Before leaving Skyreach, Shadowsilver purchased some bowstrings and Tholannan purchased a couple of pristine Shadowcaps to restore Qarzdaq and Qhortho. Being on the clock, if they knew what a clock was, they depart Skyreach with haste for Wyl, by way of Yronwood.
The road is of good quality, but the terrain on either side is of the quintessential Dornish red rock. Qarzdaq and Qhortho awake after a few days of traveling. After a few more days, they arrive at Yronwood and notice that there seems to be more security than they remembered from their last visit months earlier.
They decide to press on towards Wyl, without stopping in Yronwood, believing that Yorick must be on to the tainted iron and there is no use in risking an appearance in town. Their inclination is correct, for if they had entered town, they would have noticed the new foundries in the early stages of being built in the Ironworks District, separated from the other foundries.
The road north to Wyl is not as sparsely populated as many of the other roads recently traveled. Initially, they come across several mining camps, some of which look to be only recently abandoned. They decide to poke around one of the camps and find nothing of any value, just some old mining caps and some iron ore. Perhaps Yorick believes the raw iron being mined is of a weaker grade?
After a few days, they begin to see some occupied homesteads. The homes are not close enough to one another to be described as a town, but there is clearly a populace in the area. Another two days pass without incident, the distance between the homes gradually decreasing as they travel north, though still not to the extent of a township.
As they continue north, the sun sinks lower in the western sky. A tall stone squared-off tower can be seen in the distance ahead. The homes continue to be more densely packed.
They realize they must have entered the outskirts of Wyl at some point as they pass their first intersection with a road running east-west. It is a good thing too, since their mission-date is tomorrow night.
The group slows its ride and takes in their surroundings. A bustling mercantile community with many homes is to their right, all of mediocre or low quality. A wide stone bridge ahead leads across a river to another part of town and, across that bridge, the tower they’ve been riding towards is up ahead to the left — a walled keep up ahead to the right with the House sigil waving above.
From this distance, it can be seen there are two large protection walls around Wyl, discounting the wall just around the keep: an outer wall contains the entire contents of North Wyl that you can see, but there is an inner wall containing densely packed buildings. Among those buildings is a military district and many estates. The tower looks to be within the military district.
The group determines that most of the better shops, inns, and taverns would be between those two protection walls.
Several guards are posted along the bridge, but they are not blocking the traffic flow in any way. It appears that they are just keeping watch for anything out of the ordinary.
The group discusses their immediate plans for the night, during which, Qarzdaq wonders if there would be a way to create some sort of time-delay fuse. They decide to find a tavern and lay low.
In the crowded streets of South Wyl, Qhortho yells out for a shopkeep, asking for where accommodations might be found. Many ignore the Dothraki’s heavily-accented outburst, but one man in the crowd lifts his head from the shuffle, “That way!” pointing to the right side of the road into the densely busy area of town this side of the bridge.
Following the man’s suggestion, they make their way through the crowd, entering an open market area with vendors selling food, trinkets, and various wares. Notably absent are schools, daycare centers, and childhood development facilities. After exploring for a few minutes, they decide it may be better to explore the area across the river before settling on a place to stay.
Normally, Burton would get out of sight before making himself up to look like a child, but the crowd is sufficient cover in this instance, given his height.
After applying the disguise, Burton says, “Hey Mommy, let’s go here!”
Shadowsilver replies, “Stop being annoying!” and laughs are had at the child’s expense.
Tholannan, Qarzdaq, and Qhortho lead the way across the bridge, with Shadowsilver and Burton about 100 yards behind.
The guards watch everyone as they cross, but do not pay any special attention to any individual.
After crossing the bridge, they are between the walled keep on their right and the military district on their left containing the beacon tower, within the area protected by the Wyl’s inner protection wall. At the top of the tower, there are large openings on each of its four sides about 20’ wide by 15’ tall. The top is covered by a slanted slate roof. It is approximately 200’ from the ground to the openings at the top.
They peer inside the military district as they pass by and see the business of hundreds of armed men carrying out normal duties.
