Eberron One

Ducats perches inside one of the upper incomplete stories and covers up in his cape to wait. He leaves Cash at ground level to bark if there's troubte, and secures a rope so he can quickly rappell down if need be.

Cole wrote:

Ducats perches inside one of the upper incomplete stories and covers up in his cape to wait. He leaves Cash at ground level to bark if there's troubte, and secures a rope so he can quickly rappell down if need be.

Excellent, you are secreted in the ruin.

Lt. Jung exhorts the warforged driver to move on, and you proceed to the next location on their rounds.

DM wrote:

1. One works on a marchwall (a hedge with a stone wall at its center, intended to slow down invading forces) west of Vulyar.
2. Two work on a ruined building in the southeast section of town.
3. One works on a road heading southwest out of Vulyar, about a mile out. The road is labeled 'Fort Bones.'
4. Two work on a barn south of town.
5. One works on a ruined building in the northeast section of town.
6. One works on a small road southeast of Vulyar.
7. Two work on a barn east of town.

Heading south, your road passes between two of the large, pyramidal stones of the lightning train line. You travel for only about ten minutes to reach a farm near the base of the southern hills. There is a large ruined barn here, and you see two warforged repairing both the lower stone structure, and the upper wooden structure. The wagon pulls up to the barn, and the two outriders circle the property at a distance.

Albrecht quickly checks over the two forged, and finding them both sound walks to the farmhouse. After exchanging a few words with a man who comes to the door, he remounts the wagon. You proceed west, making your way along several small dirt cart paths. Eventually, after about 20 minutes of riding, you roll out onto a wider dirt road, and turn toward the southwest.

Your wagon trundles along the road in the light morning shadows of a line of hills to your left. The road begins to rise a bit, and before long the hills to your left have become small valleys and dells.

You see a rough, jagged area ahead in the road, and a stack of heavy stone blocks off to the right side, but you see no movement. One of the outriders motions to hold, and the two of them ride up, staying a good distance to either side of the road. After a few moments, one of the riders comes back and says "No sign of de forged. Its tools are still dere, but it's gone."

Finora climbs down from the cart as well and begins to nose around. She's especially interested in where their tools fell, so she focuses on that area. Like Jaral, though, she is careful not to move anything.

None of you see evidence of a struggle where the work was being done, where the tools are lying, or around the stack of stone. The tools are covered by about an inch of snow.

Spiraling outward, Caby finds that the tracks of the warforged around the worksite are filled by a varying amount of snow. Some tracks are filled with enough that they are barely discernible. Other tracks have much less snow in them. The only tracks heading away from the site are filled with the least snow. They go almost straight south, leaving the sw/ne path of the road, heading down into one of the narrow dells. Following these tracks (of one individual warforged) they maintain their basic southward direction and climb back up onto a slight promontory overlooking the lower ground below.

The tracks stop here, and are criss-crossed by multiple short lines and curves in the snow, most of which are 2 -3 feet long and an inch or two wide.

Llama wrote:

Jaral climbs down from the wagon and shivers a bit as he makes his way to the work site. He watches his step as he nears the tools, so as not to disturb any evidence of wrongdoing. While Caby makes her circles looking for tracks, he'll look for a some structure he might climb, to get a different point of view.

The only higher area available is atop the stack of stone. From there you also see a pile of dirt, probably used for fill in the road work.

ehiker133 wrote:

Caby examines the lines more closely; she wants to see if she can determine how they were made or if they are uniform in depth along the entire distance of each line or if they gradually get shallow around the ends of each line.

They gradually get shallow around the ends.

ehiker133 wrote:

"Albrecht, since we first entered the military compound, I've seen several examples of soldiers treating warforged like they are invisible until needed, that they are unthinking and unfeeling and unable to reason. Has anyone bothered to ask the warforged if they knew what was happening to the others? Maybe this is some pre-determined thing that others might know about and be willing to discuss?"

