A conscripted Terrassian engineer hides a flaw inside the Eastern Tower's crystal core, and the players have to reach it and trigger it before the core cycles to full charge.
The Situation
The Eastern Tower stands two-thirds built, its black stone and crystal spire already visible for miles, its sickly light already keeping half the district awake. General Markos has doubled the conscription quota to finish the resonance floor before the comet climbs higher. The Man with the Clockwork Arm, the Terrassian engineer forced to wire the tower's Automatic Assassins, has hidden a structural flaw in the core housing and needs outside hands to spring it before the Red Guard notices the last shift he skipped. Captain Ashford runs tower security like a siege, and every laborer who finishes early gets reassigned somewhere worse.
Objectives
- Primary · Reach the resonance core on the working floor and trigger the flaw before the crystal cycles to full charge.
- Secondary · Get the Man with the Clockwork Arm off the tower alive, or recover the schematics he hid if he can't be moved.
The Clocks
- Main · The Core Charge. The resonance core cycles to full charge in six turns once the players breach the working floor. At full charge the Queen's engineers lock the alignment and the flaw becomes unusable.
- Ward Bell · The Alarm. Any tripped ward or missing badge rings the tower bell within two turns. Once it rings, Ashford floods the stairwells with Guard.
The Five Beats
- Entrance · The tower still stands undisturbed because the Guard trusts its own scaffolding more than its own eyes: laborers move in and out on shift passes nobody checks twice. A section of gantry on the east face was quietly rebuilt last week after it gave way under a full cart. Nobody talks about who was on it.
- Discovery · In the laborers' shed, the engineer's apprentice hands over a smuggled set of schematics marking the core housing, the patrol loop of the Automatic Assassins, and the one control glyph that can be reprogrammed by hand.
- Setback · The rebuilt gantry gives way again under the party's weight, or under a Guard patrol chasing them onto it. Either way it drops, splits the group, and seals the main stair. The only way up now is the exterior scaffold in full view of the yard.
- Climax · The resonance chamber: a crystal core lit violet, the floor humming hard enough to blur vision, Automatic Assassins on their patrol loop, and Ashford's reinforcements two turns behind. Triggering the flaw means someone has to hold the core steady while it destabilizes.
- Resolution · The tower goes dark on one whole face, the charge cycle broken for weeks, and the district watches it happen from the streets below. Markos issues a curfew by morning. The engineer is either free, buried, or owed.
Leverage Points
- The control glyph. Reprogram it to blind one Automatic Assassin's patrol loop, or brick it outright and lose a distraction later.
- The rebuilt gantry. Collapse it early to cut off pursuit, or save the collapse for the retreat and cross it once under fire.
- The Man with the Clockwork Arm. He knows the tower cold, but he panics under direct threat and will say anything, true or not, to end a confrontation.
- Ward-ochre stock in the laborers' shed. Enough to ward a doorway against the Assassins' sensors, but the Gatekeepers track ochre burned outside its sanctioned frames.
- The conscription roster. Names on it can turn laborers against a Guard patrol for one desperate minute, or mark the party as agitators if the roster is found on them.
The Cast
- The Man with the Clockwork Arm (Terrassian, forced labor) · Wires the tower's Automatic Assassins by day, hides the core flaw by night. Wants his apprentice off the tower before the alignment locks. Flips fully loyal if the party protects the apprentice first; freezes and lies if threatened.
- Captain Ashford (Red Guard) · Runs tower security like a siege, absolutely loyal to Kiraline, will not negotiate. Folds only when the tower itself turns against his own men.
- General Markos (Albion command, partly vampirized) · Doubled the conscription quota to hit the deadline. Wants the tower finished more than he wants any one laborer alive. Fading humanity makes him careless with names on the roster, an opening for anyone who reads it right.
Climax Variable (d6)
Roll or choose when the party reaches the resonance chamber.
| d6 | Twist |
|---|---|
| 1 | Laborer unrest on the lower floors trips the lockdown protocol early. The core charge clock drops from six turns to three. |
| 2 | The Man with the Clockwork Arm, if his apprentice is safe, throws himself into disabling the housing alongside the party. If she is not, he freezes at the worst possible moment. |
| 3 | The rebuilt gantry finishes collapsing, sealing the main stair for good. The only way out is the exterior scaffold, in full view of the yard. |
| 4 | The ward bell rings regardless of caution. Ashford floods the chamber with reinforcements, and the alarm clock collapses into the core clock: both run out together. |
| 5 | If the party burned ward-ochre earlier, its residue flares under the core's light and calls a Gatekeeper into the chamber, hunting whoever tripped it and no one else. |
| 6 | The core's violet light spikes to full brightness. Anyone without Nocturne Spectacles or solid cover is blinded for a full turn at the worst possible moment. |
Breadcrumbs
The rebuilt gantry from the entrance is the same one that fails for good in the climax; anyone who inspected it early knows exactly where it will give. The engineer's schematics mark a shaft beneath the core housing that drops straight toward the Comet Chamber, a connection nobody on the working floor is supposed to know about.
The Not-Line
This quest is not a straight demolition job. It is a race against a machine that wakes up while the party is still standing inside it.