Percy, ignoring the fact that he is still on fire, directs the hex of bad luck at the undead spider, while Aetherys tries to put out the spreading fire.
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Aetherys
Percy
Boram
Marra
Rasamoro
Rhanloi
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Spidery horror (42, on fire, misfortune)
---
With many eyes to choose from, Boram plants an arrow smack-dab in the middle of all of them, causing the undead horror to produce an otherworldly shriek, then fall to the ground, dead.
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Marra looks worse for the wear, as she helps stamp out any remaining fire, "I could use some healing, but while the wild magic is in the air, I think we need to limit our spell casting."
The halfling goes back into the entrance hall away from the books before using her wand of cure light on herself.
Marra's healing wand activates without any problem, as does Percy's hex, granting the pathfinders a moment's respite to heal their wounds.
Looking around, The adventurers soon find the severed arm of a human under one of the library tables. Though the arm - cut off just below the elbow - has been lying there for some while, the magic of the area seems to have kept the blood in the wound fresh.
While much of the sealed wing is in considerable disrepair, the collection in a side wing of the library seems largely untouched by the battle that had come before. Bookcases that rise from floor to ceiling line the walls of this spacious library, and the table in the middle of the room is strewn with open books and crumpled notes referencing lists of books and page numbers. These jottings look fairly recent.
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"Can't have you walking around in this frightful looking state!" Percy jests "People might talk! Imagine what people would say about a titled aristocrat and a Blakros no less wandering about with a bunch of bloodied ruffians?" he smiles.
Hex:Healing
Percy gets to the shelves with the help of Boffins.
Boffins assist: Know Arcane
Percy: Know (Arcane)
Boffins assist: Know Arcane
Percy: Know (Arcane)
After a while, Boffins gets all Faeire Dragon and insists the reading is getting dull, clearly distracting Percy!
Someone here was researching the Dimension of Dreams. Pages have been torn from some books, only to be used as bookmarks in others. Notes on the torn pages reference literature contained in the Lower Planes Archive elsewhere in the sealed wing. According to the registry, one book on the Dimension of Dreams is missing: the Libram of Forgotten Dreams. This book purportedly contains dozens of rituals pertaining to that realm.
The researcher veered away from the Dimension of Dreams and toward seemingly random books on Abaddon, the Abyss, and Hell. She has underlined unrelated passages and circled chapter numbers.
If anything, the underlined passages seem to form some sort of code. Perhaps it holds the key to finding the knowledge you seek?
After their first success in the library, the pathfinders settle in for an all-nighter reading books by candlelight. With Rasamoro cracking the code, the pathfinder have a good starting point. Aetherys prepares passages by pre-selecting the relevant books on content...
The nameless researcher’s investigation eventually became haphazard and inexplicable, though with patience it becomes clear that she was attempting to decipher some sort of encoded message—some of which earlier patrons of this library left in the margins of books.
Rhanloi, like the true Pastamancer he is, not only serves delicous Linguini, but also decodes the cypher that the names investigator seems to be using. The entire decoded message indicates the location of a hidden passage at the far end of the library. That room is a small and unusually claustrophobic library, with its looming shelves rising higher than the room is wide. Books are scattered across the floor, though none of them appear damaged. Rather, this library looks like it was hastily searched.
With a soft click the bookcase swings out quietly like a door. An ancient spiral staircase—just barely wide enough for a person to traverse—lies behind the hidden door and ascends at a steep, unlit incline. Scratched into the stone walls is graffiti in dozens of languages. At the top of the staircase, a stone archway opens into a cramped vault with four-and-a-half-foot high ceilings held up by squat, stone columns. Dozens of small nooks line the walls of this confined space, filled with musty old pillows, dust-covered books, and ancient cobwebs. Old candles, long unlit, sit in pools of congealed wax alongside empty lanterns. Two low-ceiling corridors lead off in opposite directions. The entire secret space gives the impression of being a refuge from the rest of the library, a quiet place to study or socialize that has long since been forgotten.
Most pieces of the graffiti each lists a different single name and a date. The most recent date engraved is 4606 ar, over 100 years ago.
