James looks at Augar and nods, but holds up a hand to as if to say give me a moment...
Then he repeats his question to the Azer in Androffan, not knowing what other language these folks might speak.
"Hello? Vedia tries common. "That hole won't stay forever."
"You don't have to continue working, the robots can't hurt you anymore. What are you working on anyway?" Xandar tries speaking with them.
Since the Azer's aren't answering, James tries a different approach.
"How much longer? Maybe they'll talk?"
Then he flies over to the pit, thoroughly enjoying the new ability to fly, and then says in Androffan, "You there, robot. What is going on here? Can you give me an alternative to destroying you?"
Meanwhile, he loads both pistols with adamantine slugs.
The riot suppressor replies in Androffan "You will be subdued for the mater. Lay down your arms."
As you fly over the pit the robot fires its intergrated stun gun at you.
vs touch
non lethal
vs touch
non lethal
Not speaking dwarven the Azer look at you, one responding in common.
"Get rid of the guard and we will talk, cannot with them listening."
The Azer nods as the last shot rings out.
"Thank you. They had been better guards until some time ago. Now this place is a mess. We were allowed to work if we did what Furkas wanted and his experiments were of interest. Now... now we just make components for robots. No more apprentices to work with and Furkas neglects us. Why are you here?"
"Is Furkas the wizard? He's dead, and was a ghost. You can do what you wish now."
"These robots seem to have gone crazy, and unfortunately we have had to destroy all of them. So the parts may not longer be very useful... but I am very interested in your process and what you are making. Care to share?"
James - ever the technology geek - would love to spend a few days learning how to make robots...
"We are here because something seems to be wrong in this tower, like something is blocking it from connecting to it's surroundings, are there any more of you in here or is it mostly robots around these parts?" Xandar asks the azers.
"We have no idea who else is here. We just work. Mostly making parts for the robots but without them maybe other things. Things for ourselves? Or maybe we will just leave."
The idea of a connection being blocked is so foreign to them they do not even acknowledge that part of the question.
"There's a town that might take you in a few days to the west. We can travel with you, if you wait for us to finish examining this tower."
The confer with each other quietly for a few moment.
"What will happen to the tower when your done? This is a good workspace if we can come and go. Might even be of use to you since you ended our entrapment."
"We were going to leave it once we explored it thoroughly. I see no reason you could not stay here to work." Vedia tells the azors.
"I agree we are just going to have a look around the tower, it should still be here once we are done. Out of curiosity what kind of work can you do here?" Xandar asks the azers
Ivar watched impassively. He'd heard tell of Azers, but never met one. They were impressive folk, these fire-dwarves. They seemed oddly carefree about the whole servitude thing.
At the top of the stairs sits an atrium and what is clearly a storage closet. The closet is mostly full of spare parts but there are a few things of note: six nets, 20 silver bolts, 40 cold iron bolts, five screaming bolts, and 10 +2 human-bane bolts.
Opening the door to the next room you see the following.
Raw iron, spools of wire, and sturdy jars filled with colorful liquids line the north and east walls of this large room. A balcony crosses the room from northwest to southeast, looking over a sweltering workshop. A large iron-and-mithral swivel crane perches at the edge of the balcony, its boom long enough to reach the stores and lower them down into the foundry below.
Clearly the crane can reach any part of the room and it is lowering some chunks of metal down to the floor you were just on. From where you stand [u] outside the door [/u] no one can be seen controlling the crand.
"Shall we go in and see what's going on here?"
James looks around for any traps before entering.
Vedia takes the bolts assuming no one else wants them. She looks into the room with the crane and casts detect magic.
James does not see anything out of the ordinary and Vedia detects no magic. She does know that the crane, which does not appear to have an operator, could be a construct even without detecting magic. Assuming there are not active magic effects.
"It's a construct. Be careful of it if you go inside the room."
