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The Clock Tower Beyond the Catacombs

Scene details

Setting: The Star Chasers explore the next level of the catacombs underneath La Crima's manor. What they find is an area constructed of gears and hazards.

Log

BACK TO THE MANOR:

La Crima holds tea and catches up with her daughter a bit. She explains all the adventures she's had up to this point. La Crima and her sister Tranquila listen with intent, as theres tea, cookies available for others to inject thier own corrections or points to the story!...

But soon enough it's back to the catacombs!

BACK TO THE CULT CATACOMBS:

The Masoleum that serves as the entrance is still there, and there's still a winding staircase downwards. This time, the floor they last cleared as a big circle painted next to the entryway which means Tranquila's been busy cleaning up behind the party since they we're last here. Down to the next floor and--

"Huh... there's no entry way...?" she remarks. Indeed. the staircase spirals down for a good ten floors into the dark, as she has someone light the old torches on the wall as a low rumble is heard the further down they go.

Until a larger entryway appears a good thirty floors below the ground. It has large steel doors, which is a feature the other entrways don't have. It takes a group effort, but pushing through unviels an enormus chamber with large pillars from floor to ground- and soon the source of the low rumble is also evident. There's a large ''gearworks'' filling this room. The purpose of which seems unclear. There's rusted, but sturdy steel ladders leading upwards which in the dark chamber, seems the only useful way to go. Stone gears turning and spinning above them all in complex patterns.

There's workshop tables alongside the walls and other furniture, but nothing of particular note. Old, damp, unreadble paper and moldy inkwells that have since evaporated dry. Old tools that have the same rust as the ladders.

Some sort of glow eminates from the every top, center of the room at the top of the gearworks.

"Amazing!" says Ruidosa. "I didn't even know this could be down here. I wonder what it's for...." she says as she stares up at all the turning gears. "How do we get up..."

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5pTZHoxxfc

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago


 Cookies are nice, but for the most part Anna remains quiet and introspective as adventures are shared. She's still been sullen and sulky since her axe was broken, and feels awkward and unsure of the new, black, axe in her possession.
 But a weapon is a weapon.
 Moving on to the catacombs however...
 The berserker princess follows Rui and Reize down into the depths of the catacombs, eyes slowly poring over the tables and their moldering contents before she glances up.
 "I think... Mn... Try and follow my lead." Murmured as she slings her axe to her back when there seems to be no apparent danger. She pauses for a beat, pursing her lips thoughtfully as she eyes the churning gears and clockworks, watching the rotations, observing, silently drinking in how they move...
 Before she makes her way to a ladder and starts climbing.
 And part way up that ladder... Anna turns and leaps off. Grabbing onto the tooth of a massive gear she pulls herself up- and leaps to another gear- jumping up to a third giant cog, she starts ascending the gears like some kind of Castlevania protagonist in an obligatory clock tower level that EVERY GAME IN THE SERIES HAS.


EARLIER AT THE MANOR

  While the family caught up, Reize had wandered around the manor out of sheer curiosity despite Ruidosa's warning of 'Don't get lost!'. He came across a sight of a glorious, silver hookshot. "!!!!"

  "Oooi! I didn't know that you had a hookshot here!"

  Then..

  "... Uhh... Rui? I think this has eyes... and it's smiling.."

  Pause.

  "Oh, hi guys."

  Hi, favorite chewtoy.

BACK AT THE CATACOMB

  Reize looks a bit worse for wear. Many bite marks and signs of tear on his clothing. Even his antenna hair looks mangled up. Comical tears rolling down his eyes. The trip is thankfully short, given that Tranquila had done some cleaning in that floor.

  , of course, is the one who would light a torch for them to travel further out. While they make their way thirty floors down, the boy looks up at the large pillars. He shifts his gaze around the sight of the steel ladders and workshop tables. "Whoa..."

  He glances over towards the turning gears, "Th--this may be Ivo's specialty."