Continuing along the road, they pass through a gate in the inner wall leading to the area protected by the outer wall. A stable is to the right, a sept is just ahead, and the Thrown Dagger Inn is to the left. Just across from Thrown Dagger is a tailor by the name of The Spinning Wyl.
Our friends walk into the Inn and grab a drink. Shadowsilver sits at a table and cuts off 6” of her 50’ hemp rope. She ties off the end so it won’t continue to unwind and unravels the 3 cables of 1/4″ rope from the piece she removed. She saves two of those cables and with the third, douses it in in oil and lets it sit so it can fully absorb and dry. She expects it will take about an hour and plans to check it then. In the meantime, she cleans off her dragon-faced dagger’s blade to remove the toad poison so she can apply giant scorpion poison instead.
After an hour passes, Shadowsilver lights the oil-soaked hemp rope on one end with her tinderbox and finds it takes about 30 minutes to traverse the entire 6” rope.
The sun begins to set, and the team begins to plan. After some pretty unremarkable ideas, the group decides on Burton disguising himself as a dog to scout the military district.
Burton consciously decides to stop and lick himself, which it looks like he does with great ease.
There are no walls guarding off the military district, but he can determine the perimeter of the military district by the stark visual differences of the buildings and the overall orderliness as compared to the streets just beside it.
As the night sets in, Burton walks through the military district, which is no longer busy, though some areas stand out.
A covered armament stockpile is guarded on all open sides by 5 guards. The section of the stockpile abutting the public throughway is protected by a short stone wall attached to the stone roof that covers the entire stockpile. Stone pillars, not more than 10 feet tall provide the support for the stone roof intermittently within the stockpile, as well as around the open section within the military district.
A few more steps and Burton can see several barracks nearby the great sandstone tower, guarded by two men in front of a strong-looking wooden door. They stand there bullshitting about the maidens they saw earlier that day, and the jugs they carried, paying no mind to the curious dog perusing the area.
The tower is of good quality – easily scalable by those with the ability to do so. Burton walks around to get a better vantage point of the tower and what might be at the top.
In the process, Burton notices a small shack in the middle of the training grounds with two guards stationed in front. As he continues to focus on the tower, he sees that the top is open with no oil hanging above it and no guards. He does notice the wood that is obviously meant to be burned to light the signal.
Burton starts toward the shack and notices it looks to be of shoddy workmanship. As he looks around it, he does not notice any holes to see inside, but it is a little too precisely “bad” for Burton’s taste. He gathers that it is intentionally designed this way.
After some time, Burton sees two uniformed men approach the guards in front of the tower. After a short exchange, the two men replace the two guards, who then enter a nearby barracks. Barracks appear to be almost everywhere within the district.
With 5 minutes left on his illusion, and sensing it may be about 8 o’clock, whatever that means, Burton makes his way to the perimeter of the military district and then heads to the tavern to meet with his crew.
Shadowsilver remembers that some towers relied on colors to send different signals. Without any information about how they do towers here in Westeros, she tells the group that they need more information.
They discuss a few options:
- Fire an arrow at the wood in the top of the tower to light it.
- However, they would not know of what color, if any, applies to this signal
- Climb the tower, light it, then parachute or hang glide back to the ground, inventing the parachute in the process
- However, this has a similar issue as the first option – they do not know of what color, if any, applies to this signal
- Disguise themselves as guards and change out the shift, taking the guards’ places
- They wear a helm and studded leather armor
- But they would still need to find a way inside
- Phone a friend: Tyrone
- But not sure what to ask
Shadowsilver decides to scout the area a little more. She leaves the tavern, scales an apartment building near the military district and waits. After a short time, perhaps around 9 o’clock, if that were to mean anything, the two guards in front of the shack are swapped with two fresh guards.
After another hour, 5 guards relieve those around the weapons stockpile. Another hour passes and the two guards in front of the tower swap for fresh soldiers.
