Before Simon leaves, Victrix taps him on the shoulder.
"...thanks for killing that thing. I didn't have many other ideas to get it to talk."
She gives him a brief hug before letting him go.
Ema lay there, dreaming finally, for a time before she became somewhat agitated once more. Her eyes moved rapidly behind their closed lids and she finally sat up with a sudden gasp. She looked around the room in a near panic as she tried to breathe and calm herself. Each deep breath caused her ample bosom to swell and then relax a little as she breathed. "Where...how did I get here? What happened?" She paused as her eyes widened and then said, "I...I think I remember something!" She paused and her expression saddened, "Or was it just a dream?"
Father Eamon prays over Victrix, restoring the blood the ugothol drained from her before he leaves to check on Ema.
Antona gives Victrix a fierce hug, followed by a gentle slap on the cheek. "That was very brave, but very dumb. Don't ever do something like that again, okay?" The worry is evident in her voice.
---
"Ema!" Perrell reaches out to grasp the arcanist's hand as she awakens early in the morning. Eliza dozes in a nearby chair.
"You were attacked by a faceless stalker. You seemed to go into some sort of trance and wouldn't wake up. Are you okay?"
The historian's eyes widen as well. "Tell me! What do you remember? Maybe it can help explain what happened to you."
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Simon accepts Victrix's hug stiffly, before relaxing and returning it briefly (and awkwardly).
"I don't like seeing those I care for being violated in that manner. I think there has been more than enough of that type of thing in our group's past. Please don't do it again, it just isn't worth it."
Rubbing at some dirt in his eye, Simon bolts out the door.
Victrix responds to Antona's hug with a strong one of her own. "...I won't."
She doesn't say anything else, her face in Antona's shoulder, taking in her warmth. Her vitality is restored, but the memory might linger for a long time.
"I agree. We really need to hurry things along. First thing tomorrow after everyone has had a chance to rest and recover, we should meet up with Koloshkora together in case any of them have been compromised and explain the situation, then head out. If we're lucky, maybe we can find some weapon that will help us fight the hag, or a way to turn some of her minions against her."
Eventually, you retire to the house you share to rest. Antona asks to spend the night with Victrix, not wanting to be alone right now.
In the morning, you wake up to hear Ema and Perrell speaking in excited tones from the arcanist's room.
"Ema! You're awake!" Kip cheered as he burst into the room, laden with a large tray. "Toast with spiderberry jam. Eat up, cause you'll need your energy today. If you're feeling better, we have lots of work to do tracking down some of these leads and hopefully finding something to fight back against the hag. Don't be shy Perrell, I can make more if we run out."
Victrix is open to Antona staying the night with her. She isn’t feeling comfortable with being alone tonight either.
Perrell's excitement spilled over into Emalliandra and she pulled on the hand holding her's tugging Perrell onto the bed with her. She embraced her friend fiercely and then sat up by her and said, "It's only a fragment, I'm not even sure if it was my memory or someone else's..."
Ema trailed off to gather her thoughts and then continued, "It seemed to be the Fall of Azlant, the day the First Impact occurred." She frowned and then continued, "In fact I think it was moments before the impact..." Her gaze went distant as she said, "I felt like I was floating, lights above me silhouetting several people. They were researchers of some kind I think. One voice seemed to be in charge, telling them to do something. One person protected, something about the unknown effects of the horacalcum casings in the ioun matrix and having no idea what would happen to her if they tried. I can only assume they meant whoever the memory belonged too..." She trailed off as she tried to remember more then continued, "Someone demanded to know why he was going to so much effort for one woman and the man in charge started to give a reason, something about 'Because she's my'," Ema stopped and shuddered, "Then the dream ended. The rest of the response was cut off by the image of a piscine face that suddenly lunged into view. A maw full of razor-sharp teeth opened wide as tentacles reach out to embrace me---!" She stopped suddenly and then shuddered again, "Then I woke up."
Ema took the offered food from Kip and tore into it hungrily. She still felt a little weak, like she hadn't fully recovered from the blood loss, but it didn't mean she wasn't ravenous. Ema ate with gusto as she nodded thanks to Kip and waited for the inevitable question.
"...are you alright, Ema?" Victrix finally asks the question.
"Horacalcum... That's one of the seven skymetals," Perrell says. "What sort of experiments could the Azlanti have been doing with them?"
Eliza has woken up by this point as well, and she taps her chin thoughtfully. "Do you think these might be your suppressed memories, Ema? Or somebody else's? In theory, a powerful psychic could plant ideas in your mind and make you believe they belong to you. I think it's called 'inception.'"
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Victrix gives Eliza a strange look and twirls her glaive on the spot. It falls over, but she catches it before it hits the floor.
Ema thought about the questions posed by Perrell and Eliza. They were both good ones and she wasn't entirely sure with the answers. Finally she decided to address Eliza first and said, "I think they are real and I think they are mine. you could be right, it could be an 'inception' but it feels too right, too..." she hesitated, "me." She seemed concerned then and said, "The problem is, if that was me in the memory that means..." Emalliandra did the math quickly in her head on paled a little as she said, "over ten thousand years old."
