With his free hand, Doritan withdraws the stolen silver dagger from where it was hidden, backhanding it into the man's side.
Katria's eyes only grow wider, her hand involuntarily going to her mouth as she pales and tries to keep her lunch.
This is madness! she thinks, mind involuntarily racing for any comparison to the wholesale slaughter, and failing to find one in the nation's long history. He must mean to kill everyone here! If word of this even got out, not even the High Prince could survive it!
She watches in horror as Doritan races off, flinching as blood drenches him from the man standing next to him.
Reaching out, she tries to use her own meager powers to help protect him.
Poor, innocent Kalbio. Elif, shocked at the escalated bloody massacre, scrambled to remove her peace-bound kunai from the pocket of her skirt. I need to get the kitchens and retrieve my spear, she mused silently. With a little distance between herself and the nearest soldier/s, Elif began to cast Shield of Faith on herself for she needed as much protection as she could get to move without being butchered by Stavian's men.
As Bernal stands guard with falcata at the ready, Elif draws he blade and casts a spell to protect herself. Katria and Maya both th to use their magic to cloud the black-clad agent's mind, but it has no effect. He is too strong for their minor spells to affect him!
Doritan stabs again, driving his dagger into the man's arm. He hisses in pain and glares at the vigilante, murder in his eyes.
As the mercenary raises a gore-soaked sword and begins to swing, there is a blinding flash of light, and when it fades, only blackness and the smell of cold earth remain. It is pitch black and ominously silent.
You are no longer in the senate floor--but where are you?
Figures, Maya thinks as her spell has no effect on the man. Guess magic is overrated after all.
She doesn't have time to dwell further on the subject as her world is engulfed in bright light before plunging into blackness.
"Uh... hello?" is the first thing Maya thinks to say. She brings her right hand up and rubs her brow.
Is that really the best thing you can think to say, Maya? Uh, hello?
Deciding to do something a bit more practical, Maya casts another spell, one that might - quite literally - shed some light on the situation.
Maya's spell illuminates the room the five of you find yourselves in. Faded wallpaper lines the walls of this thirty-five-foot-by- thirty-five-foot room, peeling up at the seams. Six beds line the western wall, each pristinely made but caked in a thick layer of dust. Eight closed wooden lockers line the northeastern corner of the room. Two doors exit the room: one to the north and one to the east.
A panel of brass and green glass is set in one wall.
Katria looks around, breath still coming fast, as she tries to get her bearings.
"It must have been our badges," Katria exclaims. "They teleported us somewhere!"
She takes her badge in hand and begins studying it.
Bernal raises his buckler-hand to cover his face and slashes forward instinctively as light from an unknown source flashes before his eyes. When the din of massacre is abruptly replaced by eerie silence, Bernal moves his hand away from his eyes only to immediately cover them back again against the appearance of Maya's light spell. The dancer's eyes grow wide, both to acclimate to the darker surroundings and in sheer inability to process the increasingly dreadful situation.
"What makes you say that?", he stammers, glad to receive a distraction from overthinking. "I could gather that we have been teleported myself, but to say it was our badges seems far-fetched. Lady Martella said they're only used for communication, no?"
"They glowed momentarily," Katria replies. "Now, hush, please. I'm trying to ..."
She trails off as she examines the device.
Maya takes a few seconds to undo the peace-binding of her dagger. She doesn't intend to be caught without a usable weapon again.
Letting the four spheres of light hover in the air, the halfling glances down at her badge. What kind of magic could enable the things to teleport them?
While Katria concentrates on the device, Maya answers Bernal's second question. "She's a Taldan noble, do you really expect her to tell you the whole truth? What's more, she's an up-and-coming spymaster. While I do trust Lady Martella, I think it's highly probable that she withheld information from us about our badges."
Maya has to wonder what in the world this room is meant for. A dormitory? An insane asylum? A fancy prison for nobles? She walks over to the eight closed wooden lockers and, after casting Detect Magic at them, opens them one at a time to examine anything inside.
Doritan looks around, momentarily confused, "We were teleported? I always figured it would be a bit more... disorienting. Can any of you magical types figure out where we are? Or figure out what exactly these pins do in addition to what we were told?" He quickly cuts the peacebonding on his second dagger, and stows the magical one in his wrist sheath, replacing his first dagger as well. In the unnatural lighting, he pulls out the buckler he swiped as well, putting it on and grateful for the small amount of protection it provides.