  Just as Anna goes up the ladder, Reize follows suit, then he jumps down to the massive gear. He gets a firm grip, then he leaps over to the next. "Whoa..." This is moving! Moving platforms.
 


 IN THE MANOR:
 Ivo arrives with a bouquet of wild roses from the Lonely Woods (painstakingly rearranged after they were tragically dropped to catch the Heavenly Crowned Beetle, a truly noble act of self-sacrifice) and a bottle of tempranillo from the southern side of the Golden Hills (about which he will chatter to anyone who will listen, showing off everything he memorized to play-act a sommelier from Princess Darcea). He is ready for a truly gallant entrance.
 But once he has floridly offered his gifts and inundated the Lady La Crima in praise (never excessive enough, to his mind), he never interrupts Ruidosa as she tells the story of her adventures, quietly sipping his very fine tea. He's oddly quiet once he enters the manor, in fact. Why, he seems almost... bashful.
 IN THE CULT CATACOMBS
 Somehow, despite having barely said anything, Ivo seems to be walking on air.
 "Ah... her very presence is inimitable... such tenderness, yet such elegance..."
 Apparently just basking in Vibes La Crima is enough. He seems stronger than usual as he helps push through the large steel doors (though Anna still does the lion's share of the work, no doubt).
 "Hm?"
 It takes Ivo a moment to snap out of his daydreams, but once he does, his scientific interest finally overpowers his romantic heart. "These were underneath the catacombs this entire time?" he murmurs in awe. "What sort of energy could be powering them? Is there some deposit of aether this far underground? Or...?"
 Where there's weird experiments with souls and the undead, there are sometimes chilling reasons for mysterious energy sources.
 "Ah ha ha," Ivo laughs as though flustered when Reize recommends him as the resident expert. His bashfulness from before hasn't worn off. "Well, let's see... the simplest approach would be to disable the movements of the gears, if possible, but I'm not sure that..."
 He trails off as Anna just, you know, goes for it.
 "Or, we could just do that," he concludes, before beginning to clamber up a ladder and try to follow her lead. He's the least agile / able-to-fly of the party, probably, but Vibes La Crima empower him still. Or at least increase his confidence, for better or worse.

Ruidosa would shoot Ivo ''eyes'' the whole time. Him and his mom!? N..never! HE'S NOT HIS DAD! NEVER!. Reize got the usual lecture about NOT TOUCHING items.

Ruidosa blinks as Anna starts....climbing gears. She blinks and follows suit, jumping upwards as she woahs and walks along the platform the gears make, but they're spinning and it's making it hard to keep up as she leaps upwards as she looks over to Reize. "Yeah?" she asks to Reize as she mentions this is Ivo's specialty. Ivo clambers up a ladder. There's scaffolding, of some sort, but it only goes up so far. Ivo's eventually gonna need to have to conquer the gearworks with the rest of them if he wants to make progress. Luckily the gears are not spinning out of control fast. At least the larger stone gears aren't.

There are smaller metal gears that seem more dangerous, spinning on there sides.

Ruidosa smiles to Reize as she leaps over to another gear, following Anna.

"I'm curious about that too. What's powering this thing? What's the purpose?" she asks.

SUDDENLY, some sort of launcher opens in the wall and starts spitting old arrows out of it. They're inaccurate, but it seems someone planned for people trying to scale the gearworks. Ruidosa eeks! and ducks onto the ground of a gear and spins around. At least this gear's surface is flat with another, so she won't be squished.

"Someone needs to stop that thing or we gotta get higher than it quick... or..or maybe it'll run out..."

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago


 Working her way up the gears, Anna hops, climbs, and leaps from cog to cog, making her way upwards.
 Until an arrow embeds in her shoulder and another in her back.
 There's a soft grunt of pain as she lurches from the impact...
 Before Anna's eyes turn bloodshot.
 Ignoring the fact that she's bleeding and in pain, the berserker princess... Loses her cool.
 Rrrrrgh!"
 Annnd hurls herself upwards, using her mind-clouding rage to uh.
 Ugnore the fact that she's turning into a pincushion.


