Victrix's axe cuts a path around her with wild abandon!
Terana ignores the skum and heads for the gillmen, intent on bringing them Shelyn's peace, even if it must be for the final time.
Ema felt a searing sensation across her body as two consecutive balls of extreme cold landed atop her. The pain was incredible but not enough to take her down. Ema sent another lightning bolt out before stepping away through a tear in space and appearing next to Valentin.
The elemental popped out of the earth once more to drag one of the gilmen down into the earth again.
Valentin snaps out his healing wand and uses it on Ema.
Terana charge into the fray, slicing through skum as the stony bear erupts from the sand to drag a second gillmen down beneath the earth. Ema's second lightning bolt isn't quite as effective as the first one, but it's enough to finish off the most wounded members of the ulat-kini mob. Victrix cuts down more of the skum with brutal slices of her axe, and soon she and Terana only find themselves facing half the number of foes.
The two remaining troops attack Terana and Victrix, rather ineffectually thanks to Terana's displacement and Victrix's extreme resilience. Not wanting to suffer the same fate as her comrades, the final gillman casts a spell of flight and rises into the air, out of the elemental's reach.
Valentin moves over to Simon and casts Fly on him.
Ema nodded in thanks to Constantin's healing and decided to stay back for now. The last of the casters was going to fall shortly and her elemental should be able to take down the troops on it's own. She strongly suspected they couldn't do much harm to an elemental as old as this one.
The elemental moved in on the troops and swung one arm like a scythe.
With her true target out of reach Terana settles for cutting down skum as swiftly as possible.
Chop chop!
The remaining skum quickly fall to the brutal assault from Terana, Victrix, and the summoned elemental. Simon flies up and misses the gillman sorcerer.
She defensively casts a spell, trying to drive the air from Simon's lungs.
Simon grabs hold of the gillman, who shrieks as the half-orc drops down to the ground with her in his grasp! The unfortunate sorceress is now within reach of the rest of you...
Victrix's axe finds a new target.
With the last sorceress in reach the elemental moved up and lashed out at her with one great fist.
Unfortunately the creature swung to early and missed as the gilman kept descending to the ground.
Ema let the elemental and the others deal with the last gilman while she began to look through the bodies for anything of interest with her magical detection up.
Terana helps render the sorceress into sushi.
Between Victrix's slicing and Terana's dicing, the sorceress swiftly falls. You finish off the remaining enemies in short order, allowing you to gather their valuables and destroy the strange troop transports without further interference!
You make your way to the remaining mesh repeaters, scrambling their psychic mesh as well. It seems you have done all you can to destabilize the algollthu army, though you still haven't explored the Fane of Aesocar, if you are ready to try to handle the clockwork angels guarding it!
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After making sure the rest of the island is safe, Simon heads back to the temple with the rest of the party.
"I had a thought. These angel constructs are programmed to only allow the faithful in, it appears. Perhaps if we display the holy symbol of Aesocar, they will let us pass.
Alternatively, we could decorate ourselves with the holy symbol of Amaznen, and claim to be emissaries."
Retrieving pen and paper, Simon will set out to draw Aesocar's symbol once for each of the party. "Hopefully this will be enough to get past their programming. It would be a shame to have to damage them. Teleporting past them may be easier, though there is something to attempting to figure out a puzzle"
Simon's instincts prove correct. Displaying the holy symbol of Aesocar appeases the clockwork angels, who allow you to enter the shrine unimpeded. Skeletal remains litter the fane’s interior—victims of the deadly constructs. A total of 285 gp worth of assorted coins and precious gems is scattered around these bodies. In addition, one of the skeletons clutches a rod that is revealed to be a rod of security.
Investigating the ruins takes roughly 20 minutes, but your patience is rewarded with the discovery of a hidden cache of treasures lodged within the walls. The cache contains 8,000 gp worth of rare gems, healer’s gloves, a ring of curing, and a scroll of resurrection.
You have succeeded in thwarting Ochymua's initial attacks, protecting Talmandor's Bounty and Talasantri from danger while severely hampering the veiled master's forces. The time has come, at last, to enter the Compass and defeat Ochymua once and for all! If there's anything else you need to do before venturing to the Azlanti facility, now is the time to do it!
