Twilight's Peak - Part 2
This note is from the April 7, 2013 session, as written up by Carl. The computer renderings were modeled in Sketchup and rendered with Kerkythea.
Location: The Planet KKirka, Lanth Subsector
Imperial Date: 093-1103
As we left off the narrative last time, the Skylark crew had located an Octagon building in the mountains of K'Kirka, after three days of scanning and a meeting with an avalanche.
Leon did a full check out and performed all needed refurbishment of the air raft, and with a promise to our selves to watch out for falling snow, we loaded up to check out the building.
Life form scanner, x-ray scanner, hand weapons (cannot be too careful), ballistic long johns, one set of the Droyne coynes (the epic references symbols of that type), breathing equipment all fit in snugly with the five of us, and off we went with Kipenzi piloting the air/raft.
At the Octagon, as we had seen on out last trip, there was one window on the topmost floor, not broken, and a roof covered in snow. There were several feet of snow in front of the door, so after discussing melting with laser weapons or even flying the Skylark down, we went back to town and got a couple of shovels.
On our return, Fig and
Medicus cleared an opening to the front door while Kipenzi and Sam
grav-belted around the whole outside of the building, scanning with the
life and x-ray apparatus we have. A general outline, pretty well
matching the epic text, revealed itself. There was a Fireplace with the
likelihood of stairs and support pillars at each corner point of the
structure. The building appeared to be made from fitted stone, without
mortar and there was a band around the whole thing, in different colored
rock, with the cardinal directions and coordinates indicated in several
languages.
The adventurers get a look inside the octagon as Leon looks on from the air/raft.
Clearing out the snow took about as long as the scanning, and with minimal effort the doors pushed inward to show a largely empty building, with only one box up against one wall, and a row of large hooks hanging from a cable (such as you would see in a meatpacking place) on the opposite wall from the door, with what appeared to be blood. Recalling the mention of human bones in the epic poem, we proceeded cautiously, with Leon on guard in the air raft, alert for incursions of animal or any life, and especially watchful of the weather.
The fireplace was clearly in recent use and unblocked, and unexpectedly there was an octagonal open space, about half the width of the building, between the entryway floor and the upper floor. The only evident access to the upper floor or a (at that time likely) lower floor were hatches in the ceiling and the floor, near the fireplace, and a runged ladder on the wall.
The metal box turned out to be survival gear, and Medicus determined that the blood was some sort of herbivore, definitely not human. It appeared that this place was in at least semi-regular use as a hunting lodge. The box of emergency supplies was dated about a year back, and the x-ray scanner confirmed that the shapes of the contents matched the packing label.
Sam climbed up to check out the uppermost floor, and Kipenzi shone a light down into the lower. Both were empty, noteworthy only in that a fairly new ceiling, of steel or some steel-like material, had replaced the original, and there was ice covering about one quarter of the lower floor.
So far, so good. Three of the mentioned four floors were found, now to just locate the opening that 'appeared as if by magic' and we could settle down to some serious exploring.
While Kipeni, Medicus and Fig scanned, poked the walls, trod across every square foot of the floor, Sam went up to try and access the roof. In a few minutes the three on the lower floor heard the clang of metal on stone and a string of curses from above, and in attempting to force open the roof hatch, the weight of the snow had outlasted the strength of one rung of the ladder, and Sam had slipped, slightly injuring his left wrist slightly.
To make a long, thorough search short, we looked everywhere, at least twice. We even came back with ice-breaking equipment (OK, we got a couple small sledgehammers, the ice was only about 1/2 an inch thick, but we did clear it out) and pressure tested the floor under it. In the years since construction some geological activity had slightly tilted the entire structure and opened a hairline crack someplace, allowing snow melt to seep in and freeze during the cold times.
The entire search actually happened over a two day period, since bad weather had rolled in on the first day and we chose discretion as the better part, returning to port and the Skylark. Overnight we put all our analysis, measurements and images into the computer and removed any possibility that there was a passageway in a wall we did not find.
Not wishing to leave any 'stone' unturned, we even tried placing the Droyne coynes in various parts ofthe building, hoping this might actuate a secret door, but it looks like this was a three floor stone building put up about 750 years ago, and built well. Lighting a fire and clearing the roof area showed that the fireplace still worked great as well. We did comment on the dubious choice of a relatively flat roof in mountains, but beyond that it was well and very well done.
On day two of the investigation we found that as well as the building itself, there was a parking/landing area nearly half a soccer field size around it. This was actually a good thing to confirm, since we had been wondering why a building would be put out as a resting place for spacers and be so difficult to reach. We figured that at one time there were beacons and prominent visual indicators to make it easy to locate.
So, K'Kirka was in the history books for our search, and after getting cargo loaded we set off for the last interim stop on the convoy's flight plan, the planet Rech. They had a stop planned for Djinni, but that system is currently under interdiction and we will not be able to visit it, so for our peace of mind we are figuring the crash was NOT there.
One last raft scan of the area, to make as sure as we can that either eyes or the computer analysis will recognize the next octagon we encounter, and a look from the Skylark as well on the known site, and on 096-1103 we jumped out to Rech.
