You get the feeling, that if he could, he would now frown.
Undead? My master was on the search for immortality. I am immortal. So is Saruna, but she is a traitor and needs to be destroyed. Look around you, without immortality and protection all this knowledge would be lost to the sands of time. It is our destiny to search and gather knowledge for the greater good of all humankind and then to protect it! My master did this because Servants of the Padishah attacked hima nd us and wanted to destroy everything while they conquered Osirion. Are you really of the jeweled sages? Why don´t you know this and about the holy pursuit of knowledge? And the protection of Osirion?
His flat voice can´t transport any emotions, but you can guess its a touching topic for him. He just spent aeons closed in in this archive.
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Much of what we had was lost and the jeweled sages were scattered. They hid themselves so well as to lose knowledge of each other, and only recently has the Diamond Sage and Sapphire Sage begun the work of reuniting our order. Please, lead us onward. We will not destroy Saruna before talking to him, but we will visit with your master. Perhaps he can set things right between his servants.
Mh i see. Then these qaridan bastards were successful in destroying the wisdom of Osirion. Well at least partly. This archive is intact and heaps of knowledge are stored here. My master, the Amethyst Sage sealed himself in the library below and i hope to rejoin with him. I have vast knowledge of this place and it seems we should join forces, since we are natural allies.
However, there are some intruders. First there is Saruna, who is removing relics from the library. She is really disloyal, untrustworthy, and deserving punishment! If you defeat her for me, ill help you! Once she is defeated, i can lead you downstairs and show you the entrance to the library. Together, we can find the Amethyst Sage then!
"I'm no judge of good or evil, so I can't tell which of them we should side with. I'll leave it to you all to point my hammer."
Ah my mistake, i meant the archive. Some things just mysteriously vanish! That must be her, there is no other possibility. So do we have a deal? Or are you on her side?
Oloch looks to his translator companion.
"I see no reason to side with an accused thief. I am willing to go with this one."
-Posted with Wayfinder
The mist? Ah you mean that safety spell. I´m not affected by it. I can describe the rooms here to you. Just over there you have the Chapel of Thoth he points at the crossroad you came from. Then there is the Catalog, the Shrines of Nethys and Ptah, the Librarian’s Office some Elemental Pools and the Ritual Chamber where my master performed his rituals. But i didn´t go there for a long time, Saruna lurks somewhere there. Now will you go and defeat her for me? Then i´ll help you and lead you downstairs.
"Is there any way to disable the safety spell?"
I´ll wait for you here untill you finished Saruna. I guess the safety spell could be dispelled for some time or suppressed, if you have those magic means.
"Sounds like a plan to me. Just point me where to swing my hammer."
Dariamus convinces the other that there is a door behind an illusion and you enter the room, presumably the Chapel of Thoth, where Badru suspects Saruna.
The air in this chapel carries the scent of incense and old parchment. A simple altar occupies the east wall. An ibis statue sits behind it, silently gazing over any visitors. Pale light shines on the altar from a painting of the moon on the ceiling, illuminating stray motes of dust.
Although battle-damaged, the sanctuary is otherwise well maintained and seems to get regular sweeping, dusting, and polishing of every surface. An ancient sitting pillow, repaired countless times and sized for a large creature, rests before the altar. On the pillow, wrapped in strips of linen, a creature with tattered wings that looks like it used to have the hindquarters of a lion and a woman's face sits, obviously expecting you.
So, after talking to a non-living man you come here to kill what´s dead since long ago? Before you do your dirty work, i must ensure two things! First the knowledge i accumulated here may not be destroyed or lost! So long i gathered it, cartographed and wrote down, so long i protected it and sat over it here, alone and bound in this body!
Second i want vengeance on my treacherous master! A tale of blood and gems these walls would tell. The sage asked for commitment of heart
and soul; he left cold stone and a ragged hole.
Or can your minds be changed and you spare this loathsome shadow of former glory, cursed with unlife? Instead destroy the doll who wants to make all of your kind like him, because he can´t see the difference between life and unlife?
She makes no move to attack, but seems ready, and awaiting an answer.
Map.
"You look like you'd be a fun challenge to best in combat. That's all I care about." Crowe looks at this allies, not sure of what to do yet, but he does seem to be itching to fight a gynosphinx.
