Flynt scowls as his second shot goes wide and reigns in his focus. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, he aims again. Time seems to slow in his perception as the front of the monster stands out in stark relief against the sky. To him, it feels like pulling the trigger takes an eternity but the report of the weapon snaps him back to reality and he starts moving.
Round 2, Initiative 7
If the Behemoth is still up ...
Nethan takes another 5 foot move, points his finger at the Behemoth, and states the incantation, "Nil'gnos arcaniss!" With the same magical special affects, two large magic missiles streak forth from Nethan's finger, passes the front line party members, and slams into the Behemoth.
Nethan looks over both of his shoulders to make sure again nothing is walking or sneaking up from the party's rear.
We may have to face something like this again. Best to gain knowledge while I can. Dreyyn seems injured, but I'm sure he is just feinting...
Round 2 Initiatiove 5
"Move to flank him!" Dreyyn says to the others, pinned down as he is under the onslaught of the beast's attack. This leaves him open, but he hopes it is worth it.
Standard Action: sharing my teamwork feat Precise Strike to all within 30ft, lasts for 6 rounds.
The group seeing the strength the creature is hitting with quickly use their mythic powers to great affect blasting the creature away with all their might before it gets to raises its claws once more. Jeremiah taking the final strike placing a shot straight between its eyes. It hits the ground with a sickening crunch. Its body seems to deflate a little as it lies dead on the floor, until another crunch rings out. The sound of bone and sinew breaking in its body after it has died. Its eyes turn a clear white showing now indication of an iris anymore. A light whirring noise can still be heard as the party approach the defeated beast.
When the party decides to go over to the well they can see a large shaft with what looks like no bottom, it continues into the blackness of the earth. The edges of the well are completely smooth bored, no work tool could have created such a perfect shaft.
About 20 feet down there are two openings in the side of the shaft, one opening is about 10x10 feet, whereas he other is 5x5 feet. Another 30 feet further down is 3 openings, all of which are 10x10 in size. There could be more further down but it is nothing but darkness down there.
At the entrance of the first 10x10 opening there are two corpses that have large cauterized gashes across them. One of the corpses has also had a clean slice, cutting off one of her legs. They are both clad in the colours of the knights of ozem.
As the beast falls Elise backs down and sighs. The battle is over - for now.
"Disgusting"
Her hands return to their normal, human form but is still covered in gore. She looks around for something to wipe away the ichor from the beast and settles for a shard of the exploded kegs. Still scarping away the filth she once again approaches the fallen beast.
"A most peculiar thing indeed. Did quite a number on Dreyyn too." She offers him a relatively clean hand to steady himself on and shouts out to the others "Anyone got some healing magic up their sleeve ?"
As soon as that is taken care of she once more return to the slain monster with her poleaxe in hand. "Anyone up for dissecting that? I'm curious as to what makes it tick myself. Carefully thou - it's 'blood' stings like salt"
Nethan jogs up to the group surrounding the slain behemoth. As soon as he arrives, he overhears Elise's comment regarding dissection of the behemoth, "Let's first wave down Sienna and let her dissect it with us?" ... Nethan looks to the others, "I know some of you are eager to jump down the well but Dreyyn needs medical help and while he is receiving it, we can dissect the behemoth. Perhaps, there is something in this hybrid carcass we can use? After all, it is arcane and clockwork in nature." ... Nethan turns back to where Sienna was observing from and waves them on to come down to where the party is with the dead or out of commissioned behemoth. And Nethan is just as curious as Sienna what makes the behemoth "tick".
"yes, that beast almost killed me. Not to be underestimated. Each bite it took of me healed itfrom the looks of its wounds closing."
While waiting for Sienna to respond or not, Nethan looks to Dreyyn, "That was definitely a close one and I hope Calathar can heal those wounds of yours!"
Calathar lays his hands on Dreyyn's shoulders, blessing him.
Sienna comes down when its safe. "Oh wow, you guys did a number on these things'! A full squad of men couldn't take down this much. Hahah, great great!" She starts looking over the carcass of the behemoth stinging herself on the ichor of blood despite the others warning her. "Ohhh poisonous blood, you are tricksy, even in death."
