120
Grethe approaches you, accompanied by a pair in attire you don’t often see: Utaru brown and gold. The pair of women introduce themselves as Jupi and Adri. Both are covered in road dust and look exhausted, but otherwise healthy and friendly.
The pair explain their predicament, completing each other’s sentences:
The Derangement has affected the machines in Plainsong just as everywhere else. Utaru have long since learned to give them a wide berth, and to set up strong defenses against the random roaming packs.
Something new is happening in the villages along the Southtap, the river generally considered the southernmost boundary of the lands tamed by the Utaru. One fishing village is now empty — no one knows where the people went. A farming village saw its occupants become paranoid, closing their doors and refusing to leave or allow entry, starving while their fields went untended. A third has seen mysterious disappearances of its young men and women, following uncharacteristic acts of aggression and violence. A fourth has seen strange new fruits and vegetables sprout on the edges of their fields, not planted by any farmer. Other villages have similar strange tales, which many had hoped were only superstition and exaggeration, but they are getting harder to ignore.
Machines do not seem to be involved an any of these incidents. There is increasing concern that the earth itself is becoming deranged, just like the machines. If this is part of a new cycle, does that mean people are next? Is that what is already happening?
Pairs of Utaru were sent to each of the other tribes. They were to take their time, gathering intelligence about similar strange occurrences, regardless of whether the leadership of the tribe would acknowledge the oddities.
Jupi and Adri were assigned to the Carja, making the five-week journey from Deeproot, the largest city in Plainsong and capital for the Utaru. They spent three further weeks talking to people throughout the Sundom, especially in and around the Royal Maizelands. Most of what they learned were typical Carja political machinations — the new Sun-King, the Carja Civil War, some intrigue from an Oseram wronged in the Red Raids, and the encroaching bandits and Tenakth.
The pair found the rise of the Eclipse cult interesting, as it had parallels to the disappearing villagers, and those who seemed to go mad overnight. They even went so far as to scout their main base in The Jewel, where Jupi was able to sneak in to find Helis conversing with HADES. Jupi watched the hornet’s nest erupt to try to destroy the Seeker, who had also found her way in and seemed to know something about the mysterious entity.
They tried to catch up with the Seeker, in the hopes she might share what she knew, but were waylaid for days by a trio of Stalkers and a Glinthawk. By the time they reached Meridian, it was already under siege by the war machines of the Eclipse. The pair helped where they could, but they never managed to get closer to the Seeker than seeing her bright red hair at a distance.
Their next delay came on the road east, as they followed the Seeker’s trail back toward Nora lands. A caravan of Carja refugees, each with a sadder story about lost families and homes, was making camp for the night before a hard push the next day through Stormbird territory. Jupi wanted to travel through the night, but Adri convinced her they should at least help the group get to the Daytower Gate. None of the caravan had any combat, tracking, or navigation experience — they were running scared, and Adri was worried they were just going to get themselves killed.
The refugee families made slow progress, but Jupi and Adri were able to keep them out of the sight of the machines. Escorting the group added almost a week to their time, causing the duo to once again miss the Seeker — arriving in Mother’s Watch several days after she’d left. They spent the time since then going from one Nora settlement to the next, even those abandoned and razed to the ground, but the Seeker left no further clues of her destination. They’d lost her, but decided to make one final trip to Mother’s Watch before returning to Deeproot.
Hearing of your group, they asked for an introduction, hoping you might have knowledge of the Seeker’s whereabouts. Barring that, maybe one of your party might have tales which could shed light on the behavior of the Sunrise River villages.
The pair intend to return to Plainsong, leaving as soon as they can obtain supplies to start their journey. They need to report their findings back in Deeproot, but they want to take the long way back to see the villages along the Sunrise River. If you’d like to accompany them, they are willing to wait up to three days for you to prepare. Otherwise, they will wait for you in Winter’s Fork, the first major Utaru settlement beyond the Nora’s Southern Embrace Gate, in ten days. From there, they will make the journey to Tapwash, the village marking the southwestern corner of Plainsong.
Winter’s Fork is a 2-day walk (ca. 60mi/100km) due south from the Gate, on the banks of the Sunrise River. Tapwash is another 90mi/150km due south, but the rougher terrain pushes the walk to almost 4 days.
Next Steps
This is the first multi-day travel of the module, and may be the first you’ve done in Skyline. If you have a Narrator, they may have encounter rules for you, possibly based on distance travel rules from your game system.
Before you head out, you’ll want to decide your mode of travel. Your party should have at least one Corruptor Override Controller by now. If your characters know how, you might override one or more Striders, providing you with options for riding or pulling a cart instead of walking. If you have not yet learned how to use them, you might wish to roleplay a scene in which your characters figure out how to do so. Such a scene is not included in this story module, but should be straightforward to improvise: your Focus devices connect to your Override Controller(s), which then present new options as you approach units you know how to control.
In the author’s head-canon for Horizon, there have absolutely been people who have tried to use boars and goats to pull carts and sleds. Maybe some have even succeeded.
For ease of narrative, you might assume that you start off knowing how to override Striders. You could then figure out how to ride them, remembering there are no horses in Horizon or Skyline, making it a new experience for everyone, or how to hitch them to a cart.
If you’re going to use overridden machines, how are you going to handle Adri and Jupi? Will you explain to them how you’re able to override machines, hide it from them, or leave it a mystery? Maybe you walk to the border of Nora lands, and then tell them? It’s up to you.
TODO: Character sheets for Adri & Jupi