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re it ended and its neighbours begin its entrance advertised the company as a maker of fine automata and displayed several samples in a glass window these included an automaton flamingo that delicately stalked back and forth across the display an automaton ballerina who occasionally demonstrated its dancing with a twirl and a hulking clockwork ettin its two heads swivelling from side to side appraising passersby inside the party were met by a ten foot tall automaton of gleaming brass armed with a massive halberd it looks a bit like an oversized gnome welcome visitors the automaton s voicebox croaked please state your business here about the robot fighting yam said and the robot ushered them inside a large workshop where thousands of automaton components were scattered madly from coils and springs and gears to chassis parts and painted faces two gnomes are tinkering they looked remarkably like one another though one looks male and the other female ah hi yam the female gnome said hello everyone i m wanda cogswright and i m edgar cogswright owners of cogswright associates the male said wiping a gloved hand on his apron good to see you yam dissertation coming well yam made a non committal noise thank you for coming on such short notice wanda said can we offer you any refreshments tea perhaps eustace gladly accepted and a scuttling teapot automaton poured them tea you fix the scalding issue yam asked eyeing the automaton ah we re working on it wanda said you re adventurers in hex so i take it at least some of you have been down in the old city edgar said moving on to more pertinent matters most of the upper tunnels have been thoroughly looted already and it can be very difficult to reach some of the lower chambers the librarians put all sorts of traps and protections round the entrances so we thought why not circumvent those protections wanda put in we gnomes have been making tunnels for centuries we re really really good at it we don t need to jump through the librarians hoops we can just tunnel into the lower levels even the most conservative estimates suggest we ve barely scratched the surface of the old city edgar went on there are miles of tunnels down there almost all of it totally unexplored the city up here big as it seems is tiny compared to what lies below so we did what gnomes do wanda said we built automata automaton drills to punch through layers of earth and stone and demolitions automata to blast or cut through what can t be drilled automaton protectors to guard our expeditions against the unpleasant things that lurk in the depths of the old city we drilled and delved and drilled and delved and mostly we just found earth and boring empty chambers edgar continued but then we struck proverbial paydirt a sector of the old city hitherto unexplored deep deep below hex full of everything we d hoped books and artefacts and strange machines all of the wonders of the first library our plan had worked unfortunately there s been something of a snag wanda explained we don t know how it happened but something down there started messing with out automata at first just minor malfunctions bots that wouldn t take orders properly or that started doing things on their own but then then things got ugly edgar interjected really ugly the automata turned on us started attacking we lost some of our expedition more are still down there possibly trapped or on the run from our constructs we ve spent a lot of time and gold on this excavation wanda said and we want to know what went wrong we want you to go down there and see if you can find out what made the automata go haywire and if you can reverse it don t worry about damaging any constructs you encounter edgar said do whatever you need to we can always use mending to repair them and of course if you come across any of our expedition while you re down there do what you can to take them to safety if you can t figure out what s causing the automata to behave like this there s sort of a plan b wanda added well more like a plan z really we ve really worked our way through a lot of plans recently if there doesn t seem to be any way to reverse the process we want you to blow the tunnel seal everything back up eventually the automata will wind down on their own and we can go back in and see if we can make sense of what happened but if the tunnel remains open the constructs might come back up and we definitely don t want that in either case your reward is simple edgar said anything you find down there is yours if you manage to deactivate the automata or undo whatever has happened to them we ll throw in a bonus of five hundred guineas each sound fair wanda asks the party agreed and were duly equipped with a quantity of explosives before being escorted down a flight of stairs and into a series of tunnels below the workshop where a cable car awaited them to lead them deeper underground two metal cables snaked along the ceiling in the tunnel which descended deep into the earth hooked to the cables was a rickety looking rusted cable car equipped with a sputtering light either magical or electric complex gear driven mechanisms were connected to the cables so that the car can be propelled along them a lever was set within arm s reach of the car armand with a flick of the wrist cast a light spell to arrest the flickering light and the group piled in yam yanking the lever with a lurch the cable car began to move swaying vertiginously at first it moved slowly as it approached the shaft plunging down into darkness but then it began to gather speed before finally hurtling into the chthonic gloom at breakneck speed the flickering light briefly illuminating the rock walls as the car whizzed downwards spiraling deeper and deeper occasionally dropping almost vertically occasional side tunnels and branching passages could be briefly glimpsed during the descent before the car leveled off suspended now above a vast dark cavern below stalagmites and the broken stubs of ancient monoliths rose from below barely visible in the darkness the car careened back into a tunnel winding ever downwards before emerging again into an echoing cave this one filled with phosphorescent fungi the party caught a glimpse of a subterranean stream flowing through the inky blackness and then the car was swallowed once more by a narrow tunnel bored into the rock at last the cable car came to a half at the end of the long meandering tunnel within a natural cavern studded here and there with lumps of glimmering crystal another tunnel bored by the same great drill that fashioned the shaft leading up to the surface stretched ahead beyond a short tunnel lay another natural cavern this one with walls not of rock but of softly glowing crystal changing in colour from pale mauve to cerulean blue to bright crimson to gleaming white two passages both obviously artificial led deeper into the caves sister carefully removed some of the crystals here before the party pressed onward coming now to a sluggish river of lava quite broad with occasional lumps of un melted rock floated on its glowing orange surface sister tested one of the crystals here throwing it at the lava and producing a blinding flash of light that left her eyes stinging armand ignoring this quickly cast several rays of frost to harden the lava for a few moments allowing the party to quickly cross the river before the rock bridge melted once more next the party came to a branch in the path and decided to head to the left