Lt. Jung looks at you quizzically. "Ask the warforged? But there don't seem to be any of the thinkers in either of my sections." He pauses for a moment, glancing around, then continues. "Frankly, I don't think the captain even believes thinkers exist. I've only been at Vulyar for a year. I came with my corporal and two sections of warforged to assist in the repairs. I didn't fight in the war with these men.. I've been trying hard to.. well, fit in with them. As an artificer, it is always difficult to be seen as an equal with experienced fighting men, and there is little room in my duties for my theories."

ehiker133 wrote:

"Well, maybe we can explore your theories and determine if the evidence provides any support for them. Do you care to take a few minutes to expound on them for us?"

He looks around again, and up at the thinly overcast sky. "I should re-assign a worker here, perhaps two I think, so we can move on to the next site. We can talk in the wagon, on the way there." Unless there's further conversation then, he explains the road repair duties to two of the warforged which have been riding in the back, and they set about their work. He then gets the attention of the two outriders and lets them know you're moving on.

[Is this one of the places where someone was going to remain?]

DM wrote:

1. One works on a marchwall (a hedge with a stone wall at its center, intended to slow down invading forces) west of Vulyar
2. Two work on a ruined building in the southeast section of town. - Ducats
3. One works on a road heading southwest out of Vulyar, about a mile out. The road is labeled 'Fort Bones.'
4. Two work on a barn south of town. - no one
5. One works on a ruined building in the northeast section of town. - Tagor
6. One works on a small road southeast of Vulyar.
7. Two work on a barn east of town.

You head back northeast on the road toward town, where you head west and make your way along sparsely settled outlying roads beyond the edge of town.

As you travel, Albrecht, who you realise is probably not much over 20 years old, begins to speak. "As an artificer, it is part of my vocation to understand and work with the arcane motivators of the warforged. In addition to being a sort of complex clockwork, a warforged is suffused with an enchantment which serves as its engine, which brings it to life, so to speak. These things are not completely understood by any artificer I have met, though we base our work on manipulating this. For those who produced the warforged during the war, I believe it was much like the farmer who may grow bushel upon bushel of grain, though he knows not how the seed functions."

"Anyway.. I believe that the thinkers result when various different parts or factors common to all warforged within their minds, certain opposites for example, come together in a sort of agreement. This is, perhaps, what allows them to become unique.. a thinking individual.. that these separate factors are incredibly numerous, and have come together in a unique way in each case. I have done certain experiments.. " He pauses and looks at the three of you in the party still on the wagon. "Experiments which even my assistant, Corporal Meier, does not know about.. which suggest I may be correct. Yet, I have no proof, and so far no real success."

ehiker133 wrote:

"In your estimation, what percentage of warforged are Thinkers? And is it possible the Thinkers are aware of the prejudice against them and so are not revealing themselves as Thinkers anymore?"

"Fewer than one in a hundred. But as you say, it may be more in reality. Perhaps many more."

You see Albrecht's gaze begin to shift slowly toward the warforged driving the wagon... but then his eyes snap back to Caby instead, and then out to the road. He gathers his cloak more tightly about him, perhaps in response to the cold.

"No, not dismantling." He sounds like he finds the idea shocking. "Analysis. Analysis of their thoughts, their responses and reactions. Then the careful categorization of these thoughts, to determine their connection and interrelation. There are certain series' of questions, for example, that are designed to reveal thought relations indicative of a Thinker. These, although they have revealed no Thinkers at the garrison, are useful as a part of my analysis.

"I agree that, were one to engage in the reverse study, imagining what categories exist and then proceeding to seek for proof, one might find themselves always correct, regardless of the empirical data. This is a matter of great debate at the university in Korth. I am gratified that you agree with me. You are a great thinker amongst your own people, I assume?"

"At first, we all thought it was attacks. Probably by the elves from their new fort. Then we realised it was something else. I thought it had to be theft. If those train bandits, for example, had an artificer with them, it might be possible to shift the forged loyalties to take orders from them. But from what you just found on the road to Fort Bones.. they're not being forced. I checked both sections for thinkers before we left for Vulyar, and there were none. I've checked each of the replacements as well, as soon as they arrived. I can't explain it.

"As far as where they might be going.. there are only two things south of here. Talenta, with elves at the border who don't like forged, and the Mournland."

"We're here."

You've arrived at the repair site at a marchwall west of Vulyar. From here you can look down into the town.