{"id":371,"date":"2019-01-10T13:34:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T13:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/?p=371"},"modified":"2020-03-01T09:55:43","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T09:55:43","slug":"fairmeadow-fair-session-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/10\/fairmeadow-fair-session-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Fairmeadow Fair, session 10"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/05\/fairmeadow-fair-session-9\/\">\u2190 Session 9<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/ttrpg-campaign-reports\/fairmeadow-fair\/\">Campaign Summary<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/03\/fairmeadow-fair-session-11\/\">Session 11 \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last time, <a href=\"https:\/\/http:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/05\/fairmeadow-fair-session-9\/\">our heroes were trapped in a horrible dungeon<\/a>: the science labs of a Dwarven college! They escaped and went straight to the dean, reporting the crimes inflected on them, but also admitting to damaging lots of university property and releasing a prisoner.\u00a0 Is honesty the best policy, or should they have kept running when they escaped the dungeon?<\/p>\n<p>Dean Stanton leaps into action, giving his sub-ordinate, Over-Dean Sessions, a list of tasks (Dwarves aspire to depth, not height, so Dean outranks Over-Dean):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get Chief Laertes of Campus Security to track down the suspects who assaulted our heroes<\/li>\n<li>Send janitors to fix the damaged doors and restore the freezer that our heroes de-activated.<\/li>\n<li>Get a list of everything stored in the science lab building. Our heroes reported a Dwarf prisoner, which doesn&#8217;t sound right.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Our heroes wait in the Dean&#8217;s antechamber. Gleador finds some university letterhead and writes a letter of recommendation for Angus, the page at the public library.\u00a0 Chief Laertes arrives.\u00a0 He&#8217;s a serious looking Dwarf with his hair, beard, and mustache in neat braids.\u00a0 He&#8217;s wearing a large ceremonial helmet as a symbol of authority. It can still stop a sword, but if it&#8217;s stopping swords often, the wearer is doing something wrong.\u00a0 Laertes takes a statement from Lucia &amp; Gleador. They don&#8217;t remember the names of their assailants, but have good descriptions and know that they share a class with Flint.\u00a0 Flint isn&#8217;t with them.\u00a0 He fled, probably leaving town.\u00a0 Laertes sends deputies to get the class roster so they can identify and arrest the two suspects.\u00a0 He tells our heroes not to leave town, since they are part of an ongoing investigation.\u00a0 He asks if they have a place to stay in town. Gleador asks if Laertes can host them.\u00a0 Laertes says that would be either the barracks or jail.\u00a0 Oh, never mind, says Gleador.<\/p>\n<p>A janitor runs in out of breath, reporting that there are people in the freezer room! Two janitors had cleared the door to the freezer room, dissolving the anti-tamper glue with a chemical they keep for just that purpose. They went inside to re-activate the freezing units, but there were people lurking inside to grab them!\u00a0 The janitors ran out of the room and pushed a chest in front of the door to keep the grabby strangers at bay! Gleador&#8217;s player has an epiphany: there were coffins in that frozen room! The corpses have thawed out! Gleador and the janitor head back to the freezer room.\u00a0 Lucia takes Sessions to get another freezing unit.<\/p>\n<p>Sessions leads Lucia to an outbuilding where various supplies are stored. On the way, Lucia spots a campus security guard and tells him to get some backup and head to the freezer room.\u00a0 Sessions is an authority figure the guard recognizes, so he agrees and runs off to gather his comrades.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_591\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-591\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-591\" src=\"http:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/zombies.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"688\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-591\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The freezer room in the science building of Fortinbras School of Mines, with an anti-zombie barricade.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Gleador and the janitor run down to the science building. It has wide halls lined with cabinets and chests.\u00a0 The second janitor has a large chest in front of a broken door. The top half of the door is pushed outward, and the janitor is swatting at the opening with his broom. As Gleador approaches, he sees an arm reaching out of the opening: it&#8217;s clothed in a fancy shirt and jacket, and the hand bears ornate rings, but the skin is grey and pulled tight over the bones. Peeking into the dark room through the damaged door, Gleador sees three figures.\u00a0 He finds an evening class in the same building and triesto recruit some students to help him build more barricades.