Archived GM Notes: This page is unsealed GM-notes pertaining to PRPG2. It is not canonical to PRPG2. It main contain contradictions (even with itself), and preliminary ideas that were merely written down as I thought of them, for later consideration. The absence of something mentioned here from the canon does not necessarily mean that the party "missed" it, it could have been mooted for other reasons or simply discarded by me.

You suddenly come to a small cliff. Fortunately, you are able to stop in time. Judging from the hoof-sized divets carved into the soft ground which go all the way to the edge, though, someone before you was not so fortunate. The cliff is oddly fairly short, with a much gentler slope to the west.

Misty is lying at the bottom of the cliff, about seven meters below. Some bushes seem to have broken her fall, but she isn't visibly moving.

(Misty is injured with broken forelegs and a broken rib; Eagle Eyes will want to have the Farm trail leader bring her back (she is a pegasus). Misty can be roused by Discolor and talk to Akasha.

The cliff is very steep. In fact, it's a concrete wall, mostly buried in countless years of windblown dust, in which plants grew and decayed to soil. There are louvers high on the wall.

At the base of the cliff, about 10 meters south from the bottom, there is a row of deteriorated concrete pillars about 30 cm diameter sticking out of the ground.

The pillar has a horizontal hole in it. The ends of the hole point to the other pillars in the row. There are red-brown stains on the hole and down the side of the pillar. It is otherwise uninteresting.

(If one digs a little, they will expose a concrete road on the side of the pillars nearer the cliff base, and find just more dirt on the other side (where there was water previously.)

--

A bit east and south of the pillars, there is a patch of unusually verdant vegetation on a hillside.

The cave is in this patch. There is a trickle of water emerging from the cave, which seems to be providing this patch with more water than the rest of the area.

The cave is actually a large concrete pipe. An adult pony could move into the entrance of it it by crawling only, but the depth of the dirt on the bottom gradually falls.

The pipe has a little bit of cool water at the bottom.

--

The pipe ends in a chamber with a sharp upturn. There is some sort of huge, silvery and rounded cone in the middle of the chamber; higher up it has giant curved fins protruding from it. Water trickles down the walls. The floor is covered with debris, including large pieces of curved, rusting metal.

The casing of the turbine was not as successful at resisting centuries of decay. It has cracks and holes. None are pony-sized, but they could easily be enlarged.

Should the party enter the penstock (a tunnel higher up, leading away), they will find it inclined upward with a small volume of water running along the ground, which has worn a slight groove in the cement concrete pipe, exposing pebbles of larger aggregate. You come to a huge metal wall obstructing further progress. Tiny jets of water shoot out from pinholes in the wall, the source of the water feeding the trickle in the pipe and ultimately the tiny "oasis" outside.

--

Powerhouse:

West: Backup generators as described previously.

Up stairs, East: Control room, office, office, reception area (south) break room (it and the hall are collapsed, filled with dirt and debris, preventing further exploration.)

Papers and wooden objects have crumbled to dust.

An engraved sign on the office: BOUNDARY LAYER, P.E. / CHIEF ENGINEER, WESTYORE HYDROELECTRIC DAM

The desk is empty of everything but a few trivial artifacts - paperclips, a chewed pencap, a bent tack and a long knifish thing that is not very sharp and had fallen into a crack in the desk. Either the user cleaned out the desk fairly well before he left, or other looters have preceded you here.

Other office door: ICE PHASE, M.V. / DEPUTY ALCHEMIST, NICKERBY COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT

This office was also cleaned out pretty well, but if someone looks carefully through the piles of decayed wood and rusted metal, she may find some enchanted glassware (for durability) that was accidentally left behind.

The control room has many switches that are held in the current position by twisted wires going through holes in the switch and its housing. You could easily remove the wires, though, they just seem to be there to hold the switch in its current position, they are not part of the switch. There are lots of scraps of deteriorated paper here and there.

--

Controls: Six servo controls for the tower intake, labeled INTAKE GATE 1 - 6, All set to 100% open. They are labeled with percentages CLOSED, 25%, 50%, 75%, OPEN

Two servo controls for the penstocks PENSTOCK 1 and PENSTOCK 2, and TURBINE BYPASS.

