake of Woe today are the clouds of flies which cover everything like a vile black carpet.

Brinewing is a salt dragon. She measures thirty feet long in a sickly yellow, muted by a thick crust of salt that has built up on her scales from bathing in the Lake of Woe. She is not particularly intelligent but is vain, territorial, and easily enraged. In place of fire she breathes clouds of superheated salt which burn and desiccate. Her lair lies in the most inhospitable southern sections of the lake on a peninsula of stone and crenelated salt. During the day she is more likely to be found sunning herself on the shores to the east of the lake or flying paranoid circles over her watery territory. The only creatures she permits to approach her presence are her ‘pets,’ the brine shrimp which infest the waters of the lake and can grow to an enormous size.

Hidden in the hills to the west is the Clay Palace, a monastery of salt monks dedicated to achieving enlightenment through self denial and desiccation. The Clay Palace proper is a compound of mud brick building on the shores of the lake, but the coming of Brinewing drove the the monks away. Now it lies abandoned, a ramshackle monument to the dragon’s dominance. The survivors carved out rows of cells along the canyon walls south beyond the dam the dragon created from shattered mountain pinnacles. Here they are protected from the dragon’s sight by overhanging stone. The wisest of their order are little more than leathery husks. Their minds are only lightly tethered to their almost immobile bodies, and drift throughout the region like silent ghosts. Should something threaten the monastery can steal the water from less enlightened monk’s bodies and achieving a lurching mobility. Their mental wanderings have left them utterly without empathy and terrifying in combat.

Encounters

1. The buzzing clouds of salt flies become impossibly thick, sucking the moisture from bare skin and creeping into mouths and noses
2. Salt mephits
3. The salt crust covering the ground here gives way, uncovering a large sinkhole. Contains: 1-salt water 2-nest of hungry brine shrimp 3-jagged old bones 4-caustic mineral bath 5-meditation chamber of a salt monk 6-treasure
4. A gale kicks up a wall of acrid dust, cutting visibility to mere feet and scouring unprotected flesh, it lasts for 1d6 hours
5. 1d6 pilgrims to the Clay Palace. Either 1-3 arriving, or 4-6 departing
6. The wandering psyche of an elder salt monk
7. Mummified remains of the dragon’s victims, a quarter of the time the corpses will rise as undead: 1-2 caravan, 1d6 humanoids, 1d4 pack animals 3- 1d6 wolves 4-2d8 herd animals 5-bats 6-giant eagle
8. A quartet of salt monks carrying the body of an elder on a palanquin
9. The blasted wreck of a small village, 1 in 6 are inhabited by something horrible
10. Mirages appear, hauntingly real until touched: 1- rows of saltwhite children 2-oasis 3-attacking army 4-crystal castle 5-apocalyptic vision 6-the dragon
11. The rainbow-colored crust around this dried pond is a potent drug: 1-2-hallucinogen 3-4-stimulant 5-6-deadly poison
12. Brinewing appears

More info on Brinewing, the Clay Palace, and a map forthcoming!

Numenera: The Aged Daemon and the Mist-Shrouded Tower

This will be the last Numenera session report for a while! The group has dissolved for the holidays, to be picked up some time in 2014. Hopefully. Part 1 Here. Part 2 here.

Blocked from retreat on all sides by the flying creatures the party prepared for a hard fight. Turning to their cyphers the party was quickly able to turn the tide, creating an illusory version of the jumble to distract the fiends and a wall of flame that belched from another device. The battle went well for the group, the distractions and fire were able to quickly dispatch their foes. They continued up the ramp, ascending for what seemed like an eternity up the long spiral to the top. The tunnel opened up into an enormous circular room. The walls looked like glass, looking out they could see a thick miasma of clouds rolling past. The room seemed empty except for a large console in the center of the room, around which several of the flying creatures made agitated orbits.

As they approached the console it the room shook. Every surface in the room pulsed, almost like a heartbeat, then the console began to animate. Panels opened and long skeletal limbs unraveled, and featureless birdlike mask pistoned up on a neck of twisting cables and ceramic plates. Deep in the sockets of the mask lights burned crimson. It was the room, the walls pulsed with its movements. It spoke, but its voice sounded like wind chimes and soft piping. Turning to their cyphers they managed to cobble together a rough translation of the aged daemon’s message. It was hard to follow, as the thing spoke almost entirely in feelings and jargon, and inhuman metaphor. Something had broken in the system the thing was created to oversee. The creatures it had been created to protect were being released but this was wrong. The thing couldn't reach out to its fellows to fix anything.

As it spoke the clouds outside the window thinned, showing the view for what it really way. The view beyond that clouds was the patchwork of fields and wilderness around Jaston viewed from far too high to be coming from the complex the party had explored. This was somewhere else, and when schools of dark bullet-shapes began to drop past the view they knew they had to find some way to stop them. The daemon agreed, but with a terrible sadness.

The group hatched a plan to use flying device they’d found earlier (the Primicarium) to fly up through the clouds to face whatever lay above. Leaving the daemon behind they took the artifact outside and leapt aboard. Their ascent started slowly but sped up as they experimented with the controls. They accelerated through packs of the flying monsters, keeping them at bay with a volley of esoteries and crossbow fire. Leaving the monsters behind they pushed through the clouds. An enormous tower loomed out of the miasma, hanging unsupported in the air.

They entered through a hollow section at the base of the tower. The whole interior of the tower was open and contained thousands of the cubes that contained the flying creatures in stasis. Pushing farther into the tower they discovered another circular room, but instead of clouds the screens showed view of the tower and the creatures awakening within.

This chamber held a matching daemon, but only hate shone out of its hollow eye sockets. It was immediately aggressive, wrapping itself in flying creatures and warping the room with vicious pulses. Sections of floor and ceiling articulated themselves and moved to crush the party. They could barely keep their feet, but attacked as best they could. They'd barely chipped away at the daemon and taken heavy damage from the room when the dashing jack leapt over a section of floor as it swept past and got a perfect shot with his crossbow directly at the daemon. It saw its death then and threw up panels to block it. It couldn't rearrange the room quickly enough to stop the bolt, and with a shriek the bolt pierced the daemon's mask and left a sparking hole out the other side.

The thing let out a shriek and the room gave a tremendous lurch. The tower began to buckle and heave beneath their feet, and they barely had time to claim the thing's mask from its wreck before fleeing back to the Primicarium. They raced to to get away from the falling superstructure, overtaxing their artifact vehicle which shut down right as they reached the ground. They had moments to take cover before the tower crashed to earth reached them. A wall of dust and grit rolled over them as the structure struck the earth with a boom that rolled through their bones. They'd stopped the dark creatures, but the land around Jaston would never be the same.

Suffice to say they weren't especially welcome back in town.