Lyddia Vath, Vermissian Sage
Some of the revolutionaries have gathered a fair amount of stress on their various attributes. Stress relief is discussed but enough of the coterie is worried about Lower Perch that they opt to continue operations against to Professor Vex.
Professor Vex is revealed to be a member of the Cult of Spire Ascendent, who wants to electrocute sections of the Spire to revitalize and awaken it as a living entity, which means there is someone or someones that would continue her work.
Kill the Professor!
We embark upon a plan to remove Professor Vex from the equation.
Abu Al-Nisr and Fortunate Al-Nisr stake out Professor Vex’s factory building – they wait and watch, then recognize a trio of student workers leave including Ezmer a young, drow female that Vex dotes on because she’s brilliant. Abu picks an Ivory Row property for his ambush. It is choked with topiary.
Ezmer runs away when the first of her companions, a male human, is strung up in the topiary. Abu drops a kind looking spider gargoyle into their path forcing them deeper into the topiary where Ezmer is captured.
Ezmer is interrogated by the brothers – she reveals that Professor Vex’s doesn’t know who the coterie members are. Her drow students get exempted from the durance.
Department of Applied Galvanics Intel:
- Dean is senile and hanging on by luck and seniority
- Five professors, all humans, are attempting to replace the dean:
- Bosst – Galvanic Defenses
- Mandalite – Civilian Galvanic Applications (central lighting). Practical uses for every day life rather than weapons.
- Loque – History of Lightning – collecting texts of lightning gods to found her own religion. Example: Ben of Franklin and his Kite of Galvanic Attraction.. Example 2 (not galvanics): Cult of Garrick, a human industrialist who replaced his body parts with mechanical parts.
- Thule – Galvanics “therapy”
- Vex – Weather Galvanics
Lyddia applies investigation and academia to divert some of Professor Vex’s student factory workers into abandoning Vex’s team for Professor Thule.
Slav and Kreth and Therratix work together to assassinate Professor Vex in her campus office. They successfully divert an electrical experiment on display output into her desk and chair. While in the office they investigate a device that is copying texts to find that the device is interpreting and copying any text given to it; it is currently working thru a stack of texts by her rivals for Dean of Applied Galvanics.
The assassination fails to kill her but it does damage her reputation and destroy her copying machine. The world will have to wait another millenium for the fax machine.
The Al-Nisr Brothers interrogate Ezmer and decide she is perfect to black mail into being an asset. They are informed by Slav’s pet spider about that section of the coterie’s operations.
Slav, Kreth, and Therratix follow a “bad luck” spell’s back trail out of Professor Vex’s office to a gambling section of the Silver Quarter, in particular a casino named the Mermaid.
Ezmer is stashed in a broom closet in the Rut & Wallow Bar. Quent the owner notes which broom closet and puts up a sign that announces, “Beware of Hyena! Don’t open!”
No Really, Kill the Professor!
The second assassination of Professor Vex proceeds apace.
The brothers arrange a ransom note to Professor Vex for Ezmer. “Come to Lower Perch’s Honeymoon Suite at Thumb’s. Come alone. Bring a bag of silver and your research notes.”
Professor Vex arrives with her three spider pack enforcers, two teams of student workers, and her trio of student security. Kreth, Lyddia, and Therratix are in the suite with Ezmer. The rest of the coterie wait outside and nearby to cut the cords that suspend the suite.
A duo of student workers enter the suite to scope it out before the professor enters. They exit once Therratix ensures them that Ezmer is safe and on the premises.
The killing begins: Abu’s crossbow bolt hits Vex in the heart; her corpse tumbles from the cat walk. The campus security team fires a rescue line at Vex that ropes her corpse and slams it with horrible noise against the spire. A student fires a Galvanic arquebus that misfires and blows up in his hands. A blackspire bomb is thrown and misses, plunging into the structures that hang far below.
Lyddia bravely rescues the injured Slav by plunging them both into the Vermissian Tunnels via the Back Door. Slav keeps her eyes squeezed shut. Abu and Fortunate fight a pair of cultists armed with spider back packs. One is spared the horror of impact when she falls off a catwalk and is killed by the lit black spire bomb stuck to her hand. Fortunate takes wounds clambering up onto a catwalk with more victims… cultists. Abu plunges his saber into a cultist then pushes his corpse off the blade and into the void.
Therratix’s claws professionally cut a cultist’s head off at the shoulders. She throws the severed head at other combatants. Kreth calmly leaves the battle by donning another mask and walking away. Success!
Slav and Kreth work on Ezmer hoping to convert her to the cause leveraging her involvement to Destroy Perch as blackmail.
Therratix researches the coterie’s notes on the Cult of Intelligence and Department of Applied Galvanics, which are both active in the Hive Prison and both tied back into the Gwynn-Enfer university.
The Discussion: Who do we want to tackle next in our quest to liberate the Hive Prison?
- Investigate the Cult of Intelligence – Kreth uncovers Councilman Drynn, the only human member, is also the Primary Communications Node of the Cult of Intelligence.
- Prof Bosst – Galvanic Defenses
- Prof Thule – Galvanics “therapy”
- Prof Loque – History of Lightning – collecting texts of lightning gods to found her own religion. Example: Ben of Franklin and his Kite of Galvanic Attraction.. Example 2 (not galvanics): Cult of Garrick, a human industrialist who replaced his body parts with mechanical parts.
- Prof Mandalite – Civilian Galvanic Applications (central lighting). Practical uses for every day life rather than weapons.
- Prof Xavier – No crystal implant. Working on crystal thinking machine.
We decide to make Professor Mandalite the new dean (or at least the current dean’s executor) of Galvanics. Make it so he needs the support of the other three professors and vice versa.
We convince Thule and/or Galvanics that Cult of Intelligence members are a good experimentation stock. Lyddia uncovers that the humans mined into Protocoticoss colonies to gain hi-tech crystals which they built a steam punk empire off of. Humans can only really use the instantaneous communications of said crystals by implanting said crystals in human, elf or drow brains. An experiment line would involve running varying currents through those crystals to attempt instantaneous communications… Cultists have clicks that are at odds with each other. The crystals act as a vast library rather than mind control.
Therratix shares this information slyly with Professor Thule. Kreth and others convince Thule that experimenting on crystal heads is ethical.
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