She then returns to the taverns and explains the staggered shift change pattern she’d seen:
- 2 at the Shack ~ 9pm
- 5 at the Stockpile ~ 10pm
- 2 at the Tower ~ 11pm
Expanding on plan #2, Shadowsilver says she should climb the south side of the tower in the latter tenth of the tower guards’ shift, then wait in the belfry until an opportune time to light the beacon and descend the tower. Though she admits, she still knows nothing of whether colors are required.
Qarzdaq voices that he is very interested in the contents of the guarded shack. The potential consequences of colors also causes him pause.
Qhortho mentions another plan of having Shadowsilver distract the guards while the others sneak into the tower.
After much debate, they agree that a distraction will not work – there are simply too many people at the ready to pull that off.
Shadowsilver insists that anything they do needs to happen all at once and be very coordinated, whatever it is they decide to do.
Burton mentions that the shack is secondary and the beacon is the primary mission.
Qarzdaq says that the shack may hold important information related to the primary mission and that proceeding straight to the beacon is careless.
Shadowsilver wants to paint a sail black and use that to glide back to the ground after she lights the beacon.
Qarzdaq, trusting his instincts, insists that they find out what is going on with that shack.
QHORTHO: Burton pretends to be a mad dog, chasing one of the group, or maybe one of the dogs
QARZDAQ: What if we contact Tirius?
There is much discussion about who to contact and what to say.
Tholannan messages Tirius:
Can you tell us what color to light beacon in Wyl to signal attack by Blackmont and Kingsgrave?
Tirius responds:
Secretive information. Not standard. Unsure of their code.
Shadowsilver pushes for the “quick coordinated attack.”
Qhortho argues for a distraction again — everyone else pushes back on this and, in unison, restates the relative locations of the hot spots within the military district. He relents.
Burton welcomes Qhortho back to the conversation.
The discussion continues. After some time, Qarzdaq mentions that they may be able to disguise themselves as guards.
Tholannan, in a stroke of brilliance, after sitting silently for some time, finally jumps in and says that if he were able to get up on the inner protection wall, he could eliminate all sound within a small bubble around the shack, allowing someone to break in through the back of it without making a sound.
They all decide this is the way to go. Qhortho could pry open the back of the shed with his crowbar to allow Burton could squeeze through.
Qhortho likes the idea of disguising themselves as guards and take over the station just a few minutes early.
Finally, the decision is made. Burton and Qhortho will disguise themselves as guards, Tholannan will cast a cone of silence, Qhortho will break into the back of the shack and Burton will go inside. They will then re set the pried-up boards of the shack behind them. Burton asks that the last part happen AFTER he exits. They all laugh, but no promises are made…
Tholannan doffs and stores away his chainmail, they all depart the tavern together and the plan commences…
Shadowsilver scales the inner protection wall stealthily, lowers her 49.5’ rope, and Tholannan climbs up. They proceed across the rooftops to get a good, closer vantage point to the back of the shed.
Qarzdaq takes point on watch, walking the streets nearby, attempting to convert those that are faint of faith. During his after-midnight stroll, he notices a dock near some high-end apartments. This looks to be a loading dock of some sort, not a fisherman’s wharf.
Shadowsilver and Tholannan survey the landscape to determine when to act. Moments later, the five guards at the weapons cache are relieved.
Burton dons his stilts and casts Disguise Self to make himself look like a guard. He then casts Minor Illusion around Qhortho’s torso to make him look like he has a guard’s armor. Qhortho hunches over to play into the role of being drunk; Burton is just being a good comrade by helping his friend back to his bunk.
The duo passes through the inner protection wall, the guards nod at them as if this is a sight they’d seen more than once this night. Perhaps not the last either. Burton plays out a scenario in his head where he makes it sound like Qhortho farts loudly, thinking the guard would respond by telling Qhortho to check his pants. He thinks better of this however, since that would dismiss the illusion on Qhortho’s torso.
They make their way to the back of the shack, verify no one is around, and then turn their gaze to Shadowsilver and Tholannan in the distance on the wall.
Tholannan sees them and casts Silence, deadening the sound within a 20’ bubble.