"Gods I wish I had my armor now. Or even just my sword. I feel so vulnerable. Do any of you ladies need a weapon? I have a couple extra daggers you can borrow."
He makes his way over to the northern door, and cautiously pulls it open, "Hey I don't suppose I could get a light over here, Maya?"
As he busies himself, Doritan looks down at his blood-covered formal outfit, "I don't suppose any of you have a cleaning spell, do you?"
These badges were further enchanted with an emergency effect similar to a contingency spell. Senator Voritas made sure that if his servants were attacked, they would be transported to a safe place.
One locker contains a grooming kit, a moth-eaten change of clothes, a few candles, and a simple hand mirror, but the rest are empty. A functional bathroom is attached to this chamber.
The door opens to reveal a hallway that seems to lead to another room.
Your badges buzz and you can hear Martella's voice in your heads. "Where did you go?! I just saw you and several others in the senate vanish into thin air!”"
"Ah," Katria exclaims as she comes out of her reverie. "Of course! All Senate badges, of course, are part of a set, attuned to a single master senator badge during their creation. Anyone wearing the pinned brooch can receive telepathic communications sent from the wearer of the master senator badge, which for us is Lady Martella. If you receive a message, you have 1 minute to send a reply with your mind, up to 25 words.
"If you're thinking carefully about it, you can try using contractions to save words," she continues. "It does require some concentration, however. The wearer of the master senator badge can send up to 10 messages per day, targeting either a specific badge or all badge wearers, and knows the approximate direction and distance to all wearers of senate aid badges attuned to the master badge.
"So, Martella should know about where we are!" she adds brightly.
"Oh, and right. These badges were further enchanted with an emergency effect similar to a contingency spell. Senator Voritas made sure that if his servants were attacked, they would be transported to a safe place. Which must be where we are."
She looks around, seeming satisfied.
"Oh, and there's Lady Martella!" she adds as the telepathic message comes through.
We've been teleported somewhere Senator Voritas, who previously owned our badges, thought was a safe space, as a contingency, Katrria replies telepathically. But where, we don't know...
Unaware that Katria has already replied, Doritan broadcasts his report as well:
Location unknown- badges triggered teleportation, currently in dark cellar, trying to find way out. Likely in abandoned Voritas manor, as a preset escape location. Orders?"
Maya pockets the grooming kit, candles, and mirror, but leaves the moth-eaten clothes behind. She walks over to Doritan and sends her dancing lights down the hall as far as they'll go to try to determine where the hallway leads.
To Doritan, Maya says, "Please don't run-off in such a suicidal manner in the future. We need to stick together if we want to make it out of this place alive, especially now that we're... wherever we are."
It occurs to Maya that her words sound similar to something she would expect her mother or father to say. They were big proponents of family and community. Maybe more of them had rubbed off on her than she realized.
Maya wracks her brain to see if she knows anything about this Senator Voritas when Katria mentions him.
"Whoever he was, I find myself grateful to him. He must have been a decent fellow if he cared enough about his servants to implement a safety measure like that. I doubt many, if any, other nobles have anything nearly as sophisticated or as effective."
When Lady Martella's voice pops into her head, Maya's a bit surprised that the noble doesn't know about Voritas's safety measure. Perhaps it had been a secret that died with the senator, only rediscovered upon their sudden exit from the senate floor.
Maya replies to Lady Martella, Room with a bunch of beds. Bathroom attached to it. Smells like cold earth. Fine for now. Are you and the Princess safe?
As the others respond to Martella, Katria pokes her head into the other room, trying to see what's there.
Martella does not immediately respond. Maya's light floats down the short hall and illuminates the next room. A wooden counter juts from the northwest corner of this thirty- foot-by-thirty-foot chamber. Open cabinets of dusty liquor bottles stand behind the bar, while one cabinet remains tightly sealed with a visible lock. Three tables with adjacent chairs fill much of the room. Portraits of posing nobles and historical scenes adorn the walls, all faded with age. Doors exit to the south and east.
Doritan heads over to the locked cabinet, and, using his dagger and some stuff scavenged from the grooming kit in the other room, tries to pop the lock open.
And tries again.
And keeps fiddling with it until he gets it.