"Now we're talking treasure, lad." Despite the likelihood that Augar is much older than the old man, James chuckles at calling him a lad.
"Well, fear of the unknown ain't stopped us so far."
James enters and starts examining the equipment.
As James step in the crane swings its arm toward you, its claw opens wide. Clearly it cannot move but it can reach anyplace in the room with ease.
The claw strikes hard, clearly hitting a soft spot as it attempts, and fails, to pick James into the air.
Bold may act
[u] Round 1 [/u]
James, Ivar, Xandar, Vedia, Augar
Crane
[u] Chapter: 1 [/u]
Choking Tower[u] Stat Tracker [/u]
Global Condition: None |James HP: 26/63 - AC: 18/14/14 Status:
Vedia HP: 51/51 - AC: 14 (17 Iron Skin)/14/11 Status:
Ivar HP: 93/93 - AC: 25/12/21 Status: AC+1 vs Robits | DR/4 |
Xander HP: 56/56 - AC: 15/12/13 Status:
Augar HP: 71/71 - AC: 23/11/22 Status:
-------------------
Crane HP: 68/68 AC: 18/8/18 Hardness: 15 Construct Traits
"I was afraid of that." Vedia sighs. She pulls out a couple of wands and waits to see what happens next.
Ivar's eyes widen as the crane grabs James. He draws his dorn-dergar and starts forward, elemental companion following at his heels.
Augar moves in with his Shield raised and his hammer ready!!!
"By Desna, I wasn't expecting that are you alright James?" Xandar utters as he starts to inspire everyone and tries to determine what kind of construct/robot this is.
"Well, my ego's a bit bruised. And I think it broke a couple of ribs."
James struggles to escape.
Augar and Ivar move in along with the elemental. Xandar learns that this creature is indeed a with its body attached to the central column for support which fixes it in place.
James is unable to break the cranes grip and is swung out over the drop to the floor below, fortunately the forge is out of the drop line.
Bold may act
[u] Round 2 [/u]
James, Ivar, Xandar, Vedia, Augar
Crane
[u] Chapter: 1 [/u]
Choking Tower[u] Stat Tracker [/u]
Global Condition: None |James HP: 26/63 - AC: 18/14/14 Status:
Vedia HP: 51/51 - AC: 14 (17 Iron Skin)/14/11 Status:
Ivar HP: 93/93 - AC: 25/12/21 Status: AC+1 vs Robits | DR/4 |
Xander HP: 56/56 - AC: 15/12/13 Status:
Augar HP: 71/71 - AC: 23/11/22 Status:
-------------------
Crane HP: 68/68 AC: 18/8/18 Hardness: 15 Construct Traits
James struggles to get to one of his extracts and drinks it down, mking him suddenly much lighter. (Levitate)
"Anyone want to get big to fight this thing?"
Vedia will cast Enlarge Person on anyone who would like to receive it.
Xandar casts mirror image and carefully moves into the room while keeping his performance up so everyone can hear him.
Ivar circles the construct to flank with his companion. "You dare to attack us, tool? This day will be your last."
Crit?
Ivar is a one man wrecking crew causing major damage to the construct with Augar connects with one hit. Xander creats some additional copies of himself as the crane drop James.
If the crane was capable of suprise it would be because James simply stays in the air as the crane swings to try to attack and grab Ivar.
It finds no purchase on the dwarfs armor.
Bold may act
[u] Round 2 [/u]
James, Ivar, Xandar, Vedia, Augar
Crane
[u] Chapter: 1 [/u]
Choking Tower[u] Stat Tracker [/u]
Global Condition: None |James HP: 26/63 - AC: 18/14/14 Status:
Vedia HP: 51/51 - AC: 14 (17 Iron Skin)/14/11 Status:
Ivar HP: 93/93 - AC: 25/12/21 Status: AC+1 vs Robits | DR/4 |
Xander HP: 56/56 - AC: 15/12/13 Status:
Augar HP: 71/71 - AC: 23/11/22 Status:
-------------------
Crane HP: 16/68 AC: 18/8/18 Hardness: 15 Construct Traits
James lowers himself to the ground, and then moves to quickly get out of reach!
