Cerro Rico

• The spoils of the coup
  • The Summer Gale
  • Vetrini treasury (20,000 gp)
• Outfitting HMS Lady Jezebel
• Crew
  • The Red Watch Marines
  • 6 months supplies
• Journey
  • Peril Rating =5, Encounters =2
  • Encounters
    • A Chance Encounter - Tritons hunting the Kraken
    • In Need of Help - Tritons hunting the Kraken
    • Enemies Abound - The Kraken
    • Wonders of the Wide Sea - A sunken temple, from Lost Farbosheia, Song of the merfolk
    • Signs of a battle - The kraken leaves an offering
    • A lingering memory of times long past  - A sunken temple, from Lost Farbosheia,  Song of the merfolk
    • A place touched by shadow  - A Saragossa sea
    • Something is on the hunt - Attack by the furies
    • Great powers walk the world - if hostile, furies, if positive, Tritons 
      
      
• Potsio 
  • Roll Unknown
  • Arrivial Scene: Reef
  • Potentially getting a glimpse of the maroon's
• Abandoned town of Potsio, smoking mountain in the distance
• Potsio - Searching / Reconstructing the fall of the town
• Searching for survivors
  • Little Jimmy Cudgel in the outskirts of the town
  • Tracks to Maroons in the jungle
• Road leading west (Mine Road)
• Dragon attack along the road?
  • Unknown will pick an area in the old lava flow to spring his attack. 
  • This area has very little cover
  • He will attack from the air, primarily using his breath weapon to hit the party over and over again
• Returning to town
  • Housekeeping: Daniel briefs on The Books of the River and The Metaphysics of Shadow
  • Half an hour later, Dragon returns (at around 4pm). Sunset is at 8pm
  • Party will be off the lava flow in scrub land, still 2 leagues from the jungle
  • Weather will stay relatively clear until it starts to rain around 8pm. 
  • Will attacks at range with Fire Lance and Spells.
  • Will disengage if he falls below half hit points, regenerate and return
  • Will continue to harry the party until he's killed, they reach the jungle or the weather becomes incriminate  

• Maroons arrive in a Pirogue during rainstorm
• Flee you fools!

• Note from Ozraeline
• Arrive at town around sunset (8pm) in the pouring rain. 
  • Take one level of exhaustion (except Radiant)
• Heavy Rain - from sunset to sunset +1 hour
• Exploring the center of town
  • The center of town has been fortified but several breaches existed in the fortifications 
  • Despite this, it is still the most secure area of the town 
  • A pitched battle took place here and it appears the defenders were over run but there are no bodies. This happened at least a year ago
  • On top of the two tallest towers are waterproof chests containing 6 Grenadoes each.
• First attack of the burned dead around 11pm
  • After half the attackers are destroyed the Bone Golem will arrive, with two additional ladies of flame.
• Dawn and reuinited with Ozraeline and The Maroons 
• Possible side trip to Maroon Camp

Arriving at Cerro Rico, exploring the Mountain and surroundings 

• Cerro Rico - Maroon Camp, rest and refit
  • Oz greets Freddy
  • Read camp description below
  • Meeting Kaelina
  • Long Rest
  • Intel (Read below, allow questions)
  • What to do with all these refugees?
  • Supplies?
• Roll Unknown
• Through the jungle to the road
• Spyglass - Show picture 
• (Read description below)
  • Honeycomb around the peak
  • Smaller road winding up the flank
  • Main road to the base of the mountain
• El Fundición -The cluster of buildings
• Discovering the New Drift
• Discovering the Map - Old Mines
• Potentially Discovering the hidden tunnel from Old Stonebreaker Hall

The Maroon Camp, located deep in the jungle, is built in the style of the First People, roughly circular packed earthen walls around twenty feet high surmounted by a wooden palisade. You've seen this style many times throughout the The Thousand Isles, it's simple, practical and effective. This camp is a little different in than most, rather then the usual deep ditch outside of the walls, the settlement has a full moat. Built next to a small river, the inhabitants of the camp have diverted the river to full encircle the camp.

Inside the camp, roughly two dozen wood and thatch huts hold an eclectic score of survivors, from the mine, the town and the naval expedition 

So my name is Benny Barlow and I worked that mine for over two years, which means I stayed alive a lot longer then most. And that was mostly, luck I gotta say. My momma always said I weren't smart nor pretty but The Gentleman favored me. Staying alive for two years ain't no mean feat here either, they don't call Cerro Rico "The mountain that eats men" fer nothing. Many don't make it three months, between the cave-ins, bad air, cholera, dead-lung and the crazies, or just plain being worked to death. The Vetrini don't give two shits neither, they just keep new bodies rolling in to replace the ones that died, and as long as the silver and mithril keep rolling out, they are happy as clams. Old, book learned fella I knew once said he did the math and based on how much fresh meat rolls in every year he figures a hundred thousand people have died in that mountain over the last hundred years. Maybe more.

Anyway, my stories is pretty typical I'm from Haven Towne, got into debt with the wrong people, judge ordered me indentured to pay it back, and the Vetrini bought my indenture, shipped me here, and next thing I know I'm a miner. A lot here like me, from all over The Thousand Isles. Lotta Pressed Men too, and a lot of First People and folks from remoter parts of Mbo even, that are straight up grabbed by the Vetrini. I know slavery is technically illegal in these Isles, but I swear there ain't much difference between being indentured and straight up enslaved, and when it comes to First People no one gives a shit. The Vetrini grab whole villages, and this far out in the The Northern Reach no one ever hears about it.  One fella I talked to said the Curari have even taken to selling folk from other tribes to House Vetrini. 

But anyone I'm sure you didn't come this way to hear about me, so let me tell ya what happened.

