As Sydney approaches the field of stars arrayed across the ground of the eastern gallery, the observations Ted made earlier click into place. The spacing between the stars marked on the ground here is on exactly the same scale as the annotations in the constellations above!
Studying the star field inlaid across the ground, the 39 individual movements correspond to a particular path through the field - one that someone with could conceivably follow if they wished by hopping from starburst to starburst.
The operative remembers how the other place wanted her to bathe to ease the vertigo. She wasn't about to go through that again. It seemed, from Ted's observations, she'd have to put in some fancy footwork to appease whatever magic may or may not be present in this building. "Put away your com units. I don't wanna see this posted anywhere," she hisses at her companions.
Sydney holsters her gun and shakes out her limbs, jumping in place a couple times. Then, she begins jumping from star to star on the path. She tries to minimize the noise from her footfalls.
Sydney and Arc step with absolute ease through the field of stars following Ted's "dance steps". Each sunburst glimmers softly as they step on it, but beyond that nothing unusual happens. At the end of the journey, they find themselves on the opposite side of the field.
They look around the aft section of the temple. This southernmost point in the temple is a high-ceilinged sanctuary with tall, narrow windows filled with foggy, discolored glass. The vantage point juts out over the cliff below, overlooking the stairs carved into the mountainside and the ruined settlement below. The high arching ceiling here is bedecked with silvery inlay that seems to mirror that in the entry hall.
To the northern end of this aft section is a tall, ornate wooden door set into a solid brick wall. The door is inscribed with images of butterflies in flight. Seeing the door and the stone structure its built into quickly allows you to realize that the construction styles between the larger temple and this internal stone structure are very different. It seems as though this inner structure was built much earlier and with cruder techniques, and then the larger temple was built around it later.
To the western end of the room, a heavy orange curtain blocks your view of what lies further that way.
Perhaps most importantly: Lying bound on the ground at the southern end of this area is a pale-skinned female kasatha. She appears to be unconscious, but not obviously harmed. Wire ties keep her four arms pinned securely behind her.
Sydney continues to sneak around, approaching the bound kasatha. "Hey," she whispers, gently prodding the unconscious form. "Are you the professor?" She activates the Starfinder Society Subdermal Graft on her palm.
Solaria watches as Arc and Sydney traverse the starfield mosaic, she waits patiently for instructions, as Sydney disappears from sight. He heart beats quickly in the moment.
At the prod from Sydney, the professor blearily opens her eyes and lets out a groan. Her eyes go wide with surprise when she realizes that the person waking her up isn't a cultist, though she has the presence of mind not to make too much noise.
She whispers "The Starfinder Society? How did you- no, it is not important. There are members of the Devourer Cult here. You must be careful. Before exhaustion caught up with me, they were planting explosives. Aiming to reduce this ancient site to a ruin so that no others could learn what they found here." She speaks common with a thick accent.
All her whispering is practically wasted as Arc, Ted and Spectre speak normally, their voices echoing in the cavernous hall.
Sydney doesn't trust the professor, let alone 'The Man.'
All her whispering is practically wasted as Arc, Ted and Spectre speak normally, their voices echoing in the cavernous hall.
Feeling pissed, Sydney turns to Arc, Ted and Spectre and yells:
She turns her body, shooting arm outstretched at the curtain and dashes forward, firing a blind shot off in frustration.
|
Arcalinte nods at Sydney's words and moves to position at the front door she mentioned.
"I wasn't aware we were trying to sneak! This is why you figure out your strategies BEFORE you move in!" he replies.
He looks back at the person sprawled on the floor.
"Clichéd as this sounds, Dr. Solstarni, I presume?" he calls back to her before returning his attention to the door.
Hearing the commotion and Sydney's gun going off, Solaria takes a look at Ralkawi. She'l never be able to dance across the floor in her state and we cann't leave her here defenceless should the cultists exit. They would surely kill her. Her antennae twitch as she considers the position, "Perhaps we should see if we can meet with the others going the other away around the centre of this temple. What do you think Ralkawi, that dance across the floor there, or we leave you here until we return. All have danger, but I have to go if you decide to stay here. It might be easiest to find a way round the other side."
Solaria takes Ralkawi's arm and guides her, as they walk a little behind Isu. Careful as you go Solaria speaks into the Kasatha's mind. She peers at the curtain, to see if there any nasty surprises.