While James get himself back in touch with solid ground Augar wacks the crane twice, the second strike causes the noise of something important snapping. The construct teeters and the arm smashes to the ground with a resounding thud, shaking the tower. Things are quiet for a moment, two, three.... clearly there is nothing else in this room.
Sadly for you there is nothing else of use in this room.
The door to the north is marked as Technic Research and opens easily onto a laboratory. The walls of this laboratory are painted bright white. A partially disassembled mechanical man spreads across an otherwise clean desk. The automaton’s lower half is intact, but its arms are disconnected from its torso and its torso and head are both spread out in their component parts. The single eye in the middle of the creature’s face is dim. Hatches lead out of this room to the west and southeast.
This lab, if powered, could act a military lab.
Some of the gearsman’s valuable internal skymetal circuitry is piled on the edge of the desk. This circuitry is worth 232 gp. The desk also contains a variety of high-quality precision tools worth 500 gp.
There is another door to from this small room but the GM is not just opening that one for you. No reason....
Ivar moves to James and says "Let me help you with those wounds."
"Thank you! Yah, curiosity sometimes gets me into trouble. I'll need to be more careful."
James will mix a curative extract as well, to try and feel better.
At the next door, James holds up his hand. "Let's be careful again."
He checks for traps and locks.
And James will take the tools and circuits to add to his collection.
"Well it might lead you into trouble, but let's be honest we wouldn't have find things like this if out curiosity hadn't led us here." Xandar responds looking over the different equipment inside the lab.
Vedia has her crossbow loaded, and ready for an attack on the other side of the door. "I wonder whose been working on the mechanical man."
"Yes, and while I would like to share some technical notes, I fear whoever it is may not have the same intentions we do. So let's continue to take care as we move forward. Of course, from what we have seen, it may be that there is no live mind still at work behind these - some of these constructs seem able to repair and build others like them."
Opening the other door you find a small room. The upper halves of eight metal creatures hang from hooks in the ceiling of this narrow room, each trailing wires from its torso like mechanical viscera.
James sharp eyes notice that these robots are still wired in an unusual way and quickly deduces it is indeed a trap. An automated system would have caused them to lash out attacking all in the room had he not been able to disable the trap. Oddly they would have not only stuck you but also tripped form the look of things.
Hanging from a hook at the southern end of the room is a grelim-skin drum.
These small hand drums have pitted metal frames, with dark skin bearing furry patches or rough scales stretched across it. The flaws in the drum’s skin render the drum difficult to play, imposing a –4 penalty on the user’s Profession (percussion) checks. Though undesirable as musical instruments, gremlin-skin drums are icons of ill luck and therefore prized by followers of Zyphus. These drums are usually planted in an area to encourage accidents or other misfortune there. As a standard action, the user can activate a gremlin-skin drum by setting it down and beating it three times. Once activated, the gremlin-skin drum’s effect (see below) continually targets all creatures within 30 feet until the drum is picked up or moved, at which point the effect ends. A gremlin-skin rum can be activated up to five times before it becomes a nonmagical drum of poor craftsmanship.
Several types of gremlin-skin drums exist, and each drum’s powers depend on the type of gremlin flesh used as its skin. These effects appear to be mere mischance upon casual observation; an observer must succeed at a DC 20 Perception check to notice that whenever a creature suffers a gremlinskin drum’s effect, the skin of the drum shudders slightly. The effects of multiple versions of the same type of gremlin-skin drums don’t stack.
Nuglub-Skin Drum: The skin of this drum is dotted with tufts of long, oily hair. Any creature tripped within 30 feet of the drum takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage from a painful fall.
Heading up to the next level you find another atrium with several doors.