\u00a0 Most students react to the news of dangerous intruders with fear, but a few punk Dwarves welcome the chance to smash up university property and get in fights.\u00a0 While everyone else flees the building, Gleador and his four punks construct a killbox right outside the door of the freezer room.\u00a0 The walls lean in, so they are hard to climb from the inside and easy to collapse from the outside. &#8220;You&#8217;ll remember this night for the rest of you lives!&#8221; says Gleador, although he&#8217;s not sure how long that will be.<\/p>\n<p>Simmons and Lucia reach the supply shed and locate a freezing machine that will blow super-chilled air, and the volatile canisters of fuel the machine requires.\u00a0 Lucia decides to transport the canisters on a cart, to avoid the risk of dropping and breaching them.\u00a0 She reaches the killbox outside the freezer room around the time that the zombies break the freezer room door.\u00a0 There are two men in tuxedos and one woman in a nice dress, the sort of clothes people are buried in.\u00a0 Yeah, these are definitely the bodies in the coffins. Lucia scans for evil: 2 of the punk students, and the female zombie are evil.One of the punks says that a zombie looks like Armstrong, the famous artist, but another says that he&#8217;s been dead for 20 years.\u00a0 Gleador orders the punks to build another layer of defenses, so there are two walls on each side of the zombies.<\/p>\n<p>Lucia asks Sessions why the college is storing zombies.\u00a0 A clerk arrives with the manifest for the freezer room.\u00a0 She would have brought the manifest earlier, but went to the Dean&#8217;s Office first, and had to be redirected here.\u00a0 Sessions scans the manifest and says that the zombies are listed as &#8220;tissue samples&#8221; for Professor Jenkins&#8217; long-term research on terminal diseases.\u00a0 Sessions is upset by this falsification of records and threatens strong corrective measures:perhaps loss of funding, or delay of tenure! Sessions sends the clerk to summon Professor Jenkins immediately.<\/p>\n<p>There are five tissue samples on the manifest, but only three zombies milling about in the kill box.\u00a0 Gleador remembers moving from room to room through the vents. Maybe the zombies have done the same.\u00a0 He takes a Janitor (Wally) and heads for the smelter room on the lower floor.\u00a0 He wants the punks to come along too, but they are bored.\u00a0 They&#8217;re not actually fighting zombies or collapsing the killbox.\u00a0 They wander off.\u00a0 Gleador and Wally have to go outside and circle around the building to reach the smelter room, since the kill box blocks the hallway.\u00a0 The door to the smelter room hangs open, since everyone fled the room during the last session.\u00a0 Wally closes and locks the doors, and they return to the killbox.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Lucia and Sessions set up the freezer machine in between the inner and outer walls of the killbox and start blowing freezing air on the inner wall and the zombies.\u00a0 Lucia bemoans the slow response time of the campus security.\u00a0 Gleador &amp; the janitor return and report that the smelter is secure. They wonder what to do next.\u00a0 The furniture in the inner wall of the killbox starts creaking and cracking as the freezer machine freezes it.\u00a0 The zombies are moving more slowly.\u00a0 Armstrong is scratching designs in the frost with his finger. Gleador says that if the furniture collapses on people who have terminal diseases and have been dead for 20 years, it&#8217;s no big deal.\u00a0 Definitely not murder.<\/p>\n<p>Jenkins arrives about the same time as four campus security deputies.\u00a0 Jenkins arrives and Lucia grills him.\u00a0 Why are there zombies?\u00a0 Jenkins is horrified that they have been thawed. These people volunteered to be frozen until their diseases were cured.\u00a0 Decades of work are at risk!\u00a0 Lucia asks if he&#8217;s cured any diseases in the last 20 years.\u00a0 Well, there&#8217;s a vaccine for one.\u00a0 Our heroes look closer at the zombies and see sores, and other marks of infectious disease on them.\u00a0 Jenkins assures them that the diseases are not airborne, but they should avoid contact with the zombies.\u00a0 Just then, a freezing cabinet freezes enough to shatter the glass doors on the front, throwing glass shards at the zombies. The inner wall of the killbox is threatening to collapse.\u00a0 Lucia tries to loop a rope around the top cabinet to secure it, but it breaks and the whole wall collapses.\u00a0 The female zombie (identified as &#8220;Hawkins&#8221; by Jenkins) is buried by the debris, but the other two zombies are now free to enter the outer killbox, where our heroes are standing!<\/p>\n<p>Lucia falls back past the outer wall.\u00a0 Gleador sees his exit route, but realizes that the zombies can now access and perhaps disable the freezing machine.\u00a0 He tries to re-direct them by telling Armstrong that there&#8217;s good art back in the freezer room.\u00a0 Armstrong seems to recognize his name and heads straight for Gleador.\u00a0 Gleador slips out.<\/p>\n<p>Campus security detects danger to college personnel and property and move in to subdue\u00a0 the zombies.\u00a0 First they have to dis-assemble the outer wall of the killbox.