Maya follows Katria and Doritan into the next room. If the situation wasn't so dire, Maya would mostly certainly indulge in some of the liquor. As it is, she already had a rather large glass of wine at the gala, so another alcoholic beverage so soon for one her size seems unwise.
While Doritan works on locked cabinet, Maya says, "Perhaps we should check the other door leading out of the room we came from before continuing further? Call me paranoid, but I'd rather be safe considering we just witnessed the Grand Prince of Taldor stab a man to death and order a massacre on the senate floor."
The place they found themselves in could easily be a maze. Probably best to take some precautions, regardless of which direction they decide to go. Maya grabs the tooth powder out of the grooming kit and rubs a bit of it on the doorway they just passed through. Even if they pushed forward, they could at least find their way back with a few well-placed markers.
While Doritan works, Maya also uses Prestidigitation to clean his clothes. She doesn't want to see the poor servant's blood anymore than he does.
Doritan waves Maya's concerns aside, "Have you seen this place? Nobody's been here in years, and I'd prefer to avoid backtracking. This is supposed to be a safe room anyway, and there's not a soul on Golarion that has a clue as to where we are. I think this is about as safe as we'll be for quite some time." and blows some dust out of the lock, holding pressure as he tries to pop the pins.
Doritan works for several minutes, trying again and again to open the lock, but it's no use. The well-crafted lock is beyond his skills to disable.
Martella sends you another message. "You're under the senate. Find a way up! Gloriana Morilla’s allies secured us a way out of the senate building! This is an organized force."
Wouldn't it be safer to stay down here until everything has quieted down, then venture up? Or do you need our assistance? Doritan thinks back.
"Damn it. I wish I had better tools." he looks around, "Does anyone else think that we might be safer just hiding down here until the attack ends? I kind of doubt that anyone would look down here for us."
"Under the Senate?" Katria repeats. "Fascinating. There are so many ruins under Oppara from previous construction. I wonder if anyone else knows about this place ...
"Still," she says sharply to Doritan, "remaining distracted during chaos has never really worked out in the empire. That was what led to the Even-Tongued Conquest, and the empire's loss of Cheliax, Andoren and Galt, after all.
Despite her sharp words, she seems more fascinated by the surroundings, continuing to look and prod as she goes, torn between finding new places and exploring the old.
"Plus, Lady Martella said others disappeared, so we may well not be alone down here. Who knows if some of Grand Prince Stavian III's forces might be down here too?"
Lady, you said others disappeared at the same time we did. By any chance do you know who they were?
"Unsure who the others were. Out of senate. Stavian's soldiers still pursuing. Fighting throughout the entire senate building. Wherever you are, keep your heads down!"
Katria notices another panel of brass and green glass on the wall among the portraits. Many of the liquors here have soured or evaporated away, but two bottles of whiskey remain sealed in wax. A wand of create food and water (14 charges) and a sustaining spoon rest in a drawer under the bar.
Bernal listens to the others, temporarily rendered mute. His mind slowly begins to work again, connecting the pieces of their current location.
"A sustaining spoon, a wand that can create food and water, beds, bathroom... I find it likely that this location was meant to serve as a hideout for the servants, where they'll remain for an undisclosed amount of time until rescued."
At Lady Martella's message, Maya is both relieved and worried. How far does the Grand Prince's plot extend? How long has he been planning this?
Maya replies to the message, Wait... find a way out or keep our heads down? Please stay safe. Taldor needs as many sane people as it can get today.
The halfling nods at Katria's mention that some of Stavian's forces could be below the senate floor with them. She replies, "Perhaps so. And if Lady Martella saw us disappear, I'm sure others did as well. At least the masked man we attacked would have noticed us disappear. Considering that the Grand Prince seems to have gone quite mad, or maybe he always was, I think it's safe to assume he's going to try hunting us down.
"I suppose trying to get out of here is the best plan, but, at the same time, we should tread carefully. Stavian's people are likely to be trying to get in here, if they have any inkling that these chambers exist below the senate floor. If anyone has the resources to know about them, I would think that would be the Grand Prince."
Noting the portraits on the wall, Maya says, "The portraits represent a notable gure or scene chronicled by Taldor's Fourth Army of Exploration. Perhaps Senator Voritas was involved in Taldor's military operations? Or maybe he just appreciated the country's history."