Qhortho uses his crowbar to pry up a board causing only very minor damage to one of the planks near the ground; something that would be very hard to detect. As he pulls the board away and looks inside the very dark room, he makes out a staircase going down. Qhortho pulls back another board and Burton climbs in, and hangs on to the edge, then drops down to the staircase about another 2’. Qhortho pulls back one more board and climbs inside, then pulls the boards back in place as best he can. The boards would certainly look out of place if anyone were to get within about 20’ of the shed.
Qhortho draws his sword. Burton and Qhortho realize they are in an underground, decently-lit tunnel system. The walls are reinforced masonry, the floors are flagstone. They continue down the corridor just a bit until they can hear their footsteps.
Burton whispers that he wants to take point. He tells Qhortho to remain where he is and cautiously scouts the way. After a few moments, he motions to Qhortho that it is clear. They continue in this manner, scouting the tunnels, for another 5 minutes. Because they have no calligraphy or cartography supplies, they decide to use makeup on the back of the Solutionists credentials.
They eventually arrive at a door and attempt to open it, but it doesn’t budge. Qhortho gives it a shove, but it doesn’t move. He tries again, with more force, and busts right through it. He is now in a room lined with pillars. There is another exit from this room through an archway. He takes notice of a large, out-of-place stalagmite in the back right corner of the room.
Burton sneaks over to the archway and peers down the corridor. He doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, so he turns around. His curiosity takes hold and he moves towards the stalagmite. Moments later, he realizes why people talk about the unfortunate happenings of similarly-minded felines, as a giant eye spontaneously pops open in the middle of the stalagmite.
The Roper’s tendrils fly out from the sides, out of Burton’s view, but somehow, even though he can’t see them, he sees them and is able to uncannily dodge the first strike. However, since the tendril doesn’t actually hurt him, it’s a moot point and it snags him anyway, dragging him towards the Roper. The Roper moves to bite Burton, who now uncannily dodges the bite but remains grappled.
Burton manages to struggle free of the tendril, cunningly disengages the Roper before he gets a chance to bite him, then dashes for the door. “Qhortho! Let’s get the fuck outta here!!”
Qhortho, channeling the future spirit of Hodor (Qhordor?), replies with a sleepy, “o-kay.”
They continue to explore a little more, carefully examining each and every dead end they come across.
They soon decide to revisit the room with the Roper, so Burton can sneak down the hallway with the archway entrance.
Burton begins to have second thoughts as he peeks around the corner of the room, seeing the motionless stalagmite. He decides to tempt fate and proceed. His sneakiness prevails as he enters the room disguised as part of the wall. He slowly creeps to the archway and exits down a long corridor.
Now on his own, he continues to creep for a few feet, then decides better of it and sneaks back through the Roper room and meets back with Qhortho. The Roper does not appear to take notice.
Burton tells Qhortho that he doesn’t want to be traveling the halls alone and he’s not sure that Qhortho would be able to sneak through. They toy with going back to get the group, but decide that they need to go back with some intel so they backtrack until they arrive at a path they had not taken yet.
By this point, being more than 10 minutes since entering the tunnels, Tholannan’s Silence has dissipated, but he is ready to cast it again immediately upon seeing Qhortho or Burton.
Burton and Qhortho continue exploring and stumble across another door. Before testing it, Burton has flashes of the Roper experience and questions whether they should regroup with the others. Qhortho reminds him that they still have not found anything yet. Easy for him to say…
They decide not to test the door but continue on with the exploration.
After many more twists and turns, about 20 minutes after entering the tunnels, and running dangerously low on writing space, Burton finally convinces Qhortho that they should turn back – but on their way, Qhortho reverses this decision again and they continue to map the unexplored tunnels.
Getting restless, Qarzdaq messages Tholannan, “at what point do we go in after them?” Tholannan replies, “I don’t know if we can get past these guards.”