Ema thought it through a moment and then addressed Perrell's question next, "i don't know what they were doing exactly but I think that it has something to do with how I am still here, still alive." Her gaze became distant, "Whoever he was it seems he wanted me to live through the destruction." She sighed, "Maybe we'll learn as we explore this place, maybe we'll dig up something that will provide a clue." She didn't sound certain but there was a little hope she could figure it all out.
Looking to Victrix Ema said with a nervous laugh, "For finding out I may be over ten thousand years old I'm doing really well thank you."
"..."
The berserker is at a loss as to how to react to the news. "...I was referrin' to how you're doing now that the stalkers are dead, but that's..."
"...definitely not something I was expecting."
Ema gave Victrix an amused smile and said, "I think I'm recovered from that too, at least for now." She frowned then as a worrisome thought crossed her mind, "I'm not sure if I will be if we run into more of those things though, especially if they get a hold of me. I think I can handle them if they are kept off of me but I can't promise more than that."
"Knowing my luck, they'll probably go for me first." Victrix jokes. "They seem to like angelic blood a lot."
Her expression turns serious. "...we've got some more information about this hag that's apparently leading them. At least, some more information on what sort of defences her lair has."
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After preparing his extracts for the day, Simon walks by Ema's room and looks in.
"Good, you're awake. Well, no time for laying about, we've got lots to do in order to prepare ourselves to deal with this hag.
First order of business is to warn the locathah and make sure there are no stalkers in their village."
Without even waiting for a response, he heads off to don his armor and weapons.
"After we warn them, where should we go next?" Kip asked excitedly.
Once you are ready, you head north along the coast for a few miles until you reach the locathah camp. Koloshkora takes your warning about the faceless stalkers seriously, and all of her people pass the food test. "We shall remain wary for any attempts at infiltration by these shapechangers. In the meantime, we have received the items you requested from Talasantri." She hands Kip a waterproof case filled with scrolls,
Ema was rather startled by Simon's abrupt entry and departure and glared daggers at him as he left. She began to eat very slowly in bed, just to spite him, and when she finished with that she went and bathed before studying her spell book. When she finished her preparations she stopped to let Medrinnah know she would be leaving for a while and was alright then finally arrived only two hours after Simon had peremptorily demanded she get ready. She knew it was petty but she wasn't letting him get away with the attitude she thought he gave her.
Once they set out Ema looked around cheerfully as they headed to speak with Koloshkora. She couldn't help but wonder if maybe she had walked this island before sometime, visited the facilities, it was a heady experience. Ema knew she should be concerned about her loss and what it meant that she might be so old but she found the fact that she knew there was something she had experienced before a breath of fresh air despite all the horror that likely lie behind her.
"Thanks a lot for these Koloshkora. They'll really come in handy. Were you able to track down the armor I requested yet?"
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Simon didn't stick around long enough to notice Ema's delays.
After a quick breakfast, he stopped to see Ramona to inquire whether she would want the group to investigate any of the houses of the replaced settlers.
He then quickly stopped by the library to search for books that might shed a clue about the abilities of hags, bemoaning the fact that he hadn't built a magic repository yet.
When the quick and disappointing search was over, and he didn't see any of the others, he assumed that he had missed their departure and rushed on his way to the Locathah camp.
Seeing that he arrived first, he momentarily considered heading back, but didn't want to compound the problem with another trip on his own and decided to start conversing with Koloshkora.
When the others arrived, he was strapping on his new amulet, and sheepishly trying to ignore the fact that he had taken off without them.
"Look! My amulet is ready. Hopefully this will protect me from most of the hag's powers. I didn't expect it to be so beautiful, though."
Once the testing was complete, he attempted to get the party moving again. "So, shall we follow the remaining coordinates now, they aren't that far to the south"
"Yes, we acquired the armor as well," Koloshkora says, presenting it to Kip.
"Oh, excellent. Look how light and shiny it is!" Kip exclaimed as he stripped out of his studded leather and replaced it with the mithral chain.
"Sounds good to me Simon!"
After concluding your business with the locathah, you travel south from Talmandor's Bounty, circumnavigating the mountain that stands on the island's southern cape. It only takes about three hours for you to reach the Pathfinder coordinates.
Here, an impact crater more than a hundred feet across punches into the mountainside, shrouded in dense vegetation and surrounded by toppled stone blocks, crumbling pillars, and shattered statues obscured by the island's lush flora. Small streams flow down from the mountainside into the yawning crater that descends into the earth.
As you look around the site, you notice old carvings on an ancient, mossy pillar near the opening of the chasm--more cipher glyphs.
As they entered the crater and found the old carvings Ema began to focus on studying them. She was careful and did her best to divine the meaning of the cypher glyphs.
She looked back to the others after a moment and said, "They say "danger, undead" and point towards the chasm there." She looked closer for a moment and then continued, "They also give coordinates for an island off the Northwest coast of this one."
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Simon crouches down to take a look at the pillar, rubbing his chin while he consults his notes from the previous glyphs.
He nods along with Ema's translation.