  As Reize manages to climb onto one of the gears, he tries to keep his balance on the gear while it keeps turning. He is already drawing his boomerangs out, expecting that they will not be venturing down unimpeded. All what it does take is for one of the launchers to fling an arrow out, causing him to widen his eyes and he yelps while ducking. "Whoa!"

  Reize looks over at the source of the launcher, throwing his boomerang out at it. "Haa!" He sends it twirling out to strike at the projectile launcher.
 


 "How elaborate," Ivo remarks, sounding faintly amused as a warped arrow whizzes by his head. "Whoever was behind this had some very specific opinions about how an evil lair should be designed. But then, I'd expect nothing less than eccentricity, considering the sorts of experiments we found before..."
 He's had a little experience with mad scientists recently.
 "Oh." Anna's getting shot. That's less amusing. "Perhaps one of our recent innovations will be of help here," he says, crouching down on a horizontally rotating gear, occasionally shuffling awkwardly to avoid being rotated until he faces away from the trap. "Normally Hauteclare's need for precision and my being on, uh, unsteady ground would be a problem, but..."
 The Cosmopolitan draws a small green sphere from his cloak and places it with a click into the pommel of his sword before drawing it from its scabbard. A pulse of wind greets the others as Ivo aims Hauteclare at the mechanism embedded in the wall. Then, with a stronger rush of wind, the blade veritably rockets out toward his target, darting past Reize's boomerang in its aether-fueled rush, striking home in a split-second before, after a brief delay, erupting in a torrent of gusts, damaging the mechanism enough to knock its aim askew or even disable it.
 Within moments, the blade returns, floating almost lazily in comparison to its speed before. "With a little refinement," Ivo explains, "the element enhances the blade during its travel before unleashing the remaining stored energy on impact. Neat, don't you think?"
 It's a meaningful advance on his abilities during their battle with Thael. It seems that Ivo has been developing quite quickly in that sketchy lab of his.

Ruidosa mutters under her breath. She has a specific opinion on things mortals do like this. But she keeps them to themself for the moment as Reize strikes out with his boomerang at the launcher, combined with Ivo's gusts of wind, knocks the mechanism off kilter enough that it's shooting arrows at nothing and they're clambering down into the depths. That's good enough, right?

Ruidosa frowns and follows Anna upwards as she pushes herself up and frowns. "Anna, you're ''bleeding'' I can 'smell' it.." she frowns as she follows Anna upwards, looking behind her to make sure Reize and Ivo are okay.

All the climbing is putting some sort of strain on the ancient gearworks however, as a cog with a broken tooth falls out of the gears overhead and starts rolling downwards towards the group...! It's about half the size of any of the given people here, so large.

"A..aah watch out..." says Ruidosa as she moves to the right a little...only to be put back in the path by the gear she's rotation on as she 'awks!' and starts running against the motion of the gear to get away from it's falling path!

Others may have to dodge. or figure out how to deal with the falling hazard.

Reize Seatlan rolls 1d20>=12.
Comment: I'm a nimble lumber jack, a lumber jack I --
Roll(s): 4. Total result is 4. This is a failure (by 8).

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago

Anna rolls 1d20>12.
Comment: Climb through the pain. +_+
Roll(s): 13. Total result is 13. This is a success (by 1).

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago


 It's true. Anna is bleeding. But for the moment she seems to be unhindered by her injuries as she proceeds.
 Until a grear comes loose and starts careening wildly toward the group.
 Anna jumps aside as it goes tumbling by and continues on her upward path, breath ragged in her throat as she pulls herself hand over hand from gear to gear.
 "I'll. Be fine." She says through gritted teeth. "We can. Deal with it at the top."


  The good news is that they managed to knock the mechanism off course, now the arrows are directed away from them. That leaves the group to clamber down the depths. "Whew, at least this should be less of an issue...." He looks at the worried Ruidosa and fixes her with a grin and a thumbs up.

 'I'm okay!'

