GURPS 2026-05-20

We journey to the anti magic island, and the building that was destroyed last time is still standing. There is a large lock on the door that looks complicated. The door is made of solid brass. There is a portico that is part of the large white-stone cube structure that is embedded in the ground. We find an old pack with a blue potion with the label: Export of the Green tower Mageport, drink in case of emergency.

The door is in fact locked. Solstice attempts to magically unlock it, and nothing happens. Phaidros looks around to see if there is a second entrance or a window that is accessible, while Milo scrounges for lockpicking tools. There is an (air vent?) that has some warm air coming up out of it, and a faint clanging can be heard. It seems like a perilous slide down to who knows where. Milo attempts to pick the lock with his scrounged tools, and finds the lock is a strange pattern of gears inside. After solving the initial set of gears, there is a second set of smaller gears! He picks them, and notices there is a trap that was not set off. The door swings open with a slight grinding sound. We dash inside, and a huge slab of white-stone slams down behind us. We hear clacking like inside the bronze tower in Mageport. We come across a balcony overlooking a metal conveyor belt with automated sorting arms and stomping things. 50 yards across the room is another balcony with no access we can see. Our soulsight leads towards where the molten metal is getting stomped on the conveyor belt.

We find some glyphs on the wall, and we tap them, but nothing happens. We drop down the 15 feet to the conveyors. We all land rough, but Solstice especially so. The Remorhaz eats some molten metal. It looks like we may be able to squeak through the stompers if we time it right. Milo then Phaidros make their way between the stompers. Solstice attempts to zip through on all threes (sprained ankle from the fall). The Remorhaz comes along with, and bumps Solstice, saving them, but causing the Remorhaz to lose four legs!

There is a chute on this side, and the stamped metal chutes down it. One of the automated arms discards a bad piece of metal in a separate chute, and another chute comes for Milo! A quick side-step takes him away from the arm, and ends him up by the good chute. The others all dodge the arm, and dive down the non-garbage chute with Milo.

There is a junction here, with six different chutes exiting from this room, with six observation landings each with a door. Doors three, two, and one are all open, four through six are closed. Door five seems to lead towards where we want to go, as does door six. Door six has a different looking lock than doors one through five. Milo picks door six's lock, avoiding the trap, and we enter a smallish chamber with many bronze plates on the wall with glyphs on them. The Remorhaz is our portable spotlight. There are two diagrams inscribed on bronze plates, and also a framed piece of white-stone that seems like it could be a door. One diagram shows a chamber with platforms that are movable. The second is a three word warning in all caps and underlined, but in a language we cannot decipher. We cannot get the glyphs to do anything. Milo investigates the center chamber again as the tumble of gears in the middle looked somewhat like what the gears in the diagram looked like. The floor begins to shake, and we all gather inside the room. The door closes, and when it opens, the whole room has rotated one spot. We head into door one, as it is now in the position door six used to be in, so heading towards our goal. We see a "bridge" that seems to be a huge one of the automator arms that is idle. There is a landing on the far side with one of the bronze plates.

Door two leads to a balcony that overlooks a conveyor that is moving in spurts. There is a hand-assembly station here with lots of racks of tools, and lots of parts that we have seen throughout the factory starting to be assembled. There is no one working at the stations though. There is an (elevator?) on the far wall. It is a 20 foot drop down to the floor though, so we return to the nexus.

Door three goes down quite a few stairs, and leads to a big chamber with many tubes crisscrossing through the room. Each one has a little wheel and gem, and there are glyphs. Nothing is interacting with us though. Almost all the tubes are warm/hot. The tubes are roughly four feet in diameter. We hear metal clatter through tubes.

The nexus chamber does not rotate, but the whole outer chamber does rotate. AKA the nexus with the six chutes does not rotate, but the whole rest of the factory rotates around it. Why??!

We investigate the mess of gears and such in the middle of the nexus that spins up before every rotation. We can't seem to interact with the mechanism in any way.