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Dariamus approaches and bows to the gynosphinx, I thank you for your millennium of service and will ensure your work is preserved and remembered. I would ask you to share your story with us before we release you from your curse ancient curator. Your story is as much a part of this place's history as the works it contains.
"Crowe, although it would be a good fight, we should let them speak for the sake of preserving history."
"If it gets aggressive, however, game on."
Oloch will put a hand on his greatsword, readied to draw if combat begins.
I will tell you, if that murderous one backs off! I myself do loathe this undead existance. In life, i studied alongside the sages and considered the bearer of the amethyst sage jewel my favored colleague and mentor. When Keleshite forces conquered Osirion and began their campaign against the Jeweled Sages, i stood at my allies’ side to aid as best i could in preserving the nation’s history. At the sages’ request, i guarded the sanctum for several months while the Amethyst Sage sought some secret that might preserve the scholarly order. When he returned, he asked for my aid in a ritual he had found deeper in the Pillars of the Sun. I accepted, not knowing that the ritual required the removal of a sphinx’s heart — my own. Before leaving the sanctum forever, the Amethyst Sage revived me as a mummy. As part of the process, he replaced my heart with a fist-sized amethyst. Does it make you happy to know this? All around us and deeper here lies Osirions history and many an artefact of the jeweled sages, much of it my work. And now you came on behalf of Badru to slay me, but not if i can help it!
Map.
"We didn't come specifically to slay you, but we will if need be. Why don't you tell us why we shouldn't? It sounds like you'd happily leave your unlife... shouldn't we oblige you?"
Singing and winging, the ritual made a soul fly from one vessel to the next, bringing what the master called immortal life, but not exactly it. You met the chosen before.
Decisions you must make yourself. While i loathe this form, i cannot voluntarily risk loosing this work of wisdom.
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Mmmm, much as it pains me, this one may serve our interests even better than the other. "Yes, a peaceful resolution may be best after all. I believe our interests and mine especially may be closely aligned with yours. I have a special interest in curators, librarians and archivists and it seems to me your depth of experience in this area given your many years on this world may be deep indeed."
The undead face seems to relax a bit, if something like that is possible.
A geas prevents me from leaving this place, but i suspect a true jeweled sage could remove this enchantment. If you help me with this and defeating Badru, i will tell you what i know and help you in return.
So be it. I will hold my part if you hold yours!
Saruna leads you through the area, giving you a tour passing many interesting sites:
-Catalog
This hallway twists and turns in the fog.
Intricate glowing hieroglyphics line the corridors. They catalog the contents stored in the library, even changing to reflect new relics that enter or leave the site.
The character also realizes that pieces of the collection are missing and more are disappearing.
-Shrines of Nethys and Ptah
A marble statue stands at each end of this corridor.
Purple faerie fire illuminates the east statue, which depicts a Garundi man who is healthy and vital on one side and cracked and burned on the other. The otherstatue depicts a Garundi man wrapped in linen like
a mummy and wielding a staff.
A PC who makes a similar prayer or offering to Ptah gains a +2 sacred bonus on Craft and Knowledge (arcana) checks made to identify constructs for 24 hours.
-Saruna’s Sanctum
This is where i normaly rest and study.
Saruna rests and studies in this spacious chamber. A large divan sits in the southeast corner. A bookshelf dominates the north wall, while tapestries and maps cover the others. Saruna’s etched riddles and rambling notes cover the floor.
The ancient maps depict Osirion during the Age of Destiny, ranging west into Thuvia and south into Geb. In addition, the maps indicate several
dozen unlabeled locations, including numerous points throughout the deserts of northern Garund, half a dozen scattered throughout the Barrier Wall mountain range, two in northern Geb, another four in Katapesh, one each in Nex and the Mana Wastes, and one coastal site now
submerged just north of Osirion. Saruna is not certain of the relevance of these sites, but she speculates these are sites of importance to the Jeweled Sages.
-Librarian’s Office
This neatly kept office once doubled as living quarters.
A basin in the northwest corner continuously refills with water as a decanter of endless water, and an ancient cot stands nearby. Magical illumination provides bright light. A tidy desk and workbench hold ancient quills and dried-up ink.
You locate a loose stone under the cot. Prying it up reveals a cache of
tools and a journal. In it are 20 years of the Amethyst Sage’s work in archiving and recording lost treasures while wrestling to maintain his
own identity when exposed to his sage jewel’s memories.
