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Nox swears in annoyance, wishing there was more that he could do other than pincushion the tiger, but since there isn't, he'll do just that.
+ 1 Str Damage + Debilitating Injury (Does not stack with itself) -2 penalty to ACC
+ 1 Str Damage + Debilitating Injury (Does not stack with itself) -2 penalty to ACC
+ 2 Str Damage
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Undy and Riddy watch in horror as their friend Erik falls before the cat's onslaught. Riddy turns to Undy: "Send me, boss, I can do it!". Undy casts Vanish on Riddy, and suddenly the faerie dragon disappears from view! Undy steps backwards 5' to take refuge amidst the fallen pillars.
Riddy stealthily flies towards Erik. With his speedy wings, he has more than enough speed to reach Erik.
Once reaching Erik, Riddy stealthily (and invisibly!) attempts to activate the breath of life spell in Erik's shield right under the hellcat's nose!
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Looking between attacking the hellcat and the unmoving Erik, Marra sighs as she reaches down and touches Erik with her gloved hand "No time to take a dirt nap!" invoking the magic in the First Aid Gloves {link} to cast Breath of Life {link} on Erik.
Unable to continue fighting defensively, the halfling Dawnflower maintains her battle dance and position giving the cat another target.
Standard: activate magic item First Aid Gloves using 5 of 10 charges.
swift: used out of turn for immediate action.
Free: maintain battle dance 2/23 rounds.
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Undy heaves a sigh or relief as he sees Marra touch Erik and the fallen cleric resumes breathing. Casting his eye towards the obnoxious hellcat, he decides that it would be good if the damn thing stopped being able to see them. He waves his hands and suddenly the pink hellcat is not only pink, but extremely sparkly!
Riddy glares at the hellcat with dislike, waves his hands, and puts the cat in a box! He is now surrounded on all sides by a wall!
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Lysaer keeps his cool as Erik falls down, the cat much faster than the priest of Kurgess. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Lysaer holds his ground and calls forth his god's judgement on the creature before them, adding power to his sword arm as he swings back with more vicious chops of his Greatsword.
for
for
for
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Nox sends a pair of arrows into the hellcat, hurting it badly. Xon also floats over, sucking some of the big cats strength.
Undiana and Riddy try to help the fallen Eric, but without luck. Marra however is able to reach him and pulls him back from the brink of death.
Erik opens his eyes, and positive energy flows around the area. Unfortunately this also helps the cats, and the big one to the north that was down, now opens its eyes evilly.
Lysaer, sensing the danger the group is in, finishes off the pink cat.
From the ground it looks at the two juicy targets in front of it as it climbs to its feet.
Status, bold may post- bold may post
Marra 44 damage; 22 temporary hp. AOO
Lysaer AOO
Cats
Green -62 damage; shaken(2) ; 5 NL, prone
Pink -88; debilitating injure (-2 AC); -3 STR; unconscious
Nox
(Xon)
Undiana
(riddy)
Eric 33 damage - prone;[/b]
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The Hellcats fall to the pathfinders blades, as Eric recovers from his almost fatal injuries. His blessing energies course around the group, avoiding helping the hellcats.
Sore but triumphant, the team pause for a moment to consider how poorly things almost turned out. Licking their battered wounds, the team realise this is an area that has been badly damaged by overuse of magic, and sometimes it just doesn't work here.
Status,
Marra 44 damage; 22 temporary hp.
Lysaer
Nox
(Xon)
Undiana
(riddy)
Eric 33 damage
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The team heals up and presses on, bolstered by Erik's enchantments.
The rest of the afternoon...nothing happens. Although you meet with frequent magic depleted areas, making use of overland flight... dangerous.
neither is your night interrupted.
The next day you notice the magic depleted areas are getting thicker.
Early in the afternoon you spot a ring of stele in the distance. Carefully approaching you look around.
A cold fire pit, well-organized gear and supplies, and two journals blowing lazily in the wind surround a small, stone monolith. The monolith, the stele described in Rijana’s journals, is covered top to bottom in intricate and exotic carvings as well as markings and what look to be writings in an ancient language. The entire camp is covered in a thin layer of reddish dust, as if no one has been here for some time.
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Glad to be uninterrupted during the rest of their trek, Lysaer peers around the site and listens out for signs of potential ambush. It was strange that the two notebooks just lie there untouched if the other was in town, but this place is a wasteland so it could be safe.
"This smells of a trap." he says bluntly as he draws his blade. "Be watchful."
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Nox has taken to being more careful and not relying entirely on his shadow ability to hide, but he's still forced to pop back into existence entirely to often for his taste. For now he stands towards the center of the group (Not that they can see him) and nocks his bow, his voice echoing out of their shadows.