The potentiometers of most of the intake servos have deteriorated at the remote end. The motors of 1,3 and 4 have all failed, so they will not open or close in response to the servos. They are as of 15 open because the party politely decided not to cause a drought for New Equestria. Motor 2, 5 and their servocontrol are working fine. Motor 6 work, but its servo control is not working and thinks the motor is more closed than it actually is; if set to closed, they will be 25% open, etc.

The penstock servos work. The penstocks are CLOSED for PENSTOCK 1 and PENSTOCK 2.

The bypass servo works, but the control potentiometer and knob has been rather violently removed. It is currently closed (high resistance = more closed). This was done by New Equestrian engineers after the fall of the cloister, in response to a flood.

The dam was shut down during the catastrophe, due to lack of funding and support for it; they left the bypass open to drain the reservoir (preventing a catastrophic collapse someday of the unmaintained dam, which they feared, wrongly as it turns out).

--

Reception area:

Sign: WESTYORE HYDROELECTRIC DAM / NICKERBY COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT

There is an elaborate brazen statue of a muscular unicorn stallion in the lobby, rearing up bipedally, embracing a comely, robe-wearing mare in each foreleg and an levitating an overly large slide rule and a model of a turbine. (They are suspended with bronze wires and hardware from the ceiling.) They are in the midst of a river, which is parting miraculously around the hindlegs of the ponies.

Anyway, once the intake is closed and the penstock drained carefully, the element can be recovered. (It won't be swept out, it's lodged in an area of deteriorated concrete.?)

Corrrupted element vision: You suddenly find yourself on a barren plain, barely recognizable as the countryside around New Canterlot. The Lake Tower has fallen, and city itself is ruined, smoke still rising from some of the collapsed and burned structures. The ancient dam is exposed by great flaming rifts in the ground, which are expanding visibly. Abruptly, the dam collapses into the rift, a huge wall of water following it. You turn to flee and see $PONE there, hovering unperturbed above the ground, laughing.

Your vision returns to normal - you are back where you were.

Ivy -> Some green pony you don't recognize

Emerald -> Ivy

Discolor -> Some green pony you don't recognize

Shadow -> Emerald

Scarlet -> Ivy

Akasha -> Emerald 

Dam / powerhouse
Underwater Ruins

Combat: Two Steps / Archangel / 23 Sanctuary is Lost

On the other side of the dam it's quite overgrown, but interrogating the locals will reveal that there is a local spring (a hint can be dropped with bystanders if necessary)


There are naught but a few concrete bits poking up from the ground, although those with local knowledge (kids) here would know the location of a "really straight cliff" that more educated may know is a ruin. 
There are some air vents at the top of this cliff that can be infiltrated. Alternately, they may find the "cave" in the hill. The cave leaks water, and is actually part of the outlet works. The two turbines are rusted and falling apart, and one can exit through their housings (in similar condition) to the interior of the building, ending up in the powerhouse. Their magical preservation was defective.

There are stairs up to an office and control room in the powerhouse. The control room has better ragnarok proofing, but there is still no electricity. T
Another side room of the powerhouse has oil generators. This is the room with vents that is still exposed. The preservation enchantments still work and they can be activated. There is a breaker panel here
with tweleve  breakers, labeled:

SERVO 1-6, CONTROL ROOM, HOUSE, EXCITER 1, EXCITER 2, PENSTOCK 1-2, BYPASS, EXTERIOR LIGHTS,  

Lighting/domestic power (HOUSE, EXTERIOR) or the exciters, and gates 1, 3 will immediately blow. 4 doesn't work but has failed open. The other gates 2,5,6, work, and unless the controls in the control room
have been adjusted, will promptly open the intake. The remains of the turbines will be obliterated by this, allowing water into the powerhouse. (Much of it will flow out the outlet works of course)
This will spill the TE somewhere out into the old riverbed...

There is a FLUME HORROR in the powerhouse near the stairs to the control room. There is a good chance of somepony being exposed to the spores. 
There is a flume horror here. A giant amphibious anemone-like creature with tentacles and bulbous protrusions. Beware its deadly spores!

Someone might catch Flume Fever, the prodromal phase beginning with fever and weight gain (from increased appetite.) It should be obvious that the victim needs help before the transformation begins in earnest. It does not effect zebras or dragons.

GMSessionNotesWestyoreDam (last edited 2018-04-05 20:47:17 by Bryce)