62 - The City that never sleeps

Persy and Melody are arguing while we finish to setup our journey, and Persy gets back to us sighting, mentioning that Melody will stay behind.
We take off from the motorbikes, and we're off to explore the Golden Sea, seeing golden sand dunes going indefinitely. The sun never sets, at the search of the Scale, allegedly the wonder of Dwarf, who could help us defeating the Undying.

We spend weeks wondering the Golden Sea, but we're not sure how long precisely, as the sun never set. The motorcycles broke after overheating after a few days, and we've been exploring on foot since.
[WIS Save] The weeks goes by, it's a real struggle. We may be at the lowest point at our adventure, with only the sun, sand and heat around us. There is nothing happening, not even any sign of a local fauna. We only have each other and our own thoughts to keep going.
Eventually, we're not sure what we're even doing as we're in survival mode, keeping it to the minimum, looking for something.

✒By the Great Mother, why are we here? What we were doing? Focus Nesvalyn, we're looking for The Scale... right?

We finally see something moving on the dunes, and we stopped observing it, as we're not sure what it is.
We see a giant rolling ball of sand, that's using the momentum to rolling on and on a straight line, and jumping over dunes, even passing over us.
It goes too fast to us to follow it, but we decide to follow this trail. More days pass... or hours?
At one point of our journey, Persy stops moving.

And suddenly Persy looks at us, faceless, then starts running up of the dune, gives thrust and nose dives into the sand.

Gemini casts [Locate Creature] to search for Persy, and finds him moving quickly downward, until he gets out of range. Gemini laughs nervously.

We notice the tunnel left by Persy, on which Gemini casts [Feather Fall].

We all go through the tunnel, falling and sliding for a while.
Persy regains consciousness as he notices sand around him and falling on him, being in this great underground cavern. He seems to have fell in this small city, with huge tall buildings, lit up with statues with a torch, pyramids, with flashing marquis signs.
And the rest of the group land in water, in cool water to precise, finally something to refresh ourselves after many weeks, in a stone water fountain.

Steam goes out from Persy, and we're all in better spirits now... which makes us wonder, where are we?

[History] Nesvalyn remembers before the Sand Dwarfs were nomads, and wondered the Golden Sea in Caravans, and did that for a long time. But there's nothing in the Golden Sea, so an underground subterranean oasis would make sense as that would be the way they survived.
There are a few elements we noticed when we were in the Astral Sea. We haven't seen any people yet however.

We go up to the doors of the closest Casino we see, and there's no sound coming from it... until we open the door and it's filled with Dwarfs playing, drinking and playing many games.
They don't seem to have created it, but seem to understand how to use it. We go to the bar and we notice a gorgeous Dwarf.

She pours a Whisky to Hugh.

She doesn't move.

[Perception - Pass ✔] Axel notices two men discussing making random discussion noises and laugh.

We leave this casino, and once we pass the doors, it's silent again as no sounds come from the place. And we start to head to the Pyramid. The glass of Whiskey Hugh was holding is suddenly empty.
We're going through the empty streets of "City", with the only audible sounds being our footsteps.
We finally make our way to the Pyramid, and we all get inside.

We find a decadent lobby, gold everywhere, red carpets, people in the lobby casually chatting. A Dwarf is playing the piano, a nice smooth jazz melody.
Another Dwarf is dressed like a showgirl, feathers, bustier and welcome us.

The Dwarf is repeating the whole description of the place.

We're going to check the Casino first.
↪ [Investigation] It's not a big room to search, and when we reconvene, no one seems to be a proper person. However Nesvalyn and Persy noticed that the people started to look the same, like there's around five models of male Dwarves, and five models of female Dwarves.

We're discussing on our approach, and we decide to go to the Hotel. We go to the desk, with the same fancy elements from other places of the Pyramid and the front desk has just "Hotel" written on it.

She turns for a moment, then turns back.

When we're looking around, there is no door leading to the center of the Hotel or to the rooms.

We finally head to the uncharted last place of the Pyramid, going to the Theatre.
And we go in, it's a dark place, with a stage with many tables and chairs around. We do see there's activity, and there's one person seated at a table.
Axel approach that table with confidence from behind.

There is no response. Axel walks slowly in the front of the person.
There's a dwarven woman laid back, in her late ages, stretched and crossed arms with a bottle of whisky, who seems to be asleep.

Hugh goes to smack her, and we hear a deep sigh.

She wakes up and looks at Hugh.

She takes a sip, and the showgirls disappear into a pile of sand.

We all look at each other, not really sure what she meant.

Persy, then Axel and finally Hugh bow.

Persy is laughing, almost like a breakdown.

She looks at us, and smashes the bottle she just finished.

[Perception - Pass ✔] Axel hears far up in the distance a low humming sound, vibrating through the sand, but it's still far away.

She snaps and a band appears and a loud song plays to cover that humming sound.

Hugh takes the bottle from the Wonder, takes a sip and gives back the bottle. As we walk out, she calls out.

We check each other, about to think how to get back up there.

She motions her wrist and we're thrown to the top and we're back in the dunes of the Golden Sea.

The machinery seems to be similar to these big sand balls we've seen earlier.

We walk towards the source of the sound, and we make our way and we see a spaceship, displaying the Astracom logo. And we see a couple of tents set up, but there is this constant humming coming from this big machine. When observing it, it spits out this goo, which warps out and turns into Plasmoids. They take a few steps, curl in the sand, and it seems they're gathering sand, as they turn into these balls of sand who have been rolling around.

Axel is walking through the camp.

Gemini casts [Dimension Door] to land on the stop of the ship, and hammers the top of the ship.

A small halfling gets out and yells at Gemini.

Gemini casts [Eldritch Blast], and all the blasts hits a bubble shield, which makes him go away.

When we're looking around, there are many of the Plasmoid assassins, all aiming at Gemini. The halfling gets back to the ship and shut himself in.

When we get closer to the remains of the mech, we see a dummy on fire. We're looking for him in the ship.
↪ [Investigation] Thomathan Vinucci Lombardo is nowhere to be found.

As we're up on the bridge, we see this big tunnel of sand towards the ship.

Persy gets back and gather the group, warning the group that something is coming towards us. These tubes stops at us and the Scale appears.

She tosses an Hourglass to the group that Nesvalyn catches.

She cracks her knuckles and neck.

The sands swirl up into a tornado, and the wind is whipping around her like crazy, and we take cover in the ship.

She hurls sand spears towards the Undying direction, but we're not really sure what's happening. Suddenly, the tornado stops. As the dust settles, we step out, and we see the Scale lying on the ground, a huge wound across her body. She's dead.
We're looking and we sense and hear the Undying is behind us.

We don't turn around nor react to what she says.

And she disappears.

Axel observes the other Plasmoids, who stopped gathering sands and seem to wait their next instructions.

She opens her hand towards Axel.

Axel starts to leave. Persy looks at Nesvalyn, not sure.

Nesvalyn looks at Persy then at Axel.

We help Axel gathering the Plasmoids within the spaceship, and we're standing there, observing the spaceship taking off Wundera, as Axel takes off with the other Plasmoids, focusing on their objective to free their people.

✒I hope you're going to achieve what you want Axel, as after all, The Undying has always been our problem, not yours. Thanks for your help all this time, let's hope that we will meet again in better circumpstances.

Next session: 62 - The City that never sleeps