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[NJW2000]

I have a feeling we're gonna stick around here for a bit so I say we tell him we'll help when it comes to the next stage of the investigation.

+1

Also, did Willis ask for anything in the fire temple, or did he not have a chance to?

[Devastator]

Also, did Willis ask for anything in the fire temple, or did he not have a chance to?

"My fire spells can now inflict something called Burn."

[IronyOwl]

Ask about accommodations for meat-creatures in the city.

[Devastator]

I have a feeling we're gonna stick around here for a bit so I say we tell him we'll help when it comes to the next stage of the investigation.

Ask about accommodations for meat-creatures in the city.

"Alright.  I'll look you up if we need you."


There are accommodations for meat creatures here.  The furniture is amazing.  All super special baroque antique wooden furniture and brass fittings with the most garish wallpaper imaginable.  Mid-sized wall mounted mirrors.  Just amazing stuff.

The food is otherwise.  It's questionable.  Even Trence doesn't like it that much.  And you know if it isn't tasty for him, it isn't tasty for anyone.  Of course, if it was poisonous or hazardous, he would probably like it, so it's somewhat reassuring.

Anyway.. you don't have any particular directions until or unless the gumshoe returns.  What do you do next?

[NJW2000]

Check out the mine!

Robot antarctica probably isn't a very interesting place to trek through the wilderness.

[IronyOwl]

Check out the mine!

Robot antarctica probably isn't a very interesting place to trek through the wilderness.

+1!

[King Zultan]

Check out the mine!

Robot antarctica probably isn't a very interesting place to trek through the wilderness.

+1!

+1

[Devastator]

The mine is rather abruptly near the town.  There's the end of the building, and then there's about forty yards of open ground, and then there's the actual pitshaft itself.

Overall the pit covers about one square kilometer, and it's deep.  Looking across the way you can see straight down the other side, going straight down as far as you can see.  The whole area has a fence around it, about eight feet high and made of metal.  Not a truly secure fence, intended to keep out the likes of you, but a plain ordinary fence, enough so that you can't walk into the pit by accident.

There are several entrances through the fence.  From the edge you can see two small entrances and one large one.  All three have lifts of various kinds attached to them with chains and ropes going down into the depths, but the biggest one, the main one, has a pair of funiculars going down as well.  Huge, tilted ramps.

The big one is clearly the place to go.

When you get there, there are a few dozen robots clearly working in some kind of office.  A couple seem permanently fixed to the ground, and are speaking orders into small hand-held devices.  There are a couple humanoid ones pushing hand carts around.  There is a big flat one carrying what looks like tons of wrapped material, safely strapped down.  And there is something you haven't seen before.. a tiny one that flies with a spinning blade device on top of it.

You're approached by a humanoid robot.  This one looks quite clean, and is decorated in shiny red and gold metal.

"Welcome adventurers.  Would you like to visit the museum?"

[King Zultan]

A museum sounds like a fun thing to visit, it'll also probably have a map and give us an idea as to what to expect if we decide to go into the mine.

[NJW2000]

A museum sounds like a fun thing to visit, it'll also probably have a map and give us an idea as to what to expect if we decide to go into the mine.

+1

[Devastator]

Robots don't do museums right.  There are a series of vertical pillars with boring labels on them, just listing year dates, and a row of tiny holes below them.  Sockets, you're told they are.  The pillars themselves are some sort of neat metal thing, and they're, you know, fancy, but the main attraction isn't intended for non-robots.  Still, the rows upon rows of metallic pillars aren't the only thing going on here for the museum..

There is one wing dedicated to not-robots, and that contains some of the stuff, such as a sample of genuine heartmetal.  It's a shimmery substance, about half the size of your head, and pitted.  It's a bit concave and roughly the shape of some crude bowl.  The purple and reddish colours are very distinctive.. you'll have no problem recognizing heartmetal if you see it again.  This is unfortunately not one of those fun interactive museums, like the old pirate one.

..Maybe you should have sold the old pirate the written logs of the other pirate that you recovered.  Aargh!  Well, you can stop on the way back for that.

Here it's just glass cases with items behind them, and a few pictures of the early mine, when it was just a pit.  It seems like the first robots, spontaneous ones, you're told, were crude models that weren't the sophisticated ones today, just ones growing out of heartmetal shards that were lucky enough to hit ordinary metal.  After decades, they sometimes turn into crude robots.  There are some pictures around, and supposedly it's possible to actually find living robots, stuck underground, but there aren't any around now.  They make proper bodies for any robots found in that situation.

The mine here was originally a hill with a whole lot of shards on it, and robots had to bring metal here to make proper robots out of them.

There are a couple of diagrams of the current mines.  It doesn't go down forever, it just goes down about twenty-five levels, which.. you're not sure how far that is, perhaps five, six hundred feet?  Quite a ways.  Further in some places, for the main shaft, and off to the side randomly to hit shards that shattered off the main mass and got buried a good ways from the main chunks.