I don't like it either... Let's grab the things and be done, quickly. I like this place less and less as time goes on.
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There are no signs of an ambush, although Lysaer does not a couple of journal pages stuck to a cactus..
Within the field to stele you find you magic works fine. And the "flickering" effect of magic coming on and off seems to be held at bay.
Hunting around you manage to piece together two of the journals you are looking for Translations of the Mana Wastes Stele and Flora, Fauna, and Hazards of the Mana Wastes
The first is a half finished book containing page after page of drawings and translations of the stele. The last written page contains an incantation in common and instructions that describe exactly how to activate the stele. A notation below the incantation reads, “Making my first attempt tomorrow.” and is dated several months ago with no following notations. The page immediately preceding that one has this notation: “[b]Worried that if I activate the stele and don’t like the results, may not be able to deactivate it. Pretty sure the incantation I’ve copied on the next page, when read backwards, will return this stele to normal. Will test later.[b]” The second journal is a detailed account of the monsters, plants, and normal animals that call the Mana Wastes home.
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Undy uses his other pearl of power to get his Vanish spell back.
Before they approach the stele, Undy will cast Message on all the party members and will renew it each time it expires (every 80 minutes)
"Did one of you say something earlier about casting Hunter's Blessing? Perhaps it might help us before we approach the stele..."
Undy and Riddy both examine the writing in the journal, including the notations mentioned above, to ascertain if they were written in the same hand as the journal we recovered back in the village.
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Taking the journals, plus the one found in the village, Lysaer spends some time examining for clues of what exactly their missing colleague had been attempting here. It would seem the obvious answer was to try the reversed incantation, yet there was no telling what might happen if they were unprepared.
As he reads through, the Hellknight shakes his head. "I wonder why the society allows such research alone." he sighs "Then have to organise teams to rectify the damage.
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The half finished book containing page after page of drawings and translations of the stele. The last written page contains an incantation in common and instructions that describe exactly how to activate the stele.
The last entry indicates that she was two days north of Geb’s Rest, in the Mana Wastes, camped around a stele that she believed could cure the Mana Wastes of it’s magical afflictions (or lack thereof ) if only she could just translate and properly perform the ritual laid out on the stele in ancient Kelesh
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"Aye, perhaps, though it seems that whatever she did, it clearly went wrong. Perhaps we had best begin with reciting the incantation *backwards* since she believed that would restore the stele to normal. Presumably she never had a chance. I wonder if once she activated the ritual it brought forth that bone devil and it killed her before she had a chance to reverse it? I'll study the texts to see if I can make any further sense of them."
Undy studies the materials they have gathered thus far to see if anything more can be known.
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Erik will cast hunters blessing as before and also overland flight.
”There is the matter of the fourth book. If it’s hidden within 800 feet of here I could find it but that does involve moving the other books we have more than 800 feet away. This either requires splitting the party or the wizard from his spell books. To most wizards I have known these two options are the same thing”
If fourth book can’t be found the reset procedure seems a good place to start. The briefing did mention she had four journals
On hearing his suggestion, Riddy chirps with alarm and lands on Undy’s shoulder. ”What is this spellbook you speak of?”
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Marra looks through the second journal to see if Hellcats are normaly common to the Mana Waste, commenting as she does ”You know, we have encountered two outsiders so far. Maybe the incantation opens a portal to an outside plane? If so, I would guess that Rijana opened the portal a month ago and got into trouble. Then the the trouble came to the Last Rest, took all the people and left Rijana’s body in the fountan?”
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Erik will take the endure elements. At around lunchtime he will gather the party together to cast ** spoiler omitted **
Choosing Evil Outsider as favoured enemy and desert as favoured terrain. He will then cast overland flight on himself. (did not want to cast sooner and have both wear off just as he got to the site) Duration of both is nine hours[dice=perception]1d20+8
”Unless she had to go back to. Gets rest for supplies and got ambushed there”
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Lysaer shrugs his broad shoulders with the dull grind of metal plates. It was clearly beyond the time they had to research this ritual, though had they killed the Bone devil they might be fine. "Unfortunately, we don't have enough time to properly investigate this, which I dislike. It clearly went wrong somehow." You can almost hear the scorn in his voice as he says the next word. "We leave it to chance and educated guess."
As they prepare, Lysaer will search the area for Auras of Chaos and Evil in case something is missed from plain sight. When ready, he will stand by the performer of the ritual, ready to strike if needed.
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Preparations made, Undiana starts the ritual. It takes just a couple of minutes when suddenly a brilliant flash of blue light surrounds you; When the light fades you're still standing in the camp, but all of Rijana's supplies are gone, the stele is gone - and its as dark as the middle of the night, though the sky lacks any stars or moon.
The wind that has been prevalent as you followed the road has also gone.