Once you have made your preparations, you return to the island of Kalas-Ti, following the map you acquired from the lich, Auberon the Drowned. An almost 10-mile-wide jungle of dense, overgrown foliage and snaking waterways covers the region just west of the remaining buildings of the ancient Azlanti city. Dense trees and thick vines cover the ground here, having grown fat off ample water supplied from dozens upon dozens of winding streams that move through the area.
You traverse this treacherous terrain, trying to discover the exact location to the Compass's entrance. After passing by a few ruined towers, you come upon a spacious area with rows of rectangular planters. A variety of flora spills from them, though it does not intrude upon the walkways between them. The foliage from the dense forest beyond abruptly stops at the edge of the garden, held back by some unseen force.
A lone wyrwood tends to the plants here, but it turns towards you and cocks its head at a curious angle. "It has been quite some time since sentient beings have come to pay a visit," the construct says in Azlanti. "I am Gardener. Who are you? What brings you here? Perhaps I may be of some assistance to you?"
"We fear that a veiled master is coming, or has already come, to the complex." Terana says, in the constructs language. "We seek to stop them."
"Veiled master? Complex? I'm not quite sure what you mean," Gardener says. Their tone is guarded.
Ema's eyes widened when she saw Gardener. She remembered it, vaguely, but couldn't recall why her father built it. Deciding it might accept her authority Ema stepped forward and said, "Gardener, it has been a very long time since we met. I am Emalliandra daughter of Aliandara by Jazradan. My father built you."
Ema sighed at the guarded way the construct was behaving and said, "Yes, the Veiled Master Ochymua, one of those who brought the Starstone down from the sky, wiped out Azlant, and ushered in the Great Darkness. He is here and he is after something important. We must enter and deal with him before he does something truly disastrous. Exactly what he is trying to do I don't know but he must be stopped." Ema looked at the construct and asked, "Can you help us Gardener?"
Gardener regards Ema silently for a few moments. "Emalliandra. Is it really you? I assumed you perished in the destruction, along with the other members of the Spindle Solution. I am glad to see you well after all this time. As the other Azlanti perished around me and the other people fled the region, I remained behind to continue tending the lands entrusted to me.
"I can tell you where the entrance to the Compass facility is, but I have never been inside, out of respect for Master Jazradan. There is an underground passage not far from here that leads to a concealed lake at the center of the island. There, only authorized members can activate the teleportation lift to gain access to the facility. I can activate it for you. I can also tell you about who the leaders of the Spindle Solution were, aside from your father. The information may prove to be useful during your exploration."
Harighal was responsible for creating Thassilon-inspired weapons to combat the veiled master threat, while reporting the activities of the Spindle Solution back to his runelord master. Harighal’s greatest achievement was perfecting the creation of the shapeshifting mezlans, a process first devised in the days before Thassilon fractured into the leadership of the runelords. In the end, the Thassilonian ambassador converted himself into a mezlan in order to survive the aftermath of Earthfall.
Lurisian, the Optimist: It was Lurisian who tempered much of the fire present in the Spindle Solution’s membership. She truly believed in the idea of bettering the human condition that the Spindle Solution espoused as its public purpose. Lurisian understood the need to free the Azlanti people from the yoke of the veiled masters and vowed to put her considerable cunning and knowledge to the task. She saw the solution to defeating the alghollthus in the spiritual superiority of humanity, including their acceptance of the greater universe and the power of deities.
Rashimos, the Eastern Blade: Only Grand Arcanist Jazradan eclipsed the reputation of General Rashimos. Rashimos earned her reputation as a merciless tactical genius, responsible for Azlant’s many successful assaults on the eastern shores of Arcadia. Only due to the intervention of senior Azlanti political figures, including many members of the Ioun Imperative, did her assault on the western continent fail. She returned to Azlant in shame only to be approached by Jazradan, who brought her into the Spindle Solution as a military advisor.
