The Honeyed Hand of Arshea stands his ground and continues to swing his greatsword across the room, aiming to take down another.
_______________
Rutai opens the next door, and Argor hovers over for a better view.
Rutai opens the door to reveal a huge chamber is entirely tiled with plain gray flagstones. It’s uncannily cold, and only a trickle of light slips through a trio of tiny windows, one set into each adjoining wall, just below the eaves. The room is lined and partitioned with rows of massive stone cubicles. The cubicles stand twice the height of a grown human. Each cubical has an iron door with a brass plate on it. The plates are labeled and numbered with a black wax pencil. Two large undead shadows turn to glare at the open door with baleful red eyes.
The beast who is Grommesson hustles toward death. He squeezes past Gianluca and Argor and into the huge chamber. He climbs on top of the massive stone cubicles to make way for his large companions.
The remaining demon continues to back away from Olympia, its flames growing stronger again.
Init
Party
Shadows
Demon
Scowling at the creatures in the next room, Argor calls out "Shadows. We've fough their kind before. Incorporeal abominations," before pointing his staff at one. The crystal held with the dark obsidian flares red and sends five pulses of energy into the nearest one.
Rutai levels one of the acquired wands at the same target and lets loose a fiery beam at it.
Cladissa moves quickly up to Sir Preston and wards him from the shadows' negative energy attacks.
::There you go. They cannot harm you now. Be bold against them:: she sends to him mentally.
Having laid low the final flaming skull, Gianluca follows Grommesson toward the shadow demons. When he sees one he lashes out with his greatsword, which rips through the demon as though the shadow was as real and vulnerable as flesh.
"Your days of thwarting love and pleasure are done, shadow-spawn!"
____________
Gianluca's man-sized blazing sword shreds one of the shadows with little difficulty, destroying it instantly.
The beast that is Grommesson strikes out at the undead shadow.
Olympia's persistence seems to be paying off. The skull demon is badly chipped and missing its lower mandible by the time the bird finishes.
Gianluca's man-sized blazing sword shreds one of the shadows with little difficulty, destroying it instantly.
Argor's missiles thud into the remaining shadow, wounding it. Rutai's scorching ray flies past it, burning the front of one of the stone coolers.
Grommesson's fists pass through the frigid undead without interacting with it, but the magical acid dripping from the bestial orc's hands does seem to have full effect.
Perceiving Gianluca as the clear threat, the shadow floats into the floor, popping back out at his feet halfway to try to touch him.
The demon shrieks in fury at Olympia, blasting her with another ray of fire as it floats out of her reach.
================================
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"No one cooks my Turkey!" Sabbysaurus (literally) roars angrily as she moves forward to help her companion. She ends up wedging herself in a weird place, but Magic Weasel Belt makes it work.
To give her handler some room, Olympia chases after the demon into the next room.
The two then attack the wicked creature together...
Preston ran into the room, just in time for the shadow to slip away over to Gianluca. He swipes at it as it enters the floor.
Sabrina and Olympia bring down the demon, while the shadow suddenly realizes Grommesson has magic hands. It shrieks in confused agony and dissolves.
The beast who is Grommesson quickly snaps out of his battle rage when the shadon creaure dissolves on his fists. He looks around and then at Argor for direction.
Argor is clearly becoming more and more irate. Scanning the room, he says through clenched teeth, "We need to find her. NOW."
Cladissa tastes the air to find traces of Imrizade.
This room smells like frozen dead things, but hasn't had any recent passage from living creatures that Cladissa can tell.
"No trace of her here. We need to go further in." She points to the door down the hall.
Sir Preston, seeing no one react to Cladissa's comment, trumps down the hallway. He opens the door to reveal a chamber containing a massive iron stove, which it appears the Society necromancers use to burn the remains of their experiments. Ash has been gathered, collected, and placed into sample urns. The urns are dated, labeled, and stacked along a wall near the back for later use. At the far end of the oblong chamber there is another open doorway leading east into the mausoleum's interior.
"I see some kind of light coming from up ahead. It looks similar to that which is beaming from the roof. Shall we advance?" he asks, looking back to the other warriors for support.
"Of course!" Argor says, "With haste."
With Argor's encouragement, the beast who is Grommesson will squeeze past Sir Preston and take the lead toward the light.
"Be alert," Cladissa says as she hurries a few steps behind them.
Preston leads the way through the crematorium to the next chamber. Within this vast chamber, rows and rows of dark-lacquered mahogany shelves hold thousands of texts. Part of the library wall is open in an arched doorway, which leads into another chamber from which the strange light is coruscating across the walls.
"There's a...no...many, bodies on the floor of the next room. They are flopping about and convulsing in the light. This is not my area of expertise..." Preston reports. He steps into the library to make room for the others.
Argor flies in and moves close to Preston and observes the room.
A strange, metal cage lies sprawled in the center of the room like a great, undulating, skeletal lotus. . Long tendrils of translucent ether lash violently from the artifact, while crackles of eerie light dance across the metal frame and up into the ghostly pillar that erupts from the center of the device, through another hole in the roof, and into the night sky. A dozen bodies surround the pulsating cage, flopping on the floor and convulsing madly. There is another set of double doors behind the cage.
