Yeah, I'd hate ta hafta kill yer friends so that'll be a good idea.
"All right, we'll leave you alone while we get the stuff we need to open the way. Don't tell anyone else that we came by, OK?"
The ghoul shrugs meekly. "Who would I tell?"
The first stop is in the room to the southeast: A column of blue-green crystal rises out of the floor to nearly reach the room’s ceiling thirty feet above. To the left and right, additional blue-green crystals protrude from the walls, and flickering bolts of lightning arc back and forth from these to the central crystal. The entire room vibrates with a thunderous humming sound.
The crystals in this chamber are refined abysium. In this form, the rare skymetal looks more like a crystalline material, and the radioactive energies emitted are much more potent. The overwhelming energies instantly sicken the whole party.
Over the centuries the abysium reactor has hummed away, tiny motes of expended abysium have flaked down to gather in small piles on the floor. Even a cursory examination of the powder reveals a section to the northeast of the central pillar where a massive draconic claw seems to have raked through the stuff to gather some up. Abysium powder is a deadly ingested poison in addition to being a useful component to activate the Leng portal.
And finally you move to the far eastern chamber: This relatively plain room has but one feature—an ovoid, six-foot-long tan stone that floats two feet in the air above a three-foot-high riser. The side of the strange tan stone features a faceted gap, as if some sort of key could nestle within.
The large block of stone is an unusual artifact from Thassilon’s era known as a whisperstone. Whisperstones are infused with potent divination magic, and Thassilonian wizards often used them to record information and memories, treating them as a sort of telepathic mental library of lore. Each whisperstone is keyed to a specific crystal—in order to store information or access it, a user had to insert the crystal into the stone and maintain physical contact with the crystal for the duration of the information transfer.
:)
"Have we found a stone that fits this?"
Brelar takes the sapphire and puts it into the whisperstone!
Brelar melds his mind with the whisperstone and not only understands how to complete the ritual by using some of the dust from the other room, thereby opening the portal to the Temple of the Crawling Chaos, but the party wizard also gains a much fuller understanding of the realm of Leng you are about to travel to.
Leng is a distant demiplane, barely known to even the greatest scholars of the Great Beyond on Golarion. It is an inhospitable realm hedged in by titanic mountains, home to creatures that defy facile categorization or even understanding, but who occasionally travel to the Material Plane in their strange ships to collect slaves.
The Plateau of Leng is believed to be either a pocket within the Dimension of Dreams or accessible through it. It is a dry desert littered with ruins. The greatest of these ruins is the abandoned city of Sarkomand, the original home of the denizens of Leng. The most powerful being in Leng, perhaps its ruler, is the mysterious yellow-clad High-Priest Not to be Described, who presides over the plateau's culture of blood sacrifice. The fabled city of unknown Kadath, while not itself in Leng, can be reached through that dimension.
The primary inhabitants of Leng are the mysterious denizens and fiendish humans who resemble them. Others include the massive Leng spiders, dragonlike monstrosities called shantaks, and the infamous hounds of Tindalos. The runelords of Thassilon were aware of Leng and often conjured its inhabitants to do their bidding; Karzoug the Claimer even built his capital, Xin-Shalast, in a location where the border between Leng and the Material Plane was unusually thin to take advantage of the dimension's eldritch energies.
Knowledge of Leng is sketchy at best, limited to glimpses in nightmares and drug-fueled visions. Its origin is unknown. Some believe it to exist physically on the Material Plane or another dimension. Others claim it is a surviving piece of a dead plane from before the current Multiverse. Yet others believe that Leng is the nightmares of mortal dreamers shaped into a physical place.
Bert rubs his hands together in anticipation. "Yeah! Let's go! This is going to be really informative...and a lot of fun, too!"
I dunno, Bert. Spiders and stuff, plus won't it be hot if its a desert? The dwarf doesn't seem too sure about this type of travel.
"Onward then, to the Temple!"
