Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Ocelot Quill slips her thieves' tools from her belt and crouches by the jammed linkage, steadying the bent cog while Clu and Sophi work the wheel. "Hold it still, Sophi - I will pry it straight. Clu, keep an ear on that door."
Sophi Brasswick raises her holy symbol for light and searches the area carefully for hidden dangers, traps or anything the party missed.
Sophi reads the gauge right. The needle trembles at the edge of the red, and the hiss climbs half a note every few breaths: two, maybe three minutes before the pipe splits. The fault is plain once you see it. The bent cog is jammed in the valve linkage, so the wheel will not turn. Straighten it, swap it for a spare, or force the wheel and hope. Behind the gear-sigil door, the goblin chatter stops. Someone in there heard the hiss change too. What do you do?
Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Sophi Brasswick, a human cleric newly arrived, kneels by the hissing cracked pipe and studies the pressure gauge and valve linkage to analyze how long until it bursts and whether the bent cog will seal it.
Sophi Brasswick joined the campaign
Staying low in the shadows, Quill eases the cog into the bent gap in the valve teeth and gives it a quiet quarter turn to ease the pressure, keeping the wheel between himself and the goblin.
Steam hisses over Ocelot Quill's head and the halfling simply isn't there anymore: just shadow, grease and the slow tick of the great gear-wheel. Cog in hand, Quill creeps into the dark. Ten paces on, the scrape of a scimitar on stone: the goblin tinkerer crouches by a rusted valve, its back to you, muttering as it tries to wrench the wheel shut with both hands. It hasn't heard a thing. Beside it, a bent gap in the valve's teeth looks exactly the size of the cog Quill is holding. Behind you, the cracked pipe's whistle climbs half a note higher; the pressure gauge on the wall is creeping toward red. Quill has the drop: strike from hiding, slip the cog into the valve, or call Clu forward?
Ocelot Quill pinches the bent cog between two fingers, ducks low under the hissing steam and melts into the shadow of the gear-wheel, then creeps toward the dark where the goblin went, listening for its scimitar scraping the floor.
Ocelot slips behind the great gear-wheel, but the shadows are thick with grease and the search turns up only scuffed oil and a dropped bent cog. No door shows itself. Somewhere above, the cellar clock ticks louder, and a thin line of steam starts hissing from a cracked pipe near the far wall: whatever powers this place is building pressure. From the dark beyond the wheel comes a goblin giggle and the scrape of a scimitar on brass.
I slip behind the gear-wheel where the goblin ducked and search for hidden doors or tracks
Ocelot Quill joined the campaign
Automatically marked as following the party (12h+ inactive)
Clu whacks the goblin with a quarterstaff
Goblin Tinkerer A: The goblin lunges at Clu with its scimitar
The goblin ducks behind a gear-wheel and swings its scimitar.
Clu flicks a spark of gnomish fire at Goblin Tinkerer A
Clu the gnome wizard descends a ladder into a cellar full of ticking brass. Three goblin tinkerers look up from a half-built clockwork rat.
Clu the Tinkerer joined the campaign