Yelling loud enough to wake Panelliar back up, Sydney sends a sparking shot right into the southern curtain. The sparks singe the heavy fabric, but don't manage to much more than that. For a moment it seems there'll be no response, but then a mad laugh begins to echo from behind the curtain.
"F$+#IN' FEISTY AREN'T YA!" A woman's voice screams out at the same time as the southern curtain is pulled partly aside by a cultist. Standing now in clear sight is a female korasha lashunta with extensive facial scars and a massive chaingun in her hands . She grins. "Happy ta oblige."
-----------------------
Three wooden doors stand on the western end of this western hall. The curving interior wall depicts the night sky and its stars. The most prominent feature is a 3-ft tall stone pillar rising from the ground in the center of the hall. While it might have once been a lectern or altar, it now serves as the resting place for a small pile of industrial explosives.
The chaingun toting lashunta is accompanied by three other cultists. The one to the south has a jagged longsword in hand, while the two to the north bear snub-nosed shotguns.
----
|||| INIT ||||
Spectre (7pts shield)
Chaingun lady
Cultists x3
Sydney
Arc
Solaria
Ted
Isu
Bold are up
---
---
Spectre lowers his rifle and sends an icy beam right into the chaingun lady's arm, growing a layer of frost across her torso. She immediately returns fire in a mad hail of bullets from her chaingun. The spray strikes all over the floor, walls and ceiling (destroying priceless elven cultural heritage in the process) but Spectre pulls through unscathed!
The blue and purple cultists move up northward, advancing without much stealth towards Isu and Solaria. One pushes through the curtain and fires his shotgun at Isu. The attack scratches Isu's armor a little but does no real harm. The second of the two cultists stays behind the curtain and blindly fires her shotgun north where she hears someone. Her blast is weak enough that it fails to even penetrate the curtain.
The red cultist pushes his way through the southern curtain, and with a quick swing of his longsword scores a shallow cut on Sydney .
|||| INIT ||||
Sydney (8 dmg)
Arc
Solaria
Ted
Isu
Spectre (7pts shield)
Chaingun lady (10 dmg)
Cultists x3
Bold are up
Solaria steps over and, finding Isu uninjured, instead draws her pistol and fires at the ground next to the purple cultist's feet. The cultist steps out of the way, but it clearly distracts him.
Sydney rolls away from the red cultist and sends a quick tricky shot into the chaingun toting lady.
That not only scorches her, but sends her into a spin as she attempt to track the operative with her chaingun.
----
--
--
On the other side of the curtains, Isu smashes the purple cultist in the chest. His armor does little to protect him from the blow and you can hear the grisly sound of ribs cracking. Nevertheless, the badly injured cultist remains standing.
Chaingun lady growls audibly as she switches targets to Sydney and delivers another hail of fire. While most of the shots are deflected by her armor, Sydney still suffers from the attack. The red cultist lets loose a mad scream and swings twice at Arc with his jagged longsword. Arc manages to side step both swings.
On the north side, the purple cultist drops his gun and draws the longsword at his hip, delivering a reckless swing that Isu is easily able to knock aside. Meanwhile the blue cultist pushes through the curtain and sends a shotgun blast into Isu's back that only barely manages to bypass his armor.
|||| INIT ||||
Sydney (18 dmg)
Arc
Solaria
Ted
Isu (2 dmg)
Spectre (7pts shield)
Chaingun lady (27 dmg, flatfooted)
Cultist purple (17 dmg, flatfooted)
Cultist blue
Cultist red
Bold are up
Solaria continues to try and distract the cultist fighting Isu, shouting out "Don't worry Isu I've got your back. We have another visitor arriving needing correction." as she moves behind Isu, coveriing his back from any attack.
Sydney feints a shot at red, but delivers it instead to the chaingun toting cultist.
While the shot doesn't manage to fool her, it certainly injures her! The blast of electricity fries the cultist in the face. She has a vaguely outraged expression as her eyes roll into the back of her head and she collapses to the ground, dead.
--
Spectre sends a shot at the red cultist but only succeeds at icing the curtain behind him.