\u00a0 Lucia tells them to stand down, that they could be infected by the zombies, but they don&#8217;t recognize her authority.\u00a0 Gleador tries again to distract Zombie Armstrong by getting paper and charcoal from his adventuring pack and throwing it towards the freezer room.\u00a0 Armstrong doesn&#8217;t notice.\u00a0 Reassuring himself again that these zombies are already dead, so it&#8217;s definitely not murder, Gleador prevents the imminent fight between campus security and zombies infected with incurable diseases by collapsing the killbox on the zombies!\u00a0 The collapsing wall of re-purposed furniture also smashes the freezing machine and its volatile fuel canisters.\u00a0 Super-cooled gas blasts outward.\u00a0 Gleador chooses to push the deputies out of the way instead of saving himself, and takes some cold damage.\u00a0 The two remaining zombies are under a pile of smashed furniture, which is covered by a thick layer of solid frost.<\/p>\n<p>Two zombies are still unaccounted for.\u00a0 Lucia rises to her full 5&#8217;0&#8243;, eight inches taller then Jenkins, grabs him by the shoulders, and orders him to go into the freezer room and see where they are.\u00a0 Terrified, Jenkins flees.\u00a0 Gleador runs him down and grabs him.\u00a0 The deputies object to these outsiders threatening college personnel and order Gleador to unhand Jenkins.\u00a0 Gleador reminds them that he just saved them, and suggests that they escort him into the room.\u00a0 They agree and the five of them climb over the remains of the killbox and enter the freezer room.<\/p>\n<p>Our heroes watch the door and listen.\u00a0 After a short pause, there&#8217;s a commotion and the four deputies run out in a panic. They report that they went to close the coffins and a zombie reached out of a coffin to grab at them. They beat it with their somnaboffers, to no effect!\u00a0 Our heroes are unfamiliar with somnaboffers.\u00a0 The deputies are holding them.\u00a0 They look like clubs wrapped in foam. There&#8217;s a mist coming out of the foam. Deputies use them because they put people to sleep instead of injuring them, but they don&#8217;t work on zombies!\u00a0 Where&#8217;s Jenkins?\u00a0 The deputies do a headcount and come up one short.\u00a0 Oh no!\u00a0 Our heroes hear a machine turn on inside the freezer room.\u00a0 Did Jenkins do that?\u00a0 They rush inside.\u00a0 There are three open, empty coffins, one closed coffin, and one open coffin with arms flailing over the rim.\u00a0 Apparently this zombie doesn&#8217;t have the strength to get out of the coffin.\u00a0 Gleador reaches out with his club and flips the lid closed.\u00a0 That&#8217;s all the zombies secured.\u00a0 Jenkins is hiding behind one of the freezer machines installed in the room. He planned to wait for the zombie to be frozen, then escape.\u00a0 Our heroes turn on the other freezer machine.\u00a0 The situation is secure.\u00a0 Gleador and Lucia leave the deputies to clean up and head back towards their hostel to rest for the night.<\/p>\n<p>On the way back, they are stopped by one of the college-age Dwarves who shares their ten-person room in the hostel. Her name is Dolly.\u00a0 She has two long braids in her blonde hair, and another long braid in her beard. She doesn&#8217;t attend the Fortinbras School of Mines.\u00a0 She knew a guy and already has a job at a mine.\u00a0 She spent a day at the Fairmeadow Fair, and is visiting a friend in Templeton before continuing back to her mine in the east.\u00a0 She reports that people were looking for our heroes at the hostel.\u00a0 One guy looked like he&#8217;d been in an accident and was really tall, like Lucia&#8217;s height. He was asking for people of our heroes&#8217; description.\u00a0 The other person was a suit, probably with the city.\u00a0 He went straight to the hotel staff and asked for Gleador and Lucia by name.\u00a0 Dolly thinks that the hostel is being watched.\u00a0 Our heroes thank her for the warning and decide to sleep outside of town.\u00a0 They pick a spot near the road to Fairmeadow, since they have some familiarity with that terrain. They find a hollow in the hills and Lucia casts Sanctuary around the campsite.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/05\/fairmeadow-fair-session-9\/\">\u2190 Session 9<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/ttrpg-campaign-reports\/fairmeadow-fair\/\">Campaign Summary<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/03\/fairmeadow-fair-session-11\/\">Session 11 \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2190 Session 9 | Campaign Summary | Session 11 \u2192 Last time, our heroes were trapped in a horrible dungeon: the science labs of a Dwarven college! They escaped and went straight to the dean, reporting the crimes inflected on them, but also admitting to damaging lots of university property and releasing a prisoner.\u00a0 Is &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/10\/fairmeadow-fair-session-10\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fairmeadow Fair, session 10&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-diary","category-fairmeadow-fair","category-rpg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633,"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cliffnordman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}