Infernal Pact

H&Y Infinite Open Table Session 4 Notes (Strange Structure of Lake Dak) | GM commentary on descriptions + metagaming

In Attendance:

Starting Date: Summer 08, 6023

The party began by discussing what to do next. They remembered that the Council of Currents offered to sponsor a trip out to the strange underwater structure in Lake Dak and was even offering pay for investigating it. They thought this was a great idea and set out to supply themselves.

Flamagio purchased a fishing boat in Circlebrook and named it the S.S. Eggbert (Sorcerer Supreme). Ronby and Billy checked in with Quentin the Apothecary and determined that A) Potions of Waterbreathing require Black Hellebore and Gillyweed as ingredients for creation, B) said potions last 4 hours, and C) there were 8 in stock at the apothecary. Each of the PCs purchased one in preparation for their diving trip.

Gunder and Zavos checked in with the Council of Currents, the naiads provided 12 slots of Gillyweed (consumption provides 1 hour of waterbreathing, each dose requires 1 slot) and confirmed that they would pay 1000 coins for investigation of the structure.

The party set forth on the S.S. Eggbert downriver to Lake Dak.

Summer 09

The party sailed right for the underwater structure due to having enough supplies and Flamagio being afraid to show his face in Croakpool again. They arrived at the structure mid-morning, 60' above the strange white stone structure.

Zavos consumed a slot of gillyweed and dove over the side, his cursed ring marking him to the party as the "safest candidate." He swam down to the cylindrical structure lying on the triangle baseplate, searching for any entrances or exits. He found a door flush with the edge of the structure near the tapered end of the cylinder, also discovering that when he touched it he heard a voice in Elven speaking to him from within the structure. Zavos swam to the other end of the structure and found 3 massive half-furnaces such that he had seen dwarves use for massive casting projects, though they were missing the top halves and these ones were filled with hermit crabs. Zavos found a strange glass orb helmet filled with a small octopus. He was running out of gillyweed at this point so he rose back to the surface.

After explaining what he had seen below, Zavos took another dose of gillyweed and Billy's mining tools back down to the structure. He found a strip of dark glass stretched across the tapered edge of the cylinder and pried it off the structure with the pickaxe, flooding the small room on the other side. The small room held two chairs, a wall covered in arcane runes, 4 small panels labelled in old Elvish and a door to the rest of the structure. The water rushing in looked to have interacted poorly with something in the structure as Zavos also got a face full of steam.

Resolving that reading was for nerds, Zavos opened the door to the rest of the structure. He saw another wall of bubbles from the pressure change of the next room flooding, but couldn't investigate the room any further due to running out of gillyweed again. He rose to the surface and conferred with the rest of the party.

Billy crafted a few spears from some driftwood on the nearby beach along with some of his iron spikes. Flamagio cast his Engineer's Goggles spell at the glass helmet, determining it to indeed be a helmet designed to protect against environmental hazards and ideally hooked up to a larger system to provide an internal air capacity. He dived down into the water a little bit, enough to see that the structure was a ship, the "furnaces" in back were actually a propulsion system, and the flooded room at the front of the ship were the navigation controls.

(something like this is what they were looking at) Infernal Pact

The party all downed their Potions of Waterbreathing, armed themselves with Billy's spears and dove down. Gunder, Billy and Zavos opened the outer panels of the ship and harvested the "rope" within (umbilical cables, cordage wrapped in protective coating). Flamagio and Ronby investigated the panels in the cockpit, finding 4: "FIRST AID AND SURVIVAL KIT" "EMERGENCY AIRLOCK" "EMERGENCY PROCEDURES MANUAL" "HULL REPAIR KIT". Flamagio also saw that the runed wall in the room was advertising that the ship was in "EMERGENCY POWER MODE" and had 2% battery life left.

Flamagio opened the "EMERGENCY PROCEDURES MANUAL" panel and found a book inside with protective coverings over the pages. He flipped to the section labelled "crash in water" but didn't find anything interesting (except that the book was written in readable Elvish, even if very old). Ronby opened the "EMERGENCY AIRLOCK" and "HULL REPAIR KIT" panels, finding a hardshell toolbox in one and a tarp wrapped in some protective coating in the other.

Zavos and Billy entered the flooded inner room as Gunder shuttled the harvested "rope" back to the S.S. Eggbert, moving past Flamagio and Ronby who were still in the cockpit. They found a flooded hallway filled with panels and drawers coming out of the walls and spilled tools and objects wrapped in clear glass floating in the water. They also found 2 elven skeletons with extremely tightly stretched skin over their bones. The skeletons also carried strange silver wands/crossbow weapons and wore bright orange jumpsuits. They pointed their weapons at the two delvers and fired bolts of fire at the two of them, injuring Zavos greatly and burning him, despite the abundance of water all around. Zavos charged the pair of them, wounding one with his spear before losing enough HP to his burn that he reached 0 HP, triggering his curse and returning to the decks of the S.S. Eggbert another 2' shorter, that being the last place he slept. Billy immediately abandoned Zavos to this charge and retreated into the cockpit, barring the door with his pickaxe. The rest of the party fled as they saw their side of the cockpit door begin to burn from the skeletons on the other side.

