Date:
Basilsday 18th Lucrios, 2994 AE
Weather:
Warm, partly cloudy
Player Characters:
Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)
Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)
Significant NPCs:
Basil, Right for Riches employee
Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI psychologist
Mistral, intelligent scimitar
Cers, intelligent scimitar
Yamki, three-armed giant intelligent baboon
Many baboons
3 mantari
10 constructs of Archontean orators
The Plan:
- Explore the Rudishva area near the Hall of Shrines
- Commission a map from Temrin in the Goblin Market
- Visit the Arena
What Happened:
Vallium returned to find that Mistral (the magic scimitar they had found months ago which had until recently been silent) and Cers (the magic scimitar they had recently found in the hands of Cinna Minux) were each suggesting that the other one be melted down or at least disenchanted. After talking to Mistral, he suggested that maybe Akla-Chah could figure out which one was telling the truth.
It had been a month since they'd brought food to the baboons per the terms of their peace treaty, so the group took a shopping trip to the Grain House and bought a wheelbarrow full of assorted food through the Teleport Rugs to the Beacon, for later delivery to the baboons.
Vael was late for their delve, as he was using a Trace spell to try to find the exact location of another Teleport Rug. The others left without him. They went through the Rudishva teleporter to the Secure Vault, then through a teleporter in the Cloister to the Rudishva Transport Hub, then through another teleporter to the area that the Goat's bat had scouted the previous week. They expected to find a blue granite slab with some circles on top, and standing on the circles would cause the slab to move upwards to another level.
Instead, they found an empty shaft heading up into the darkness, with no blue granite slab. There was a sigil with four circles on the wall. They waved silver and yellow Rudishva identity plaques at it, to no effect. Vallium used the Boots of Levitation to fly up the shaft until he saw the underside of the blue granite slab, but there was no way around it. He flew back down to the others, then, not having brought the Command Bracelet, used the Teleport Rug to go back to the Beacon to talk to Akla-Chah.
Akla-Chah said the granite slab sounded like an "elevator" which was a Rudishva technological device for vertical transport. She suggested that if waving a plaque at the circles on the wall didn't work, it might actually be necessary to touch the circles. As Vallium was talking to Akla-Chah, Vael wandered in, reporting that the Teleport Rug he was looking for was rolled up in a closet somewhere in Lady Alexia's residence, but without actually breaking in he hadn't figured out the exact room.
Vael and Vallium went back through the Rug to the Halls, rejoining Uvash and Ioannes at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Vael touched the circle on the wall, and eventually the blue granite slab came down the shaft and stopped at the bottom. They all stood on the slab, and Vael touched the circles on the slab with his foot, and the slab went up. A few minutes later it stopped and some doors opened, into an octagonal Rudishva-architecture room.
As Goat had reported based on his summoned bat recon, the room contained many chambers that looked like Rudishva-sized coffins, made of plasteel, with transparent windows in the front. Some appeared to be empty and unpowered. One appeared to be empty but powered, with some flashing lights and humming sounds, and some tubes carrying some yellow gel back and forth to a vat in the center of the room. Six appeared to be occupied: two with Rudishva, one with a skinny bald gray unidentified humanoid, one with some kind of rock elemental, one with some kind of black goo, and one with some horribly ugly demon hag. Looking through the windows, it wasn't entirely clear if the occupants were alive or dead, but no decay was visible so they were either alive or well-preserved corpses.
Vael went back through the Rug to the Beacon to collect a GnuCoder 1000 tablet and the data crystal "Crew Roster (Medical)." He then started looking at all the Beacon crew members, trying to identify if the two Rudishva present were in the list. He identified Triv-Lok, a Flight Jemadar, and Talg-Roe, a Gravitics Test Engineer. He called Akla-Chah on the Command Tablet to confirm this finding and his previous notes about the two. Akla-Chah re-iterated that Talg-Roe had been cryogenically frozen to slow the process of a terminal a disease that was not treatable with local facilities, and that Triv-Lok had been frozen as punishment for treason, after trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Kaliyani and Heqeti after their attack. She said that the other humanoid sounded like a Niravairi, and that she didn't have any record of why it was there, but the Niravairi didn't always get along with the Rudishva so it might be a prisoner. She didn't know about the other creatures in the pods and suspected they might be local to Arden Vul.
