Everyone moves into position, and Lantorth's magic missile scorches the serpentfolk.
Snowball claws and bites the serpent, but fails to penetrate his tough hide. Still, the cat is able to grab it's leg in powerful jaws and pull the priest down.
Pau takes another 1d2 ⇒ 2 Strength damage from the poison coursing through his veins. Still, he manages to punch the priest while his is down, shocking him with the power of the hit.
The serpent folk bites the cat attached to his leg, and then flies up 20 feet!
|
Seeing the priest go airborne, and the living sacrifice it was about to make, Jayori gets a serious look, and pulls out his javelin.
"Whatever evil this thing worships, it must be stopped! Irori guide my hand!"
He then calls out to the thing in Draconic. "Your foul rituals stop now!" As he hurls the weapon at the serpentfolk.
, for [dice]1d6+4+3/dice] damage. (bypasses DR if Evil)
Pau swipes the creature as it rises, but fails to hurt it, while Snowball misses completely. Garn, however, gets a significant blow landed that causes the priest to wince in pain.
Then Jayori throws a javelin that pierces right through the serpentfolks stomach, and he hisses in extreme anguish.
The magic missile fizzles as it hits the priest.
Round 1:
Garn & Snowball double move
Pau double moves
Serpentfolk attacks Pau for 14 dmg and poison
Graf - moves
Jayori - double move
Radagast double moves
Lantorth magic missile for 4pt dmg (Should have rolled for SR)
Round 2:
Snowball attacks 3 times with greater magic fang (bypass DR), doing 10 pts and tripping (14 total)
Garn climbs and misses with Shillelagh
Pau hits, crit due to prone, for 10 dmg (after DR reduction) (24 total)
Serpentfolk bites snowball, then flies away, provoking aoo from Pau, Garn, Snowball
-- Pau AoO - doesn't exceed DR
-- Snowball - AoO misses
-- Garn - AoO threat for 12 dmg (shillelagh bypasses DR) (36 total)
Graf - moving
Joyori throws javelin with smite (13 dmg - 49 total)
Radagast - delay
Lantorth magic missile fails to beat SR
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Fearing whatever magic or weapons the serpentfolk might toss down from above, and seeing that Snowball has little effectiveness against a flying creature, Garn commands his faithful companion to retreat and get out the way. Snowball dashes down the mound, shaking off the final vestiges of the poison.
That done, Garn follow's Pau example, pulling out a vial of alchemist's fire and throwing it at the serpentfolk.
for
Pau slams an alchemist's fire on the flying foe, but he seems to ignore the flames that erupt around him. Garn misses with his throw, but the fire falls harmlessly away from everyone.
The priest performs a short ritual, and suddenly there are multiples of him flying around. ( copies)
Pau takes another strength damage.
Lantorth hits the priest, but unfortunately the missile fizzles again (DC 17 SR). Using the missile as a tracker, though, Jayori aims and skewers the priest, who drops from the sky with a thud.
A man is strapped to the altar. He seems a little out of it.
|
A crack of thunder and the tang of ozone cut through the complex. The figures before you, and indeed the walls, the floor, even the air itself seem to crumble and fall away like glittering sands through an hourglass. Unfamiliar figures—their heavy, hooded robes embroidered with the symbol of a winged eye—stand about the field, their hands crackling with lightning. Dozens of Pathfinder spellcasters lie dead at their feet. A gargantuan image of a woman appears and shimmers like a desert mirage. She has a regal bearing, but her features are lined as if by years of endless duty.
”Arrogant Pathfinders! Your ridiculous Society spends fortunes and lives to reassemble a treasure that turns time itself like the pages of a book—a key that could undo all the misery and suffering our world now knows—and you use it for this? Poking at snakes and playing at heroism? Golarion knew a true hero once! Our Lord Aroden—who raised the Starstone from the sea and imprisoned the undead tyrant Tar-Baphon—could already walk the world again were it not for your petty games and delays. Every death in your hours of playtime now hangs as a weight around your collective necks, you spoiled children.
“I am Lady Arodeth, and on behalf of the Harbingers of Fate and the God of Mankind himself, I have seized your Sky Key. Its defenders threw their lives away trying to stop compassion and destiny from returning to this world. I advise you not to throw your own lives away attempting to do the same.
“Behold the return of the Last Azlanti! Behold Aroden!”
The general is polite, and his years of military service that required honoring temporary alliances with non-Azlanti have softened the arrogance common in his homeland. He thanks you, his saviors, and halfheartedly excuses himself to reassemble his army. His curiosity about his strange rescuers competes with his duty, though.
You are just beginning to get comfortable with each other when the above scene unfolds.
The embroidered eye symbol on the newcomers’ robes as the holy symbol of Aroden, the vanished and presumed-dead god of humans.
“Behold the return of the Last Azlanti! Behold Aroden!”
The robed Heralds begin casting, and arcs of lightning leap to the rods made of sky-metal. A deep thrum from somewhere below reverberates with chest-tightening force, then the earth begins to heave and quake. Emerald green miasma lashes out, snaking back along the arcs of arcane lightning and infecting hooded casters throughout the crowd. Your body—or perhaps the whole world—crumbles to dust and you hear a distant scream of “She’s overloaded it!”
