Arovandeon and Izoki succumb to the babbling while the corpse closes in on Rapunzel.
The creature slams tries to slam into Rapunzel, but misses!
Loenor recognizes the shadowy form as an allip, while the other his isn't quite sure about!
He takes a step and drinks some liquid healing!
Fastenhyme becomes fascinated by the allip, while Rapunzel tries to grab the walking corpse, but can't quite grab it!
Marianne shakes off the babbling and casts a spell on her spear!
The allip moves up and touches Loenor again!
Izoki and Arovandeon stand fascinated!
The corpse slams into Rapunzel, once!
Fastenhyme stands fascinated!
Marianne stabs at the allip, but just misses!
Rpaunzel tries to grapple the walking dead, but can't get her arms around the decaying flesh!
Loenor purs holy water squarely on the shadoq, causing its form to withe in pain!
The rest of the party stands facinarted while the undead attack.
The corpse pummels Rapunzel, while the allip misses Loenor!
Marianne stabs the allip with her spear, the magic weapon doing some damage!
Loenor falls back, while Rapunzel tries, unsuccessfully, to grapple the rotting corpse!
The allip tries to touch Marianne, but misses!
The corpse slams Rapunzel into unconsciouness!
Marianne shrinks back down to normal size and stabs the allip once more!
Everyone continues to be fascinated!
Loenor swings at the corpse, but just misses!
Rapunzel's bleeding seems to staunch itself!
The allip floats up and touches Marianne, but she seems to resist the bad touch!
The corpse shuffles forward and slams into Loenor, once!
Marianne stabs the allip once more, and it dissapates in screaming fury!
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"Everyone stand back!" Arovandeon grabs the last extract from his belt and drinks it.
Tasteless, the concoction numbed his tongue and throat as it went down. His visioned blurred, and the animated corpse seemed to move ten different directions at once, but the prescient reflections quickly began to coalesce and soon only one or two possibilities would remain. He readied a bomb and waited for the right moment.
Fastenhyme casts a spell producing an image of Loenor.
Izoki fires his musket and hits the golem!
Arovandeon identifies the corpse as a carrion golem. He knows that it is immune to magic and resistant to peircing weapons. He also knows that they are carriers of the disease filth fever. He then drinks an alchemical extract!
Loenor and Rapunzel lay on the ground, unconscious, but stable!
Marianne charges the golem, stabbing it with her spear, though the strike is not wholly effective!
The golem turns and swings at the image of Loenor, but finds only air!
Izoki fires his muket, but misses!
Arovandeon hurls a bomb that smashes on the golem, setting it rotting flesh to burning and filling the room with the sickly smell of singed flesh, but the creature still stands!
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Somewhere in the far off distance, Loenor is hunting pixies in a field of over-sized writing quills, trying to catch them with a butterfly net so he can sell them for as much grain as they're worth. Maybe then he'll be able to afford his invisible flying carpet.
I mean, Loenor lies on the cool stone floor as Arovandeon ignites the air around him.
Fastenhyme continues his illusions!
The golem continues to attack the figment!
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Fästenhyme edges the image off to bait the corpse away. He then moves against the wall to deliver some infernal healing on Punzel.
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Izoki blasts the golem and it goes down!
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"Hey, I got it! What the heck was it and why did it attack us? This room is giving me the creeps. Let's get out of here after we finish gathering any valuable possessions."
Izoki cleans his musket with a white cloth and checks the barrel for wear after it cools down. He walks toward the unexplored rooms and waits for his companions to catch up. He listens quietly at the door and inspects it for traps.
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"What you destroyed was another carrion golem, similar to the one we encountered in the first chamber. Likely it was given orders upon construction to attack anyone that disturbed this place. The other apparition was an undead spirit called an allip." Entering professor mode, Arovandeon explains further. "Those who fall prey to madness and take their own lives sometimes find themselves lost on the path to the afterlife, trapped in a state between life and death. These unfortunates, known as allips, suffer from the violent and incurable insanity they faced in life and take out their terror, confusion, and rage upon the living. They reach out to those they encounter—possibly in wrath, but also perhaps oblivious to their own insane nature—spreading the psychoses that led to their own untimely deaths."
