Quest Letter - Issue 3 - Kallio Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Exploring Kallio

If the simulation is disabled, the house, compound, and all of its contents remain intact, though all ‘living beings’, except for any purple rabbits that may be present, have disappeared. When the shield is taken down, the wind that was previously absent is now noticeable, and the ever glowing and unchanging sky is gone, replaced with a more natural sky and day/night cycle.  Players now have the freedom to leave the city in any direction, though if they choose to use the roads, the layout with roads can be found below. After about 20 minutes of walking, they will encounter a translucent purple shield with a slight shimmer. The shield is permeable to sight and sound, but you can not physically pass through it. If the shield has been deactivated using the control pad, players will find a ring of purple dirt encircling the area, resembling the remnants of dirt blown against a wall over an extended period, though the wall is now absent.

Upon crossing the line where the shield should be, the control pad emits a loud chime sound and displays the prompt: "Lock up behind yourself! Would you like to reactivate the shield?"  This same prompt happens after leaving any instance the Kallio Pad controls.  

After only a couple minutes of walking they will see another purple shield.  Any time they approach a shield their control panel will chime and give the message:

“Would you like to switch admin features to area ###” (which will change depending on the shield they approach) and they will be given the same options as before, only relating to the new area. 

217 (now 231) - This is your home instance.  You are greeted by Felix asking you to go clear out the mine again for training.  If the players choose to do this, you will face the same enemies in chapter 2, but twice as many.  The enemies double every day until 4 total trips to the mine have been completed, at which point Felix will congratulate them and ask them to wait for a vehicle.  The vehicle will never come. 

218 (now 232) - In this instance, you find a seemingly fresh occurrence. In the stasis chamber room, there are two pods that remain unopened, with deceased individuals inside (long dead). Additionally, there are two deceased individuals in the mining training building. These bodies are fresh, only a day old you estimate. By default, the shield is up, and the simulation is running. All the enemies are alive in the church and forge, and one is alive but at half health in the mining simulation.

One of the fresh corpses in the mining room has a magical item you can loot, The Remixer

The Remixer (trinket, requires attunement)

• As an action, once per long rest you can gather up all the unused hit dice from yourself and up to 3 willing people within 20 feet of you.  You may then add one hit dice to the hit dice pool and redistribute them as you wish.

• As a bonus action, once per short rest you can call out the name of a person within 30 feet of you and they may spend one of their hit dice to recover hit points.

217 & 218 - both of these instances have roads that lead to a mine.  With a DC15 survival or nature check you can determine that while the caves may not be connected internally, they are very close and within the same cave system.  You could easily navigate from outside one cave to the other by following the rocky ledges, though your Kallio pad would prompt you to switch instances if you were to do so.  While the 217/231 cave is full of enemies, the 218/232 cave is completely empty, the convicts in 232 having not yet progressed to this stage of the training.  

219 - This program appears to be running the original mining and smelting simulation.  The instructors produce messages such as 'The One is so proud of you; you can rejoin society now!' or 'Your mining skills are satisfactory; you are ready to join the world.' The ores and rocks in this simulation are significantly depleted, indicating extensive use.

Should the players enter the stasis room while the simulation is running, The One will reprimand them, stating that they are in a restricted zone and that if they don’t leave immediately the authorities will be notified.

220 -   This seems to be running a completed instance of the original training program, but for gardening.  Unless you deactivate the simulation, you will find a gardening trainer, harvesting trainer, and The One who will greet you in a friendly manner and congratulate you on completing your training.  They might also tell you that you are ready to rejoin the world, or that your contributions to feeding the miners will be valuable.  They always tell you to gather your things, as you will be picked up shortly to start your new life.  

Any attempts to attack them will show that they are not solid, and can’t be hurt.  They also make no attempts to attack back but may say things like ‘it’s important not to lose your temper, a person can only be sent to Kallio once and people who commit assault are dealt with most harshly.’ 

Should the players enter the stasis room while the simulation is running, The One will reprimand them, stating that they are in a restricted zone and that if they don’t leave immediately the authorities will be notified.

The dirt in the gardening room seems to be from Kallio and any remaining seed packets seem to be real, though quite old.  The vegetables in the harvesting room are all illusionary and can not be eaten.  They are clearly part of a program teaching you how to harvest different types of food.  

In this instance there is a journal.  You learn that the man who wrote it was a dwarf named Tuvrut, and when he woke up he and his companions all had a ‘The One’ swirl tattoo.  He talks about feeling like something was missing, like he had power surging inside him but was somehow cut off from it.  He spends many pages trying to articulate the strange feeling.  He seemed a little suspicious about being a criminal but was determined to complete training so he could leave here.  He also mentioned one of his fellow inmates who seemed even more bothered by bottled up power than him, spontaneously bursting into flames on their third day in the harvesting room and then vanishing.  The gardening instructor made no acknowledgment that it happened.  The journal ends abruptly after he finished his training, and you assume he was able to leave.  

221 - The shield is up, but the password has changed.  You can not get access to this instance.  