We attempt to enter door four. The lock is picked, and we walk through a tube for a bit. Part ways down half the tube is warm. We come to platform, and above us are interlocking gears, with shafts running down to more gears below us. There seems to possibly be another chamber below us, though it's hard to see through the gears. It is somewhat lit below us.

We attempt to enter door five, and note that it has the same (warning?) three words in all caps on a plate. The lock is picked, and we enter a small chamber. Lots of plates with glyphs, and there is a large distinctly red lever that is pointed up. There are the three warning words, and then a word labelling the upwards and downwards positions. There is a thick mesh viewing window showing a few layers of gears and flywheels.

We pull the red lever. Things begin to pick up, and there is a big clunk, then a grinding sound. There is a rumbling from one side of the room, and it shakes. Through the mesh we see the gears and flywheels spinning faster and interlocking. We have engaged something. The doors slam closed, and we rotate around again.

We check out the model in the center of the nexus, and the gears are spinning faster. There are also additional gears that have been engaged and added to the mechanism.
We look in door six (special lock room), and the floor starts shuddering again. the door slams close, and there is a grinding sound, and no movement. There is a terrible grinding sound, popping, then the gears begin again. One layer of the white-stone "door" has been raised. We have passed stage one of the puzzle! Nothing else in the room has changed. There is a fairly long delay this time before the door opens, and it opens with a hiss of steam. (The white-stone door may have been raised by steam?)

In the nexus the incoming chute is slightly misaligned, and spewing parts over the floor.
In room one the huge arm is now operating, and picking up the parts from the incoming pile and moving them to the outgoing chute, rather than just sitting idle in the middle position. The gears beneath the arm are spinning faster, and there is a faint whining sound coming from below. The arm is moving reasonably slowly, but is more stable when carrying a load.

As we exit room one, the middle model engages, rotates forward, then backwards. We dash for room two, and Solstice is left behind. It tries to rotate, fails violently. In room two the conveyor is moving like crazy, spitting parts everywhere. There is a pop, and we feel a gust of warm air from the nexus.

Phaidros and Milo drop down into room two, and attempt to cross the conveyor absolutely yeeting stuff. Phaidros dips ducks and dodges through the maelstrom, but Milo gets absolutely clobbered by a part. This carries him into the down chute - the worst not-water slide ever. Milo is in a pit of shifting metal parts, and things are definitely not working as he thinks they should be.

The room shifts position, and it works flawlessly. The tube pouring out parts does not shift and it continues to pour onto the ground. This time the doors do not move with the rooms.

Back in room two Phaidros sees that there are several smaller tubes going into the larger cylinder, and in the circular crystals there is writing and arrows pointing to more writing. There are six wheels attached to the tubes running to the main cylinder, and one large wheel attached to a seventh tube headed elsewhere. There is a large pressure plate in one of the inspection areas. I push a piece onto the pressure plate, and the two small arms in the ceiling hold the piece down, and the large drill hand drills a shallow hole in the piece. Phaidros heads to the wheels, and he notes that all of the arrows are fluctuating in the middle-ish, with the seventh averaging higher. There is a ton of pressure in these tubes, and they are really hot.

Milo explores his pitch black space and finds that as he moves parts are sliding around and down somewhere. Milo notes that his chamber does spin along with the rest of the factory.

Phaidros spins the first wheel clockwise, and the pressure changes. Room one vents a huge cloud of extreme heat/steam. The arrow drops down towards the bottom. Phaidros opens up the sixth wheel, and there is a bursting sound with lots of noise of destruction. Doorway one emits another blast of steam. The dial on six drops down, the dial on one shoots up, then drops down, and dial six slowly starts going back up.

The Remorhaz has been caught in both blasts of high temperature steam, and has been steamed.

Milo slides into another chute that exits into a vast chamber with far away blinking lights. He free falls for a long time, something that was supposed to be at the exit was not where it was supposed to be.

Solstice notes no change in the white-stone door in room six.

Splash!