From his use of the Whisperstone, Brelar knows exactly how to open the portal and sets to work. In order to activate the portal, he needs to cast a nightmare or plane shift spell (using the nightmare rod for this works) while pouring a handful of abysium powder into the fountain. Morcruft joins you in the main chamber as Brelar finishes the ritual and the alien ghoul leads you through....
The Leng portal is a frightening and nerve-racking method of transportation. As the mist envelops you, you suddenly feel the surrounding reality wash away. There are a few moments of vertigo when you float in a silver void without gravity, during which you glimpse a coiling, writhing shape measuring thousands of feet in length through the thin mist—this is the writhing body of some creature trapped between worlds.
After a few moments of this unpleasant sensation and scene, you feel solidity reform around you. The mists part, and you finds yourselves standing on a 40-foot-diameter platform extending from a ragged mountainside.
An ice- and snow-crusted shelf of land over a hundred feet across clings to the side of a mountain cliff. Above and below, dark storm clouds roil and obscure sight of the sky and ground, while to the left and right, the sheer black side of the cliff extends as far as the eye can see. A freezing wind whips through the air, carrying with it a strangely mournful howl. A forty-foot-diameter pagoda-like structure, its domed roof supported by two thick pillars, is attached to the ledge via a short flight of stone steps, leading to a column-lined avenue flanked to each side by three immense stone sphinxes. The avenue leads up to the cliff face, in which wait two immense thirty-foot-tall black stone doors.
Wow! Mountains and snow! Where are we again?
Morcruft nods while groveling on the ground at your feet. "Yes, yes, the Temple of the Crawling Chaos."
Brelar tries to recall everything he can about the Temple of the Crawling Chaos...
Unfortunately, little is known about the Temple of the Crawling Chaos, even to Brelar after his connection with the whisperstone.
"In, in!" Morcruft urges. There is only one way forward so you head towards the doors leading into the Temple.
The walls, floor, and vaulted ceiling of these twenty-foot-wide halls are tiled with relfective slabs of polished purple stone, scarred here and there with cracks and discolorations. Darker, almost black, striations run through these tiles, and when viewed from the corner of the eyes, these veins seem to pulse with deeper darkness. Towering statues of regal-appearing men loom at the ends of side passages to either side of the main hall.
Two more alien ghouls stand guard at the entrance and screech in shock as you enter but Morcruft hisses at them and they stop. "These ones helped me back, after being stranded for so long." The ghouls nod and step aside, seemingly not willing to challenge you while accompanied by another ghoul.
Huh. Argust seems content to follow the ghoul further as long as no warning is given by his liege.
Brelar nods at Argust, "Onward my friend!"
Beyond, a fort-foot square room may have once been a fine entry hall but today is strewn with heaps of half-gnawed dismembered corpses from humans, animals, and things strangely in-between. Only the freezing temperature keeps the smell of this charnel chamber from being overwhelmingly foul. Large black stone double doors stand in the center of the room's four walls, with those to the north hanging ajar and those to the east being the ones you just came through.
To the north is an awful chamber containing hundreds of hooks hanging from chains dangling from the ceiling. Many of these chains contain the partially butchered bodies of dead humans, animals, and monsters. A bank of ten-foot-tall upright sarcophagi stand along the north wall. Carved into the front of each is a highly detailed image of a human being eaten from all sides by ghoulish figures.
Bert perks up at Karn's aside and replies. "Looking for the dragon."
"Bert are you able to get a sense for the shard? I think we should continue east." Brelar says, clearly disgusted at what he can see in the northern chamber.
I think its that way! Argust points to wherever he thinks "that way" is.
The ghoul looks quizzically at Karn. "What about the ghouls back there? Are they no one? Show yourselves around then, I'd rather stay with my own than face Cadrilkasta with you if that is what you intend."
Focusing on the Shard, Argust feels a tug to the north but as the passages do not lead that way you are forced to try west instead.
To the east lies a hallway which seems to dead-end to the south but Bert is able to pick out a secret door at that end. To the north Bert also finds another secret door across from the plainly visible visible door leading northwest.
