%% date:: [[2024-09-01]] %% # [[017_20240901 Tarrin the Ant Rider]] ![[017_20240901.svg]] ## Session Summary > [!tldr] [[017_20240901 Tarrin the Ant Rider]] > Tarrin talked to Lim Dae, the ringleader of the boys, and he told her of another entrance to the tunnels near the Oak that they haven't gone into. He said there are hatches there that are very heavy and old, but she could probably open them. > > We went toward the Conveyor Belt to attend the protest. There was a commotion in the sky as several hang gliders zipped between the Oak and Spruce, dropping something as they went. Upon closer examination, we found out that the objects being dropped were bits of metal, meant to attract giant ants! Tarrin came face to face with one, a darker and Bleed-filled one than we had seen before, and she found her inner cowgirl and rode the Ant down to the tunnels. There she found out that the ants were in the middle of some dark ritual. She shot her gun to disrupt them, and then burnt some of the mushrooms she found there (that seemed to smell wrong) to smoke out the ants. > > Eric realised that there is a pentagram hidden in the architecture of South Soffit, and where the ritual was taking place was right at its heart. Someone knew they could use the leylines of magick beneath South Soffit... We went to The Margin Pub to try to find out what we'd missed, and were told by Kailey Zhang, the proprietor, that there was a big bit of news we had missed... Madam Fidovich has been murdered. ^summary %% ## Video [Video](https://youtu.be/0dyTtLVc1to) 00:00:00 Can we all hear each other? 00:08:21 Andrew does a recap 00:12:00 Start of game - Tarrin talks to Lim Dae 00:30:41 Andrew is too excited about splitting the party 00:31:35 Complicated relationship 00:33:54 To the conveyor with a fine monocle! 00:41:38 The protest begins 01:04:07 Tarrin vs. Dark Giant Ant 01:08:11 Tarrin rides the ant! 01:28:04 Tarrin goes down the tunnel 01:34:17 Break, and talking about Daggerheart 02:04:57 Andrew forgets something super important 02:07:05 Back to the game - Dark Giant Ant Ritual 02:24:15 Are their vehicles here? Poking Andrew 02:26:33 Eric is an Occult Researcher 02:33:49 The cops arrive 02:44:51 The big news - everyone goes :O 02:48:40 Talking about the Daggerheart playtest %% --- ## Recap ![[ttrpgs/The Great Dark/016_20240825 Megafungi#^summary]] --- ## Log Tarrin talks to [[Lim Dae]] but she tells [[Clara Bellecourt]] a white lie. - She asks if he knows a way to get through the ant nest in the tunnels. Is there a way to get into the tunnels near the Oak? - He says there are no tunnels near Oak. They avoid the Oak because if something hapens to Oak, [[The Eaves]] come falling down on them. - BUT there is another way that they just haven't gone into because it was barred with something heavy. There are hatches that the boys couldn't open. - The Pineward area is the least occupied. Mapleward and Birchward to the south are closer to the Belt. Hollyward and Spruceward are closer to the clestories so have more light. The hatches are in Pineward. - He thinks Tarrin could just rip it open with her bare hands. He asks Tarrin to tell him what's down there if she finds anything and she agrees. He suggests a code. He creates a substitution cypher that is very simple, but he's very proud of it. We go to the conveyor belt. We get to the place where the belt and the conveyor meet-- but it's not really a belt; it's a travellator. There are people walking and buses as well. It's full because it's rush hour. Stairs have been made on the Oak to get to the conveyor, which is about 30 feet up. The Conveyor is basically a big box, an elevator. There's a track that keeps it attached all the way up the Oak. There's machinery at the bottom and at the top to lift it up and down. There are big giant cables. When it goes down, it's full. People are offloaded swiftly and efficiently, then picked up by buses. Then it goes up again. It's still slow and doesn't fit very many people even though it's the main way to get to and from The Eaves. The cops are there and are starting to get a little suspicious because a crowd is gathering. Then all the attention is drawn to a commotion above. We're seeing it in the sky! Someone's using hang gliders to fly around between Oak and Spruce. More than one person is doing it. This is really unusual because they look like birds, but large ones-- there are birds in South Soffit, but not many. There isn't much space between the pillars. Then we see the explosions. They're basically fireworks. Ash has been in the war and tries to get us down, but it's just fireworks. Tarrin