Rashimos became the Spindle Solution’s most vehement voice for exterminating the veiled master threat. As Earthfall ruined the world around her, Rashimos knew she lacked the intellect shown by other members of Spindle Solution in surviving the catastrophe. Instead, in her final days, the Azlanti general pledged herself to a new master: the demon lord Ibdurengian. Some coastal communities of Azlant, including many members of the Arcadian offensive, worshiped Ibdurengian as an aquatic terror. As the so-called Lord of the Red Tide brought devastation to the few Azlanti coastal settlements to survive the initial impact of Earthfall, he heard Rashimos’s pleas for revenge and salvation and granted them.
Varliss, the Outsider: The ages-old Winter Council was an organization that acted as advisors to the elven leadership and as ambassadors to Azlant. The council would greatly change in the aftermath of Earthfall, becoming a much more secretive and manipulative society. Much of the new Winter Council’s adopted doctrine was the direct result of Varliss, an elf brought on as advisor to the Spindle Solution’s operations. Varliss brought an understanding of elven magic to the Spindle Solution, specifically melding Azlanti innovation with tested elven technologies, like the aiudara network.
Ema nodded and said, "I only survived because father put me in some kind of pod. It had a side effect that made me apparently immortal, at least until recently. I don't think that was its intent but it worked out that way. I spent most of my life trying to fight the Veiled Masters and help rebuild what was lost with Earthfall."
Ema smiled sadly and then said, "It is good to see you again Gardener." She approached the construct and reached out to embrace it, "And I am glad that another can remember my father." She stepped back and then said, "I did meet another who remembers the Azlant of old, at least after a fashion. Auberon. He became a liche at some point and has become very twisted. When this is all over with we will have to go put him down to stop his evil.”
Once they turned to speaking of the entrance to the lab Ema nodded and said, "I understand Gardener, if you could guard the entrance once we go in to prevent enemies from following us we would be most grateful."
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Simon follows along with the conversation quietly, allowing Ema to make full use of her relationship with the ancient construct. In the meantime, he turns an appreciative eye over the garden, amazed that the wyrwood had been able to keep it in such good condition for so long.
He does turn a suspicious eye back at Gardener momentarily. Why would it choose to remain here and this act of futility for so long? Wyrwood are more sentient than most constructs, one would think it would have moved on to other pursuits long ago.
He leaves the thoughts unspoken though, he ears perking up as an entrance to the Compass facility is discussed.
"Yes, Gardener, if you are willing to at least watch the entrance, we can leave you with the means to contact us if anyone else approaches. With certainty, anyone other than us who comes is an agent of the veiled masters."
Simon will pull out one of the shells of sending if Gardner agrees to keep watch (and seems trustworthy).
"Of course. I will defend the entrance to the best of my abilities," Gardener says. Simon feels like the wyrwood is a trustworthy ally. He doesn't sense any malice or deception in their words.
Gardener leads you deeper into the woods until you reach a cave. A rushing river ejects from an enormous cave mouth, carved from a vast rise. The rocky hill towers above the nearby forest, and the passage within is large enough for a barge to pass within.
You follow the passage along the waterway until it opens into an immense cavern. Several hundred feet in the air, storm clouds roil above a lake contained within the cavern. Bolts of lightning blast near the center of the lake, where the faint outline of a structure is visible.
"The entrance is there!" Gardener shouts over the din of rushing water and bursts of thunder. "We will need to swim, fly, or teleport to reach it!"
"If we fly, I assume we would need to deal with the lightning. Swimming would expose us to any hidden dangers in the lake, so teleporting seems the safest and easiest solution."
Grasping each of the group, Valentin asks Desna to transport them to the entrance.
Space folds around you, and a moment later, you find yourselves standing on the distant structure. You can see now that the great stepped-stone structure stands in the center of an enormous, 100-foot-diameter gap in the lake. Water tumbles down around the edges into nothingness. The structure you are on stands atop an octagonal stone shaft that descends into the lightless depths of the gap.
At the center of the structure is an octagonal platform that rises a single foot from the floor, engraved with subtle twining patterns. Atop the platform is a two-foot-tall stone plinth bearing a curved magical rune that glows with a pale blue light.
"The platform will transport you into the Compass! Good luck, friends!" Gardener says. He bids you to stand on the platform, then he reaches out to touch the plinth. The glow brightens and you feel energy coursing through your bodies. An instant later, you dematerialize into pure energy, which is beamed down the shaft!