222, 223 & 224 -  Shields are down, these instances aren't just looted, they are LOOTED.  The walls are gone, there is nothing but the foundations.  There is one Lavender Breeze in 222, one in 224, and a ghast in 223.  

225 (see below)

226 - The shield is already down in 226, and unlike when you left your own instance, there isn't a ring of soil  where the dirt had blown against it.  This kitchen is completely cleared out and the training has been deactivated. There are no meal drinks. Everything is coated in purple dust. Many rabbits and perils have turned the forge into their home. The furnace seems to be powered down. One large Plum Pounce (see Appendix C) guards the door. The trees are still lit but it is much more dim thanks to the heavy layer of dust. There is a lavender breeze outside the church. The natural plant life you first saw in the cave seems to be growing wild here. If you activate the simulation, the middle of town encounter with the soldiers activates.

227 - The shield in this area is up, and the simulation is running a ‘Congratulations’ message from Felix for having completed training, and instructing players to wait to be picked up. There is a crater where the house should be. A thorough investigation reveals that someone put a mining bag inside another mining bag. There is one earth elemental in the center of the crater.

228 - The shield is up, and the simulation is running Felix who tells you ‘Congratulations!  Your training is complete.  A vehicle should pick you up shortly to return you home’ and various other variations of this sentence.  There are three graves by the house, and three zombies waiting to attack you if you get too close to their graves. Inside the house, there is a diary and a larger version of the map drawn on the wall. The stasis room seems to hold a pile of broken scavenged gear. (This is the instance our skeletal friend from the cave originated in.)

There is a hymn book that doubles as a diary, its pages filled with the musings of a dwarf named Durfal. He was a robust fellow with a knack for holy magic and abnormal strength. Durfal found himself among three others, all waking up in this strange place, though their simulation seemed to teach farming instead of mining. 

He tells about going to the planting room only to be attacked by gardeners.  They were also attacked in the harvesting room and the chapel.  Then they were attacked by soldiers wanting to arrest them.  

Next they met Felix, who led them through four progressively more challenging trips to the cave, losing all 3 companions along the way. After Durfal successfully completed the program, Felix promised a pickup that never came.

He realised the food in the ‘harvesting room’ wasn’t real, but the seeds in the planting room did seem to be real and he started to grow a few things, worrying he would run out of Meal Drink.  He noticed that while the plants grew fine in the purple soil, they tended to come up with a purple hue.  

Growing impatient, Durfal delved into trying door codes, successfully opening the stasis chamber room on day 140. Beyond, he discovered an instance with a wrecked main house on day 142. Amid the debris, he stumbled upon a map. 

The diary captures his daily struggles to open the door, mixed with notes on a self-imposed workout routine to maintain sanity. As days passed, Durfal's reflections deepened, pondering the nature of Felix—whether he was a real person or a test from The One and his being left here a form of divine punishment for listening to Felix and using his magic.

There are 148 tally marks on the back page of the book.  

229 -The shield is up and the Felix training simulation is running. There are four long-dead corpses laying by a half-health soldier and soldier captain in an idle animation in the center of town. Each of the corpses turns into a zombie as you approach.

230 - The shield is up, and the simulation is running a 'Congratulations' message from Felix. In the area, there is a diary of a human woman who lived into old age. There are three graves of her companions, two of whom died right away, and another who lived about 15 years. The woman's skeleton is on the bed.

There are many, many, many bunnies, perils and pounces in this instance. 

You also discover a diary that seems to be written on homemade paper, partially composed from old pages of the books in the instance and partially from purple vegetation.  There is a homemade purple ink. 

The woman was a human named Clara.  Another human, James, an older man, was also in her spawn group and they lived together for what she estimates must have been about 15 years before he died.  Based on the number of entries after this, you think she only lived a year or two more than him.  They were friends but never more.  They grew some cave plants which produced edible berries.  They walked a lot around the perimeter of the shield, worked in their garden, and had several pet rabbits over the years that they were very attached to.  It was a simple existence but they talked a lot and invented little games to play.  When he died she was very lonely, but had her rabbits to keep her company.  Her favorite was named Flopsy, and as her health starts to decline towards the end of the journal most of her writings are about being worried about him surviving without her.  

There are several sketches of James and the rabbits found on various pages.  

There are also some speculative passages about rabbits.  Clara says:

Although I don't have memories of my former life I do seem to have some knowledge of animals and nature.  Having been here for quite some time now,  I do not believe these bunnies are native to this place.  It is my guess that a pair of them were brought here and they did what rabbits tend to do and multiplied.  Most of the rabbits are normal, though lavender.  But occasionally larger versions appear.  One rabbit this season is even larger than me.  It seems to happen more often every year.  They are a little skittish but seem friendly enough when approached gently.  They have no natural predators but I think the scarcity of food keeps the population in check.

Why are they purple though?  Some sort of magic done to the original pair?  Some sort of evolution to fit into this environment?  The result of eating lots of purple vegetation?  I can’t say for sure.  