Brelar nods in reluctant agreement.
Bert nods slowly, the sight of the bodies sapping his usual enthusiasm. "Take care of the important stuff first, right?"
Behind each secret door lies a short hallway ending at a statue of a black pharaoh with his hands at his side, palms out.
To the north, you come upon the vast temple area, which rises to a looming height of just over a hundred feet above. The ceiling is supported by pillars of purple porphyry that match the polished sheen of the chambers' floor, walls, and ceiling. The the south, a flight of stairs descends into the cathedral, while a pair of enormous basalt statues of faceless sphinxes squat to the west. An immense stone bowl, its mouth forty feet across, sits on a huge stone altar to the east, beyond which a twenty-foot-wide rent in the east wall provides access to a natural tunnel leading deeper into the mountain. The mangled and burnt corpses of a half-dozen pallid froglike monsters with faces made of tentacles lie haphazardly about the chamber.
Although you do not find the dragon Cadrilkasta in this chamber, but instead discover that it is inhabited by four more living tentacled frog-creatures, one of whom is working a ritual around the circular pool, in which is trapped a fearsome tentacled and fanged beast!
(+2 underground)
The frog-creatures leap into action as soon as you enter the temple. One of them continues the ritual as the other three try to take control of everyone but Argust!
Bert is unmoved by the attempt to influence him. He calls on his luck and casts his usual good hope on the party! "Watch out for them--they're moon-beasts! They can fly!"
Then he looks at the mass in the pit and his hair tries to stand on end. "That's a shoggoth! Watch out for its cries--they can drive you insane!"
Fly? That ain't fair!
Argust clicks his heels and charges the second of the creatures!
for
Bert spends some time thinking about the creature in the pool, recalling all he can about it. Argust charges in digs his blade into the nearest moon-beast!
#2: 56 dmg
"Brelar, do you have a communal protection from evil handy?"
Brelar smiles at the halfling, nods and then casts communal protection from evil.
One of the moon-beasts attacks Argust!
The other near Argust spits out a black plume of sparkling smoke.
While one of the moon-beasts in the back tries to keep the ritual going, the other moves along the side and hurls a black fireball at the rest of the party.
#2: 56 dmg
Argust manages to shake of the majority of the spell effect after being struck twice in melee. Argust then strikes back!
for
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Bert doesn't question the fireball, even though he knows that moon beasts can cast illusions. Instead, he tumbles under it and avoids taking any damage. He rolls to his feet and hustles into the fray, sped by Karn's blessing, before leveling his gun at whichever of the moon beasts on Argust is still up and firing.
"Fire," Brelar mumbles. "How adorable."
+50% = 61 damage DC 27 Ref for half
Argust easily destroys two of the moon-beasts! Bert then fires over the pool at the chanting moon-beast and tries to disrupt the ritual by putting a bullet in its tentacled face! Unfortunately Karn's force weapon misses it though.
Brelar then gently floats a small ball of fire across the room which suddenly erupts into a gout of flame that catches the chanting moonbeast and the shoggoth.
The moonbeast abandons his ritual and the two surround the party, again working black shadow magic against the party.
Suddenly, the shoggoth bursts into a terrible cacophany that no sane life was meant to hear.
#4: 88 dmg, *will against shoggoth
sh: 61 dmg, *will against shoggoth
|
Karn sneers at the creatures, as he easily disbelieves the stinkin' shadowfire and mentally compares the shoggoth's noise to Argust's snoring.
Darting toward the moon-beast, Karn winds up his hammer and swings the pointy end at the creature.
As Karn hits the beast, he utters a quick word adding force to the blow!
Argust will rush the shoogy thing, forgoing haste and instead taking the bonuses!
for
Karn digs his hammer into the nearest moon-beast but his force weapon again misses. Meanwhile Argust cuts into the other moon-beast as the shoggoth drones on!
#3: 70 dmg, *will against shoggoth
#4: 115 dmg, *will against shoggoth
sh: 61 dmg