They looked at the controls a bit, finding a green button, a blue button, and a yellow button. (Uvash looked for a big red button to push, but there was not one.) There was also a screen that was not showing anything, one large card slot, and thirteen small card slots, with six of them containing cards. Vael read the Rudishva glyphs on the buttons and saw that the green button had a one and a zero, the blue button had the sigil for "open", and the yellow button had a glyph that Vael wasn't sure about, which Akla-Chah eventually confirmed was the symbol for a different kind of "open" in the sense of opening a faucet and letting water flow. After some discussion, the group decided to not play with the controls today.
Vallium found a caved-in passage leading east. There was also a passage south and a hole in the wall to the northwest. Vael turned on the Command Bracelet, looking for technology it could talk to, and saw that the Bracelet had reverted to Rudishva language when he turned it off to change the battery, and was showing a Rudishva glyph he didn't know. He eventually got it back to Mithric, at which point the icon was replaced by the Mithric word for "construct" in Mithric. So there was apparently a Rudishva construct of some sort within range.
Vallium went through the hole to the northwest and found a Thothian shrine, with gray walls with strange symbols within them. The western end of the shrine was blocked by a translucent force field. Beyond the force field was the Hall of Shrines, with the huge statue of Thoth breathing orange pneuma nearby. Vallium got one of their two Stones of Passage that allegedly allowed passing through force fields, and walked through the field. This worked, but the Stone went inert afterward. Vallium was now trapped on the other side of the force field. He breathed in Thoth's pneuma, feeling his strength and health diminish but his intelligence and openness to Thoth increase. He wasn't happy about the decreased strength, and drank a strength potion to compensate.
Vallium walked over to the force field and gestured that the Stone no longer worked. Vael tried a Blink Other spell, but he felt the force field resist his teleportation magic. Vael suggested that the others go through the Teleport Rug, then he could use the remaining Stone of Passage to join Vallium, then they could come join them through the Rug. This worked, and this time the Stone's power was not consumed.
The united group explored the Hall of Shrines. They saw many statues of ancient Archontean heroes, along with some missing or destroyed statues. They saw eight shrines off to the sides, with seven of them blocked by force fields and one open. The open one contained a blue disc on the floor, a statue of Thoth, and a marble table containing some silver (or maybe platinum?) scales. Uvash ran forward to investigate, but was warned off. After some discussion, Vael stepped forward onto the blue disc, and felt the room freeze around him while Thoth entered his mind and asked three questions about justice. Vael answered all three questions, giving the answers he thought Thoth would want, and was rewarded by increased willpower and by the scales on the marble table moving toward him. He grabbed the scales, which were made of platinum and appeared to be magical.
After some peering through the force fields, the group decided that the open shrine was different from last time, so maybe the force fields changed over time. Vallium looked for any symbols of time to indicate when that might happen, but didn't see any. Uvash suggested just staying in the room for a while to see if anything changed, but Vallium said he had just drunk a strength potion and didn't want to waste it, so they should get going.
Everyone went up the stairs, north through a secret door, west through another secret door to the room with the Ruby Chair, and south to the Well of Light. Looking up, it was a bit too cloudy to do the Litany of Light. They went through the Rug to get the wheelbarrow full of food for the baboons, then east to the Howling Caves where most of the baboons lived. Yamki the Three-Armed greeted them there. He thanked them for remembering that today was food day, and asked if they marked days on the wall like he did. Vael asked for any news, and Yamki reported that the green dragon had been seen flying near the cliff recently, but fortunately hadn't spotted the baboons who were skillfully hiding. He also said that several baby baboons had been born.
Vallium suggested that they explore the passages off the Great Chasm on this level. They walked north and east until they found the bridge over the chasm, and Vael cast Walk on Air on Uvash and Ioannes so everyone could (sort of) fly. Vallium led the group south to some openings in the chasm they had noted but not investigated. On the way, three small flying manta-rays with stingers attacked them. It was a quick fight: Vallium killed two of the mantari, and the third one fled.