Another instant passes, and you rematerialize into your bodies, none the worse for wear, standing on an identical platform in another room. This chamber is octagonal, with eight slabs of obsidian-like material appearing to block the exits from the room.
As you get your bearings, a spectral, helmeted figure appears on a small pad across from the platform you are standing on. You recognize him from the various projections and programmed illusions you have seen across the island of Ancorato. This is none other than Grand Arcanist Jazradan, head of the Spindle Solution.
Jazradan reaches up to remove his ornate helmet, staring at Ema in disbelief. "Emalliandara... At long last, you have returned to me..."
Terana, who takes very little at face value, considers the spectral figure with all the magic at her command.
Jazradan does not detect as either evil or aberration.
When they were teleported into the structure Ema looked around at the slabs blocking the eight passageways and knew they were doorways that would only open to those with proper credentials. She was trying to dredge the depths of her memories for how to open them when the ghostly image of her father appeared.
Ema stared at the spectral figure in shock and tears started to well up as asked in a small voice, "Daddy? Is that really you?!" She stepped forward without thinking towards the image and reached out one hand towards the figure.
Jazradan reaches out for Ema as well, but just as they are about to make contact, the image of him flickers and disappears. A few moments later, the Grand Arcanist appears again, shaking his head sadly. "My daughter... I am glad to see you alive and well. Alas, the same cannot be said for me. My body perished long ago. Now, I exist only as a mental presence within this network of projection pads. I can observe the world around me, but I am powerless to exert influence upon it."
He regards Ema sadly for a few moments. "We have much to catch up on, but it will have to wait. We have pressing matters to attend to." He then turns to the rest of you. “I welcome you, my daugher's companions, to the halls of the Compass. It was here, at the height of my people’s empire, that we devised a means of combating the secretive threat that sought to enslave all Azlanti: the veiled masters. As you are doubtless aware, one of these aberrant monstrosities recently made its way into this compound. I recognized it immediately: a specimen our organization captured in the months before the final cataclysm. We preserved it, in hopes of better understanding the threat it posed, not realizing that in doing so, we would threaten future eras.
“This creature has made its way into the lowest levels of this facility, an area we grimly referred to as the Doomsday Stores. You can imagine that this lowest level of the facility holds weapons that could potentially alter the face of Golarion. While its secrets are preserved by the safety protocols of Azlant’s greatest minds, I fear it’s only a matter of time before this reawakened veiled master pierces our wards. If you would heed my words, I plead with you to stop this aberration before it thrusts another cataclysm upon this world.
“The Doomsday Stores are accessed from the platform you used to enter this level of the facility. Sadly, the route is inaccessible due to strict lockdown protocols. The only way to reactivate the passage is to acquire three unique ioun stone keys located on this level of the facility. There are three wings to this facility, each rotating around this central hall. Each wing contains one of the necessary keys to open the path to the Doomsday Stores, though I cannot perceive their exact location within the wings.
“I implore you, find these keys and proceed to the Doomsday Stores. The veiled master must be stopped before it unleashes our own weapons against the inheritors of our empire.”
Ema sobbed a bit when her fingers passed through her father's but she choked it back and focused on what he had to say. As he spoke Ema knew that things truly were that bad and they would need to deal with it quickly. At the same time Ema's thoughts started to work through how she could get her father free of his confines and into a body once more. There wasn't time to spend on that project so she would have to set it aside for now.
When Jazradan finished explaining what they would need to do Ema nodded and said, "Alright, I assume that we have a set order we must go through these areas to get the items we need. Do you know of what threats we will face inside of them?" Something about what Jazradan said but she couldn't quite grasp what it was through her shock, joy, and sadness, at seeing her father again.
"There is no set order in which you need to explore these wings. You'll just have to wait a few minutes until the halls align with this one and the passages open to the wing of your choice.
“There are three wings, one each dedicated to application, research, and testing. The research wing is a repository of knowledge and minor magical tests, guarded by powerful security measures. The testing wing was used to test small-scale versions of our achievements and contained many weapons and magical experiments. The application wing is a longer-term testing facility, meant to catalog the direct use of our numerous achievements.