Swirl - the sand is deep here, you don’t really see anything.  

225 - Shields are down.  You notice even before you even get close… fields and fields of crops.  A variety of crops, all growing with a slight purple hue. These seem to be the same types of crops you saw seed packets for in the gardening training instances, and some that look to be native to Kallio.   As you step inside this instance, a small child catches sight of you. Startled, the child screams and dashes away. As you explore further, you discover an entire city!

At the outskirts of the city, vast fields extend as far as the eye can see.  Four familiar buildings stand in the center of town,completely surrounded by structures created from Kallio's natural plant life—roofs of purple leaves atop walls of branches and stems woven between metal supports made from recognizable ores. The synthetic trees are adorned with living moss, bringing them to life and lending them an eerie beauty.

While navigating through the settlement, the eyes of the inhabitants follow your every move, wide with curiosity and caution. People keep a careful distance, silently observing your presence.  You are greeted after only a few minutes by Kelly and Silverpick who escort you to meet Olga Minefall, the village elder.
Felix still runs a congratulations message in the middle of town.

Kallio City -

Everyone in Kallio city is a descendant of people who woke up here with no memories.  None of them have ever been off Kallio.  There is evidence of magic throughout the village: The fields are being tended with the aid of magic, homes seem lit with magic, and the clothes are woven with the aid of magic.  

The main buildings have undergone alterations throughout the years.  The forge has continued to function as a forge.  The main house is now a town meeting area with the back room being an archive of information about Kallio.  The church is now a place to raise purple slugs native to Kallio which you learn can spin thin silky threads that are then woven into clothing, and the old mining house is enchanted to stay cold and store food.

Kallio city has 437 residents, with number 438 due any day.  By their estimate they have been here for at least 250 years but likely more.  There is one remaining resident from the original group of prisoners: Olga Minefall

Olga Minefall: Olga, grandmother of Kelly (who looks more human than dwarven),  is an old dwarven woman but was a child when she woke up.  Although there is no way to know for certain she estimates she was only 4 or 5 years old.  She woke up with 3 adults.  A human man named John, a dwarven woman named Meltra and a dwarven man named Copperwire.  They protected her and together they completed the training.  Like everyone else, they found that Felix was in fact not coming to pick them up.  Although they didn’t let her fight, it didn't take long to realize her magical powers.  Not only could she heal their wounds with just a hug, she could talk to the rabbits!

John was really good with magical devices and while Meltra and Copperwire scavenged for food and clues, he would tinker with the keypad and lock and eventually overrode it about half a year later.  After finding the artificer’s pad in the locked room they gathered some of their supplies and had a look outside the shields where they found more shields that they were able to take down, and more survivors (some magical and some not) waiting for rides that never came.  Some were randomly entering numbers in the pad with hopes of opening the door, some tried brute force and were retaliated against, and others tried to get in magically but were less successful than John.  

When attempting to get into the swirl area (base) on the map, they lost several people and control pads.  Another pad was locked inside 221 when the scout, who was a little unstable but apparently more unstable than they realized,  went inside and changed the password never to be seen again.  Their final pad was lost when another scout went out, they think to 227, and never returned.

They tried to retrieve the pads from the base several times but eventually they started building this village, first just living in the established buildings but over time expanding outward.  Olga’s husband Jem was the first baby born on Kallio, to a woman who woke up from stasis only to find she was about 6 months pregnant.    

We tried for many years to find a way off Kallio, but as more and more time passed this became our home.  A few people were killed trying to get into the base over the years, and many more were badly injured.  Our scouts found that it takes about 8 days of walking in any direction to end up back where you started, but other than the 14 instances there doesn’t seem to be anything else here.  They eventually stopped trying, because they valued their lives, we had become pretty happy here.  And any sort of world that would exile a child just for having magic may not be so great to go back to anyway.

Olga is happy to get your story and tell you hers but her most pressing question is about when and where you woke up to try to see how close the reset is to 225.  She seems very concerned that if 225 resets everyone inside will be killed.  She asks for your Kallio pad, and says she will start making immediate plans for evacuation should it become needed.  

I know you just got here and maybe I have no right to ask for your help, but you seem like competent fighters.  Maybe you are the people we have been waiting for to finally get into the base.  Your goal of escaping might align perfectly with our goal of … well… not being reset.  Some of us are magical and some of us aren't, but most of our magic is of a very domestic sort, not for fighting.  What we can do for you is this.  If you give us any ore you collected, and, well… we can get the rest with one of your Kallio pads, we can try to make you some items that might help you survive in there.  Give you the edge you need.  We have some really clever crafters who I know would love to lend their help.  What do you think?

If you leave on good terms, in addition to one magical (common or uncommon) item each (DMs choice), she also gives you one stone of sending so you can keep in touch. 

Level Up:
After fully exploring the city and speaking with Olga, the players will be granted level 4

Maps and NPCs new to Chapter 3, as well as the full PDF of this chapter including stat blocks is attached to this post. Check out all the issues of Kallio here.