following the sound of a whirring machine which became deafening as the party approached their source at the end of a winding tunnel a huge clockwork machine rammed itself repeatedly into a wall of rock slowly boring its way further with the massive drill on its front a mass of churning gears and metal plates the enormous automaton had six leg like appendages the better to navigate difficult terrain and resembles a gigantic clockwork beetle there was something disturbing in its aimlessness in between its assaults on the rock a mechanical voice occasionally spoke in the gnomish language must get out must escape yam distracted the automaton telling it to out is that way and leading it toward the lava river while the rest of the group got out of the way the berserk drill swiveled and barreled after yam their companions following as the automaton arrived at the lava river yam cast thunderwave pushing the robot into the river of molten rock yam s companions arrived armand and vespidae leaping on to the machine to try and wrest free its ticking analytical engine must get out of the asylum the machine shrieked madly as the drill sunk into the lava it screamed horribly its metal turning to white hot sludge and the pair managed to rip the clockwork brain free sprigley grabbing armand and pulling him back to solid ground as they did so sister felt a strange ripple in the air as if a spirit had passed through her upon examination the party determined that the mechanism had been tampered with somehow though there were no signs of physical force such as tool marks the party pressed on past the tunnel where the drill had been boring the smooth round tunnel broke through at last into a space beyond a chamber with walls of ancient stone black as midnight save for the glimmer of weird glyphs that here and there adorn its vast polyhedral columns an electric frisson passed through the body upon entering this primeval place where once dwelt beings of unthinkable knowledge and power first the party turned left protruding from the ceiling of the vaguely cylindrical chamber they entered was a huge complex machine of iridescent metal terminating in a node suspended directly above a large dais anyone standing on the dais would be directly beneath the node to one side of the dais was a console glimmering with the arcane glyphs of the librarians though yam was eager to experiment the party cautioned against it sister removed a mug from her pack and placed on the dais before activating the machine there was a loud series of unearthly sounds and a beam of light shot from the node to the mug the mug vanished without a trace no shards no smudge marks it was simply gone reasoning it was either a vaporizer or a teleporter the party pressed on making a note of the machine in case they needed to return to it later they followed the tunnel to the right to a heptagonal chamber with honeycomb like shelves in which were piled a number of scrolls seemingly trapped within was a roughly humanoid automaton eight feet in height its eyes were fashioned from rubies that flashed with red light the berserk automaton occasionally used these gemstone eyes to try and burn its way out of the room with a searing red beam detecting magic the party ascertained that some sort of illusion was keeping the automaton penned in and decided to leave it be for the time being yam s map of the first level continuing their exploration the party pressed on encountering a large cylindrical chamber with walls adorned with the glyphs of the librarians the floor which at first appeared to be solid stone became transparent upon entrance revealing a dark shaft below while the ceiling likewise became transparent and showed that the shaft also extended upwards deep down what looked like a light could be glimpsed possibly coming from an exit from the shaft puzzled they left the chamber only to become snared in a trap corridor which seemed to have two dead ends the moment they turned around they found the way they had come blocked and utterly impassible by closing their eyes they found themselves capable of defeating the trap the wall was only present when perceived next the came to a trapezoid hall some form of shrine dedicated to an almost indescribable idol of cyclopean size that loomed near the far wall fashioned of the same night black stone as the rest of this part of the old city the being had a complicated series of many jointed limbs dangling down from an enormous mass suggestive of a gigantic angular and thoroughly inhuman head but lacking any trace of eye sockets where eyes might be in a human head there was only smooth stone the thing s mouthparts were vaguely lamprey like or cephalopodan the overall impression was that some monstrous spider of octopus had crawled into an eyeless skull sister identified the deity as the eyeless watcher one of the unspeakable ones revered by the librarians and by some in hex renowned for its total omniscience and powers of foresight continuing their survey the party next came to a wall of shimmering energy blocking progress forwards there was a console to one side with a series of glowing glyph markings on it armand and yam managed to decipher these runes and after some experimentation they caused the wall to dissipate beyond were two rooms of note in the first a heptagonal chamber were seven opalescent pods emerging from the floor these pods could be opened and climbed into though this had no noticeable effect one also seemed dim and grey the second chamber rhomboid in shape looked to be an arsenal or vault with a number of unusual items these included some kind of band fitted for a tentacle but wearable as a bracer a round plate of glass is set in a glyph graven frame a prismatic stone an impressive looking weapon somewhat reminiscent of a blunderbuss or short rifle though fantastically complex and sophisticated a polyhedral puzzle box and a glyph graven wand of iridescent metal the party looted the chamber thoroughly yam took the lens peering through it he discovered he could see what looked like a gnome shouting and waving wildly the gnome only visible through the lens could not be heard or otherwise interacted with indeed he could even be walked through with ease yam urged the party to follow the supersensible gnome who led them back through the old city to the room with the huge machine the gnome gestured to the dais and yam climbed on handing the lens to sister and indicating that the party should activate the machine light shot from the beam and irradiated yam who found themself quite suddenly in a grey silvery version of the same room the ethereal plane the gnome however was suddenly audible yam also noticed a mug at their feet the same mug they d placed on the dais before oh thank the magistra the gnome exclaimed you must be here to get us out of this mess i m isaac yam yam responded it seemed the gnome one of the explorers who d delved into the old city had fled after the automata attacked shortly after they d used some explosives to enter a room on the second floor isaac explained that the mysterious cylindrical room with the transparent floor was a mentally controlled elevator he fled to this level pursued by the automaton with cutting eye beams and turned himself ethereal in order to evade it isaac was able to explain several other features of this part of the old city including the white pods which he described as pods of rebirth capable of returning the dead to life yam follow...
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