With so much to contemplate, Maya decides to distract herself from whatever's happening above by walking over to the door leading to the south. She opens it and sends her Dancing Lights beyond to see what lies ahead.
"You may be right, Maya, but I suspect the Grand Prince has more important people and things to worry about than us. He likely doesn't even know we exist, specifically. If we can get out of here, he should be none the wiser," Katria says thoughtfully, after she finishes investigating the items.
"Still, maybe there are other supplies down here that can help us, in case you're right. These will at least keep us alive for a while. Is anyone hungry?"
Heavy wooden bookshelves line the walls of this opulent bedchamber. A posh chair sits in the northwestern corner alongside a small circular table. A massive bed and an adjoining table rest along the eastern side of the room. An open bathroom fits into the southwest corner, with a bathtub matching the room's opulence, but adding an ignoble odor. Doors exit to the west (back to the common room you are in) and south.
An ornate golden key sits in the table near the sofa. Another panel of brass and green glass is on the wall.
"Maybe this is the key to get out?" Katria says. "Now we just need to find out how to do that..."
She heads to the south door.
"The exit must be this way," she muses.
Stacked wooden crates cover the southern wall, and more crates occupy the northwestern corner. Wooden shelves fill much of the eastern half of the room, each tier filled with dust-coated bottles, crockery, and glass jars. Another brass and green glass panel is on one wall.
A door to the west leads back to the room you arrived in. These four rooms only seem to connect to one another. There's no exit!
"That key might open that fancy lock Doritan couldn't crack. Maybe that'll offer some clue on how to get out of this place."
Maya walks over to the latest brass and green glass panel in what appears to be a storage room.
She says to Katria, "Can you do that staring thing you did on the badges to these panels? They're magical, so they must have some significance besides adding to the aesthetic appeal of this place."
Maya spends several minutes searching the master suite. There are dozens of books on the shelves. It will take a few hours to look through them all. A circular, coin-sized niche is obvious on one wall, but it connects to no obvious mechanisms.
In the bathroom, she finds a hand mirror and a frayed brush. She also spots a scroll case hanging from the railing of the bathtub. This bronzed and pitted case opens to reveal a tattered note that reads: "Fourth bed from the north. Comforter. Backup key."
A routine check of the storage chamber reveals changes of clothes, condiments, pickled vegetables, preserved delicacies, salted meats, and a well-stocked toolkit. The room is a storage area, meant to store excess equipment that the senator or aides would use while spending prolonged periods in the safe quarters. While all the foodstuff here has long since rotted, the toolkit is well stocked and in excellent shape, counting as a masterwork tool related to carpentry, metalworking, or stonework.
Rearranging the boxes and searching through all of them will take half an hour.
Katria will try to examine the plates, using her training in magical items.
"Fourth bed from the north!" she exclaims at Maya's note. "A backup key sounds perfect. Well, if we had a door, perhaps. Maybe it fits in that niche? Unless someone found a coin?
"If not, perhaps we should look through all these boxes..." she muses.
When Katria touches the panel in the master suite to examine it, magical lights in the ceiling illuminate in the common room and the storage room. Touching it a second time causes the lights to deactivate again. Studying it with her object reading, Katria confirms that thie panels are just switches for the lights, but they are supposed to activate the lights in the rooms they are in. It seems the magic has gotten a little crossed over the years.
The panels toggle the lights in the following rooms:
Servants' Quarters: Common Room and Master Suite
Common Room: Master Suite
Master Suite: Common Room and Storage Room
Storage Room: Servants' Quarters and Common Room
Maya nods to Katria. "We should probably check the locked cabinet first. If the niche does lead out somehow, we should make sure we're as prepared as possible. This area may be secure, but who knows what lies beyond?"
Assuming no one protests, Maya will search the fourth bed for the key. If she finds it, she'll try opening the fancy cabinet. If that doesn't work, she'll position her dancing lights so as to allow her to see into the niche to see if there's a keyhole or something else inside. She won't actually try to open it quite yet even if it appears the key will fit into it.
Sewn into the comforter of the fourth bed from the north is an inelegant brass key. This key fits into the fancy cabinet.
Seeing that the key fits, Maya smiles to herself and turns it in the lock. The halfling is fairly confident that whatever's inside must be particularly important and valuable to warrant such a fancy cabinet and lock.
Inside the locked cabinet is something that resembles an immovable crystal ball built into the wall. There is a rectangular hole in the top of the device, as if a piece of glass is missing.