"Alas, I cannot perceive exactly what awaits you in each wing. Likely, it will be a mixture of the Spindle Solution's traps and wards, as well as minions of the veiled master."
Ema listened intently to her father's words and when he finished with his description asked, "How long do we have in each wing before it become trapped there adn then how long of a wait until we can get out again? Also, if we do get stuck in a given wing can we teleport out of it?"
"The Compass rotates at a random rate," Jazradan says, "but you would not have to wait more than a few minutes at most for the wings to come into alignment with this Convergence Hall again. There are no wards against teleportation within the complex. However, the constant rotation makes it difficult to guess where to arrive, increasing the chance of a mishap. This hall is stable, though, so you can always teleport here reliably."
Ema nodded at her father and said, "Thank you. I wish we could catch up more but there is not time to waste right now."
Ema looked to her friends and said, "I recommend we go to the research division first. That might help us figure out what we will run into in the other two wings."
You wait for the halls of the research wing to line up with the Convergence Hall. Once the way forward is open, you step through the door and into the wing.
This forty-foot-wide hall extends over a hundred feet before reaching a series of descending stairs. Past the stairs is a narrower corridor with branching side chambers. Crystal lamps, illuminated with magic, dangle from golden chains along the ceiling of the chamber, providing light to the entire area. Several stone pillars support the primary entryway. Etched into the stone floor, intricate magical runes crisscross one another in snakelike patterns. Metallic iron doors stand closed along the sides of the hall.
A lone golem patrols the hall. This four-armed metal construct has a roughly humanoid shape, with the obvious exception of a missing head. Veins of brass overlay a body of meshed platinum and silver, with intricate circular grooves visible above, below, and between its twin sets of arms. The construct stomps towards you!
Ioun golems resist weapons not made of adamantine. They are immune to magic that allows spell resistance, except shatter spells affect them as if they were crystalline creatures.
Ema chatted with her father while they waited for the halls to align and took her leave so they could go take care of the first one. The hallway was pretty, well lit, and seeing the runes etched across everything brought back memories she had log forgotten. When she saw the patrol golem start stomping towards them Ema felt a wash of fear. She knew she would be of little help against this creature. She could summon something to fight for them but that would be all. She hoped that it wouldn't come to that.
[ooc[Do I gain any other info with that roll? Also, did I have some kind of credentials or passcode that would have given me access in the past? If so I will try to use them to get the golem to stand down.[/ooc]
Valentin reaches into the bag of holding and drinks a potion, turning Invisibile.
Ema recognized the problem immediately, the thing wouldn't give her problems and would let her through but it would attack everyone else. "If you can make yourselves invisible we can walk right past it. Also, put away any ioun stones orbiting your head, the golem will naturally try to take them if he gets within sixty feet of you. It is a passive ability so it doesn't signal aggression on its part but it could give you away."
Ema removed two of her ioun stones and stowed them in her pack then stuck the third, the iridescent spindle, into the engineer’s gloves so it wouldn't get taken away. Once everyone was invisible and ready Ema lead the way past the golem.
Terana does as she is told, Ema is the expert here and she's learned to trust experts. Much as everyone should trust her when it comes to dicing aboleths!
Victrix takes a potion from Simon and chugs it down, turning invisible.
Once you have disappeared from sight, the golem abruptly turns around and resumes its eternal patrol. You head to the nearest door and check inside. Satin curtains hanging from the ceiling cordon off much of this rectangular chamber. Almost a dozen upright wooden slabs with embroidered cloth and attached pillows, each resembling an upright bed, line the walls.
Despite the beds’ vertical alignment, someone wishing to use one of the beds needs only approach and lean back against it. The occupant immediately feels weightless as per a levitation effect but doesn’t drift beyond the bed’s area and can move freely to find a comfortable position. In addition, the beds are enhanced with a conjuration (healing) magic effect, which halves required rest time (typically from 8 hours to 4 hours). These beds are part of the structure and cannot be moved or removed from the Compass without removing their magic.
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Eyeing the beds, Simon whistles. "These could prove useful, if exploring this facility takes a while.
It does occur to me though that these potions will wear off eventually. We will need to find some disguises. Maybe there are some robes and helmets left behind?"
Simon begins looking behind the curtains.