Sienna routes in her pouch for a pair of gloves and a wand. She taps the wand on her wound before putting on the gloves. She looks at the party and says. "Right and now for the fun stuff... oh wait.. these did a number on you too huh? Well.." She takes the wand out of her pouch again and throws it to Calathar "You can use that, it has seen a lot of us these past few days. Savour it while it lasts, I don't have much more on me. I might have to make some more when I get the materials."
Sienna happy that she could be of service starts to dig into the behemoth trying to see what she can do. "I'll be a little while guys, want to start thinking about what to do next. You can hear her rummaging around quite excitedly. Oh so much new things.. is that a heart.. oh that was a heart, crushed by a metal cog. Who would put it that close? Hey.. here's another one. This one ain't crushed!"
The wand is still a good idea though, because healing people is a bit boring for you.
While the others look down the well Alþórel warns the others to stay hidden, then commands the fire he controls to plunge in, hopefully illuminating more as it falls.
Then, fighting back his distaste Alþórel looks on, hands clasped behind his back and asks some insightful questions of Sienna.
Well it died before your second turn came round so I thought it might save you the spell. Though I guess you could still cast it to get the result: It is neither alive nor dead.
Arcana, dungeoneering and planes are all likely good candidates. They'll get different info though.
As Sienna comes down to dissect the beast Elise walks over to the well. It is now illuminated with Alþórel's magic and she can see the mutilated bodies of the knights further down. She points and says-
"I would hazard a guess and say that they are the handiwork of those lasers. Hey Sienna, mind coming over a moment and confirming?"
If you're happy for me to have cast it, then I'm okay with that, but not if I thought it was dead because I think then all I get is "Dead"!
Just tell me so I know if it is still up.
I have all those skills at +8...
Flynt approaches, casually putting one more bullet into the head of the behemoth for good measure before he begins plucking spent casings from his weapon and tossing them aside.
"You alright, Elly?" Reloading the weapon, he flicks the cylinder closed with a snap of his wrist and looks over the others as well. It seems they had faired well enough. Saving one of the spent casings, Flynt tosses it into the opening, aiming for just past the slain knights.
"If I am to be honest, I feel a little shocked." Elise smiles and grins - pointing on the hand shaped singed piece of armour where the 'zombie' struck. She observes keenly as Flynt throws his casing down towards the opening. "Good thinking!"
Nethan is more curious about the Behemoth and is peering over Sienna's shoulder looking for something "interesting".
Nethan eyes get big, "OOOH, that looks like a power source right there! You see it Sienna?!" Nethan points to a blue glowing orb. "And right there looks like the clock work organ that makes the poisonous blood! And the all of the clock work and biological systems are redundant!" Nethan points to the organ and then the whole behemoth.
"My thanks for stopping my bleeding. A good sight more than just rest will be required for these wounds not to foul." Dreyyn says.
As the magical healing closes the minor wounds inflicted by the zombie like creature Elise breathes out. Well - this is better. She glances towards Dreyyn whom seems to be in a lot better shape now.
"Ahh - I've always liked the feeling of some good positive energy!"
The light that Alþórel chucks down continues to go past where your vision stopped before, it drops another 20-30 feet down before you can see the light disperse into at least 2 more openings. It drops another 30-40 feet before the light is very suddenly extinguished.
Alþórel can see that on a cursory glance and a bit of a chat with Sienna that the flesh of this creature was made with magic, how it nits together with the rest of its body seems very artificial. The creature seems to be modeled after a Rhino, though has parts chopped and changed. Can't tell how exactly, some of the modifications that Sienna is talking about go over your head. The most surprising thing that Alþórel gathers though is that the way its body is working and how Sienna is describing the biology of the creature the core design of this artificial being is from another plane, though it doesn't sound like any plane Alþórel has heard of. More interestingly Sienna seems to believe that some of the parts of machinery she has found are to make the creature survive in this plane. She will continue dissecting until she gets something concrete.
Nethan starts to excitedly look at some of the clockwork parts that Sienna is drawing out from the creature, a lot of the parts seem to be a secondary part to the creature so if one were to fail the machinery will take over. Some of the ligaments in the creature were replaced by some odd piston like parts that were strengthening the creature's blows. Though through the search Nethan looks through the creature and spots something. It is a small coin planted into the ribcage of the creature. It is only two fingers width across, and has a emblem emblazoned on it. Wonder what that could mean?