You can't tell how much is left, but the.. curator, lets go with that, says they're through perhaps about three-quarters of the main mass, with most of the difficulty being carefully extracting small chunks and polishing them properly into modern heartmetal.. well, hearts.  Big pieces aren't friendly or safe to extract, and the one on display is only on display because it's too impure to be used, being mostly rock inside a heartmetal shell.

As for things for an adventurer to do.. well, you can go down, but there isn't much to see.  You can also go down the side shafts, which sometimes spawn monsters after they're empty, but there are some serious combat-robots down there so you don't really have to do that, if you don't want to.  And they're not associated with the Adventurer's Guild, so you won't get paid.  They also do the rough cutting down there and the basic extraction.  The finishing work and the forging happen in the Heartmetal Forge, which they don't allow outsiders to see.

[King Zultan]

I say we go ahead and go into the pit and look around even if it's not that great it'll probably be more interesting than the museum turned out to be.

[NJW2000]

I say we go ahead and go into the pit and look around even if it's not that great it'll probably be more interesting than the museum turned out to be.

+1

Check out the side shafts in particular - might be some interesting monsters to fight.


Also, ask someone if the robots have special forging techniques for making weapons, staves, etc. They must have some interesting technologies that normal humans can't readly muster. Ask about special (non heartmetal) materials they've found in the mine - any weird gems, ores, etc?

[IronyOwl]

I say we go ahead and go into the pit and look around even if it's not that great it'll probably be more interesting than the museum turned out to be.

+1

Check out the side shafts in particular - might be some interesting monsters to fight.


Also, ask someone if the robots have special forging techniques for making weapons, staves, etc. They must have some interesting technologies that normal humans can't readly muster. Ask about special (non heartmetal) materials they've found in the mine - any weird gems, ores, etc?

+1

Also ask if they know where heartmetal comes from and why it spawns robots.

[Devastator]

Go into the mine

Explore the side shafts

Also, ask someone if the robots have special forging techniques for making weapons, staves, etc. They must have some interesting technologies that normal humans can't readly muster. Ask about special (non heartmetal) materials they've found in the mine - any weird gems, ores, etc?

Also ask if they know where heartmetal comes from and why it spawns robots.

The last one you get a simple straightforward answer to.  Heartmetal falls from the sky as meteors.  As to why it's all robots, however, you get a series of polite refusals.  You can't even gather if they know the answer or they're just hiding it from you.  Argh.

Anyway, time to go down the shaft.  The huge funicular does have a plain emergency ramp on both sides, but there are two elevators, moving up and down on a schedule, with a series of lights signalling when to move.  It turns out the signal device is another robot, and it greets you and chats mildly.  Unfortunately it's mounted too high for either of you to touch.  Well, unless you go dragon.  Restraint roll (3).  Ahh, dang it.  You go dragon, climb up the pole the signalbot is mounted on, and talk to it.. face-like lights to snout.  The bot doesn't run away, but perhaps it's only because he doesn't have legs.  You do interrupt the signals for a moment before Uncle and Sessha shout you down, in front of the two or so dozen other robots going down with you.. humanoid, bulk carriage bots, and some others that defy obvious description, ones made for slowly crawling on the ground, one that is just two human-sized wheels, and so forth.  All going down.

There's a big clunk, a hiss, and the far door opens up, so you can see the spiral of the shaft.  Further below the surface, the rock is all striped and patterned, all pretty colours.  Uncle comments on how it's from the shattering force of the meteor, how it mixed the rocks up and changed other ones, with the huge calamity.  Far below where you could see from outside, you can make out dark holes in the rock.. they must be the side shafts.  The bottom itself isn't clearly in view from up here, it's too far down.  The party is the only humans you see here.. just robots, and one dragon.

Wait, there might be a fight waiting.  You revert from your standard Venom Whelp.  Even after all this time you don't really notice changing.

Now that you're a bit taller again, as the shaft starts moving, you can see another large building.  It was hidden from you by the main entrance, but from here you can see it for about a minute before you go down too far.  A big factory, with squat, short smokestacks and grim looking gray barriers that look like weird glass or something.  Heat shimmers above it in places.  And it's behind a more serious wall, patrolled by a few huge robots moving slowly.

That must be the heartmetal forge.

Anyway, going down.. after a full fifteen minutes of slow, spiralling descent, you can make out the other platform coming up towards you.  The ground is still indistinct, but you can start to see things moving in the odd, gray-brown surface below, and you're getting close to the first of the side shafts.  As you approach it, the rail on the platform facing the edge of the rock raises up, lowering a yellow-marked platform from above, which comes down to stick out to the right of the platform, hanging near the edge of the rock.  You ask about it and one of the robots says that's to pick up anyone heading to the side-shafts.. you step on it, it warns you with three blasts of a horn, and then it falls much more quickly towards the next side shaft.  It'll then stop there long enough for you to get off, and then get picked back up by the funicular again, to get ready for the next shaft.  It's so the big slow ones can get off without the elevator having to stop.

Huh.  Interesting.

Are you going to get off at a side shaft near the bottom, or one higher up?  Sessha thinks the lower down ones will have stronger enemies, but they will also be patrolled much more, so will be less likely to have enemies at all.