I was outside the mine when it blew the first time, bringing an ore car out. That's why I lived, pure luck. My crew was mostly digging coal, we'd been having some trouble keeping those new Deep Workings ventilated, those air blowers the dwarves built are marvels, but always hungry for the black stuff.

I hears a 'boom', sounded like it was from far underground but still hella loud, so loud I couldn't hear right afterward, everything shakes, almost like an earthquake. A big cloud o' dust shoots out of the entrance of the New Drift, wind so hot and hard that it nearly knocked me over. A shard of rock hit me shoulder and busted it all up. Hurt like hell. Still can't really move that arm right.

It gets quiet and then someone comes running out yelling that there was a big explosion down in the New Mine

Now we have explosions every now and then in the mines, that's the nature of it, some people get killed, the overseers don't care, and the ones that live clean up the mess. This one was a lot bigger then anything I ever seen though.

So the word was a lot of the machines down in the new mine were wrecked, and a bunch of folks were trapped down there. Pretty soon the air was gonna go bad, so we had to get 'em out quick.

Pretty much everyone that could work was sent down into that mine to dig out the survivors. The only reason they didn't send me was I got hurt in the blast and couldn't do much digging with one arm. So they had me running around upstairs, runing messages and such.

Things were a real mess down there I heard, shafts and drifts collapsed, machines all wrecked, hundreds of men trapped. About eight hours in a bunch of folk from the town showed up to see if they could help, they heard the boom and came straight away. Everyone knows a mine explosion is bad. The overseer's sent them all down too, Overseer Lucius Vetrini was mad as hell, said this shit was gonna set his timetable back a month and it would be worse if he lost all them workers. The dwarves kept telling him he needs to be careful, all that coal dust the first explosion stirred up was still dangerous. Coal was still kinda new to Lucius, we'd jsut started mining it hard a few months ago to feed the new engines, so he didn't take 'em seriously. 

That night the mine blew again. And the second one was BAD. Collapsed the whole New Drift, was so loud I couldn't hear right for a week. Most everyone was down in the mine when it happened, even Lucius, they hadn't been running shifts since the first time it happened, was all hands on deck down there. 

No one came out of that mine that time. Not a soul. New Drift was collapsed but still some of them should have been able to get out through the Old Mines N one that night anyway. The few of us left didn't really know what to do weren't many of us up topside and no real leader. There was talk of an expedition through the Old Mine to try to rescue folk but I don't think anyone really thought anyone was still alive down there. The second night they came back though, some of them. Burned and broken, but still walking and talking, bodies so hot the meat sizzled. God the smell. First they talked to us, saw my buddy Jim, known him for years, and he knew me too, called me by my nickname and everything. But that was just a ruse, when they got close they started killing, so we ran. They followed us all the way back to Potsio and tried to kill us there.

Dragon? Dragon didn't have nothing to do with any of that stuff, least that I know. He came later, the third night. We had the town fortified some and were starting to hold back those walking dead, and then HE came flying over and that was the end of that.

The few of us that lived ran off into the jungle, we had heard some folk escaped and lived out there. We found them eventually, or rather they found us. Been hiding out ever since.

So you gonna take us home right? Cause this place is cursed and we all want off. 

Intel

• Mine has three main sections, old mine, new mine, deep workings
• Most miners lived in barracks in the old mine, which was mostly played out and converted into living quarters
• Deep Workings were pretty recent
• New Drift collapsed. 

As the elevation increases and the climate becomes dryer the jungle gradually peters out into scrubland. Finally as you crest a tall bluff, a large peak comes into view, a peak that is clearly your destination. A peak that can only be Cerro Rico, The Mountain that Eats Men. Quite literally, the end of the road.

The mountain is arid, only sparse vegetation is visible on its slopes, a few stunted trees, rough grass and hardy shrubs. Tall, and roughly conical, it stands a good 6000 feet above the landscape, a landscape that must be already 3000 feet above sea level.  Still, in these tropical latitudes, even at this height it bears not a trace of snow. 

Even from this distance your spyglass shows that the mountain still smolders. Your glass reveals a honeycomb of pits and shafts dug into the upper cone of the mountain and around its base, many of which are still venting dark sooty smoke. The smoke must be heavy because it drifts down from the mountain onto the wide plain at its feet, rather than rising into the air, almost like tendrils of some ravenous creature searching for prey. 

The road you had been following heads straight as an arrow to vanish into a wide tunnel drilled straight into the mountain base. You can also see a smaller road branching off from the main track and winding its way up the flank of the mountain. 

Clustered around the base of the mountain along the main road are a handful of buildings. The road leads straight through the buildings and out the other side.

Scattered around the base of the mountain, in ones and twos, and creeping up it's flank, are what appear to be great engines of some type. These engines are large, some three stories tall, covered in pipes and metal tubing. Some sport windvanes similar to what you would see on windmills, others are built around huge iron drums, others are short and squat, and appear almost like large ovens made of stone and iron.  The great engines also seem abandoned.  

The strangest part of the vista is that the flat scrubland is dotted all over with large circular depressions. These depressions are around twenty feet in diameter, only a foot or so deep, and are perfectly round and utterly barren, completely devoid of plant life. There are dozens of these circles scattered around, mostly near the outskirts of the small settlement.   

There is no sign of any activity other then birds and a few small animals.

A half dozen buildings cluster around the road about a quarter mile from where it plunges into the heart of the mountain. The buildings are neglected and  ramshackle, but with the exception of one building they are intact. From the look of them they were not living quarters but storage warehouses and mechanical workshops, probably associated with the operation of the mine in some fashion. The largest building seems to be more intact then the smaller ones.