A few more minutes of exploration and a putrid odor fills the corridor. Qhortho, finally recognizing some semblance of danger, decides, “yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” Burton, now the defiant one, decides to peek around the corner first. He does so very cautiously. He notices the floor ahead is a little… off… Burton turns back to Qhortho, “yeah, we need to get the fuck out of here…”
As they make their way back, they become distracted again, the sirens of the unexplored corridors calling their names – or maybe it’s just ADD.
Getting restless, Qarzdaq messages Tholannan, “Do you think something’s happened? They’ve been in a 5 by 5 shed for 20 minutes.”
THOL: What would you suggest?
QARZDAQ: Maybe we should go in after them. Do you see a way we can do that?
THOL: I think we should give them more time.
After some more exploration, they finally decide to head back to the entrance and meet up with the group and, this time, they stick to the decision.
They arrive back at the entrance about 25 minutes since entering. Burton asks to climb on Qhortho’s shoulders so he can move the boards out of the way and exit the shed.
Immediately upon seeing the board moving, Tholannan Silences the sound.
Tholannan and Shadowsilver notice Burton waving for them to come to the shed. Tholannan motions to Qarzdaq, who then messages Tholannan.
QARZDAQ: What’s up?
THOL: They just motioned us from the shed to go join them.
QARZDAQ: What do you want me to do? How am I going to get in?
THOL: Shadow will drop down the rope, just make your way over to the wall where we came up closer to the docks.
Shadowsilver hops across the buildings and gets back to the inner protection wall and drops the rope down. Qarzdaq walks over that way without drawing any attention and climbs up. They then make their way back across the rooftops to meet up with Tholannan. Qarzdaq makes some sounds, but not enough to wake any of the residents in the homes on which they clamber.
The three of them slowly and stealthily climb down, Tholannan continues to concentrate on the cone of Silence, while all three successfully remain out of sight from the stockpile guards and get within range of the cone of Silence. Knowing there are only minutes remaining on the spell, they go into the shed with Burton and Qhortho, and then replace the boards as best they can. The group, now together again, make their way into the tunnels.
At this point, it’s about 1:30am.
They walk down the hallway to be outside the Silence zone. Burton turns to Tholannan.
BURTON: Can you heal me good sir? I’ve sustained some damages.
THOL: What happened to you guys?
BURTON: It was actually a stalagmite that attacked me. I know that sounds strange, but it grew tendrils, and an awful mouth full of teeth, and it bited me sir.”
QHORTHO: What we’ve discovered is a dungeon. We have gone through many of these hallways and found many dead ends.
QARZDAQ: Can we cleanse this beast by the fires of R’hllor?
QHORTHO: I believe we can.
SHADOW: What purpose does it serve to even explore all of this?
BURTON: Well, there’s the eXPerience of it all…
Burton and Qhortho discuss more details of their encounters and they decide to find that blasted stalgmite and destroy it. Qarzdaq is so excited that he just can’t hide it.
Qarzdaq uses his drawing utensils to sketch Burton’s nude form… oh… sorry… wrong story… ahem…
Qarzdaq uses his drawing utensils to transfer Burton’s crude map from the back of his Solutionists’ credentials to a sheet of papyrus and does so deftly.
They head straight for the Roper room.
Shadow wants to peek in and shoot the thing with an arrow. Just as Shadow is about to poke her head out from the corner, Burton casts Minor Illusion to make her head look like a giant brick.
When Shadow sets her gaze upon the room, she sees no stalagmite, but instead, a stalactite.
She shoots! She misses! The silver arrow flies past the stony form and slams against the wall behind it. The giant eye opens…
Qarzdaq launches a fireball into the room and R’hllor rains down a healthy helping of wrath upon it. Its tendrils burn up entirely.
Burton launches an arrow but misses.
Shadow launches a giant-scorpion-poison-dipped arrow right in its stupid face.
Moments later, all of the Roper’s tendrils regrow from its body.
QHORTHO: Oh god damn it!
A tendril flies towards Qarzdaq and is blocked by a red translucent barrier.
Another two tendrils fly his way – one of them snags him, now grappled, and drags him to its mouth. It tries to bite him but misses as Qarzdaq continues to struggle.