During K'Kirka system departure, we saw a pretty spectacular comet passing through.
Libary Data:
Rech (Imperial)Starport: Class D.Diameter: 8,690 miles (13,983 km).
Atmosphere: Dense oxygen-nitrogen, with dangerously high oxygen partial pressure.
Surface Water: 52%. Population: 51,000,000.
Government: Charismatic dictatorship.
Tech Level 6:
Law: A - Extreme
Arriving in system on 103-1103, we set down on the agricultural world. Rech is known for its smoked meats and fine leathers. There was a Vargr ship was in port to load up a cargo of meat. Without a good computer network we would have to stay two entire weeks for selling and buying cargo, so there was plenty of time for search and exploration.
Sam tried to engage the Vargr traders in conversation, but short of learning that there is an octagon building some 40 parsecs away, deep in Vargr territory, they were pretty standoffish.
Rech,
unlike many of the places we have visited, required a local license
(also a test) before Kipenzi could fly the air/raft, so she got that
accomplished quickly. While Kipenzi and Medicus flew around in a search,
Fig and Leon walked around town to the college, bookstores, any
antiquarian places that (unlikely but we always look) may have been
around, and found themselves in the wrong part of town at the wrong
time. Four 'urban gentlemen' invited us to make a small donation to the
charity of their choice (themselves) but quickly learned that they had
literally brought knives to a gunfight, as Leon pulled out a service
pistol and suggested they seek donations elsewhere. Fig was willing to
risk carrying a body pistol on this high law world, but only two words
can cover Leon's willingness to have a real shooter: BIG BRASS.
After that encounter, and a retreat to the ship to let any legal dust settle (unlikely but we did have two weeks...) Fig and Leon went back out and on the second day of their walkabout came across an old bookstore. Old bookstores were right after historical societies on our list of things we want to find and check out, and this one proved that our prioritieswere not misplaced. On one shelf was a dusty old volume titled 'The Octagon Book'.
Eyes alight, we purchased it (Sam would just shake his head as we paid the asking price).
The Octagon Book
In 872 a history of the Octagon Society was published by Lent Publishers of Wochiers.
In 326, early on in the colonization of the Spinward Marches, many (if not most) of the worlds in the sector stood at low tech levels, and travel between the few high technology (and well-settled) worlds was a dangerous undertaking.
One traveller, Foren Caliphren Doon, an employee of Halloran Surveys and engaged in a preliminary reconnaissance of several worlds for the company, met with trouble. The free trader on which he took passage developed engine trouble in the Frisini system (it became Beck's World/Regina later, during the Civil War); he was marooned for nearly ten years.
With rescue, Doon was a changed man, obsessed with a new-found purpose: to stop such a fate from happening to anyone else. His tool was almost a church, but with a purpose very clear at the practical level. The group's continuing activities centered on fund-raising and on building shelters for spacefarers on all possible worlds.
The Octagon Society, headquartered at Regina, and with major branches at Feri, Wochiers, and Alell, actively solicited funds for the construction of shelters throughout the Marches. Video programs of progressively higher quality struck a responsive chord in the audiences on high-population worlds, and cash flow synergized with a competent organization to make the various octagon projects viable. Regina subsector was furnished with shelters on all worlds in the course of forty years (338 to 378). Most notable is the current Travellers' Aid Society hostel on Regina - a large, now only vaguely octagonal building obscured by additions and renovations. Less populated frontier worlds received stone, concrete, or metal octagonal shaped buildings which served as shelters for marooned or distressed travellers, and were furnished with radios, survival equipment, and food.
In 410, the group expanded its efforts to adjacent subsectors and even sent construction teams into Vargr territory. The entire movement fell apart in the late 400s when scandal surfaced. Embezzlement had diverted much of the funds pouring into the society's coffers, and substandard shelters were being produced.
Shelter Locations: As an appendix to the book, a complete list of-all octagon shelters constructed or planned is included. Locations on worlds are not given, but it does indicate that there was at least one octagon constructed on each world in the Regina, Lanth, Rhylanor and Ararnis subsectors.
No shelter was produced, however, in the Macene Belt, on Dinom, or on Roup. The shelters on Regina, Dinomn, Jenghe, Rhylanor, Jae Tellona, Celepina, Risek, and Inthe were staffed and operated as hotels and actually turned a profit.
Among things we learned from this book over the next days, perhaps the most important is that
"There was at least one octagon constructed on each world in the Regina, Rhylanor, Lanth and Aramis subsectors."
At least one... oh my aching back.
So, any planet we go to should have one or the remains of one. While Kipenzi and Medicus continued to scan the world (could always be two) we had learned that one octagon society building outside the spaceport in the downtown area had been demolished many years ago.
As of this writing, we were planning to jump back to Regina for more research, some training, and perhaps a junket to Vilis to pay off the Skylark.
Continued in: Twilight's Peak, Part 3.
See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Skylark 2, Campaign Starts, The 2nd Adventure, The Chamax Plague, Horde, Shadows, Research Station Gamma.
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