Flynt while this is going on throws a casing through the opening, he sees a small white beam start to track the movements of the casing. Just before it lands an intense white light spirals towards the casing disintegrating it before it lands. The white beam that was tracking it was doing so quite slowly, it seemed to have trouble with such a minuscule target. Though the beam doesn't seem to disintegrate the floor of the opening, nor does it leave a mark. After seeing the lasers again Sienna says "Yup, those are the lasers, made short work of those two there. Though they haven't been raised... which I suppose is good.. I don't need to go to their parents and tell them they tried to kill us in their sleep. Oh well.. eternal sleep you know."
Calathar shoulders his no-dachi and begins to move toward the well. "Let's get going," he say over his shoulder. "Alþórel and Nethan will poke that thing all day if we let them. There's evil to smite down there and its not going to smite itself."
Nethan overhears Calathar's statement regarding the Behemoth and begins to laugh then holds up his finger, "Just a little longer, please?" Then studies the coin more without yet touching it.
Calathar sighs, stopping and resumes an energetic pacing.
As Flynts casing disintegrates Elise winces and blinks. But it looked awesome atleast ... She looks towards Calathar and his aparent desire to head further down.
"Soo - any volunteers to step thru the portals of light?" she teases him "Relax Cala - If we manage to find some way to bypass the protection we could trick the awaiting evil into smiting itself ... Or at the very least walking straight to their doom"
Glancing backwards towards the dissection of the beast she shouts out "Hey - how is it going back there? Are you finding anything yet or do you want me to come over and maul it some more? We could probably use your magical expertise over here aswell! The lasers they spoke of have been located." She grins wildly "And it would seems as if they do what was promised"
"Hmmm. Sienna. The laser seems to "see" the object. Can it see in the dark?"
Amelia can see from this distance it is made of some sort of metal that doesn't explain though why there isn't a mark on the floor. Though the novelty of a whole corridor made out of metal is bizarre enough.
Flynt can see the beam came from above the floor of the corridor, pointed diagonally down. This likely means the lasers are originating from the roof of the corridor.
Amelia throws rocks ricocheting them into the corridors, the one you know has lasers take out two rocks at a time then there is a delay of about 6 seconds before they fire again.
The 5x5 opening on the first level doesn't have any lasers popping out, out of the next lower level one of the openings has lasers as well firing at the same speed as the first level. The other two don't have any. The 3rd level openings are a bit harder to see even with the light being dropped down because of the angle Amelia is at so she isn't sure if there is lasers that far down either.
Nethan can't tell who or what the heraldry on the coin could represent though he makes a mental note of it just in case he sees more of them in the future.
Sienna finishes up on the beast. "Okay okay, so this extraplanar thing was artificially created from scratch like I was saying earlier. The beast by the look of its face has never actually slept, heck it doesn't have eyelids. It likely has some form of sleep cycle for its body that doesn't have to shut down the whole thing! That might be why it had two hearts, one maybe shuts off! I am not sure why someone wanted this instead of a golem, but I guess you can call this creature a Homunculus. It used blood and had organs but I doubt it was actually alive. Strange experimentation but I doubt Tar-Baphon was beyond this, he likely animated it with necromancy first or some such I'm not sure. Either way even though there seems to be a base that it was worked from the body is still very alien. Also thanks to Nethan here I have seen that the skeleton has markings on it similar to what blacksmiths leave behind on their weapons and armour to say it was their doing! So that coin you found probably tells you who made it!"
Nethan takes another quick look at the coin and knows that the heraldry on the coin has nothing in common with any of Tar-Baphon's signatures.
Sienna whirls on her heel to talk with Alþórel "Er..well... answer... love to give it to you but haven't tested that, got anyway to turn out the sun? If so you could perhaps test that? Or maybe the magic types have some sort of shadow spell thingy?"
"Slow and steady, or fast and loose. Amelia, you are out th... scout. What do you say?"
"Excellent work, Sienna."
"Those who summon light can often summon darkness. It is a useful tool but fraught with moral peril. Many a good wizard has been seduced by the darkness... Is this experiment worth what it may cost us?"