As the next Temple gathering approaches, things get underway.
The party assembles on a Ferryman fragment floating in neutral space, between the Union and the Fallen's territories. The promise of adventure has lured many to the expedition, including Catequil of the Machinists, Djared Crusius, Hawthorne (surrounded by a crowd of children) and Anja Sedlak from the Union and Bezeth, Madame Imogene and Valk from the City Fragment.
The Ferrymen have agreed to transport you most of the way, from where the party make use of Djared and Evelyn's flying machines to cover the rest of the way.
The lost city of Neverdark was built ages ago inside an almost spherical fragment. The only external features are a large platform designed to let flying craft dock, and colossal double doors leading from the landing area to the city proper. The doors are covered in bas-relief depicting grand potentates on thrones, wondrous constructions and all sorts of marvels. They were clearly designed to impress visitors, and they do their job as soon as you disembark.
A short rest later, Hawthorne's children start setting up a base camp on the landing platform, and the advance party heads towards the doors.
As you near them, you hit upon a problem. The doors stand over twenty times as high as the tallest member of your party, and they have no visible means of opening. After pondering your options for a few moments, Anja happens to lean on it, and it swings open. Behind the stone walls you can hear the massive collection of gears and counterweights that enable the doors to be pushed with relative ease.
The inside of the city is an impressive sight. The fragment is completely hollowed out, with buildings as would be built on the surface, all pointing towards the centre. Constructions cover all of the inside: towers at the bottom pointing up, dangling temples from the ceiling, massive stairways running up and down the walls, bridges and platforms providing footing in the heights.
The entire city appears to be covered in a thick vine that bears glowing orbs, illuminating everything in a pale, washed out green light. These orbs dissipate into a glowing dust as soon as they are touched, leaving behind a faint smell of open fields and forest undergrowth.
In the centre of the city, suspended from the ceiling and walls by a huge number of chains is a dark reddish palace that looks like the most important structure in the city. It is connected to buildings above you by bridges, so this is where you choose to begin your search.
The climb up is hard. The sheer number of steps would prove a dauting challenge for even the most able-bodied, and this is not helped by the years of humidity and lack of care, which have made them slippery and crumbling in places. Valk scouts ahead for traps, pausing every so often to probe for hidden passages, but never finding any.
This was clearly a path designed to be taken by dignitaries. The way up is lined by expansive mansions and shrines, all gone greyish green with age. The few that you explore seem to have been completely ransacked, full of broken furniture and devoid of anything valuable. Being inside these houses inspires a slight sense of terror, as if a terrible tragedy befell their inhabitants.
In time you come to the foot of a bridge leading to the dangling palace. The stone is crumbling away in places, but it holds and before you know it you're across, standing in a grand antechamber. The walls are covered in depictions of scenes of battle, between ground forces, between airships, storm mages blasting battlefields, large mechanical constructs sweeping the weaker soldiers away, …
As you make your way into the palace, you come across the first remains of Neverdark's former inhabitants. A corpse sprawled on the ground, run through by another human's arm. The body seems to have decayed relatively little considering the age of Neverdark, and a thick layer of dust testifies that this is no recent casualty.
A brief search reveals he had little more on him than a handful of badly rusted stamped metal discs and an old dagger in similar condition. A little further along, you come across more corpses, and visible signs of a struggle. The palace seems to have been the stage for a violent battle, but there are no signs of any allegiance.
Poking through the carnage reveals little more than weapons rendered unuseable by the ravages of time and the wreckage of this once grand palace. Machinery of all sorts appears to have been employed, but has long since become little more than rusty cogs and piles of dust, its original function unknowable.
At long last you reach the throne room. The battle must have been at its most violent here: old bloodstains marr the walls and reach all the way up to the ceiling. On a great gilded throne in the centre of the room is a figured covered in black robes, run through by a number of large steel rods. The figure's left hand is the only visible part of it's flesh: a decaying thing covered in bandages, missing its thumb. On its lap are several bound scrolls.
You approach the figure, careful not to disturb the corpses strewn about the floor. Catequil reaches for the scrolls, grabs them carefully and places them inside a container to prevent any damage.
After convening, you decide that this may be nough for one day, and head back towards the base camp with the only useful thing you've found. As you near the bridge, you start to become aware of several sounds coming from within the palace: the scrape of steel of stone, and the rustle of dozens of feet shambling towards you. You turn back to see the masses of the dead charging towards you, the black-robed figure floating above them, seemingly pulling invisible strings to make them move.
You quickly gather your wits about you. Those not adept at fighting make their way to the base camp, while the others hold them off on the bridge, where the animated dead cannot use their superior numbers effectively.
Catequil, belching steam and smoke, plows into them, tossing them aside and off the bridge like rag dolls. Bezeth is little more than a dark blur, a knife in each of her hands slicing and dicing her way through their ranks. Hawthorne's experience and Imogene's fireballs prove invaluable in holding them off.
You soon realise that you run the risk of being overrun by their sheer numbers, and start retrating towards the landing platform. The dead seem to be growing smarter and more agile as the fight progresses, and you soon find yourselves having to fight some crwling on the walls, or climbing up from the edges of the walkways.
Hawthorne and Anja dash ahead to warn the base camp, and as the main body of the expedition reaches the doors, they're almost done packing everything they could. You abandon the fight and run down the stairs to the landing platform, with the teeming masses of the dead in hot pursuit.
Djared yells at his pilot:
“Jack, start the engine, get it up! The Engine!”
The flying machines lift off the landing platform as the last person leaps on board, and the undead at the forefront get pushed off the edge, pressed by the masses behind them. The black-robed figure watches you leave from the doors, and you can all feel the rage in its gaze as you escape. You speed away, hoping to return before the temple session, so that you may warn the colonies.
As you look back, you see little Timmy getting devoured by the undead.