#34 Crypt Keeping

Hail brave readers. Continuing cirion's Antumbra Saga campaign as 1nv4d3r, a fool-punching ork shadowrunner (FPOS for short).

Previously, on Before the Shadow:

We started the campaign with our FPOS saving the people and holdings of Antumbra, a Seattle nightclub run by music artist and producer Kali on behalf of megacorp Mitsuhama. Mitsuhama then hired the FPOS to investigate the Aztechnology corporation in San Francisco. While we were there, an thief-assassin killed an Aztech executive and stole the data we wanted.

Our search led us to the devotees of Norton IX, the (disputed) absolute ruler of California, who was hiding out in a graveyard in Colma. Norton became our ally and we uncovered the thief-assassin - a troll extremist named Shavarus, who teamed up with the elves of Tir Tairngire to strike back against the city's oppressive ruler, Saito. We stopped him but spared his life so that he could reverse his original plan to destroy the city's water supply.

This module started with our FPOS on the run from unwanted publicity. Kali recruited him to gather allies and supplies and protect Northern California from an impending invasion by Tir Tairngire and their megacorp allies.

After recruiting a dour elf with dreadlocks named Elorn and stopping an invasion of our base, we took Elorn and Norton to Colma in hopes of recruiting Norton's army. A mystery woman we found during Elorn's recruitment gave us some vague portents before we entered the graveyard. Inside, we found members of the Army held hostage by z̶o̶m̶b̶i̶e̶s̶ ghouls.

We had to dispatch ghouls and Tir elves to free them before being told by mysterious lady that the children of the soldiers were being imprisoned in the crypts. After removing some pesky fire elementals that had 'defiled' the graveyard, a creepy child ghost opened the crypts for us and we found our way underground.

Unrelated to any of that, I also learned that if you ALT-F4 out of Dragonfall, Steam can't tell that you stopped playing until you manually hit 'STOP' on the launcher. Whoops.

Thanks for the comforting thoughts, game.

We're greeted by braziers, torches, a bunch of creepy statues -- and a corpse. Also, this place is super-dark and so some of my screenshots have been tweaked for better visibility.

We also get this musical track to go with it:

In the Dragonfall campaign, this track was used for a Humanis stronghold, but I think it fits better here.

One dimly lit passageway follows the dimly lit room, before -

This room looks pretty sus honestly.

The dead body up northwest doesn't help. We begin to head that way when -

Safe? Are you insane?

That was pretty blunt. Right back atcha.

Frankly, humans are worse. Look at Saito. Or Claude. Tir is more of an anomaly. Hell, Kali likely wouldn't have gotten the investment she did if she weren't human - the Japanocorps aren't all in line with the Empire but Japan itself is famously racist in this 'verse.

Like ours? Have you seen our base? We have an elf as our general, a troll keeping stock of our supplies and an ork sitting on top of our big magic stock.

I've mostly avoided criticism of this campaign but I suppose this sticks out to me because I never really dragged Elorn around on missions before. I think I'm seeing this dialogue for the first time, or at least the first time in a long time. It might work better if the PC was human - the main character, Kali and Norton being the privileged and powerful human characters in the story, but being a FPOS undermines Elorn's attitude here.

That came out wrong.

We'll remember that

Right.

We open the door.

The body is huge, bigger than our protagonist. A troll. Form-fitting body armour stands out prominently. A roach orbits it. To our right is an obelisk accompanied by a circle of dancing lights.

The next room presents us with three tables and a locked door. Each table bears a snuffable candle - green, red and purple. Blood stain on the floor. More roaches.

Oh. A puzzle. We immediately backtrack to the central room and take the left path instead -

But before we can get there, two of the stone gargoyles come to life!

Gargoyles were introduced in Dragonfall. They hit fairly hard but more importantly, when they die they explode in a cloud of poison. You can attack them in melee, but you don't want to finish them off in melee.

Instead of killing that fool, we stun him instead.

His partner goes down in a sizable cloud of green. Hasted Elorn is OP. We have more than enough action points left to finish the job. With the supernatural menaces gone, we continue through the southwest door.

Suddenly, we're surrounded!

We retreat out of the corridor, Elorn pulling out his shotgun this time to dust the gargoyles -

Nothin' but smoke.

There were five ghouls in that room but lucky for us, they take damage from that green gunk too. Roundhouse kicks and shotgun blasts down three in the second round, but even with added armour from the Emperor's magic, our FPOS gets infected with - well, something.

Even so, we kick our way to victory.

More dancing lights in the next room, a usable statue and a stone door. The green gas in the room is intentional - but the gargoyle gunk in the corridor seems to be glitched.

We press it. There's a strange mechanical groan, and the statue is bathed in purple light.

We backtrack to the candle room, the corpse in the corridor also bathed in purple light now, and try to snuff a candle.

But we're prevented. I think I know what's going on here. Returning to the centre room, we confront the third door to the east.

We are led to the biggest room we've seen so far in this crypt, which is also mostly empty.

We press the new statue, which gives us the same mechanical howl - and emits a yellow-green light.

- and then the statue next door -

We retrace our steps - and get ambushed again!

This is getting tiresome now. Only four ghouls this time, and we have better positioning. Elorn still ends up on the worse side of a ghoul claw though.

Some back and forth confirms that the east statue was yellow, not green, and the west statue blue, not purple. We also learn that we can turn statues off.

Without the light, she seems strangely bashful

So to recap:

• the table room had a red candle, a green candle and a purple candle.

• the statues are blue (west), yellow (east) and red (north-east).

After some backtracking, only the red statue is lit. The troll corridor bears a red light as well.

New meaning of the word 'corpse light'

Jackpot. Love it when a plan comes together.

We turn the blue light on next, snuff the purple candle, then run back east to turn the red light on and the yellow light off.

Farewell, nameless troll. You were our beacon. Literally.

We open the door. The room beyond is better lit but the decor - blood splatter, piles of bones - leaves a lot to be desired.

I feel like I'm going to regret asking, but I ask anyway.

You first, pal.

Turns out he wasn't kidding about the death part. We're critted for 41 damage, immediately followed by 13 more to keep us from magically healing it all in one go.

Norton uses an advanced medkit and all his action points to stabilise our FPOS, before the ork runs out and socks Tophet in his fiery jaw.

Or misses. Despite having a 92% chance to hit. That works too.

It's an intense battle. We're trying to stop Tophet before his duplicate gets through the door, he gets two attacks per round, and even at close range Elorn only has 60% hit chance. Despite taking out close to a hundred points, his health is only at the halfway point.

That said, never tell me the odds.

First questions first. Why?

Ah yes. Revenge.

That - sounds ominous. Of course, we saw this guy's face already, talking to our Native Californian friends, but considering that Tophet barely respects anyone this kind of reverence isn't good news.

We dismiss him. It's over.

He dissipates into flame.

An old friend runs out to meet us and the music becomes more chill (not that I can find that track.)

Almost makes me wish I'd brought Hailey.

These two are like Professor X and Magneto, only Orion hasn't become a supervillain yet.

Most important question though -

Good, good. More followers for our personality cult.

In other words, we really dodged a bullet by not siding with him - and Orion's been making the army more tactically sound (and maybe ideologically sound too). Good to know.

And now we're down to the last question. More soldiers or more supplies?

We cast a vote for consistency.

I love how he just goes on about 'the forces of humanity' right in front of Norton.

Orion gets the last word here, which is no surprise considering how much talking he does.

This was it. The final mission. After this comes the final battle.

We retrace our steps through the now-empty crypt -

-and out we go.