The narrow staircase leads up into a series of small chambers hidden between the ground level and second floor of the Forae Logos. A single pair of footprints in the dust leads down one winding corridor. Near the back of the network of tiny rooms, the area is cleared of cobwebs, and a chalk diagram is drawn on the floor, and assembled a ring of candles that still burn with heatless flame. An enormous tome—the Libram of Forgotten Dreams—lies open atop the diagram, and several items lay strewn about the floor.
Many of the items in the room are magical: the tome, a cloak, a headband and a scroll.
That's a scroll of breath of life.
The tome contains scribbles in the margin, all in the same handwriting ()
The items looks like they were left behind in a haste: they're a headband of alluring charisma (+2) and a cloak of resistance (+4)
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Feeling better after the healing from both her wand and more so from Percy's hex, the halfing smiles "Thanks, that should do for now, I don't want to press our luck."
Marra helps looks around, "The writing seems to be the scribbling of someone going mad. I wonder .. if we would have dreams if we napped."
Marra tries to make sense of the notes and the tome, but the only thing she manages to pick up is that the tome describes the nature of—and how to travel to—the Dimension of Dreams. A thorough study would take weeks to complete.
The candlelight gradually grows to an unnatural intensity. Soon, a shimmering form of golden light blossoms into being, taking the form of a Garundi woman () in regal robes and with the symbol of a winged eye hanging around her neck. The apparition first takes on a stern, chastising countenance, raising one hand in the air as if to castigate everyone in the room. Then, as her luminous eyes register her many guests, she adopts a less aggressive posture.
“Heavens blessed,” she whispers. “You’re not the same guests at all, are you?” While clearly some form of spirit, there is no visible malevolence
in this phantasmal woman’s eyes. Rather, she over ows with a palpable aura of compassion and concern. “My name is Aliyas Ardenvaugh, I am—I was—curator of this wing of the Forae Logos. It... It’d been so long since I’ve seen another soul. Now so many guests in just a short time! How unusual. Are you peers of the woman who was here? Three-twenty- two?” She wrinkles her nose at the name.
The ornament around her neck is the holy symbol of Aroden, the dead god of innovation, history, and human culture.
Aliyas is a prana ghost, a type of incorporeal, good-aligned outsider.
Yes, that poor girl. She came here, fleeing a fight she did not start. I offered her comfort and compassion, but she refused both. I could tell she was troubled, but she preferred the company of the libram more than that of another wayward soul.
She performed a ritual found in the Libram of Lost Dreams, which put her to sleep. Eventually, her body and possessions simply faded away. I feel she was drawn somewhere else by powerful magic.
She was carrying a lantern indeed, yes—a grim-looking thing! It flickered with such an unusual light, and she would talk to it, ask it questions. If it responded, I could not hear.
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Boff-assist
Rel
Boff-assist
Pla
"You wear the symbol of Aroden - I assume you feel a kinship to his domains of innovation, history, and human culture? I judge you to be of good character and know that I appreciate your assistance and guidance. I am Lord Sinclair Blakros, and somewhat of a keen scholar myself - and yes that woman is one we need to speak with, for that lantern holds another soul we wish to retrieve and set free."
"Did you see what ritual she used specifically? We need to be after her, wherever it was she went"
Once, yes, I was a servant of Aroden. He did not bestow my gifts directly, yet I admired—no, still admire—Aroden’s ideals of knowledge and wisdom. I know he is gone, but in a way perhaps his memory lives on in me.
The woman performed a powerful and complex ritual that shunted her sleeping mind into the Dimension of Dreams. It did not send her into any one particular person’s dream but rather into the raw psychic essence of that plane— into the untempered echoes of memory between dreams.
If you wish to follow 322, I would be proud to offer assistance! I once studied the Libram of Lost Dreams when I was alive, you see, and I am familiar with the rituals therein. With your assistance, I could send your consciousnesses into the Dimension of Dreams to the same untempered dreamscape that 322 sought. What awaits you there, I do not know. She pauses before adding with a half smile, “But isn’t the chance to find the answer exciting?”
