Cathyriel looks at the monstrosity. "Retribution? No. This is duty. In the name of the Inheritor, you will be purged."
Noting the nature of the thing's attacks, she spends some seconds in warding herself and her companions against the damage.
"You are dead Onthooth." Terana declares. "Shelyn has no place for you and yours!"
Tobar lobs a pair of bolts downrange at the hideous aberration, though his aim isn't great.
"Let's kick it up a notch!" Gideon says, casting a spell on the group; as he concludes the incantation, he shouts,""BAM!", filling the group with speed and energy!
Cathyriel wards the party from electricity while Gideon hastens the group. Terana can definitely detect an evil aura in the room, and she slices into Onthooth with her glaive. Blood pours from the deep wound, staining the water a cloudy red. Tobar lands two good hits, the bolts sinking into the aboleth's body.
The three-eyed fish focuses its baleful gaze on Terana, bringing the full weight of its psychic force to bear on her!
Terana shakes off the worst of the aboleth's spell, and recharges her own defenses with a flash of magic.
The she sets about destroying her ancestral enemy.
This time, as Terana's slices into the aboleth, she notices that it is only semi-solid, and that the blood pouring from it is fading away into wisps of shadow. This isn't the real aboleth--it's an illusion!
"It's an illusion!" Terana yells, "Ignore it, we need to find the real one!"
Cathyriel looks glad that she didn't waste any attacks against the thing. "An illusion, huh? I can handle that."
Raising her holy symbol of Iomedae aloft, she prays to her goddess to bring the light of revelation.
The illusory aboleth winks out of existence. The real monster must be lurking somewhere nearby...
That spell requires line of sight; the real one's close!" Gideon says to alert the others.
"Well butter my biscuits," says Tobar, clearly annoyed. He reloads and waits for Terana's seeking magic to give her that terrible crawling sensation.
Cathyriel frowns, temporarily stymied: her magic doesn't let her detect the unseen. Although...
"I can summon something that could find it, if we need to."
Terana is wracked with psychic impressions of the previous pain the aboleth's magic caused. Suddenly, a field of rubbery black tentacles erupts from the floor, reaching for you to try to squeeze the life out of you!
Cathyriel struggles but can't escape.
Doing his best ignore the writhing black tentacles that threaten to entangle him, Gideon attempts to dispel the rubbery mass.
Gideon manages to fight through the pain and cast his spell. The tentacles vanish as abruptly as they appeared!
Terana barely has time to struggle before the tentacles vanish so she sweeps the room with her battle senses, intent on finding the aboleth for real!
Terana can definitely detect the presence of aberrations nearby. That means the aboleth is somewhere within 60 feet.
With a nod of acknowledgement to Gideon - I owe you one - Cathyriel concentrates, muttering a prayer to the Inheritor; and her petition is answered when a vast, sleek cetacean (entirely black apart from a white patch around its eyes that seems almost to glow with a holy light) appears in the middle of the room, streaking towards its target with a series of clicking noises. Jaws open ominously wide...
The half-elf nods in satisfaction, her red hair swirling in the water around her as she does so. "Can't hide from my dolphins!"
Tobar is just able to escape the tentacles, thanks to the haste spell - he's just too slippery.
He moves to assist Cathy in getting out, grapping at the tentacles that grasp at her.
"Spread out! Don't stay tight!" Gideon calls, trying to move so that they can't all be caught by the same spell again.
The summoned whale takes off towards the wall to the north and lunges through it, biting at something on the other side. Presented with this evidence, you focus your perception and disbelieve the illusion. Part of the wall seems to become insubstantial and you can see the real aboleth on the other side! The whale's teeth grate against a field of force around the monstrous aberration!
With the true foe in sight Terana staunches her own wounds and then takes off like a javelin to smite the aberration!
With the distance between them, there's not much Gideon would be able to do at this point; he opts to close the distance a bit and wait rather than attacking immediately, knowing there are more enemies about.
Tobar advances as best he can and follows Gideon's instructions to spread out, heading slightly to the right. He takes a single shot with his crossbow down the hallway through the illusionary wall.
Tobar's shot skips off the aboleth's mage armor, but Terana scores a solid hit with her glaive! The creature lets out a psychic snarl, then defensively casts a spell, conjuring a wall of force between itself and Terana and the orca. The aberration swims away out of line of sight.
The other tentacled creatures continue to gurgle and ready themselves to strike any that come near.
Terana swings around in the water, her gaze furious as she looks for a way past the creature's wall.
With the boost of speed he gets from the Haste spell, Gideon is easily able to close the distance between he and Terana, weaving the words of a spell as he goes. Laying a hand on her shoulder, he says simply,"Go get 'im!"
The spell cast and its energies passed into Terana, she finds herself suddenly on the other side of the wall of force, in direct line of sight with the aboleth! His spell cast, he looks to the others. "Attack the squids! He likes illusions and they ain't attackin', they could be one, too!"
Terana's grin turns feral as she is suddenly face to face with the creature! With Gideon's magic to speed her she arrows towards the aboleth once again, her glaive shining with holy wrath!
Tobar switches targets quietly to one of the squids, to the right.
Out of reach of the fight for now, Cathyriel settles for calling the blessing of Iomedae on her companions.
She then swims forward as fast as she can, which isn't much. The orca rapidly outpaces her, swimming through the gap on the right, ignoring the squid in search of its true prey.
Tobar fires two bolts into the squid creature, which recoils in pain. Gideon teleports Terana to the far side of the wall of force, then she and the orca converge on the aboleth. The mollusk lashes out at the orca as it passes but doesn't strike it.
The orca's teeth scrape against the aboleth's mage armor, but Terana lands another powerful blow as she smites the heinous aberration.
