The session began with the party standing outside their disconnected train cars, debating how to assemble the massive brass cannon they had discovered. Mickle, the gnome artificer, successfully supervised the assembly process, which took approximately six minutes of heavy labor from Grundel and the others.

Simultaneously, Bludarious devised a plan to turn the remaining train cars—which were filled with crates of volatile gunpowder—into a massive bomb to attract attention or deter pursuers. He laid a seventy-foot trail of gunpowder leading away from the train. When he ignited the trail with his musket flint, the resulting explosion was catastrophic, completely destroying the cars and the tracks and sending a massive plume of black smoke into the sky. The shockwave was so intense it caused Mickle significant injury and temporarily deafened Grundel.

While the party dealt with the train, Nebish flew into the air to scout an approaching glint in the sun. He observed a large airship engaged in a firefight with the engine of the train that had previously abandoned the party. The airship, eventually identified as the *Spring Wind*, took heavy damage from the battle with the train engine and Nebish assumed that the Spring Wind was an enemy, so he decided to puncture the Hydrogas envelope and it began a slow, unintentional descent, ultimately touching down roughly 1,500 yards away.

The party approached the wreckage cautiously at night. Nebish used a Minor Illusion of a gunshot to flush out any survivors, prompting a panicked volley of return fire from beneath the collapsed canvas of the ship's balloon. Eventually, the ship's captain, Barnaby Harrier, emerged.

The party discovered that the rest of the crew had perished, mostly upon impact. They learned that among the crew was Barnaby's partner and lover, Miranda. Despite their rough introduction, the group spent the night helping Captain Barnaby. Mickle utilized his Mending cantrip and a sewing kit to repair the twenty-foot tear in the airship's canvas, while the others dug seven ten-foot-deep graves for the fallen crew. Following a somber funeral ceremony, the party took a long rest.

In the morning, Captain Barnaby offered the party a place on his crew, explaining that his ship was a privateer vessel. He revealed they were roughly thirty miles from Caracas. The airship's hydrogas engine—a shardisite powered device—was damaged and needed a magister at a port to be repaired for approximately five hundred gold.

The party decided to camouflage the *Spring Wind* with canvas and sand, detach the engine, and head toward the mountains to avoid Cordoban patrols along the rail line. Before departing, Barnaby distributed equipment to the party:

• Bludarious: A double-barrel shotgun and thirty silver bullets.
• Mickle: A long dagger (functioning as a short sword).
• Grundel: A pair of magical leather gloves that made him feel stronger and more powerful.
• Nebish: Recovered an ornate silver rapier from the initial crash site.

As the group navigated a canyon that bore a haunting resemblance to the site of their shared premonition, they were ambushed. Two massive, twenty-foot-long arcanotech beasts fused with metallic armor in the shape of ankylosaurs—burst from the rock face.

The ensuing combat was brutal:

• Faerie Fire: Khalid cast a purple Faerie Fire, outlining the beasts and granting everyone advantage on attacks.
• Bludarious: Used his revolvers and violent shots to shatter the metallic plating on the constructs' heads, eventually splitting one creature’s head open.
• Nebish: Executed a dive attack, plunging his silver rapier deep into the back of one construct.
• Grundel: In a display of raw barbarian rage, he used his daggers to pry and eventually rip the head off one construct and the tail off the other.

Upon the destruction of the beasts, a sickly, green necrotic smoke dissipated from their remains. Mickle and Grundel scavenged two stones of shardisite from the constructs' bodies.

The session ended as Captain Barnaby, hearing more metallic screeching coming from the hole the creatures had emerged from, urged the party to flee the area immediately.