Week 7 (Part 2): "It's the MACHINE, man!"

Next on the "most wanted" list was Xavier the Mage Engineer, wanted for the (most likely fraudulent) charge of transmuting lead into gold. Alac, on good word from the Mages Guild, had sworn to protect Xavier from the corrupt government official who had fabricated the ridiculous charges against Xavier. But first, they had to find the reclusive artificer.

Told that his tower was behind a smelting factory, the party arrived a dusty alleyway, with nothing but a pigeon roost occupying the derelict space. Upon closer inspection, Alac and Cysero found that the pigeons inside the roost were actually clockwork constructs designed to carry coded messages. Cysero, after evoking his magical armor and assuming to form of a rat, decided to explore a bit. Climbing down a pneumatic tube, the curious rodent found Xavier's hidden workshop, but only succeeded in setting off an alarm!

Rolith, unintentionally helping, tripped over a trap door in the ally. Alac, after some amount of effort, used her Knock ritual to open the hatch, leading downward deep underground. It seemed the tower itself was inverted; the perfect hiding spot!

After trudging down a metal spiral staircase, the stone walls of the tower gave way to metallic plating and clockwork mechanisms. The party approached a great furnace, and Artix unsealed the hatch, leading the party inside. The alarm that Cysero had set off earlier preceded them, and huge bellows of flame rhythmically pulsed from slats in the walls.

A small camera construct floated down from the ceiling and projected an image of Xavier to "greet" them. The mage engineer, clearly out of his rational mind, seemed convinced that they were there to kill him and "steal his inventions" to aid some sort of conspiracy that he referred to as "the machine." Dumoose and Alac could hardly get a word in edge-wise before the little construct zipped off, summoning 4 Warforged Furnace Workers and a Warforged Captain to confront the party.

Deftly dodging the furnace flames, Artix charged forward, only to critically fail on his attack, getting shoulder-checked by the Warforged Captain. The captain, in return, commanded the Workers to surround and attack the hapless Artix. It was clear to the party that, so long as the captain was alive, the Warforged constructs had a strategic advantage and would surround the most threatening group member, taking them all out one by one. Rolith tried to retreat, his confidence shattered by the organized mob of metal golems.

The rest of the group, acting swiftly, was able to focus fire the captain just as he began to repair himself. The Workers, now leaderless, lost their resolve and were taken out with little effort. However, the group got careless toward the end of the fight; Dumoose critically failed and sent an arrow right into the back of Rolith's head! On the very next turn, Alac ALSO critically failed and sent her SECOND magic missile of the season into Rolith. Perhaps it was karma for his cowardice... either way, Rolith took more damage from his allies than he ever did from the Warforged!

The next floor down, the party entered a giant electric generator, buzzing both literally with arches of electric energy, and metaphorically with dozens of tiny, flying welding bots, constantly toiling away at a huge construct at the far end of the room.

Rolith spied a protective suit of welding armor in the room and elected to try it on; this action alerted the construct and, upon seeing that the man in the suit wasn't its master, prompted it to attack! The gargantuan steamtank first activated a defensive perimeter... the room was slowly being encased in a crackling cage of lightning! The party would have to act fast and devise a way to strip the steamtank of its impressive armor if they were to have any hope of surviving.

Dumoose, with a keen eye and deadly bow, was undaunted by the golem's protective plating, sending several devastating blows toward the steamtank over several turns, all the while dodging the retaliating cannonball blasts. Rolith, protected with heavy welding armor, and Alac, naturally gifted with fire spells, hammered away a the steam-powered goliath using heat, which caused an overload in the steamtank's system. Its protective armor began to glow white-hot, and was ejected, revealing his vulnerable clockwork interior. Ai No Miko sent a nova of holy light into the metal guts of the beast, prompting it to activate emergency defenses. Meanwhile, the lightning cage was still closing in, tighter and tighter, surrounding our heroes. Now was the time to strike!

With time running out, the party brought the steamtank to its knees with uncanny resolve. Not to be denied victory, the construct viciously punched Artix, sending him headlong into the lightning wall! Ai No Miko, Alac, and Cysero were also engulfed by the encroaching field of crackling energy! Our heroes just barely edged out a victory; as the steamtank shortcircuited and slumped into disrepair, it sent forth a blast of electromagnetic energy, dispelling the cage of lightning and assuring the survival of the party.

The party finally confronted the Mage Engineer, still lost in his delusional paranoia. Our heroes managed to calm the conspiracy theorist enough for his mad ramblings about "the machine" to begin to make sense. "Sense" being a relative
term, of course.

After witnessing via his camera construct the so-called "impressive caution" that Rolith displayed in the first fight against the Warforged, and the skill in which he utilized the welding armor in the battle against the steamtank, Xavier trusted the cowardly warrior more than any of the other party members. He entrusted Rolith with a plated blunderbuss of his own design, and a vital piece of evidence that the party needs to rout the corrupt captain of the Chivilian Guard.

So, with one more bounty more or less "checked off their list," and with one more piece of a mounting pile of evidence against corruption in the city guard, the party presses ever onward, determined to satisfy their country, their honor, and their pocketbook!