The aboleth focuses its psychic energies to heal itself slightly before attempting to isolate part of the minds of Terana and the orca, preventing them from acting coherently.
In spite of Tobar's bolts finding their mark, Gideon is still convinced that these creatures are not truly there, so he acts on that feeling, charging directly at the squid on the right to attack!
Gideon's blade stabs into the tentacled mollusk, and the bard feels it pass through with no resistance. His suspicions are confirmed as he realizes the creature is illusory!
Cathyriel swims forward until the aboleth is in sight. Her holy symbol glows and a bolt of light streaks through the water towards the aberration.
The orca continues trying to bite its way through the shield of force surrounding the creature.
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Terana throws off the creature's spell without much issue and lashes out with a series of blisteringly fast blows before sparing a moment to heal her own wounds once more.
Terana's glaive tears into Onthooth, ripping tentacles free of its bulbous body, rupturing its bulging red eyes, and eviscerating the aberration. It psychically screams in pain and fury, vainly offering to form a truce to spare its life, but the gillwoman paladin will not relent. With a final strike, she ends the aboleth's life! It floats quietly in the water, surrounded by a cloud of slime and gore.
This strange metal headband of vast intellect +2 is crafted in the shape of intertwined tentacles and adorned with runes in the Aboleth language. When a creature dons the headpiece, the tentacles seem almost alive, changing their size and shape to fit the contours of the wearer’s head.
The headband has two special indentations for ioun stones similar to those found in a wayfinder. When an ioun stone is inserted into one of the slots, the tentacles animate for a moment, adjusting themselves around the slot to accommodate the shape of the ioun stone. The wearer benefits from the ioun stone’s effect as though the stone were orbiting her head.
The headband uses a more refined version of the same technology that powers a wayfinder. First, it coaxes two ioun stones to manifest their resonant powers simultaneously. Furthermore, the slotted ioun stones do not suppress the headband’s own magical abilities. However, if the wearer is also carrying, wearing, or wielding a wayfinder or any similar item into which ioun stones can be inserted, the two items suppress one another’s abilities, but both return to normal when one is set aside.
Searching through the debris in the ruined laboratory, you also find a rod of the aboleth, a wand of make whole (48 charges), and a lesser maximize metamagic rod.
The western part of the chamber contains three cells protected by shimmering force fields. Dozens of people cower in the cells. Few of them lift their eyes from the floor, and fewer still show any kind of emotion. Some are so weak and starved that they have to hold one another for stability.
You recognize several of the citizens of Talmandor's Bounty among the prisoners, including the Pathfinder Carver Hastings, dwarf alchemist Alba Divenvaar, fisherman Soran Vigaldo, and noble Andvara Jeclair. Sitting on the floor away from the other prisoners is a tall, pale elf with long white hair and piercing blue eyes.
Gideon gives a shout of triumph when the creature falls, somehow amused that the thing would even consider that they would make a deal with it after all the suffering it had caused.
For now concerned little with the treasures and trinkets, Gideon moves to the western chamber where a force field holds back the water. Emerging, Gideon gasps. "By the gods! Carver! Alba! Soran! Andvara! We thought the stalkers had killed you!! I'm sorry we took so long to find you..." he says, kneeling before them, clearly distressed and sorrowful. "Can you ever forgive us? Gods, how long has that vile creature kept you here?"
One of the prisoners, an unfamiliar woman, flinches as Gideon enters the cell. "No! No! Don't take me!" she screams, scrambling away and huddling in the corner.
Many of the people here appear tired and starved. Carver looks up at the bard with weary eyes. "More trickery, is it? Has Onthooth sent you merely to mock us by assuming the forms of our friends?"
Cathyriel holds up her holy symbol. "I swear by the Inheritor that we are who we appear to be."
A burst of radiant light washes over everyone, healing their wounds.
"Could Onthooth do that?"
The prisoners begin to murmur in awe as their minor wounds are healed. "It's not a trick! They have come for us at last," somebody cries. They begin to crowd you then, voicing expressions of gratitude. They are too tired to even smile, but their quiet, approving nods and tearful eyes speak volumes. A handful of them bear misshapen bodies, additional limbs, gills, and other aberrant mutations of their humanoid flesh.
"I am sorry for doubting you," Carver says. "The aboleth had been tormenting us for many weeks... At least I think it has been weeks. It is impossible to track the passage of time here. We had lost faith that anybody would ever find us down here..."
The bearded man nods to Cathyriel. "I do not know you, ma'am, but I am happy you are here. As are we all."
"This is Cathyriel. She decided to join up with us after the last ship docked at Talmandor's Bounty...just as well, since Weyve had to stop going out with us. He's not dead, but those shadow-powers of his were starting to get him in a bad way, so volunteered to go back on the last ship and see if they could figure out what was going on with him back on the mainland."
"Are you four the only ones left from the second ship? And what about everyone else? Have you all been here since the first colony ship was lost?" he asks.
"We can leave whenever you all feel ready. We'll make sure you get out of the water safely, a few at a time. All the enemies we encountered on the way down are dead and there are some soldiers we rescued from domination that will help guard you."
Seeing the elf, Gideon is struck by his appearance. "An elf? I don't remember seeing a full-blood elf on the passenger manifest from the first colony ship..." Gideon says with a hint of suspicion in his voice.
Terana methodically rends Onthooth into tiny parts, completely ignoring its cries for truce. Once that is done she swims patrol, letting the massive adrenaline rush drain away as Weyve and Cathyriel talk to a large number of people, some of whom she vaguely recognises. Unless they were always faceless stalkers that she knew...
Tobar keeps his crossbow at the ready, watching the team's back... just in case one of Onthooth's erstwhile minions returns to receive orders from its now-defunct master.