Casting detect magic, Argor spends some time examining the artifact. Reading the complex web of magical auras surrounding the object is extremely difficult, but Argor is just that good.
After his examination he's pretty sure he understands how it works.
Cage of Soul Echoes (Minor Artifact)
Aura strong conjuration and necromancy; CL 18th
Slot none; Weight 60 lbs.
DESCRIPTION
The Cage of Soul Echoes can be used to create a rift into the ethereal plane. The rift works in a similar fashion to a gate spell; however, some of the ethereal plane leaks into the surrounding plane, creating a strange ethereal mist. The artifact can be manipulated to control the speed, strength, and direction of the current. It appears to have been tampered with, as if someone were trying to align it to a different planar matrix than the Ethereal. However, they seem to have failed miserably. The cage has three settings from what he can tell.
SETTINGS
Static: The current remains stationary. Once this state is triggered, the mists fill with ghosts and spirits of the departed. An individual who stands within the cage can speak with the departed and ask them questions. This power works as speak with dead.
Output: The ethereal mist flows in a current that draws living things into the ethereal plane, as the telekinesis spell (CL 18).
Input: Ethereal mist rushes from the cage, erupting into the area in great ghostly tendrils. Lashing frantically, they discharge bolts of supernatural cold into all living creatures they touch. Creatures from the ethereal plane can freely travel into the plane when the cage is activated. The input state is a protection, predominantly used to ward off enemies seeking to steal or tamper with the device when its owner is traveling the ethereal plane. The device appears to be stuck on this setting.
The artifact has three distinct parts, and in order to shut it down, all three parts need to be disabled. Each part requires its own disable check. The checks must be performed one at a time, over the course of 3 successive rounds. Failure always triggers an ethereal blast and resets the device.
Ethereal Blast (7d6); DC 20 Fort save for half; multiple targets (all targets in a 20-ft.-cone)
As far as he can tell, the group has two options for crossing the room. They can either try to disable the device, or run past it and into the next room while trying to dodge the ethereal blasts. A third and distinctly less pleasant option would be to simply wait for the device to overload and destroy itself, which will eventually happen if the damaged artifact is left as is. How long that will take is hard to estimate, but at minimum several more minutes. What exactly will happen if the device implodes is also hard to know.
Cladissa moves in to stand next to Argor to observe the room.
"I'm not trained in the dismantling of devices, magical or otherwise. I wonder if I could create a line of webbing across to allow some of us to stay out of the reach of those lashes," she suggests.
She'll also test the air to sense for signs of Imrizade and other, corporeal threats.
"While I theorize I understand the mechanizations of this artifact, I doubt any of us are well versed in the art of disabling such creations to do so without killing us all. Let us bypass it quickly and find Lady Blakros and this fool Chaviron."
Gianluca attempts to stay fluid, dodging beams as he crosses the room.
Cole dimension doors across.
Argor, contrary to normal form is first across the room. He dodges all but one of the ethereal tendrils. The one that does hit him burns with unearthly cold.
Gianluca, Turkey and Cladissa are similarly hit once each.
Preston hangs back for now, not wanting to crowd the doors.
Argor tries the double doors, the handle turns but the doors appear to be wedged shut.
While everyone piles up in the traffic jam at the door, Argor tries to open it. He finds it wedged shut and turns to tell the others.
Sabrina roars and slams her head through the doorway, but not before another two tendrils lash out of the artifact at Rutai and Gianluca.
Everyone rushes into the next room, only to find themselves wedged into a triangle shaped chamber that is far too small for them. Sabrina and Gianluca's magical belts compress them into cartoonishly flat and thin versions of themselves as the whole party piles in like a can of sardines.
Sir Preston sprints across the artifact chamber as fast as his armor will allow, taking a blast of cold through the chest halfway across. He skids into the mass of compacted Pathfinders, and slams the double doors behind him, cutting off the artifact room.
As everyone is scrambling to not step on each other, Sabrina catches a sight that chills her soul. The hellish duke Graz'ith Ur Maurgith stands in the next chamber, pregnant Imrizade behind him. The demon laughs.
Imrizade screams, "Argor!"
There's something off with Imrizade.
Initiative:
Graz’ith Ur Maurgith (1) 20
Imrizade 18
Party 14.8
Graz’ith Ur Maurgith (2) -11
Graz’ith waddles forward to the middle of the chamber, and speaks a word of foulest blasphemy. Everyone in the party except for Rutai and Argor immediately feel a wave of evil magic hit them.
Imrizade stumbles back to the corner, clutching her belly.
rounds
Argor sees Imrizade and her plight, and his eyes flare with a violent red energy unlike anything they've done before. His very skin even begins to darken. "You will pay for this, demon."
His hands begin glowing red and he works a conjuration, and the massive club tailed dinosaur from hell reappears and slams its tail into the demon!
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/2=4 for rounds.
Cladissa's mind fights off the spell, then she levels a hex against the foul creature.
if failed, Misfortune (roll twice and take lowest roll).
Move:Cackle