Returning to the surface, the party checked their options. They all had roughly 3 hours of waterbreathing for each of them, which they figured would give them enough time to potentially lure the skeletons away from the ship. They saw the skeletons escape the ship below them but get confused at their surroundings, only shooting at some nearby ship and swimming in circles.

Gunder and Ronby swam to the nearby shore to create a trap for the skeletons to be lured into. The party assumed that the skeletons were sensing alive creatures, so Billy dove into the water to attempt to lure them away from the ship towards shore. He made it halfway before the errant weapon fire from the skeletons finally found him, killing him dead.

Flamagio took advantage of the skeletons at least being momentarily away from the ship to dive down and see if he could search the rest. He opened the drawers and panels in the flooded hallway but couldn't find any more of the silvery weapons the elves were using. He found another door labelled "LIFE SUPPORT" in the back and opened it, flooding that room as well.

Flamagio immediately heard an alarm sound and a soothing Elvish voice notified him of "Reactor fuel chamber depressurization, core meltdown in 29 minutes, 59 seconds, 58 seconds, 57 seconds...". Flamagio swam back to the cockpit and opened the last panel there, finding a white metal box with a red cross on it as well as another hardshell bag that was colored bright orange. He grabbed Billy's pickaxe and attempted to use it to open an interior hatch, breaking the pickaxe in the process.

In the meantime, the player Nero took control of Alcyone, Billy's porter. She took a dose of gillyweed and dove down to the ship to help Flamagio. The two of them were able to go to the outside of the ship and pry open the top of the cylinder at the central seam, opening another flooded hallway. They searched the hallway quickly but were only able to find a protective environmental suit in one of the lockers, no silvery weapons. They fled the ship as the reactor melted down, crumpling the back half of the ship and causing the water around to rise to extremely uncomfortable temperatures.

The party at this point chose to cut their losses. They had some loot from the ship (even if none of them were the silvery weapons possessed by the skeletons) and had accomplished their goal (investigate the structure) even if they had caused some collateral damage (releasing the skeletons into the world, causing the northern part of Lake Dak to be borderline unlivable due to the heat). They sailed to Croakpool to see if they could offload some of this loot to Loreto, their merchant friend.

After some haggling, Loreto purchased the Hull Repair Kit, the Emergency Airlock, and the Environmental Suit. He also purchased the 21 slots of "rope" they had recovered from the outside of the ship.

Zavos questioned the merchant further on curses, fearing that he would continue to shrink even further as the cursed ring kept triggering. Loreto mentioned that the Council of Currents could break the curse for a fee, though he also knew that there was a spring in the mountains to the south that could also break the curse. He had also heard rumors that the duergar deep beneath the earth could break the curse. Flamagio offered to break the curse as well with the Spell Decay spell similar to Aster at the Buzzing Temple, though he feared the ring itself would break as well.

The party went back upriver to Circlebrook.

Summer 10

The party returned to the Council of Currents for their 1000 coin reward. They notified Zavos they could break his curse for 1000 coins, but he didn't want to take that deal. The party further investigated the First Aid Kit (finding it to be a 4-use, 2-slot item that healed for 2d6 HP per use) and the Survival Kit, finding it to contain within its 6-slots:

(reference: https://theappendix.net/posts/2013/11/the-cosmonauts-survival-kit)

The party resolved to keep the two kits with Ronby and Flamagio and not sell them.

775 XP split / 565 coin split

Map from session: Infernal Pact

Warning

Follows contains theory about metagaming. If you're a player at my table, do not read further unless you want to understand my underlying thought processes while GMing, which may change the experience for you.

GM Commentary

Describing a sci-fi structure to players that would understand but characters who wouldn't is always difficult. Do you focus on clear descriptions to minimize misunderstandings at the table (after all, you are the entirety of the character's senses and observations) or do you focus on describing things as obliquely as possible so as to not clue the players themselves in? Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes is the obvious answer, but its not always easy to define where that is in the moment. Nero had obviously clocked that the structure was some kind of space ship all the way back in session 3, and Reeves also pretty quickly picked up on it as soon as he "saw" it. I tried to keep in character in my descriptions as long as I could, but eventually broke when Flamagio was able to cast his Engineer's Goggles spell to see everything.

At the end of the day, does it matter if the players do metagame? I have a firm policy of "metagaming doesn't exist" at the table, if players want to use their player skill I figure there is always a way that the characters would be able to figure it out as well. If players want to bring fire to fight trolls, let 'em! They still have to haul it, still have to apply a plan, still have to execute their plan successfully, they're just starting from a baseline of more information.

They don't even know if the information is right! What if it's not a troll, what if its an iron golem seen in the dark? What if its not a giant snake terrorizing the people, what if its a basilisk instead and the villagers don't know how to recognize one?

I like to prioritize understanding at my table. I'd rather someone had perfect information to make a choice and made it knowing that there'd be consequences for their actions. It can also be fun to put players in situations where they know they don't have perfect information and push them to act anyways, understanding that "don't make a choice and gather more information" is a choice that preserves the current status quo that might get worse. It just feels unsatisfying to play out consequences for an action where the player just misunderstood my words or forgot about something their character would easily be able to see "in world." The elves are waving silver cylinders with handles and pointing them at you as if they were crossbows, of course the characters are going to pick up that they're weapons. The real fun is figuring out what to do now that you know they have them.

#HaY Infinite #Session Recap #theory