"I wonder if this island could be one of the locations that Carver was interested in. We'll need to borrow a boat to get there, or swimming might be possible."
Standing, he gazes into the chasm.
"We might as well eliminate the undead. No reason to leave danger on the island.
I wonder if there are pieces of meteorite left in the crater. That could potentially be a vary valuable source of metal."
As Simon looks down into the crater, he catches a glimpse of moving humanoid silhouettes cast against the ruins. A feeling of dread fills him and he gets the sense something bad is about to happen.
Suddenly, Gerald puffed up in alarm and Kip felt his skin crawl with a creeping sense of impending doom. "Angry spirits!" Kip exclaimed and quickly summoned a radiant bubble that popped with a shower of light.
Kip reaches out with the bubble and manages to touch something semi-solid, discharging the healing energy into the haunt. The shadows fade away. The threat has been neutralized--at least, for now.
"Gerald says that that seemed to settle it for now, but the spirits are still here. We should try to look around and figure out what caused them to linger instead of going on to Pharasma. If we figure it out, we might be able to put them to rest permanently. They get to move on, and the island is safer. Win win!"
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Simon glances around, but figures that whatever disturbed the spirit is most likely to be near the center of the crater.
He carefully scambles down into it and casts about for clues.
"Spirit! We do not wish to disturb you. Speak to us and we can help alleviate your suffering. What is it that ties you to this plane?"
Simon carefully begins his descent into the crater. The wall is a steep slope covered with vegetation that descends into a lower tier and then opens into a gaping chasm. Eighty feet below this cavernous opening, he can see a stone floor cast in the shadow of the plant life surrounding the opening.
Simon notices humanoid shadows burned into the stone of crumbling walls and other ruined architecture. He also spots an ancient, skeletal, humanoid form partially fused to the stone by intense heat. While most of the figure's gear is fused to the remains and the stone behind it, the corpse wears an elaborate (and now heat-warped and worthless) circlet set with a faceted sapphire. The sapphire can easily be removed from the warped circlet.
There is no response to his calls.
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Simon shouts up to the others
"The meteor impacted an occupied room. One of the occupants is still fused to the rock. Maybe we should try to bury it."
Simon takes out his notebook to make a hasty sketch, then returns to the problem at hand. He will ignore the sapphire for now and attempt to remove the skeleton from the wall.
The skeleton is too solidly attached to remove easily. It will have to be excavated with mining tools or magic.
Lost in thought, Victrix only barely notices that some sort of... mysterious happening was suddenly averted, courtesy of Kip.
When Simon requests another length of rope, Victrix fishes out her spool of rope and offers it.
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"Than you Victrix." Simon retrieves his own length of rope from his Haversack, ties the two together, then tries to find a rock outcropping secure enough to tie the rope off.
"We could take that sapphire, by the way. I'm not sure if that might anger the restless spirits. Any opinion, Kip?"
Once the rope is secure, Simon will begin climbing down the rope.
You carefully clamber down your rope into the chamber below. Much of this structure has collapsed and is in severe disrepair, and everything sits skewed at an awkward angle. A portion of the chamber is flooded with water flowing from streams cascading through the overhead cavern opening. The floor, partially obscured by piles of broken stone and crumbling masonry, consists of corroded, interlocking tiles of copper and brass lined with delicate silver circuitry. A pair of steel doors is set in the wall to the north, and a break in the wall to the east reveals another chamber.
As Simon starts moving to the opening, he glimpses a figure lurking in the shadows on the other side. A second figure lurks to the south--skeletal creatures surrounded by clouds of smoke and ash. They haven't noticed the invisible half-orc. They seem to be lying in wait to ambush his companions.
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Simon moves back to the rope and waits as the other climb down, alerting them to his presence with soft words.
"This is Simon. I'm invisible. There are two blast shadows in the East room. They explode when you kill them and can be hurt by cold. We might want to try killing then with ranged attacks.
Reach might be sufficient. I'm not sure of the blast radius."
Simon readies his whip while he waits.
"I don't think the spirit will mind us recovering their old things if we also help put them to rest and give them a proper burial. We'll need to recover their remains from the stone though."
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"Sounds dangerous. How big is the room? If it's not too big, I can freeze the floor of the room and make it really cold in there, then we can shoot them if any come out?"
The chasm was very disturbing and Ema wasn't really sure she wanted to go down there. Unfortunately down they went and she kept her eyes opened nervously. When Simon mentioned the creature's lying in wait Ema almost gave a scream of fright. She managed to stifle it a bit and snapped out, "Don't do that Simon, you nearly scared me to death." As teh shadows were mentioned Ema considered options for dealing with them and finally said, "I think it's worth a try Kip."
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"Hee Hee! First time I am using this extract." Simon says quietly.
Getting more serious, "I am worried about these shadows. We know very little about them. They may be tougher than the ghoulish things we fought earlier.
I think it makes sense to boost our abilities as much as possible before engaging them."
Simon retrieves his extract of Shield and prepares to drink it once Kip moves to cast his spell. I need to learn an extract that will grant elemental resistance