Aslan Route 011: The House of Shrouded Mirrors

Previously, on the Aslan Route: The crew of the Macavity has learned that the swamp on Sink is an alien data storage device, with a secure satellite location on Pourne for sensitive data. Their eyewitness account of the fall of Torpol alarms a missionary from Sink, who asks them to take him back there to consult the Abbot. Now read on...

Sink, Paal and Pourne, 204-1105 to 245-1105

The abbot wants to charter the Macavity to travel to the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne, but the crew say that’s risky and they want hazard pay. Complex three-way negotiations end up with the Macavity’s crew owning a share of the monastery gold mine plus all the gold on hand, while Prince Hteleitoirl and his followers provide military service to the monastery in return for land, which they will develop over time.

The Macavity makes its way to Pourne and enters the dome containing the House of Shrouded Mirrors, which proves to be full of shrouded mirrors. The crew is informed this is because there is a miniature swamp (“the Pool”) in the basement and the mirrors show what various parts of it are thinking about. After some difficulty, the abbot obtains an interview with the Sage of the Stars; between that and Dr Matauranga’s stealthy peeping into mirrors, the crew learns the following:

• During the Ancients’ War, many of the factions used human troops and servants.
• One faction developed a menhir-like weapon which emits a field known as the Fury, which distorts human minds, making them xenophobic and militaristic; this was used to suborn the human troops of other factions. The fondness for black and silver uniforms is an unintended side effect.
• By kidnapping people and throwing them into the Pool, which absorbs their memories, the House has learned that archaelogists on Drinax uncovered one of the menhirs; Mazun hypothesises this is what started the problem. The Drinaxian Star Guard then emplaced a menhir near the south pole on Torpol, thus gaining control of the downport and later the rest of the planet. (The field propagates at lightspeed, so for rapid expansion menhirs must be transported by ship.)
• The field is only effective on sentients genetically engineered by the Ancients, chiefly humans and vargr. The Sage believes aslan should be unaffected. He doesn’t know if droyne are affected, but there are none in the Area of Operations so that’s not relevant.
• A few years ago one Mike Matin visited the Sage and asked similar questions, though as hypotheticals rather than based on eyewitness testimony. Mazun recognises him as a Scout Service covert operator.

While the discussion turns to questions such as how many menhirs does Drinax have, how do you destroy one, and would that help or would converted people stay converted, an aide interrupts to point out that a vargr corsair is cutting its way in through the dome.

As the corsairs barge in, Mazun offers the Sage and the abbot a ride, which they accept; if the Pool is destroyed, the Sage will be the only repository of certain data, and if not, he can always come back. Mazun leads them away at a run while Vila and Dr Matauranga sneak away, hiding behind shrouds and pilfering small objects of monetary and scientific value respectively, and Rex roars defiance at the pirates in the hope of intimidating them; it doesn’t do that, but does mean they close into melee to fight him like men… errm, vargr.

Mazun joins the fight to help Rex while the others look for a way back to the ship. Mazun uses his tactical skill to identify a line of retreat, Vila locks the doors against pursuit, and Dr Matauranga injects everyone with useful but probably illegal substances to sharpen senses and reflexes. Rex continues to hurl threats over his shoulder as the party falls back to their ship.

The corsairs appear chiefly focused on looting, and Rex jams the desultory missile locks while Vila crash-starts the engines so Mazun can fly the ship out through the new holes in the dome.

Mazun takes aboard as many of the staff of the temple as can be herded on without substantially slowing us, up to the number the Macavity can safely convey to the starport.

As soon as all are aboard, they call for help from the PDF - something that Matauranga can do while Mazun flies, Vila works the engines and Rex mans the weapons.

To be continued...

GM Notes

Having completed The Borderland Run, and being (as they say) low on spoons at the moment, I switched over to the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury as the core of the second phase of the game. I prepared for this session by working through it and seeing what could be salvaged and adapted, and sadly it's less than I hoped; part of that is how suitable the various scenarios are for the Trojan Reach, and part of it is that I've already tried to run it and one of the current players was in that game. I had to do more surgery on the setting and campaign background than expected; I'll probably wind up using less than a third of the product as written, but that's better than it languishing unused on my hard drive.

Of the 16 adventures, the first four need to be ditched because Rex's player has already played them. The next three are covered by the last couple of episodes and so are not really needed. This session merged scenarios 8 and 9. Scenario 10 is not something that the players or I would enjoy, so I scratched that one. Scenarios 11-14 I'm not sure what to do with, although that is a problem for Future Me, and the last two look viable if I relocate them to Drinax.

You'll probably see spoilers coming up, but Heart of the Fury was published in 2016 so I regret nothing. I think it would work better as a Bulldogs! game with the various free one-sheets folded into it, but I've used most of those already with other groups.

Over the next few weeks, I need to give some serious thought to where the campaign goes next.