At the base of the Clockwork Tower, Kathmandu surveys the scene. Off to one side, the river ends in a waterfall cascading off the edge of the world. The blue sky above fades to darkness toward the horizon, where it gives way to a dark and starry nightscape below - full of colorful nebulae and shooting stars. The waterfall turns a gigantic paddlewheel, and its waters fade into mist below. A huge drive train runs from the paddlewheel to the Clockwork Tower - and other pipes, braces and bridges run from the land to the tower as well, though none of them look nearly sturdy enough to actually suspend something as large and massive as the tower. Nonetheless, it stands there, gears spinning, puffs of steam rising from valves, its top obscured in mist.

As Kathmandu and Nao approach the main bridge leading to the base of the tower, they see two large steam-powered machines, fashioned to resemble giant rams. As they approach, the rams declare, in stereo, "You may not pa-a-a-a-a-ss." Kathmandu asks questions and tries to negotiate, but he is met with the same declaration each time. Looking over the edge, he determines that he'd really rather not be knocked off - which is what he's sure the rams will probably try to do, should he try to cross. So, he has Nao stand and hold the rams' attention (without approaching any further), while he transforms into a small white cat.

Nao is momentarily distracted by the small white cat at her feet; she scoops up the kitty and pet it and make a fuss over it. Kathmandu eats up the attention, purring - but finally squirms free and returns to the matter at hand: getting across. The cat leaps onto one of the hanging cables. The cable swings to and fro, just as it had been doing before, with no evidence that the cat's weight has any bearing on its movement at all. It would be too narrow a walking space for any normal person, but the cat easily makes its way across, leaping from the cable to another narrow support, then another, and finally landing on the ledge to one side of the rams.

The first steam ram turns and charges Kathmandu. He turns into his giant were-tiger form to meet the charge, and performs a "judo throw" to send the steam ram flying over the side and into the void below. The next steam ram, however, connects - and butts Kathmandu right off the edge! Nao cries out - but Kathmandu transforms into his little white cat form again, and manages to catch a narrow cable, balancing precariously on it.

The steam ram, apparently satisfied that the threat has been eliminated, returns to its original waiting position, while little clockwork "spiders" start scurrying about, pulling out bits and pieces - gears, bolts, plates of metal - and start the long process of assembling a replacement steam ram. Then, the little white cat appears on the ledge again, after working its way from cable to cable, ledge to ledge. The steam ram charges into action again, attempting to run down the little white cat, but this time it easily dodges the ram's attack. It transforms into were-tiger form again, and proceeds to smash the ram, again and again, finally knocking the remaining steam ram's head into the grinding gears and machinery on the other side of the ledge. The spider-robots begin rebuilding the other steam ram as well, but by all indications, it will be some time before the steam rams are a problem again.

Nao rushes up, expressing her relief that Kathmandu is all right. Once it's clear that he's more or less intact, and recovered from winding himself (after smashing the steam ram to bits), they set to the task of figuring out the best way in.

There are two doors, and Kathmandu finds that one of the doors has some junk arrayed in front of it that seems to make something resembling a "smiley face", though individual pieces making up the "face" have been knocked about. He also discovers a few rose petals - one of which looks as if partially singed. The other door has some junk in front of it, less disturbed, that seems to describe a cartoony "skull and crossbones".

Kathmandu notices hand-prints in each of the doors, but he's unwilling to go sticking his hand into what might be a trap. So, he and Nao dig through a pile of broken robot parts lying to one end of the ledge, and they find a couple of automaton hands, and some cable. Kathmandu has Nao hold one end of the cable - and he holds the other - as he makes his way across the bridge over the spinning gears in cat form, to reach the door. The bridge makes creaking and groaning noises, but shows no evidence of giving under his weight. When he tentatively changes back to his human form, it groans some more, but holds steady.

He jams a robot hand into one of the doors, and a metal iris closes around it. This alarms him ... so he decides to try the other robot hand in the "skull and crossbones" door. An iris closes around the "wrist" of that robotic hand, claiming it, too. His attempts to push either artificial hand further in - or pull back out - fail. Eventually, after examining the door some more, he goes back to the debris pile and rummages around until he finds some bars that might be used to wedge into the broken frame of the "wrists" to wrench the hand clockwise or counterclockwise. Figuring that it might be important to open both doors at once, he has Nao stand at one door, while he stands at the other. After a count, they both turn the hands - one clockwise, one counter-clockwise ... or, at least, they try to. The hands won't budge. So, they try the other way. They click, they turn, steam escapes from valves, and both doors open.

Inside the left door - the "smiley face" door - there are a few more rose petals inside. Kathmandu decides to chance that door, rather than the "skull and crossbones" door. So, he heads inside. Once inside, he can see that there's a large cylinder positioned above the right door, and a depression in the floor, and some worrisome dark stains on the floor and the bottom of the cylinder; he decides that stepping through the skull-and-crossbones door would be a bad idea.