----
Isu dispatches the purple cultist with a powerful swing and steps over to corner the blue cultist while Solaria runs distraction. At the sights and sounds of all his dying colleagues, it almost seems like blue might break to flee. But a manic desperation enters his eyes and he drops his gun to draw a longsword. "DEVOURER WITNESS ME!!" He screams as he falls upon Isu with a furious blow. Furious, but not strong enough to pierce the chest plate of the kasatha's heavy armor.
|||| INIT ||||
Sydney (18 dmg)
Arc
Solaria
Ted
Isu (2 dmg)
Spectre (7pts shield)
Cultist blue (flatfooted)
Bold are up
Solaria speaks to the cultist, "You have failed, the Devourer will not be accept you as a follower, put down your weapon and surrender. Give yourself up to a powerful god, to Sarenrae. You will be forgiven.". As she says this she twirls her pistol on her finger before pointing it at cultists head.
As Solaria distracts the last cultist, Isu delivers two massively powerful swings of his hammer, blowing past the cultist's meager guard. The cultist's chest is crushed and he collapses with a gurgle of blood.
Arc's call rings out moments too late. As you survey the battlefield, its clear that your deadly team has left nothing but dead cultists in its wake.
Combat Complete!
-----
Now that the cultists aren't trying to murder you, you have some more time to take in the western hall. Between the two heavy curtains sits a stone lectern atop which lies a pile of industrial explosives. As far as you can tell, they don't appear to currently be armed or set - this is merely a stockpile from which the cultists were drawing. A few of the explosives look to be somewhat unstable though... it'll take a skilled hand at engineering to separate the dangerous ones from the more stable ones.
The ever perceptive Arc also looks up to the ceiling and spots that the roof in the western wing has been adorned with a dozen explosive packages, hooked together with wiring. From the look of their blinking lights, they're currently armed. The ceiling in this wing is 20ft above the ground.
You also take a quick peek through the doors to the west and find a interconnected series of small rooms. They are largely bare except for a few crumbling ancient pieces of furniture - ones that are likely only a single soft kick away from collapsing into dust. What little is there leads you to believe these must have once been offices or labratories.
Solaria begins to search the bodies of the fallen cultists, starting with the one holding the chainsaw. Hoping to find something useful, even something to disarm the explosives.
|
Ted's eyes gleam in excitement, "Those look like dangerous explosives!" He approaches the pile and starts pulling on wires and moving switches to discover what is salvageable. "Spec, come hold this wire. No, not that one! The green one!"
While working on the pile, Ted points with his chin to the ceiling, "Let's not be around when they push the button for those ones." His top cringes and hovers near his shoulders for protection.
|
|
Arcalinte's eyes widen when Ted points out the explosives both on the ground and on the ceiling.
"Oh flare!" he says quietly. "Ted, Spectre, is there a way you can get up there to take those down? If these cultists have a deadman's switch, I guarantee they'll use it to take this entire temple down, and us with them, if we defeat them!"
Ted easily extracts (with Spectre's aid) some choice explosive devices from the pile while rendering those that are left behind harmless. Meanwhile Isu goes through the gear that the cultists had been carrying and lays the haul out:
a squad machine gun
squad defiance series armor
a handheld remote detonator (currently primed)
a credstick with 500 creds
trail rations for 2 weeks
---
three sets of lashunta ringwear I
three longswords
three shock grenade Is
three utility scatterguns
trail rations for 2 weeks x 3
a pile of assorted credsticks that add up to 450 creds.
Spectre looks up for somewhere to land, but sees no obvious spot. What he does notice is climbing pitons hammered into the walls where the cultists must have ascended to set the explosives in the first place.
As Solaria helps Isu with looking at the items carried by the cultists, she shouts out, "Spectre or Ted, you don't know what this is that's currently blinking a red light at me, do you?" She points to something She stops anyone from touching it until an engineer has been able to identify what it is?
Spectre climbs up with ease and in short order strips the active explosives off the ceiling, defusing them with a single deft motion each. Unfortunately, unlike the explosives that were on the pillar, these aren't salvageable.
As the last explosive is disabled, Solaria notices that the red light on the detonator fades. Spectre quickly concludes that the handheld detonator had been paired to one or more of the explosives he just disabled.
Solaria watches the red light go out, shakes it a little, before pulling up her shoulders and putting it back into the a bag. She notices Dr. Solstarni crouched on the floor on the other side and moves towards her. "You must be Dr. Solstarni, is that all of them and was one of them Tahomen? If not, there is still work to do. We must find Tahomen and stop whatever evil plan of destruction he has in mind." she pauses for the Dr to react, then continues.
"If there is anything you can do to help us in this, then your help will be gratefully accepted. Professor Muhali was very concerned about your abduction from the University and gave us help with the authorities to bring you back safely."