"It would seem a waste of the magic, given that you are correct, he won't known much more than we. As for direction. Well, any way that gets us out of here is good with me!"
Deciding to finish the level, or at least the remaining door, Dilwyn walks over and has the spider robot open it with his key.
This room has a light source in the form of a metal plate bolted to the ceiling that glows with enough light to see clearly. Several glass cages stand on the floor, all of them partially smashed open. The remains of plants, rocks, and feeding dishes clutter the bottom of the cages, suggesting they once housed living specimens. A long table lines the southern wall from the eastern corner. A large door centered in the eastern wall provides the only exit.
The room appears otherwise empty.
Kit breathes a sigh of relief seeing that none of the cages contained children. This place just keeps getting better and better! he mutters as he heads towards the exit.
Dilwyn likewise breathes a sigh of relief. He's prepared to move on without the thought that the children might have been just on the other side of that one last door potentially haunting him for the rest of his life. Since it sounds like they're walking into a war zone, if not an outright ambush, he takes a moment to contemplate the mysteries of the sky. Though he cannot see it, he feels like at least he's in in, in a way, and the connection is enough to cause divine magic to toughen up his skin. Then, as they initially planned, it's time to start climbing up that shaft.
"Despite my desire for a stiff drink, I propose we press on."
Hilde carries the metallic creature and follows the others.
With Hilde carrying the spider robot, you all make your way up thru the central cylinder to what BR-N3R says is the top level. Arriving at the top, Hilde puts the robot down, and you see a passage way to the east, ending in a door, and also passage ways to the north, south and west.
Before you have a chance to explore, you hear a gong like reverberation echoing through the corridors, with a voice speaking in a language that you do not understand. Andretta, and BR-N3R both look worried, and Andretta translates, the message is a warning, "Warning! Facility power ompromised. Auxiliary power diverted to atmospheric shielding. Drain will soon exceed capacity. Repairs required or system failure imminent."
Alarmed by the translation, Dilwyn turns to the talking mechanical spider thing. "Which way to the gate, and which way to the repairs?" he asks with urgency.
Kit is perplexed at the strange words. That doesn't sound good! How do we fix this?!
BR-N3R responds to your query, Whir, click..... "North and then west to the power plant room." Just as the spider robot finishes, a shifting mass of roiling clouds charged with electrical energy, comes to you from the north and east. The only real feature of this flaring of electrical energy is a vaguely humanoid face that flickers and plays within its shifting mass.
It surrounds Iskender with electrical flames that do not damage him, and it seems to be trying emphatically to share information with him about the facility and what occurred to it.
Hilde grabs her axe, but seems at a loss of what to do about the electric cloud.
I wish I could say that's the strangest thing I've seen today, but I can't! Iskender? Are you all right? Kit asks equally at a loss of what to do.
"Well, I feel fine, albeit a bit strange."
Any idea what's going on?
Dilwyn pauses with his hand crackling with electricity when Iskender says he feels fine. He takes a deep breath and lets the energy dissipate rather than concentrating it. And he really does seem to be fine in the middle of that cloud, which is perhaps the single strangest thing that has happened to them since they woke up in this bizarre place.
"Uh," he says, slowly coming to terms with this development. "I guess onward to the generator room, then? Maybe Iskender's new friend will come with us?"
The warnings said that the need to fix the place was urgent, so he doesn't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure this weirdness out and instead heads off in the direction that the Bernard told them.
Zaladrel cocks an eyebrow but if the druid lets an electric cloud move on the elf is confident he knows less than Dilwyn. I agree, move on?
Iskender stands still for a moment, as the creatures electrical aura flickers and changes colors subtlety.
It tries to convey information about itself and the current state of the facility. During this interaction, it becomes clear that it wishes to recruit you and the others as allies in its bid to escape Garsilt and return to its home world.
Once held prisoner the power disruption caused by the meteor strike set it free. As an incorporeal creature, it could easily leave the prison, but Garsilt has few major bodies of water (its preferred habitat) and wants to leave this planet entirely. At first, it flashes images of a circular metal structure which resembles a gate. Then, it changes the image to depict you all and itself moving through the same structure before disappearing, presumably to someplace much safer based on the emotion it shares.
Through a further series of images, it also attempts to explain the problem facing the prison, showing a meteor striking an external structure and damaging its internal power source. It also shows that the prison has automatically erected a force field to keep air from leaking out of the ruptured exterior. But, due to the damaged power source, it indicates the solution cannot last indefinitely. Furthermore, it shares that they cannot use the gate to escape without repairing the power source.
Iskender nods knowingly...
"I cannot fully explain how I know this, I am still assimilating. But this fog of electricity is a creature, which we shall call Spark. We, and Spark, are in danger. This place is in danger. It is some kind of space building that is failing. We cannot fix the building completely, but we can fix it enough to save ourselves, and Spark."
Sure, why not? Dilwyn asks himself. At this point trying to sort the things that don't make sense from the things which do is too difficult to bother about.
"Then there's no time to lose," he says out loud. "Let's do what we have to do." He rushes in the direction that Bernard had told them was the way to go.
Hilde follows.
Kit shrugs, Let's follow the strange cloud!
The creature floats off to the north, which is where the spider robot said the power plant room is. With Dilwyn leading, the group moves in that direction, with the robot and the wyrd following Iskender. Arriving at the most north west room.
