Fireday shouts as his voice slows the same way Viv's does and the chaotic power burns him.
"Iiii aaaammmm blooodiiied buuuut uuuunboooowwwwed!" he manages as he regains his footing and attempts to charge into the fray with the others...only to run like he's swimming through a pool of slush and mud.
Holg cuts down the blinded acolyte before stepping forward. Fireday sluggishly moves towards the fight, and Viv's blast veers away from Nalakai at the last second, his defensive spell deflecting it away. Coen's barrage of magic missiles brings down another cultist.
The cultists step up to attack Kaska and Holg, but none manage to hit. One of them recovers from his blindness. Nalakai casts a spell to attempt to paralyze Holg!
Kaska impales another acolyte on her blade, kicking the dying man off of it as she brandishes the sword.
Holg turns to Fireday, seeing the android terribly bleeding away. When he is up to do something an invisible force suddenly takes him. The Kellid warrior freezes on place.
With a strong will fight, Holg struggles to break his chains "Wraaaagh! What have you done?! You cannot stop Gorum's will!"
Coen strikes the unblinded enemy adjacent to Holg before it can slit his throat.
Viv rushes across the hall and whips another kinetically-charged fragment at Holg's foe.
Fireday charges, still magically slowed, but managing to close the gap between him and the enemy flanking Holg, striking with his battlestaff!
As Holg struggles and frees himself from being paralyzed, Viv misses the cultist near him. Coen manages to take down that acolyte with a trio of magic missiles, and Fireday closes the distance to stab the blinded foe.
*FIGHT! YOUR GOD DEMANDS IT!* Hellion intones as the remaining cultists struggle to fight back. One attacks Kaska, while the blinded one swings on Fireday. Perhaps spurred by their god's exhortation, both manage to hit, wounding the Kellid and the android!
Nalakai holds his holy symbol out towards Kaska. "Flee!" he commands.
Finally breaking out of the paralysis, Holg raises Gorum's holly symbol and channels energy to heal the group "For Gorum! Remove our wounds!"
Although a part of her mind knows better, they are on the cusp of victory, Kaska can't resist the cleric's command to flee.
"Thhaaank yooouu, Hoooollllg!" Fireday says as he presses the attack.
Coen summons a column of fiery rocks from nothingness and rains them on the opponent closest to Holg.
Viv purses her lips and flings another shard at the blinded cultist.
Holg channels healing energy, then Viv takes down the cultist near him with a well-aimed kinetic blast. Kaska succumbs to the command, retreating partway up the stairs. The acolyte stabs her as she flees. Fireday and Coen switch targets to the last remaining acolyte. The android misses, but the sorcerer's rain of fire scorches the man.
Wounded, he tries to punch Fireday, to no avail. Nalakai moves in to join the melee, swinging on Holg but ultimately missing as well!
Fireday strikes at the cultist, hoping to finish them off.
Kaska shakes off the urge to run about halfway up the stairs. To her the new cut doesn't sting nearly as much as having fallen under the machine priest's influence. She turns around and starts back down the stairs.
"No Kaska! We almost have them! Keep the fight!" Holg steps back to avoid possible retaliate attacks, and casts remove fear on Kaska and Fireday "Let Gorum cover you in his brave mantle!"
Viv switches to blast the wounded cultist swinging on Fireday.
Coen directs another pillar of fiery rocks onto the last target as a roar of anger escapes his mouth.
"You will be the SECOND Lord of Rust we have slain this day!" Fireday crows as the dark magic begins to wear off.
Fireday cuts down the last acolyte with his monk's spade, leaving only Nalakai and the enraged image of Hellion to contend with. While Holg wards Kaska and Fireday against fear, Viv sends a blast whizzing past the enemy. Nalakai howls in pain as Coen rains fiery meteors down on him.
Undeterred, he swings on Holg again, barely failing to pierce the cleric's armor with his spiked gauntlet.
With Kaska saved from the dark magics Holg turns to Nalakai with a smile. The sacred warrior takes grip of his greatsword with both hands "You seem not to understand... your army of acolytes is now defeated. Recognize Hellion's inferiority!" the man steps forward to create a flank for Fireday and swings at the enemy cleric.
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Fireday smiles at Holg's words.
"For Victory! For the Heart!" he cries as he joins in the attack!
Coen continues to focus the fiery column onto the enemy.
Nalakai is unprepared for your sudden and brutal assault. Fireday bashes him with the back-end of his spade, while Coen rains minute meteors down upon the half-orc. Though Viv misses, a brutal chop from Holg lays the cleric low.
*I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT MY MORTAL FOLLOWERS WOULD DISAPPOINT ME.* the image of Hellion growls in a grating monotone. *BUT WHERE WEAK FLESH FAILS, STEEL REIGNS SUPREME.*
The doors to the east grind open, revealing a room with four tall pillars featuring glowing bands of pale purple light pulsing along their sides. A pair of patchwork robots scuttle forward, rotary saws whirling on the end of their arms! One slashes at Fireday, the other at Holg. Fortunately, neither one hits!
Coen summons an Aggressive Thundercloud and directs it over the machine facing Holg.
Holg avoids the saw on the surprising robots' charge. The Kellid smiles while he recovers his fighting stance "Ah! So you send us metal now? Ok, let's see whom is more capable!" and followed by Coen's magics, Holg swings at the robot in front with all his forces.
PEW PEW!
Surprising even herself, Viv manages to land a solid blow against the closest 'bot.