 As they continue to climb, the group face a new obstacle. The young boy's eyes widen at the sight of one of the large cogs rolling down his way.

 He runs over towards the cog to meet it head strong and he leaps off into the air. "Wooo!" He starts to plant his feet on the cog to run up against it, motioning his feet to climb up as quick as he can like it was a set of stairs.

 "Whhhh----?!"

 He slips one foot. His eyes widen.

 And the boy starts to fall.
 


 "Anna, I've got some of our quick-healing poultices with me," Ivo is saying as he tries to catch up with the hulked-out princess. "It'll just be a moment and--"
 A loud and ominous clanging calls his attention behind them, the young man looking over his shoulder to see a fallen gear pursuing them. It appears the party no longer has a spare moment. Being last in line, given the care he has to take in hopping from gear to gear and the focus that using his weapon requires, Ivo is first in the gear's path.
 "Well," he quips, "time for a little more field testing."
 Loading a red sphere into Hauteclare's pommel, he launches the blade again, the metal glowing red-hot before it strikes the broken-toothed gear and unleashes a small explosion. But as the blade glances off and spirals off to the side, the gear, though it wobbles, does not really slow, let alone stop. The Cosmopolitan can only grin lopsidedly as it rolls toward him.
 "Test failed. That's science for you."
 He crouches low as the broken mechanism bears down on him before it appears to crush him beneath it, rolling on implacably. But moments later, Ivo will reappear none the worse for wear, if perhaps with some mussed hair and visible sweating. It seems that he was able to flatten himself against the ground and hide in the gap created by the gear's broken tooth. Cleverness successfully substitutes for power or agility.
 "At least we're all-- Reize!?"
 Well. He also brought a rope along with the poultices, but he may not be able to whip it out in time to toss it to their fearless leader.

The falling cog clangs to the ground eventually, digging itself into the stonework and coming to a stop with a grinding set of sparks. Ruidosa barely missed it running on the gear she's on as she jumps up after Anna and looks back to Reize...

"....Reize....!" she says as she turns into a bat and whips down after Reize... trying to catch him and flap him back to a gear safety, if further down- he can catch back up quickly, right?

Still, it's either that, or the rope. Either way- she doesn't want Reize falling to his death in this dumb, old cult catacomb lair.

Climbing back up, Anna now has a lead and gets to swinging pendulums that will clear a gap across a way to another set of gears that SHOULD get them to the top near that glowing light at the top.

"I Bet----" she huffs, even though she's a vampire, and undead. She's out of breath, somehow. "That's what's powering this room..." she huffs as she looks behind her at Reize and Ivo, making sure they're safe enough.

Ruidosa ughs.

"This is a dumb." she says as she sees the swinging pendulums.

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago

Anna rolls 1d20>12.
Comment: Pendulum jumping!
Roll(s): 15. Total result is 15. This is a success (by 3).


  Reize's eyes widen upon his descent, that is until he sees a rope falling along with him. The first thing that Reize does is take a firm grip upon the rope. "Haaah!" He catches his breath, clinging onto that rope. Even better, his bat-formed partner manages to catch him and the combined efforts get him back onto his feet.

  Once they climb back up, the boy looks over the swinging pendulums.

  "...Whew..." He grimaces, and then he takes a deep breath and he takes a large leap over the pendulum with the hopes that he times his jumps just right.
 

Reize Seatlan rolls 1d20>=12.
Comment: Platforming Pendulum
Roll(s): 1. Total result is 1. This is a failure (by 11).

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago


 Reize falls...
 That... That pauses Anna. She considers, even in her rage-state, to go back for him-- but Rui handles that. So Anna continues her ascent until she reaches the swinging pendulums.
 Spending a beat analyzing their pattern before she leaps...
 Grabbing the first pendulum.
 Reize makes his leap and--
 As it seems like he's about to miss it, Anna's hand snaps out, catching him by the wrist.
 Using her own momentum she whirls around on the pendulum and HURLS Reize onward to the next before following, herself.

