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Eldoran

Imperial Capital • City of the Five Crystals • Target of the Three-Site Strike

Overview​

Eldoran is the capital city of the Eldoran Empire and the seat of the goddess Eldora's faith. Lady Viper called it one of the most heavily defended cities in the world, watched by soldiers who can detect magic on sight. The party reached it in Session 57 and spent Sessions 58–63 inside it under cover, preparing a coordinated sabotage strike for the Twilight Company.

As of Session 63, bombs have gone off at three sites across the city — the Spaceport Factory, the barracks and the university Research Tower. The Research Tower collapsed onto the city wall, Bru had already stolen the miniature sun that powered the factory furnace, and the party was on the point of escaping the city.

The City​

  • Setting: The capital is carved into two facing cliffsides and built out across the top, reached by riding an elevator up from the valley floor (Session 55).
  • Technology: Hovercraft, drones, glowing lamp posts, shape-shifting fabrics and citizens with red-glowing cybernetic eyes; a space shuttle launches from the harbor (Session 57).
  • Power: Five giant floating crystals of iridescence hang over the city in a pentagon, one of them at the spaceport, beaming purple energy down to pylons across the city. Elspeth marked them as sabotage targets on arrival (Session 57).
  • Society: The inner ring is affluent and mostly human. The outer worker rings are more diverse — dwarves run shops, while halflings, gnomes and orcs work as labor — but goblins are absent from every work crew (Session 57).
  • Faith: There is "no god but Eldora"; the artificers' god Tony is followed here only as a philosophy (Session 60).
  • Districts: Named areas include the Tumble Downs, the Beaded Alley, the Crescent and the Guilded Esplanade (Session 58).
  • Transit: The barracks installed luminous "light lanes" for vehicles in January (Session 62); the road into the barracks is a glowing blue levitation platform.

Security​

Lady Viper warned the party that the capital is riddled with mechanisms that detect magic weapons, magic items and spellcasters themselves, and that casters of the party's power could only enter under the sponsorship of an aristocrat (Session 54). Soldiers wear laser-scanning magic-detection helmets and search civilians with them, as at the Sexy Peacock (Session 58); in the Beaded Alley, white-armored soldiers tally magical purchases shop by shop (Session 60).

The party hid its weapons and magic items in the portable hole Silas carries, and later masked items with magic-dampening "Tony stickers" that Elspeth took from Fredo Boggins's shop (Session 60).

Places in the Capital​

  • Little Cradle — The trader town just outside the city, where the party met Finnegan.
  • The Bradicus estate — Seat of Lord Bradicus, a spiral of stonework built into the rock behind a brick wall, under an arcane dome that blocks flight and throws back anything lobbed over it. Bradicus is an independent state, a contested matter between it and the Empire (Session 55).
  • The park — Where the World Tree the party planted in the Dead Forest burst up into the city (Session 57). By Session 63 it had grown to fifty or sixty feet. Cassandra's lakeside birthday party was held in the park (Session 62).
  • The Sexy Peacock — Family inn and eatery where soldiers gather after their shifts; the party's meeting place with George.
  • Toothy's apartment — Room 238 of an apartment building on the western hill, beside an old church turned community center, overlooking the barracks, the spaceport and the Guilded Esplanade. Toothy keeps it as a Twilight Company safehouse (Session 58).
  • The spaceport — A harbor of floating platforms where rocket ships, barges, fighters and aircraft land (Session 59), home to the Spaceport Factory.
  • The Hairy Monkey — A restaurant run by a perpetually high proprietor named Harry and staffed by a sentient, very strong monkey (Session 59).
  • The Beaded Alley — A marketplace where Fredo Boggins keeps an artificer's shop bearing Tony's icon (Session 60).
  • The university — A campus of three research towers (Research Tower).
  • The barracks — A walled compound several city blocks across, with a concert hall used for ascension rituals.

The Party in the Capital​

The capital had been a distant destination since Session 1, when Dirk offered the party a caravan job along the Gold Road to Eldoran. In Session 47 Lady Viper laid out her plan to strike the Empire, including destroying the spaceport in Eldoran's harbor.

The party's first way in — winning Lord Bradicus's televised mercenary audition as the fake company "Pupusa Possum" — collapsed when the contest's library dragged them into a hidden gateway. They entered the city instead by climbing the World Tree up through its park (Session 57). Leliana is Eldoran-born, from the back-country outside the capital (Sessions 54 and 56).

George, embedded in the city guard for the Twilight Company, gave the party three targets: a factory at the spaceport, a research facility at the university where Captain Steel was stationed, and the barracks (Session 58). The party scouted all three through Sessions 59–62, agreed that all three had to go up at once, and detonated them together in Session 63. Across the operation Elspeth made real friends among the factory workers, which the party never fully reconciled with the mission.

Session History​

  • Session 55 — The party rides a caravan up to the capital, built into two facing cliffs and reached by elevator, and enters the Bradicus estate for Lord Bradicus's audition.
  • Session 57 — The World Tree carries the party up through a park into the capital, where they see its five floating power crystals and its ringed districts, disguise themselves, and head for the Sexy Peacock.
  • Session 58 — George gives the party three sabotage targets at the Sexy Peacock while soldiers with magic-detecting helmets search the diners, and the party settles into Toothy's safehouse on the western hill.
  • Session 59 — The party gets its first view of the spaceport, meets its inside man through Ben Boulage at the Hairy Monkey, and infiltrates the spaceport factory.
  • Session 60 — Elspeth shops the Beaded Alley under patrol and takes dampening stickers, the party confirms the factory furnace is a power core, and scouts the barracks by night.
  • Session 61 — The party watches an ascension ritual inside the barracks and breaches a university research tower to learn the harmonic science behind the Empire's power.
  • Session 62 — Leliana arms a bomb in the barracks auditorium, Elspeth gathers intelligence from Fredo Boggins, and Silas steals a scientist's lab coat and passcode at a lakeside party in the park.
  • Session 63 — Bru steals the star from the factory furnace, the party evacuates and bombs the research tower, and explosions go off at three sites across the city as the tower falls onto the city wall.
  • Session 64 — The party launched the Bugatti from the collapsed Research Tower and fled over Eldoran's estate district toward forest and farmland beyond the capital walls while being broadcast live across every screen in the city.