This large chamber includes four, dominating columns of unusual green metal. Each one throbs with a slow, rhythmic pulse shedding a faint green light with the eerie sound of a heartbeat. A thin layer of orange dust, marked by animal-like paw prints, coats the floor. To the northwest, a large breach has taken down part of the external wall, plainly revealing an alien landscape of barren rubble and debris strewn by the impact crater of a dark blue meteorite. A shimmering translucent field of energy has cordoned off the broken wall from the outside environment, occasionally flickering with an intermittent drop in power. Several spherical objects litter the ground before the meteorite, both inside and beyond the energy field. Composed of strands of unusual metal, they appear hollow and torn open from within. A nauseating tang emanates from them, filling the air inside the room.
The most obvious damage exists at the column in the northwest corner where multiple rocks fell and exposed its internal components. The robot and the wyrd look at it, and Iskender with his knowledge of engineering figures out what needs to be done to stabilize the power plant and prevent the complete failure which would result in the death to all air breathers in the prison.
As he finishes fixing the plant, Iskender quips, "Who knew I had this ability in me?"
Kit, not knowing how to fix any of this, keeps watch for...well anything!
"We need to go get the parts to fix this, they are this way..."
Dilwyn tears himself away from the strange, alien view when Iskender speaks. "I'm sure glad that someone knows what to do about all this," he says as he catches up to him as he leads the way to their next destination.
Hilde stays, transfixed by the alien landscape.
vs AC 18 Kit
vs AC 17 Iskender
With Hilde staying behind to watch the rest of you follow Iskender to the southeast corner room. Walking to the entrance of the room, you notice two hairless blue lions having twin tentacular tails. Dozens more thick tentacles quiver and twitch where its mane should be. They notice you and run to attack, one on Kit and one on Iskender. Both bites hit, damaging the adventurers.
Kit, not liking how that bite felt, launches into an attack with his axe.
Round 1, Initiative Count 10
With the corridor bottle-necked, Dilwyn can't do much to get up there and help with his staff. Doing his best from back, he condenses some ambient electrical energy into a sparking ball and lobs it over the clot of allies at the enemy in front of Iskender.
Iskender does his normal thing of starting a song, and will try to withdraw from the threat, at least a 5' step!
Zaladrel provides some help to the group, with his serendipitous luck, which just allows Kit to hit the creature in front of him. Hilde, not hearing the combat occurring continues to stare thru the wall to the other side, in hopes of seeing something interesting. Dilwyn lobs a small ball of electrical energy of Iskender head, and it hurts the creature. Andretta steps out of the way, as Iskender takes a step back and begins his bardic performance, also granting everyone a small help in battling the creatures. Andretta casts a spell, and both of the creatures fall down in slumber. As she watches the creatures go down, "they will only be asleep for a few minutes."
Kit looks at the fallen creatures. Should we tie 'em up or let Hilde in here to finish them off? I assume it will be a task she would be most pleased at! he asks.
"As much as I hate it, I don't think we can afford to let them wake up and further complicate this repair process," Dilwyn says. "I don't relish the idea of doing it personally, though, so I can understand if you'd prefer to get Hilde. But I'm sure you and your axe can do the job admirably and, more important perhaps, quickly."
Leaving Kit to decide whether to perform the deed himself of outsource it, Dilwyn moves past the slumbering creatures and into the room they came from to check it for any more surprises before Iskender, the only one that knows what they're doing, can get jumped again.
"Either way, it needs to be done. You will get no squeamishness from me on the subject. Handle it!"
Kit shrugs, Hilde is going to be mad she missed the fun! He says as he raises his axe and brings it down swiftly on one of the sleeping creatures decapitating it. He moves to the next one and repeats the process. Perhaps we shouldn't tell her.
"You don't think she'll notice?"
Hilde feels a weird tingle in her hands, as if something to be killed has escaped, but looks around and decides to ignore it, and keeps looking at the alien landscape.
Kit winks at Iskender, I won't tell if you don't tell. As long as she doesn't come into this room, we should be fine.
"Errr, our little secret then."
Kit takes care of the downed creatures, and everyone except Hilde, who is still looking at the strange alien landscape, enter the room.
The door to this chamber lies broken and physically peeled away from the track where it once slid into the wall. Tendrils of green plant-like material are still attached where it hangs crookedly to the side. Beyond the door, metal shelving units fill the room, each containing various tools and supplies, some quite pedestrian, and others so exotic as to defy explanation.
After searching for a few minutes, Kit finds a box on the topmost shelf, that contains some strange items, that appear to be parts of a machine, instead of the pedestrian mops, buckets, carpentry tools, alchemical ingredients, and even regular food.
Iskender says that this is what you are looking for, and he leads the way back to where Hilde is. Once there, Iskender and the spider robot begin the task of fixing the broken and disabled power supply. After five minutes, Iskender pronounces the repairs complete, and the warning that you have been hearing, subsides and everything is now quiet.
When they return Hilde eyes them suspiciously, but after a couple seconds shrugs and smiles at them.
After the alarms quiet Hilde pats Iskender on the back, congratulating him. Maybe a little to hard.
By now Dilwyn is getting antsy. The alien landscape is really starting to get to him psychologically, and the strange wall of of force is making him feel trapped.
"So that's it, right?" he asks, edging for the door. "We can leave now? Let's leave now. Which way to the gate?"
We should make sure that the children aren't here before we leave Kit offers. He then describes to Bernard the places they've been. Is there any place that we haven't been that the children could be? he asks he droid.