And just as swiftly, the world is whole again, but in place of a flower-speckled field stands the sprawling marketplace of a small city. Ivory-white buildings and columns feature reliefs and endless statuary all depicting physically perfect human specimens in poses of glory over serpentfolk. A chiton-clad crowd of gawkers stares, both at you and at the roiling dome of green light that encompasses nearly a square mile of territory, beyond which this strange city stretches on.
Robed Heralds panic as they sprint beyond the edges of the glistening dome, only to collapse just beyond its border. There they scream and writhe, their bones cracking as flesh and sinew age to dust in mere moments. Meanwhile, those unfortunates consumed by the green miasma scream and stagger, their features warping and bloating as if the power seeking refuge within them were too big for mere flesh to contain.
And high overhead, a looming stone glows with a light visible even in the growing light of dawn.
You recognize this as a moment in history: the Azlanti city of Lacsuhnollo, a sizable colony city in the region that will one day become the Isle of Kortos. The Azlanti citizens here have endured a long conflict with the aboleth and their ulat-kini minions, yet for the past several hours, they have fearfully watched a star in the sky grow brighter and more ominous.
You can further deduce that you have about 2 hours before the asteroid above crashes into Golarion and plunges the world into a thousand years of darkness!
[/dice]
[spoiler=DC 15 Knowledge (engineering or history) or Profession (architect) check]
You can recognize the architecture around them as Azlanti.
The crowd of onlookers grows angry, then defensive, yelling threats in Azlanti.
What do you do?
|
|
Know. History
Pau looks around at the scene, and his face grows pale. "We are smack in the middle of the Azlanti city of Lacsuhnollo right now. This was a sizable colony city in the region that will one day become the Isle of Kortos. The Azlanti citizens here have, for the past several hours, fearfully watched a star in the sky grow brighter and more ominous. We have about two hours to figure a way out of here before the asteroid above crashes into Golarion and plunges the world into a thousand years of darkness!"
|
|
"No, it sounds gibberish to me." Noting Pau's words, Garn stares around in wonder and fear. His eyes, though, are eventually drawn up to stone looming overheard. Unlearned as he is, Garn is still familiar with the history of Earthfall. Never in his wildest dreams, however, did he imagine you would ever come directly under it. Desna, guide us out of this.
There are two guardsmen and three angry citizens paying particular attention to your group.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Unsure what the locals are upset about, but pretty sure they are indeed upset about the party's presence in general, Jayori steps forward, his hands raises in a peaceful gesture.
"I know you can not understand my words... but we mean you no harm."
He glances up towards the glowing ball in the sky.
"Though the same can not be said for what comes."
"I deeply regret what is about to happen, but it is not our doing."
He continues speaking in a soothing tone, trying to calm the locals down, as long as it takes, or until they make up their minds one way or the other.
Thanks to Jayori's quick and calm actions, the citizens calm down, although they remain wary of these strange intruders.
A familiar figure limps out from between two buildings. The weight of years seems to hang over Kreighton Shaine, the Pathfinder Society’s illustrious Master of Scrolls, his face more deeply lined than it was this morning.
“My apologies for not reaching you more quickly, but I have been quite distracted,” he pants. To the left and right across the ancient marketplace, other versions of Kreighton Shaine are speaking to other, equally bewildered Pathfinders. “It seems redundant to say so at this point, but the Harbingers of Fate have seized control of the Sky Key, and we all appear to be trapped in what the Isle of Kortos used to be eons ago. The same sort of temporal bubble that brought the serpentfolk city of Sessegishoss to us now keeps our forces pinned down here.
“We are attempting to uncover the Sky Key Vault now. While the vault itself seems to be here in this time period, our entrance to it wasn’t projected back, and we’ve lost our bearings relative to its location in this new landscape. What’s more, I worry simply reclaiming the Sky Key will not be enough to allow our escape— that green surge we all witnessed seems to have invested many of the Harbingers with enough of the Sky Key’s energy to maintain our chronological exile.”
Shaine looks worriedly up at the sky. “We will need to work together to uncover the vault and cut the tethers that anchor this time period to the Harbingers’ spellcasters. We must do both so we can use the Sky Key to escape.” A crack of thunder sounds overhead as the dome of green light twists and arcs down to the surface with a thunderous crash, and strange, hairy beasts stride where it struck. “And we would be wise to move quickly.”
He hands you a potion of cure moderate wounds. "Here - take this and use it when needed. Any questions?"
"The Harbinger of Fate are an obscure Arodenite cult dedicated to resurrecting a dead god by forcing prophecies to come true. We need to separater them from the temporal energy inside them. How? That’s the lovely part: I’m not completely sure. Advanced magical theory was always more Aram’s bag. But then, it does seem to be a sort of magic, so anything you have to shut down magical effects should do the trick. And if it is a magical effect, it will certainly expire upon their deaths—tragic, certainly, but better than all of us dying here. Then again, these Harbinger spellcasters must be of some relative skill based on the spells they performed. You may be able to coax them into dismissing the effects themselves, though their temporal investitures seem to have made them a bit… erratic."