Kathmandu and Nao take the safe door and head inside, and the door eventually closes behind them. Inside, they are in a large chamber full of grinding gears, pumping pistons, churning valves, spinning counterweights, and so forth, with just a few narrow catwalks leading over the machinery - and a few automatons wandering on these catwalks. They carefully observe the movements of the automatons, and then time their movements to slip past them to reach a platform where there is a bank of ten levers. There is a worrisome bloody smear on the wall above the levers, and evidence of something (or someone) sliding down, so Kathmandu worries that there might be some sort of trap. He refrains from touching any of the levers, spending some time trying to examine the numbers printed above them, and to figure out elaborate mathematical calculations to find the right "solution". He finds a few scrawls in chalk nearby that seem to be evidence of someone else trying to solve the puzzle, but they don't seem to help him any. At last, he tries his "solution" ... but not all of the levers will go up at once. Nao watches a door across the room, and reports that it opens after the levers were moved.

After a considerable amount of time spent in experimentation, Kathmandu starts just going through the bank of levers and systematically trying every possible combination of levers, with Nao reporting the positions of the doors. Fortunately, he manages to pick the proper combination fairly early on - and all eight doors open up in a row, revealing the way to some stairs leading up.

Kathmandu leads the way, with Nao following him, as they head up a winding staircase, and ride an elevator upward. The air gets oppressively warm, and then they step out into a huge room with what looks like bubbling lava in it, crossed only by a network of pipes and narrow catwalks. At the far end, there are a couple of platforms where water gushes out, some sort of a control panel that has been disassembled with pieces strewn about, and then five huge gears lined up - with holes in them that form a walkway that seems to lead to yet another stairway up. Off to one side, there's an oily mess, and a closed door that seems to lead to a side-chamber. But of more immediate importance is that there are several fiery, vaguely humanoid creatures that rise from the lava, and start making their way toward Kathmandu and Nao.

They rush along the catwalk, alternately fighting off and trying to evade the fire elementals. Slowly, the elementals start climbing up onto the catwalk itself, and before long, they find that they are cornered. Kathmandu switches to his were-tiger form, and takes down several of the elementals, but Nao takes quite a bit of punishment. At Kathmandu's guttural urging, she relents and makes a desperate last-ditch measure: She tries to call forth the White Tiger Spirit. She succeeds, and her form is replaced by that of a huge white tigress. Cornered as it is on the ledge, it goes into a frenzy, and attacks anything within reach - which would be Kathmandu.

Fortunately, at first, she doesn't actually damage Kathmandu, though she manages to knock him back, toward the fire elementals. This seems to work well enough at first, as she presses forward, and clobbers a couple of the elementals, but as soon as there are no more elementals within reach, she turns her fury on Kathmandu once more! Kathmandu, taking damage from all sides - in addition to all the fatigue from pushing himself repeatedly - lets out a pained yowl, and slumps to the ground. The White Tigress's rage continues unabated, as the fire elementals relentlessly march forward along the narrow catwalk, and she clobbers them, one by one, as they reach the end of the bottleneck. Then, when there are no more opponents to fight, she goes on a rampage all over the catwalks, tearing up anything that can be torn up, throwing junk around, and finally collapsing in an exhausted heap.

Some time later, Kathmandu, reverted to his human form, recovers, still greatly battered and bruised, to see Nao slumped nearby. Fortunately, there aren't any fire elementals back just yet to cause them trouble, so he goes over and wakes her up. She confesses to having a "terrible dream" about fighting Kathmandu. He just nods and suggests that maybe she should stick to her "human" form for now; besides, he says, he thinks he likes her human form better.

Observing her stripes, tail, and so forth, she remarks that Kathmandu has a rather generous definition of "human" - not, she quickly adds, that she is inclined to protest. He then proceeds to compliment her on her tail, which leads to an awkward moment, and then when he continues, it only gets worse. So, in an effort to change the subject, they turn their attentions to the signs of an oily mess off to the side. Kathmandu discovers a "secret" lever and a "secret" door, and evidence of something with very large paws going through all the oil (and, apparently, licking a lot of it up). He tentatively pulls the lever, keeping Nao behind him in case it's a trap - and the door opens to reveal a ransacked workshop beyond. There are some work tables, quite a few open chests (some of them opened explosively), some dwarf skeletons, and a couple of heavy spell books sitting in the middle of the floor. By the blackened marks on the walls (some tracing an outline of a feline-looking creature), Kathmandu surmises that something painful happened here - perhaps someone disarming traps "the hard way". By the scattered rose petals, and the various oily prints on the floor (giant bird tracks, boot prints, bare foot prints, large paw prints, singed cloven hoof prints, very small boot prints, etc.), he gathers that the others must have been here, and ransacked the room - and quite possibly avoided triggering an encounter with the skeletons by virtue of Rose's magic wand. He decides not to head into the room to check and see what loot remains, since he's still feeling the hurt from that battle; he doesn't want to tangle with the undead just yet.

Kathmandu and Nao investigate the disassembled control panel (which he supposes was taken apart so that nobody would reset the "puzzle"), and pass through the opened passageway, taking the stairs and another elevator up higher into the tower....

So, what will Kathmandu and Nao find at the top of the tower? To find out answers to this and more, check out the next session of ... Superior City!