The woman start describing a ritual of the occult, which much be performed by the party in a seance, to get them into touch with realm of dreams. It takes a total of fifty minutes of arcane gestures and chanting, tapping deep within the spiritual forces that linger here.
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Rhanloi nods and looks like he understands the ritual Aliyas describes. When she is done, he says, [b]"I can lead us in the séance. Your assistance will be greatly appreciated. We must prepare ourselves.
Once the party is ready and they have made all preparations, Rhanloi has the group form an odd shape as described by Aliyas, then follows her descriptions and begins a series of arcane gestures and chants.
The first part of the ritual goes smoothly, but as soon as the planar dimension comes into view, a slight hiccup almost spoils the incantation. Fortunately, Marra manages to straighten the magic. The party feel their bodies go limp, and their minds depart, being transported into a realm of dreams....
Vibrant, billowing smoke streams forth from between the pages of the Libram of Forgotten Dreams. These soporific clouds churn furiously like a tornado, swallowing up the entirety of the room. Between the wisps of clouds, the Archive Absentia begins to fade away, and with it Aliyas. What was once the Archive Absentia of Forae Logos is now a crumbling stone lodge with a sagging, dilapidated roof. Half of the lodge is simply gone, crumbling away into a barren gray rock. Beyond the lodge’s walls lies an in nite sea of muted rainbow-hued clouds that churn above and below. A brilliant red-orange sunset glow comes from one end of the at horizon, though no sun is visible. In the opposite direction, the horizon is a curtain of impenetrable darkness. What remains of the world appears to be little more than an island of stone set adrift on a cushion of swirling clouds. Huge pieces of jagged stone oat weightlessly in the sky beyond— some of them studded with crumbling statues of elves in armor, others carrying mighty coiled serpents of carved stone that embrace the fragmented islands.
Enormous mirrors rise at skewed angles, having ruptured through the nearby stone surface. These mirrors reflect the dreamscape around them, but curiously, not any creatures.
Percy moves closer into the mirrors, but rather than see his own reflection, he suddenly stands face-to-face with a dark-hooded elf, her eyes two mirroring surfaces that reflect everything around her.
Together with her, another, similar figure emerges from a different mirror, and besets the party. They immediately surround themselves with illusory doubles
---
Marra
Rasamoro
Aetherys
Rhanloi
Percy
Boram
---
Elf (3 doubles)
Elf (2 doubles)
---
Marra ensures the party moves at top speed, while Rhanloi fires off a volley of magic missiles, the bright flashes reflecting in the eyes of the elf. Boram follows up with his own missiles. His first arrow hits only a double, as does his second, but his third arrow hits the elf, and causes it to explode in a dramatic burst of shards. Both Boram and Percy are covered in the sharp glassy splinters that fly around.
---
Marra
Rasamoro
Aetherys
Rhanloi
Percy
Boram
---
Elf (2 doubles)
---
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Reflex
= 4 damage.
Percy steps across and brings his supernatural forces to bear...
Targets the other 'Elf'
- Misfortune (Su): Grant a creature within 30 ft a bit of bad luck for 1 round.
If target makes an ability check, attack, saving throw, or skill check, it must roll
twice taking the worse result.
+ Cackle as a move action.
Percy lets the poor luck shine on the reflecting elf.
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Marra
Rasamoro
Aetherys
Rhanloi
Percy
Boram
---
Elf (2 doubles, misfortune)
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*Correction to above - on the Witch misfortune the creature gets a DC20 will save.
Rasamoro
Rasamoro steps forward to help clear some of the images and bring the elf down...
Hits on 1
Attack
-Clears an image.
Aethrys
Uses Spell Combat - Intensified SG.
5' step
Delivery strike (via weapon so not Touch)
Attack
Hits on 1
Damage
Attack
Attack
Hits on 1
Damage
Haste Attack
Attack
Hits on 1
Damage
Rasamoro does what he can to clear out the illusory doubles, opening the space for Aetherys to strike and shatter the last soulsliver, who erupts in a shower of shards
With the arcane knowledge that Percy possesses, he is quick to see that the mirrors are, in fact, arcane memory pools, storing the knowledge of those who pass through.