Tholannan dons his armor and rushes for the attack – a Spiritual Weapon attacks the Roper and hits it with its mace of spirituality. It connects with a glorious crunch.
Qhortho rages and charges the Roper – it turns out he rages at his own impotence as neither of his attacks land.
Qarzdaq launches a chromatic orb and it strikes true.
Burton dashes and attempts to fire an arrow in its eye but misses.
Shadow moves into a good vantage point and fires an arrow that misses. She leaves the room through the archway to get out of sight.
The Roper snags Qhortho and Burton.
Tholannan launches a guiding bolt at the Roper and it tears through its stony skin.
Qhortho attacks and causes some damage – quite a bit more than he was expecting. He slices it through its eye — its aqueous humor squirts into Qhortho’s face. Somehow it looks extremely angry, but after a moment it falls from the ceiling and the tendrils fall loosely from those that were grappled.
Each person earns 360XP.
Burton pries out a sharp Roper tooth for good luck.
They all go through the archway and explore more of the tunnels so they can practice the dark art of calligromancy, where an invisible hand draws the map automatically.
Qarzdaq is leading the way now and he takes them into a room with more pillars lining a couple of the walls. The flagstone tiles along all 4 walls appear to be polished. A dagger lies in the center of the room. A black blob of sticky sludge is slowly moving along the back wall. It seems to take notice of their presence, and begins to move slowly towards them. As it slides over the dagger, it sizzles as the sludge makes contact.
Qarzdaq shoots a bolt of fire in its general direction. The blob absorbs the fire and sizzles in the process. The smell of burnt pudding fills the room and halls.
Burton yells out, “I’m shooting through your legs! Spread ‘em!” He sends off a sneaky critical silver arrow into the form and it recoils in what might be a sign of pain. The arrow sizzles in the gelatinous form.
Shadowsilver tells everyone to squeeze against the wall, she shoots, and the poisoned arrow strikes true. The arrow ripples through the form and sizzles as it sinks in.
Qarzdaq shoots a chromatic orb into the blob. The orb takes the hit, appears to stiffen for a moment, and then loses its shape, transitioning to a sizzling puddle on the ground. None of the arrows are found in the acidic aftermath.
They each earn 220XP and continue exploring.
Burton says that now that he has his homies, they should go check out the locked iron door he and Qhortho found earlier.
They do so and Shadowsilver deftly unlocks the door and slowly opens it. Just as it begins to creak, she stops and tries to look inside through the sliver of open door. She puts a little oil on the hinges she can see and opens the door a little farther. After emitting a short creak, it is quiet and she opens the door to completion.
She enters the room without hesitation and the rest of the group follows. Along the back wall, from left to right, they see a pile of copper-white powdery crystals, greenn-tinted clay bottles, medium-sized black crystals, and dull gray nuggets.
In looking around the room, they notice a sign that reads:
| Orange | On Alert |
| White | Withstand |
| Blue | Backup |
| Green | Go |
They are able to loosely determine the following:
- Qhortho realizes the copper-white powder is similar in both looks and consistency to the type of powder on the floors of copper smelters. Shadowsilver takes this observation to the next step and says that the whiteness comes from Arsenic.
- The clay pots are oozing a green substance and Qarzdaq recognizes this as wildfire
- Burton recognizes the black crystals as Antimony because that is a common component of black makeup
- Tholannan recognizes the dull gray nuggets as lead
They determine they need to use one of these reagents that will make a green flame.
Qarzdaq takes a sample of each substance, except the wildfire, and goes into the hallway to run some flame tests.
Upon lighting the copper-white powder, it burns a deep, bright blue; the black crystals burn a light green; the dull gray nuggets burn a bright white.
Shadowsilver takes one of the oozing clay pots, a handful of the crystals, a few of the nuggets, and some of the copper-white powder.
It is now about 1:50 am, early on day 189, over 5 months since leaving The Sandship. The Unlikely Assembly stands now with a total of 12,335XP. Only 1,665XP remaining until they will feel like they’ve learned new skills!