sees that the thing that's floating down from the air isn't just fireworks, though. There's something else in there. They're being dropped from the hang gliders. They're not falling quickly-- they're more drifting down. Tarrin also sees that there's more Bleed at the bottom of the Oak. Eric treats some injuries in the crowd and hears that people think The Wasps are getting more out of control and that they should get arrested. They've never had fireworks and hang gliders before. There are some people who do seem to know about [[Callvo Nast]]. Tarrin's bleed detector spikes and there's a giant ant that's heading towards us... one that looks different from other ants we've seen before. It looks more ragged. It looks darker, ragged, and more pitted (not healthy). Its hide is not as smooth as the others'. Tarrin jumps onto the back of a giant ant and is almost immediately gone! I see that the ants are retrieving the metal that has been dropped from the sky and then moving towards something. They seem to be congregating towards the base of the Oak in a clockwise direction. They're heading Spruceward. Tarrin goes down into the tunnels. She sees that they are putting metal down all together in one area, and there are also some mushrooms there but they smell a bit off. The ants arranged around some sort of offering and are siting there chittering. Their antennas are twitching. It's almost like some sort of summoning ritual. It's similar to what happened at [[Everhollow Lighthouse]], but even stronger. Tarrin fires a shot on the ceiling to disrupt the ritual. She's basically blown out the eardrums of the ant that she's on. It rears up and Tarrin is thrown off her ant. She takes 1 Body and 1 more Bleed. The name of her ant is Al. There's a weird liquid on the mushrooms. There's a lot of bleed on them when Tarrin checks. There are about 10 ants. Tarrin sets fire to the mushrooms and smokes out the ants. She joins up with the rest of us and Eric uses his *Occult researcher* trait. Eric realises that the magickal field Tarrin was sensing was building was the result of ley lines from Oak to each of the periphery pillars. It's a giant pentagram! And it's inscribed in the very architecture of [[South Soffit]]. Doing a ritual there means tapping into a great potential of power. Someone knew that and someone was trained to identify and exploit that. The [[Periphery's Office of Unexplained Phenomena]] arrive and cordon the place off. We want to get back to the dome area where Tarrin was so that we can get some mushroom goo, but it's all smoky and we'll have to wait till tomorrow to do that. Signs of the protest: `Justice for South Soffit.` We go to [[The Margin Pub]]. We come across the proprietor who knows a lot. [[Kailey Zhang]] is shocked about the giant ants, but has news herself: [[Madam Lia Fidovich]] has been murdered. %% # Excalidraw Data ## Text Elements ## Embedded Files c1c1878114ce1276ff95e9d16a6974455fff4062: [[cosm-cliffhanger-2024-09-01.png]] ## Drawing ```json { "type": "excalidraw", "version": 2, "source": "https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/releases/tag/2.3.0", "elements": [ { "id": "MmnVPLio52phZJpxp7lL6", "type": "image", "x": -456.0026036372415, "y": -280.5813980102539, "width": 938.5873605947955, "height": 526, "angle": 0, "strokeColor": "transparent", "backgroundColor": "transparent", "fillStyle": "solid", "strokeWidth": 2, "strokeStyle": "solid", "roughness": 1, "opacity": 100, "groupIds": [], "frameId": null, "index": "a0", "roundness": null, "seed": 235140891, "version": 5, "versionNonce": 208435253, "isDeleted": false, "boundElements": null, "updated": 1725299197995, "link": null, "locked": false, "status": "pending", "fileId": "c1c1878114ce1276ff95e9d16a6974455fff4062", "scale": [ 1, 1 ] } ], "appState": { "theme": "dark", "viewBackgroundColor": "#ffffff", "currentItemStrokeColor": "#1e1e1e", "currentItemBackgroundColor": "transparent", "currentItemFillStyle": "solid", "currentItemStrokeWidth": 2, "currentItemStrokeStyle": "solid", "currentItemRoughness": 1, "currentItemOpacity": 100, "currentItemFontFamily": 5, "currentItemFontSize": 20, "currentItemTextAlign": "left", "currentItemStartArrowhead": null, "currentItemEndArrowhead": "arrow", "scrollX": 265.67706298828125, "scrollY": 526.5234375, "zoom": { "value": 1 }, "currentItemRoundness": "round", "gridSize": null, "gridColor": { "Bold": "#C9C9C9", "Regular": "#EDEDED" }, "currentStrokeOptions": null, "previousGridSize": null, "frameRendering": { "enabled": true, "clip": true, "name": true, "outline": true }, "objectsSnapModeEnabled": false }, "files": {} } ``` %%