As he is educating his companions, Arovandeon is also healing them.
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Remembering something, Loenor doubles back into the room to grab the ruby fragments. "May be worth something." He then rejoins the party.
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As the allip fades away, the maddening babble ceases and the room is bathed in silence. The Ulfen and his men lay on the floor, bleeding out as Loenor retreives the ruby fragments.
Someone remembers to contact Amenopheus, cracking open the geode....
As promised, Amenopheus arrives 1 hour after the party contacst him about the broken sage jewel. At first he bemoans the loss of the jewel, but he quickly realizes that the shards hold a glimmer of magic and may still contain several of the Ruby Sage’s memories. Amenopheus uses his magic to contact the spirit of the Ruby Sage, who briefly animates her nearby corpse and restores it to how she must have appeared in life. She thanks the party for putting her colleague’s spirit to rest and can explain the events that led to her death—the same events that led to her sage jewel’s near-destruction.
Through the gem, she has maintained a limited degree of awareness, and she also related that until only day before, the topaz and emerald jewels sat on this table alongside her. When the thief handled one of her shards, she was able to read his thoughts before he discarded the fragment and fled. She identifies the thief as a man named Kafar, who had intentions of delivering the jewels to the Diamond Sage in a region known as the Pillars of the Sun. It is there that the Jeweled Sages’ built their sanctum, but it strikes both her and Amenopheus as odd that the Diamond Sage would collect the gems there instead of finding new candidates to become sages elsewhere in Osirion.
Amenopheus voices his concern that the Diamond Sage’s actions are not typical for the order, and he is dismayed that the jewels may be in the hands of known enemies of the Pathfinder Society. Sharing her fellow sage’s concern, the Ruby Sage offers her power—mythic power—to the party if they are willing to chase down the thief Kafar, reclaim the stolen jewels, and find the Diamond Sage to learn what she intends.
Having successfully located and retrieved the pieces of the Ruby Sage's gem, the party was called away for an urgent mission in Qadira. With that mission behind you and complete, you have returned to Eto and now sit in the quarters of Amenopheus.....
The growing light of predawn filters in through a window of the two-story building that Amenopheus has rented in Eto, and the aging Garundi man takes a seat on one of the cushions set out for this meeting. He produces a sealed letter from his robe, placing it in the middle of the floor before speaking. “Good morning, Pathfinders. As you know, we have had our share of setbacks recently. Not only have the emerald and topaz gems sacred to my order slipped through our fingers, but we also faced the frustration of finding nothing but fragments of the once great ruby. Thankfully, its power is not lost entirely, and through the Ruby Sage’s blessing, it lives on in you. I am thankful that you have agreed to act on her behalf and see this through to the end."
He frowns at some internal thought, then says. “As we speak, the scoundrels who seized the two gems cross the Pillars of the Sun to meet their employer, the cryptic Diamond Sage.” He sighs heavily. “What she intends to do with the gems is a mystery, but the sage jewels are too important for me to take risks with. If the power that you wield is representative of a shattered jewel’s potential, imagine what one might accomplish with three undamaged stones! Until we know what her plans are, it is paramount that we get to the jewels first."
Fixing you with a serious look, he continues. “Kafar and Nefti have a rudimentary map of the Pillars of the Sun, and last night I found a bartender who spotted them poring over it between drinks. She recalled little of the map, and she could not make sense of the marks or annotations; however, the right spells have allowed me to probe her mind and determine Kafar and Nefti’s entry point into the mountains. We will follow them from there.” With a somewhat chagrined smile, Amenopheus adds, “It may be that they will lead us to the Sanctum of the Sages, a hidden complex I have long suspected might be in this area.”
He stands and announces, “Prepare yourselves quickly. We shall leave momentarily.”
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"It seems we have some thieves who know about the Aspis. If me catch 'em, we can make 'em talk about that, too."
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