Into the Gray

Session Summary

We start investigating a room with broken glass cases on podiums, all facing towards the door with readout screens and buttons. Star unlocks some research rooms containing papers, while Elzira and Wash investigate the screens. We discover that the research here is all about storing and harvesting energy, with the most potent item ranked at 267. Arachne casts Detect Magic and finds the strongest magic pulse in a small robot core, which fits into the gun. She also finds stairs going up and down and sees a faint magic glow around the creature. We return to the upper rooms and discover two enormous desks with viewing screens and shutters that can open and close. By pressing buttons on the desk, I open a door in the other room, which releases a blinding light, and everyone with an orb teleports to the room. During transportation, the orbs flash in response to a signal, and Arachne's orb looks sad. Star opens the wall using Mage Hand, and we move to the next room. We eventually figure out this was a teleportation device and learn how it works. There are energy charging devices around. Arachne finds magic mold on what used to be shelving. We manage to salvage gear from the ruined storage area.

Log

Still in the New Dawn Warehouse

Wash fazes back into reality. 

Star and Wash investigate the corpse. 

I peek my head inside the busted door I am next to. I see a large number of podiums. Each of which appears to have had glass cases on top. Many are broken. There are a bunch of different things strapped on. Several things look similar to the orb design, but others are different, hooked up to tubes that run into the podium. Each one podium appears facing towards the door, a little readout screen with buttons for interfacing. Most seem broken and are missing the objects. 

I don’t see any traps. I attempt to enter the room and read through screens. 

Star, meanwhile, is unlocking rooms and peeking in. One has research papers. There are two more rooms with podiums. 

Most of the screens seem simple displays similar to old calculators. Most of them are completely blank. The ones that show anything all have different values. One is super low, most are fairly numbers. Like 1.2, 3.4, and it looks like the display has much larger numbers on them. 

What devices are there seem like machinery in progress. Similar to the robot cores. 

Elzira and Wash read through. They find that all the research being done here is looking into ways to store and harvest energy. Each one is dedicated to a different type, material, method of storing and releasing energy, how well it does it. Lots of research details separately filed away. There are a bunch of numbers that seem to rank how effective items store and transfer energy. 

It seems they’ve tried a bunch of different methods of acquiring energy, including getting energy from different planes of existence. In later versions they started trying to get energy from living beings. #clues

What is left and stored here appear to be low efficiency. 

We start looking for the highest energy numbered item to stick into the gun. 

Arachne starts praying to see if she should be on the lookout for something. She gets no response. She casts Detect Magic trying to find something similar to the orb.

She finds the strongest magic pulse ranked at 267. It looks like a small robot core.

The standard hookups fit into the gun. 

Arachne finds stairs going up and down at the end of the hallway, to each side. Arachne can see a faint magic glow around the creature.

Star wants to go back and check the other rooms. We all decide to go back up to check those rooms out. 

He’s easily able to pick the locks to all the rooms.

There are two large rooms with enormous desks. There are viewing screens on the north side of each. They look to have shutters that can open and close. The desks have controls on them. 

I go to press some buttons on the desk. As I do so, the first button (upper left) seems to trigger something to the left side shuts.  

X X
X X

The same button does reverse the shutter. The upper right button triggers a sliding noise to the left. When I look left, there is a little door in the other room that slides open. 

I look into the room and I can see that the wall is fully receded. There are four strange objects in the corners. I’m not 100% sure what their purpose is. They go from the floor to the ceiling. It looks like there is clear stuff where there are mysterious bits that move mechanically. 

I call Arachne in to see if there is magic. 

“These buttons control the room!” I close the door again. “Let’s see what this does.” I click the lower left button. 

As I do that… 

We all can hear a loud whining noise coming from the machines. Those with line of sight can see them whiring. 

Arachne and I both make saves. I make a CON save (21) and Arachne makes a NAT 20 (21) DEX save. Arachne manages to look away as a blinding light. A lot of power seems to be drawn into the sun. I seem to be used to staring into the sun. There is a signal going into the air. 

Everyone with an orb suddenly teleports into the room. The bird is still out of the room. 

“What the hell did you just do?”

“Fixing things?”

Wash laughs and says “Wanna see a neat trick?” and disappears. 

I yell that he should click the upper right button to open the door to the other section. 

During the transportation, the orbs seemed to flash in response to the signal. Arachne’s orb looks really sad. 

Star opens the wall using mage hand. This releases us all into the next room and out the door Star already unlocked. 

I run around to click the last button and warn Twinkletoes, who is still sitting in the transportation room. 

I hit the last button. As I do, a familiar whirring sound comes from my left. 

Star, Twinkletoes, and Wash’s bird are suddenly teleported into the other room now after the same whirring noise. 

“Nothing happened!” I shout gleefully. 

“They’re in here…” as Arachne finds them in the other room.

I run over and push the upper right button on the other desk. It seems to be the same layout and the door opens. 

“What an interesting contraption…” I say with an uwu finger motion.

In the drawers is a simple pamphlet explaining how the buttons work. Oops. The language used is very “Teleportation device” focused rather than on one thing like a subject. Almost a class of item. There is a magic frequency that can be stimulated to make these items respond. There is a baseline frequency that has some sort of anchoring effect, as in a place where if you’re on the same plane and within a specific distance, it would be an anchored place you could teleport to at will. 

We decide to look through the last normal seeming floor. 

All the doors are locked and shut. Star runs through unlocking them. 

I step in and see desks, I start looking through the desks. Arachne pokes in and recognizes the contraptions on the wall that we think charged the robots. 

As I dig through the desks, it seems to just have a list of things they’re supposed to be testing currently. 

The upper right room, upon looking in, Arachne sees “Ex-shelving.” It appears to be overgrown with… magic mold?

Star starts trying to find something salvageable. 

Wash finds records on tested items. There are 5 valuable sounding items that we can find and salvage. 

There are two pieces to the teleportation device: One piece can be left anywhere and it’ll work as the anchor return portal. We just need the magical anchor to be the second place. There are 10 charges before it needs to be charged up. The range is huge enough that it should work wherever we go. Explicitly, it does mention that you need to be on the same Plane. It takes 1 minute to Teleport.

Homework: Everyone can ask for a flavorful item.

• Request flavorful item to have found in the New Dawn warehouse. ✅ 2022-08-18

• Me: Lightweight cooking gear, +2 bonus to cooking, lifts my entire pack by 20 lbs #items

• Elzara: Exoskeleton +5 Speed, +1 STR (20lbs) - Must be active, up to 10min, must be recharged

• Star: Slippers of Spider Climbing

• Elzira: Immovable Rod

• Wash: Teleport - 1 up, 2 knocked over, 3 doubles distance, potential bonus attack

• Arachne:  Necklace of Prayer Beads: 2 Bless, 3 Cure Wounds/Lesser Restoration, 1 Greater Restoration

• Twinkletoes: Goggles of Night: Bonus! Detect Magic (1hr per day, requires attunement)