The first opening they explored led to a cavern containing a large arcanum geode. The walls throbbed with orange light. Vael and Ioannes resisted the urge to stay and investigate the arcanum, but Vael and Uvash took a quick look around to see if there were any lumps of arcanum they could easily take. Vael found one and Uvash took two. Nobody had a pickaxe handy, so Vael reached into Larel's Sack to see if there was one there, and there was. Uvash skillfully mined the three lumps of arcanum, while Ioannes warned that the room was on the verge of collapse and they should get out of there.
Contining down the chasm, they found a rough passage to the east, which led to a four-way intersection, with baboon noises and smells ahead. Vallium turned left, and found a worked room, with five doors, a lot of baboon dung, and various burned trash on the floor. As he entered the room, an image of a woman appeared. She had very long blonde hair and wore a white dress. She held up her right hand in the universal sign for "stop" and said, in Mithric, “Stop! You are not welcome. Return whence you came and you will avoid retribution. Proceed and you shall die.” She then disappeared.
The group decided that the combination of burned stuff and warnings meant possible fire traps, so Vallium and Uvash put on Salamander Amulets. (Ioannes was already wearing one.) They didn't have a fourth, so Vael stayed out of the room, while the other three went in. Vallium opened a door, and a fireball went off, not burning them. He repeated this with the other doors, and got four more fireballs. Ioannes cast See Secrets and found a secret door on the east wall, with a keyhole hidden in the shadows of a fresco. Vallium lept into action and expertly tried his entire collection of about 100 keys, none of which fit. He went to get Vael, passing him an amulet. When Vael entered the room, the image of the woman appeared again to warn him off. Vael ignored her and cast Lockmaster on the keyhole, and was rewarded with the click of the secret door unlocking, plus another fireball. Beyond the door was a dusty staircase down into the darkness. Uvash went in first, far enough to be out of fireball range, then passed back his salamander amulet, so the other three could proceed without anyone worrying about getting burned.
The group went down a dusty passage for a while, then found an octagonal room with secret doors (easily spotted as Vael had See Secrets on) on three walls and a statue of an archon in the center. Vael investigated all three secret doors but failed to find a way to open them. He tried the Glass Wall spell to look through the secret doors, and found that all three were lined with lead to prevent scrying. He tried casting Lockmaster blind without seeing the lock, in case he got lucky, to no avail. Giving up on magic, he checked out the statue, and saw that its hands were articulated, like some of the Thoth statues. He pointed both hands north and the north door opened.
The north door led to a locked wooden door. Vallium again tried all of his keys, and was again disappointed. Vael Lockmastered the door. Beyond was a small octagonal room with three more doors and a pool of murkey water. Uvash immediately stuck his face in the pool and started drinking. The water tasted stale and flat, but didn't make him sick or cause any other notable effects. Vallium, with Vael and Ioannes watching, opened the western door. It led to a small closet containing only a long mirror on the wall. The three of them saw their reflections in the mirror, which tried to pull them in, but all three resisted. Vael told everyone else to look away, then went into the closet with the mirror and spent half an hour casting Analyze Magic. The spell told him that the mirror tried to imprison anyone who looked at it. Not wanting to spend more time figuring out the mirror further right now, he went through the Teleport Rug to the Beacon to warn Basil and Akla-Chah about the dangerous mirror that he would be carrying through that nobody should ever look at. He then took the mirror off the wall, carried it through the Beacon, and set it shiny-side-down on a table in the workshop.
For the other two doors, they were more cautious. Vael used Glass Wall to look through the doors, so that nobody else would see what was on the other side. Both contained a mirror like the first one, and he felt both of the mirrors try to pull him in, but resisted both times. They repeated the same process, where everyone else looked away, while Vael went in, grabbed the mirror while trying not to look at it, and carried it through the Rug. Eventually he collected all three mirrors. They then spent a while searching for secret doors, didn't find any, and went back to the statue.