Several letters sandwiched between later pages describe, in brutal detail, multiple Qadiran raids in which the invaders killed or captured sages or sympathizers. The final year of entries is encoded.
You can identify most of the supplies as well-preserved mummification paraphernalia from a past age.
It describes some of the sage’s investigation of An-Hepsu XI’s rituals of immortality, including one that involved a canopic jar recovered from
an undisclosed location in the Pillars of the Sun. With increasing bitterness, the sage expresses a fervent desire to survive the Keleshite attacks to ensure that the order of Jeweled Sages survives.
-Elemental Pools
Pools of pure elemental water, earth, and fire occupy this chamber. These date back to the Pharaoh of Forgotten Plagues, whose forces captured them in a war with Jistka.
The elemental presence has warped the stone in the room, giving the surface immediately surrounding the water pool a spongy texture, growing strange crystals near the earth pool, and sending veins of pulsing magma rippling through the flagstones near the fire pool. Several metal scoops and flasks stored at narrow workstations between
the pools.
-Ritual Chamber
This is the room the Amethyst Sage used to perform several of the rituals he researched, and the architecture still bears the scars of his experimentation. The smell of burnt flesh still permeates the chamber, and nowindecipherable runes drawn in blood long since reduced
to powder line the floor. The walls are slightly cracked and in several places even seem to bow outward as though pushed apart by a powerful force.
This tour covers the whole floor and once you are satisfied, Saruna leads you to a hidden staircase, where everything is covered in sticky spiderwebs.
Probably Badru fled down there, where his lair is. Go and defeat him! I´ll help you solve the riddles there then.
Oloch looks around the room, then to the group.
"This place is fancy. I'll leave the thinkin' to you guys. I never really paid attention to anything but fightin' in school. When you want to take out Badru let me know."
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At the marble statues, Sveinki pauses to regard the statues.
"I recognize Nethys, the god of magic. But, I'm not sure who the other one represents. Maybe an older form of him?"
In the librarian's office, Sveinki helps to search, but distracted by the magical basin and illumination he misses anything further.
In the ritual chamber, Sveinki investigates the traces of magic in the room and the damaged walls to see what he might be able to determine more of what has transpired here.
"I think the secrets of this floor are beyond me. Perhaps one of the rest of you can reveal what you've learned. If you're ready to go, let's see if we can find Badru again."
Attempting as many checks as Crowe is trained in:
Crowe is totally usless. :(
You begin to descend the stairs Saruna has lead you to, leaving the sticky spiderwebs behind you and walking 30 foot downstairs.
The strange magical effect that bothered you and cloaked everything in thick fog ends here at the bottom of the stairs.
You can see signs of attack in the broken walls and floors. Unless otherwise noted, the ceilings are 20 feet high, the rooms are carved from the surrounding granite, and the original magical illumination has failed,
leaving this area in complete darkness, what means you need either light or darkvision now.
A haphazard barricade now blocks the last 10 feet of the stairs.
You either need to climb over it or tread very carefully, needing a lot more time to pass.
All but Oloch notice the strange, probably magical runes on the stairway, that seems like some sort of trap.
Map.
As Dariamus flys over the runes, you think there was a faint glowing running over them, but nothing happens.
"That may have worked for you, but I don't trust my jumping ability. Can anyone figure out what that thing is and disable it?"
Oloch casts detect magic
Between the two of you, you are able to determine that it is indeed a magical trap. It seems to have an alarm spell on it and was probably already triggered by crossing it´s proximity.
You climb over the barricade, neglegting the trap since it was already triggered and finaly make it into the large room downstairs.
Saruna tells you that new archivists would train here, using the replaceable finds. The tools and workplaces are broken, and the the south wall was breached millennia ago.
If you do not have light, it´s dark now.
"Can someone make a regular light? I have an oil that would do the trick, but it's really much more powerful than is needed..."
"My eyes are suited for the darkness. Gorum would be displeased at your lack of battle preparation Crowe. I can make fire if you find something to light."
Sveinki takes his time looking around, can´t find anything but broken tools though. It looks like the wall has been breach a very long time ago, several hundred years or even over a thousand years ago. It´s hard to tell exactly. Saruna tells you, that those who attacked the Sanctum a long time ago did this. Or she at least thinks so. She´s not been down here for a very, very long time, since this was Badrus refuge ever since.