A note is scrawled on the wood beneath it. "Look in the book."
Bernal follows Maya's investigation with his eyes, disappointed that he can't do much to help except stand guard. His wonder when the halfling opens the cabinet gives way to a groan as she reads out the note.
"Did whomever designed this hideout want the people inside to ever come out?"
"I guess we need to go look through [url=http://paizo.com/campaigns/DMBrainiacsWarForTheCrownTable2/gameplay&page=5#236]those books," Katria says, doing little to hide her excitement at this sort of task.
Using the proper panel, she turns on the lights in that room and, perching herself on the bed, begins flipping through each one to try to find another clue.
Maya frowns at the crystal ball-like object in the cabinet. Whatever she had expected to find inside the cabinet, this isn't it.
"I don't know, Bernal. I'm beginning to wonder. With the way the badges work, they might be designed in such a way for someone on the outside to have to trigger them. But... I'm not giving up yet."
Turning to Katria, Maya says, "You might try staring at the orb thing before you bury your head in books. Voritas kept this thing in a locked cabinet, so we should probably try to figure out what it does before we try activating it. I'm going to go check out that niche in the wall again."
Before leaving the crystal ball-like object, Maya casts Detect Magic on it and concentrates for three rounds' worth of time. Then she tries to see what she can determine about it.
Maya then goes to investigate the niche in the wall again. She shines her dancing lights into it to see if she can spy a keyhole or something similar to the empty space in the object they found in the cabinet.
Many of the books on the shelves are too worn to be of use. Of the dozen or so that remain, one of them relates to the Fourth Army of Exploration. Having recognized the portraits in the other room, Katria opens that book. Fitted into the cut pages is small piece of curved, rectangular glass that fits the crystal ball!
Using her object reading, the occultist identifies the orb as a static scrying device. Replacing the piece causes the ball to glow softly. Peering into it, you can see a view of the storage room. Though the room is dark, faint light glows from behind the stack of boxes. It's impossible to see what's there with the boxes in the way though.
The niche in the wall only has a small slot the size of a coin. Maya isn't able to find anything else.
"There!" Katria points out. "There's something behind the crates!"
She looks around in satisfaction.
"Maybe that's the way out?"
Maya's quite pleased with Katria's efforts. Her ability to identify objects at will could come in handy in the future, just like it already has.
"Nice job, Katria," Maya says simply to the occultist.
Seeing the faint light glowing from behind the stack of boxes and at Katria's words, Maya says, "Guess we should check that out, huh? Seeing as how we have no other leads at the moment... I couldn't figure anything else out about the niche in the wall."
Drawing her dagger, just in case, Maya works to move the stack of boxes by the illumination of her dancing lights. If the room's normal lighting decides to malfunction, Maya doesn't want to be left in the dark.
Working together, it takes the five of you about six minutes or so to rearrange the stack of boxes into something less hectic. Doing so reveals a beautiful fresco painted on the southern wall, depicting Galitian Maramaxus, hero of the Fourth Army of Exploration, battling the dwarves of the Five King Mountains. A brass plate identifies the fresco as "Noble Galitian Maramaxus, hero of the Fourth Army of Exploration, champion of Taldor."
When the fresco is viewed through the crystal ball, a portion of it glows with light.
You can also take the time to search the crates. Inside, you find three daggers, two longswords, an elven-branch spear, a masterwork rapier, 12 masterwork darts, and a masterwork suit of studded leather.
Bernal happily helps the group in rearranging the boxes, glad to finally be of some use. While his mind isn't duller than that of the average Taldan, perhaps even sharper, he never had the patience for puzzles and riddles. When the fresco is revealed, Bernal takes a step back to take it in in its entirety.
"I've gathered that you despise the nobility, Maya, but you can't tell me you've no adoration for heroes such as this. Taldans who fight for the glory of our Empire..."
Bernal suddenly feels a sting of pain in his chest, and some strange sickness crawling up his throat. The glory of our Empire... an empire whose emperor orders to massacre its senators, a massacre that is possibly still going on a few feet above his head. He'd nearly forgotten about it; the search for an exit, the increasingly convoluted puzzle, had completely taken his mind off the massacre. Realizing that Maya would probably rather no be distracted right now with pointless questions, Bernal shuts his mouth until the two girls find a way out.