Vael pointed the statue's hands south. This opened the south door. A narrow twisty passage had fancy lapis lazuli letters on the floor reading "DENRAWEREWOUY" (except in Mithric), then ended in a blank wall. Using advanced wizardly code-breaking skills, Vael read this backwards as "you were warned." They looked for a secret door in the obvious place, didn't spot it with magic, but felt an invisible handle. Vallium pulled the invisible handle and opened a very well hidden stone door, which led into a ten-foot-wide north-south passage.
The group went south. After a while they reached a four-way intersection. They continued for a while through a series of identical looking doors and four-way intersections. After a while Vael got suspicious, pulled out his chalk, and started writing on the walls. They proceeded through some doors and found themselves at the intersection with writing, showing that it was probably the same intersection. They went all four ways and didn't find a way out. Using Absolute Direction, Vael tried to remember where the secret door had been, and then cast Earth to Air on the wall there. That made a big enough hole in the wall to show that he had the right place. They crawled through the hole and went back to the statue room.
The statue's hands would only point north or south, so Vael looked for other interesting features on the statue. He found that both eyes would depress. He pushed both at the same time, and the eastern door opened. This led to some dusty stairs down to the east, then a long windy unfinished cavern passage mostly east, then some finished stairs up. The stairs led to a room with ten large statues lining the north and south walls. The statues were all the same middle-aged man, holding a scroll case in one hand and the other hand in a fist above his head.
When Vallium reached the midpoint of the room, the statues all animated and attacked, launching Magical Bolts from their scroll cases at the group. Vael Blinked away, then used Larel's Cloak to turn invisible. Ioannes got hit by a couple of bolts, then focused on dodging. Vallium and Uvash attacked. Uvash used his Divine Might and Divine Grace to become very fast and strong, then started smashing constructs. Vallium, weaker than usual due to the effects of Thoth's Pneuma, also smashed constructs, but less effectively than usual. A couple of the constructs did not dodge attacks, and turned out to be full of poison gas, which was released when they were broken. However, nobody succumbed to the poison. Some of the other constructs appeared faster than the others, and preferred bashing with their scroll cases rather than plinking away with Magical Bolts. Ioannes got bashed hard enough to stagger from his wounds and be at risk of passing out, but Vallium rushed to his defense to parry for him, while Vallium prepared to Blink him out of the way of any attacks. Ioannes managed to drink a Major Healing potion and end the immediate danger, while Vallium and Uvash finished off the constructs.
At that point the group decided to head back for home. They went back through the dusty passages to the fireball trap room, then flew back across the chasm, then used the indoor pyramid teleporter to teleport to Upper Goblintown, then flew down the shaft in the floor to the Cloister, where a Rudishva teleporter led to the Beacon. They had found a mysterious new area and had taken three mysterious magic mirrors, plus some Thothian magical scales.
GM's Comments:
I found it amusing that, in a group with two clerics and a fighter who'd just breathed Thoth's holy pnemua, Vael the non-religious wizard was the one who charged forth to answer Thoth's questions. But it worked.
This was the third one-way-door trap this group had encountered in Arden Vul. Without the right magic, they would have been stuck in those intersecting corridors until they died of thirst. However, with their current set of powers and items, it was just an annoyance rather than a death sentence.
Thoth's Pneuma reducing Vallium's strength made him do significantly less damage than usual. (Drinking a strength potion was a good counter, but the potion only lasted an hour so it was gone before the big fight.) However Divine Might made Uvash do more damage than usual, so it mostly cancelled out.
Achievements:
None
XP:
- Exploration: 10 new locations, 1 XP
- Loot: They didn't find a lot of items, but those Scales of Thoth and Mirrors of Life Trapping are valuable. 0-2 XP depending on what they choose to sell.
- Achievements: 0 XP
- Total: 1-3 XP
Next Week:
They plan to visit Goblintown and try to commission a Temrin map to the Bone Ring of Jagri-Nas. Then they went to visit the Hall of Shrines and see if any force fields have changed. Finally they will go back to the area behind the fireball traps and continue exploring where they left off.
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