"Steel rusts! Only righteousness is unbreakable! Right makes might!" Fireday chants as he joins the others in attacking the robot.
By the time Kaska makes it back to the area of conflict, things have completely changed. The hostile living beings are all dead, but have been replaced by a couple of robots. It's confusing, but Kaska figures questions can wait.
She moves in between Fireday and the robot nobody else is paying attention to so it can't come at the warpriest from behind. She immediately goes to work trying to put the thing down.
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You assault the robots with a sudden fury that proves far too much for them. Coen's lightning bolt fries the first robot's circuits, allowing Holg and Viv to finish it off. Kaska single-handedly wrecks the second robot with a single powerful blow, rupturing its power core and rendering it inert!
Hellion's image sneers. *YOU WIN THIS ROUND, HAIRLESS APES. I AWAIT YOU BELOW.* The image flickers and disappears.
Having weathered the first gauntlet the Iron God has put you through, you feel stronger and more confident in your abilities.
Holg removes his blade from the wreckage "Ah! This is getting interesting..."
Profiting the respite the Kellid brings up the magic wand and uses it to heal Coen and Fireday.
"I wonder if there is something from this robots parts we can use" Holg gives a prospective look at Viv and Fireday Do they have this kind of pieces inside too?
Coen chuckles to himself a bit out of stress as he looks at the electricity arcing across the machine.
"It's maddening. Each time I learn more about my magic, the more I realize is just out of my reach. The good news is that I finally figured out how lightning works."
"Hey, you're making progress, so maybe you can reach the things you thought were too far," says Viv encouragingly.
Twiddling one of her metal shards between thumb and forefinger before putting it away, she regards one of the robots.
"Yeah, they're made of all kinds of... uh... bits," she says. "Sometimes if you're lucky you can even get a battery or useful piece out of 'em."
Unfortunately, the two scrapyard robots don't have any valuable parts to salvage. They were mostly built from junk anyway. The acolytes all have mundane weapons and armor, save for Nalakai, whose spiked gauntlet is enchanted.
Holg also heals up Viv with the wand.
The man takes the magical gauntlet and sets it in substitution of the one he was using until now "This might be useful in case I lost my sword, if no one else will use it, I will"
"Ok, it seems there are some more doors in these level. Let's check them out before we move on... I would not like to be ambushed from the rear" Holg moves to the door on the south, and if everyone seems ready and open to continue, he opens it and checks inside. If nothing of immediate danger is found, he does the same with the door at the north.
Fireday raises his weapon and shakes it at Hellion's image.
"Enjoy this respite while it lasts, you false idol! Two of your lieutenants have fallen to the Torchbearers this day, and we are coming for you!"
Then when Hellion vanishes, Fireday collapses to the floor and gives a loud sigh as Holg heals him.
"Praise the Inheritor! We've won and we're all still alive."
The walls of this room are decorated with images of mechanical claws reaching toward the sky. Several simple bedrolls, eight in all, lie on the floor here. A door in this room opens onto a staircase heading down.
Holg doesn't find anything of value here, so he opens the north door. The eastern portion of this room is a shambles of twisted metal and debris, leaving the western portion to serve as a combination bedroom and personal shrine. A small side room to the north opens onto another stairway, but the path is blocked by debris and currently impassable.
A journal sits on a small table next to the cot. The journal is written in Orc, and it will take several hours to interpret its dense, crabbed writing.
”Hey, I can read this.”
Nobody could be more surprised than Kaska is when the robot goes down under a single strike by her. She looks at the machine for a moment, then gives it a dismissive kick.
"Trash machines serving a trash fake god who's lording over a trash town. I can't wait until we're done her and can leave."
Holg smiles to Kaska "You are inscribing a mark hard on metal, they will have it difficult to forget you"
When the journal is found Holg just asks Viv "Hmmm... and what does it say?" Once it is revealed it will take some time to decipher the cleric gets impatient and pushes to go on "Ok... well, let's take it and read it later when we stop to recover then"
Assuming everybody is ready, Holg moves to the central doors to the east, let's Kaska check it, then help her to open them.
A bitter stink of chemicals with an underlying reek of decaying flesh fills the air of this cavern. A platform of gray metal, worn smooth and free of dust, extends over a ten-foot-deep pit filled with rubble—strangely polished rubble. Holg doesn't notice anything from his initial glance about the room.
Viv looks over the journal and says, "This guy's penmanship is terrible. Uh... this will take me a few hours to read, I'll have to sit down with it and concentrate, it's not like it's just a simple note or two. I'll deal with it later." She stashes the journal among her possessions.
Viv pauses briefly upon reaching the chemical-smelling junkpile.
"This is odd. Rot and rubble... what polishes rubble like that? Slimes and oozes?"
Fireday rises and follows after the others.
"Part of me wonders if I've let my discretion overtake the rest of my valor," he says to no one in particular.
He looks around from where he stands when they come to the room with the polished rubble.
Fireday notices what appears to be a puddle at the bottom of the pit quiver slightly, as if in anticipation. He is fairly certain that it's some sort of ooze.
He points it out to Viv, but the other android doesn't recognize what kind of ooze it might be.
"I think you're on the right track, Viv. It looks like an ooze down there, though I'm not sure what KIND it is."
He points it out with the spear-point of his staff.
"What do you mean Fireday? You seem quite brave to me. You could be a Red Talon!" Holg questions the android when he expresses doubt.
And looking down, Holg picks up a small object from around and throws it at the potential ooze to see what happens.