Torth - THE MINES
The walk to the mine entrance should proceed swiftly. First one clerk or servant ask them about their business, attracts attention, then Dragon's pursuers from the train are behind them, with a few nobles around them gesticulating agitatedly. MUSIC: BOURNE IDENTITY =96 MAIN TITLE. Hold there!
The battle that erupts in the mines is split into a few different situations, each taking about fifteen minutes.
- SITUATION 1: several large pulley elevators provide entry to the mine. The elevators are made of steel grates in wooden structure, and set next to each other. The players have only descended a hundred meters as a loud clanking noise from above is heard, and three other elevators start operating, two on the right holding eight or nine men each, one on the left holding two men. MUSIC: BOURNE IDENTITY - THE APARTMENT. The speed of the elevator can be adjusted, but, alas, this particular lift seems to be busted. The enemies are catching up, firing short bows from above, a small incendiary hurled; two pursuers even jump on their cabin. Eventually, the pulley suspension rope is sawn through from above, and they will need to make a dangerous jump to the cabin on the left (which is on equal height by now), and continue their fight and descent from there.
- SITUATION 2: the gauntlet. Fleeing through the mines: caves with tubes, carts, grates, machinery and workers. One of their pursuers urges his companions on, stays behind, starts cranking levers. Walls of, fire sprouts from the ceiling. After some evasive manoeuvres, one of the players trips, and is separated from the others by a wall of fire. Behind him, the fire and smoke diminishes, two of his pursuers nearing (one of them is Ogre =96 time to meet your maker boy). Guards are approaching from the other side as well, cautiously. The players on this side of the grate hear a click, the fireball mechanism in their cell is being activated. A hole in the wall offers a way out: a debris transportation ramp downward.
- SITUATION 3: on the transportation band, pursued by five guards. There is not enough room to swing weapons, only to drop or lose them, wrestle barehanded or with small knives, nearby stones, strangle, throw someone over the side, trap a body part in the mechanism, cast a grappling hook to somewhere else.
- SITUATION 4: a stone stairway extends deep deep down into an enormous cavern. At the end of the staircase, halfway the cavern, is a platform, and from that platform a small bridge. There is the lift down into the artefact cemetery. If they do not find a way to stall their pursuers now, they will have to fight them ALL AT ONCE while one of them deciphers the riddle to operate the elevator.
Offer them the riddle, which should be solves in 45 minutes or so. MUSIC: BOURNE IDENTITY - MAIN TITLE. After that they enter the artefact cemetery. MUSIC: TARMVRED - AMFETAKROM (ANY FUTURE REMIX). Here they can uncover the nature of the "technological enhancements", visit the artefact generator, and find a way out. Since the cemetery is uncharted territory, they will eventually get lost, or separated, hear whispering voices, meet a hundred exits that have been blocked off or caved in, and perhaps go mad with despair by all of this. Eventually, the whispering voices become footsteps and voices, far away, but real. Their pursuers. Time becomes essential again. MUSIC: TARMVRED - VATTEN (REMIX). Eventually, they come to something resembling an underground lake. The passage is barred by a great iron door which requires a riddle to open. They get ten or fifteen minutes to solve the riddle. Then, on to freedom. They emerge on a high shelved rock in the foothills.
