# [[Quadruped Construct]] ![[Quadruped Construct.svg]] A four-legged, black-powder siege construct found in [[The Gauntlight]] in [[127_20260830 Good Graces]], firing on [[Echbos]] and his [[Dreshkans]]. [[Jaspen Bond Callistair|Bond]] immediately flagged it as *new* work — a departure from the soul-gem constructs the party has seen so far, and a design he wants destroyed on principle because it runs on black powder. ## Appearance and Design - Quadruped chassis with two smoking cannons and a mortar - Sprouts additional climbing legs after firing - Fires shells that unpack into independent **Riflers** — minion-tier gunners that can climb walls and fire on their own - Physical damage resistance 10; roughly 300 HP; initiative 23 ## Riflers The shells it fires are its army. Riflers are minions (a single point of damage removes one), carry roughly 100 HP on the tracker, and act on their own initiative, climbing walls to get firing angles. Destroyed Riflers release [[Data Crystal|data crystals]] that detach and route themselves back toward [[Volluk Azrinae]] — the clearest evidence yet of who is watching, or who built it. ## Capabilities Observed (Sessions 127–128) - **Area attacks** — repeated blasts that catch everything in the room, Dreshkans included, forcing Fortitude saves and pushing targets 5–20 feet away - **Mortar spawn** — fires shells that become new Riflers mid-fight - **Resistance 10** to physical damage, which blunted [[Grumblebum|Grumble]]'s reactive strikes to 5–6 damage a hit - **Indiscriminate** — it does not distinguish between the party, the devils, or the Dreshkans ## Session 128 — The Three-Way Fight Grumble got the Quadruped **Grappled**, and Bond landed persistent cold damage through its resistance. Its second area attack of the round bloodied Bond for 31 before [[Vayle]] healed him. The fight became a three-way when [[Calamity's Ruin]] entered and [[Dread]] assigned the devils to his own crew and the constructs to the party. ## Session 129: It Repairs Itself The construct stopped being a room hazard and became a duel. [[Jaspen Bond Callistair|Bond]] broke off from the party to hunt it alone and lost the exchange badly, never landing a shot while it hit him three times from outside his reach. - **Out-ranges the party**: it fires a 10-foot burst at up to **120 feet**, and Bond was hit at 90 feet with no way to answer - **Self-repair**: after retreating out of line of sight it **repaired some of its own damage**, the first time the party has seen that - **Deploys artillery minions on demand**: dropped a fresh Rifler directly beside Bond mid-fight - **Readies actions**: it spent the last round readying something out of sight, firing the instant Bond opened a door - Bond countered it by **closing both north doors** to break line of sight, which worked, and paid for it by having to drop his gun to free a hand - Its attack does not distinguish allies: one burst caught Bond, [[Grumblebum|Grumble]], and [[Vayle]] together for 13 fire and 7 bludgeoning ## Session 130: It Has a Name Two things changed this session, and both of them matter. First, Bond stopped shooting and **Investigated** instead, and identified the construct as a **rupture cascade**. With the name came a method: he worked out how to temporarily undermine its defenses so that it can be damaged while bypassing its resistances. After three sessions of resistance 10 blunting everything the party lands, that is the first real handle anyone has on it. Second, it pulled Volluk's door open at the end of the session and showed him the state of his own project, along with the allies who had put it in that state. Volluk looked **horrified** and shut the door hurriedly, not at the construct but at how quickly the party broke from their new alliance and wrecked his work. The construct still looks like his, and he has now seen exactly who has been dismantling it. Combat notes: - Took a **48-damage reactive strike** from Grumble as it tried to move past him (resistance applied afterward), which bloodied it again despite the self-repair - Answered with a **10-foot mortar burst at DC 23 Reflex** - Kept out-ranging Bond, hitting him for 14 fire and 11 bludgeoning, and **deployed another Rifler** beside him - Lost two more Riflers, to Grumble and to [[Ashnefrotty|Ash]] and [[Zuhri]] - Its fire burst out of the north door was dodged outright by Zuhri ## Open Threads - Who built it? The data crystals point at Volluk, and his Session 130 reaction (dismay at the damage, not at the machine) fits an owner, but Volluk claimed in Session 126 to be stalled and isolated - Volluk has now seen the party wrecking it. Does he still consider the alliance intact? - Is this related to [[Jafaki]]'s forces, or a third party entirely? - Bond holds one intact data crystal - If it repairs itself, can the party actually win a war of attrition against it? - It has been moving deliberately toward the [[Metallic Crabs]], which is why Bond chased it in the first place. Why does it want them? ## Related - [[Data Crystal]] - [[Soldier Construct]] - [[Volluk Azrinae]] - [[Echbos]] - [[Metallic Crabs]] - [[127_20260830 Good Graces]] - [[128_20260906 Good Graces Spent]] - [[129_20260912 Leave This One to Me]] %% # Excalidraw Data ## Text Elements ## Drawing ```json { "type": "excalidraw", "version": 2, "source": "https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/releases/tag/2.1.4", "elements": [], "appState": { "theme": "dark", "viewBackgroundColor": "#ffffff", "currentItemStrokeColor": "#1e1e1e", "currentItemBackgroundColor": "transparent", "currentItemFillStyle": "solid", "currentItemStrokeWidth": 2, "currentItemStrokeStyle": "solid", "currentItemRoughness": 1, "currentItemOpacity": 100, "currentItemFontFamily": 4, "currentItemFontSize": 20, "currentItemTextAlign": "left", "currentItemStartArrowhead": null, "currentItemEndArrowhead": "arrow", "scrollX": 583.2388916015625, "scrollY": 573.6323852539062, "zoom": { "value": 1 }, "currentItemRoundness": "round", "gridSize": null, "gridColor": { "Bold": "#C9C9C9FF", "Regular": "#EDEDEDFF" }, "currentStrokeOptions": null, "previousGridSize": null, "frameRendering": { "enabled": true, "clip": true, "name": true, "outline": true } }, "files": {} } ``` %%