Anna catches Reize, which makes Ruidosa catch her breath and sigh as she jumps from pendulum to pendulum, following after as she lands on the other side. A few more simple jumps up and they make it to the top of the gearworks....!
5RThere's some sort of weird magi-tek dynamos up here, and in the center is some sort of glass dome containing what appears to be one of the pieces of the artifact. It seems to be the power source of the entire affair.

Ruidosa approaches it and sticks her head up against the glass dome. Like a dummy as she circles it and tries to find a way to open it. She can't find a latch.

"We're they harnessing the piece to power this...?" she asks. "I wonder why... maybe it's unfinished. Maybe this is where they made their magi-tek for the zombies..." she pokes pokes at the glass.

"Um. how do we open this?" she asks.


  N--not again! The good thing is that Anna catches Reize just as he is about to miss the landing. Not only does Anna have a good hold of the boy, but she hurls him over to the next. This thankfully puts Reize at a better position to hop along the pendulum and catching his footing.

  Once they arrive at the top of the gearworks, he looks over at the magitech standing before them. It appears to be some sort of glass dome containing something inside. He looks over at Ruidosa and back at the dome.

  "...I don't know." He scratches his head, "I don't see anything mechanical for this." He eyes the dome, tapping it curiously. At least, it's not blasting him or anything.
 

  • Character: Anna
  • 2 years, 2 months ago


 Once they reach the top, Anna sags where she stands. Drawing in a ragged gasp she works on catching her breath for a moment, even beginning to hyperventilate somewhat, as she grabs an arrow embedded in her shoulder.
 "RRRRGH!" And rips it out.
 Taking a moment to pull the other arrows out in a similar manner, she spends a moment stomping and snarling to take her mind off the pain. Before the others linger around a glass dome.
 Wordlessly Anna tugs her axe off her back and...
 Casually smashes the glass.
 "... Problem solved."

The glass smashes and Ruidosa backs off from the breaking glass as she winces and looks at Anna with a frown. "Well. It opened..." she said as she shrugs to Reize and Anna. "Thank you." she says as she gingerly places her hands on the artifact piece an lifts it up and---

There's a spark of light which causes Ruidosa to drop the piece onto the ground, clattering on the platform at least, as there's a loud quake as everything draws to a halt.

The clockwork stops and the room becomes so so eerily silent, as Ruidosa falls to her butt.. Gearworks... Complete?

"Whelp.. it's quiet now." she rubs her side as she climbs back to her feet. "And we have the piece!" she says picking it up.


  Reize takes a moment to look over Anna to see that she still has those arrows. "..Ah, Anna, maybe we should use that poultice---" And she rips each arrow out of her, earning a visible wince from the boy. He is uncertain how she can endure such pain. He runs his hand to the side of his head.

  And then he jumps when she smashes the glass with the axe. Very casually, too.

  "Well, that's one way of solving this puzzle!"

  When Ruidosa takes the artifact in her hand, he sees her reaction to the spark of light. Once it clatters to the ground and the loud quake....

  stops.

  As its eerily quiet, he looks back at Ruidosa and Anna.

  He offers them a smile, "I guess it's now just getting back up." He does wonder about any lifeforms or undead around these parts. Despite everything, it was mostly hazards that were left.

  "So that should be the final piece to what you're looking for, right?"
 

Ruidosa nods. "Uh-huh." she says. "Now we can give the pieces to the person looking for them but..."

"I dunno I have a bad feeling. This one piece was powering something. And that was only half of it. What's... the full thing do?" she asks curiously as she looks down at the piece.

She frowns. She starts to jump down into the now still gear works. It's easier to get down than up now.

exiting through the steel door she'd begin to leave, hoping others would follow.

"Let's get your wounds looked after Anna, I have just the book to reference!" she says happily.

That book is 'Caring for your Human', a book by vampires about humans.

> The Gearworks: Complete

> The Sounds of clockwork keeping monsters in the deep has ceased. Challenge rating of the catacombs goes up.