Well that's nice. Everyone can act before it
Trying to time her throw perfectly, she reaches the bottom of the stairs as quickly as possible, her magical starknife already cocked for the throw...
Targeted Strike (Ex): At 7th level, as a full-round action the swashbuckler can spend 1 panache point to make an attack with a single light or one-handed piercing melee weapon that cripples part of a foe’s body. The swashbuckler chooses a part of the body to target. If the attack succeeds, in addition to the attack’s normal damage, the target suffers one of the following effects based on the part of the body targeted. If a creature doesn’t have one of the listed body locations, that body part cannot be targeted. Creatures that are immune to sneak attacks are also immune to targeted strikes. Items or abilities that protect a creature from critical hits also protect a creature from targeted strikes.
**Legs: The target is knocked prone. Creatures with four or more legs or that are immune to trip attacks are immune to this effect.
Cass looks slightly annoyed that the creature resisted her spell, and surprised that an undead cyclops has such a strong will. As the undead moves in between some of the walls and pillars she hits it with a sticky web.
Trying to time her throw perfectly, she reaches the bottom of the stairs as quickly as possible, her magical starknife already cocked for the throw...
[dice=+1 Starknife w/PBS(+Targeted Throw:Legs):-1 Panache cost]1d20 + 18
[dice=Magic/Silver Damage+Scorching+Precision]1d4 + 4 + 1d6 + 9 + 2
** spoiler omitted **
Ashlei's starknife cuts deep into the Gholdako's thick ankle and it stumbles on the stairs, falling onto its back.
It continues its disregard for magic and ignores Cassiopaia's Web spell.
Flat on it's back at the moment. Percy and Esmarelda to act.
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holding the extened pike in one hand, he slid from hiding at the corner to standing at the top of the stairwell, he pulled one of his throwing axes out and threw it he pulled out the second and threw it as well. He would not being giving up the top of the stair unless he had too.
He readied the pike to stab the damned thing when it tried to close.
.
With her hand along the wall to guide her, Rhialla moves to just beside Percy, at the top of the stairs. Hearing the angry undead cyclops, the cleric calls upon Besmara's power, sending a wave of positive energy washing forth to scour away at the walking corpse.
Percy scratches it with a thrown axe. His other shots all miss.
Rhialla tries to damage it with positive energy, but it resists most of the damage.
The Gholdako struggles to its feet, taking another shot from Percy as it does so.
Its action was to stand, so back to the top of the order. Everyone can attack!
Cass uses one of her pearls of power to re-fetch and cast haste.
"Stay out of its reach!"
Stepping closer and cursing like the sailor she is, Ash starts slashing at the monster while still Invisible!
Full ATTACK(Melee Starknife!)
+
Hearing the intense exertion of Percy's furious attacks, Rhialla reaches around the corner to rest her hand on his back, healing his existing wounds to keep him going.
Between them Percy & Ashlei manage to hammer the undead monster to its final death.
.
"Nice work, team," says Cass.
"Should we try to set up a hidden camp and get some rest, or press on toward the ship? I have a little bit of magic left. Not a lot, but some."
Ashlei frowns and sighs heavily.
”No telling what’s wandering around waiting to eat us out here. Lets push back to the ship? I know I won’t feel safe until we are surrounded by crewmen who only resent and fear us…”
"Though the longer trek...especially with some of us blind, I think the ship might be the best move." Rhialla agrees.
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"Ship is probably best safety until we can magic up some cures for these problems," agrees Cass.
She makes an arcane gesture and conjures a supernatural mount, a light horse.
"This horse should make traveling a little easier." She helps her sightless companion up to ride.
You make it back to your ship with several near misses, the party looked imposing enough for the curious critters to veer off though.
You can heal up and regain your sight and spells.
Ederleigh Baines is extremely unsettled by the Eye in your possession. He shudders and avoids looking at it. In fact unless told not to he leaves any area that it is present.
"Do I really have a choice?" Esmarelda asked with a smirk.
When they got back to the boat Esmarelda seemed to relax, her sea-legs seemed to know their way around better than on land. Even blind. "So... Rhialla, you do have something to remove this right? Give me my eyes back?"
"I'm just glad we made it back in one piece," says Cassiopeia as she helps Esmarelda off the horse and onto the ship before sending the mount back to the aether from which it came. "I wonder if the crew has had any luck foraging? Maybe we can have something other than hardtack and jerky for supper."
After returning and resting, the next day Ashlei will focus on keep the men alert and the Fort getting cleaned up and usable.
"If those one-eyed bastards come chasing us down out here, I want us to be ready for them!"
She will also make sure the eye is double-guarded at all times (on the ship?) by trustworthy men.
"Do I really have a choice?" Esmarelda asked with a smirk.
When they got back to the boat Esmarelda seemed to relax, her sea-legs seemed to know their way around better than on land. Even blind. "So... Rhialla, you do have something to remove this right? Give me my eyes back?"
"Once I get some sleep. Unfortunately, I won't be able to until morning, but as soon as I'm up, we'll get those pretty eyes working again, I promise." Rhialla replies.
The next day she prepares Remove Blindness/Deafness, casting it on Esme first thing in the morning.
Time away from the fort and the constant nightmares along with Bikendi possessing him to retrieve the Lens of relevation has repaired Ederleigh Baine's mind and he can tell you what is going on with the Lens.
Recently, a band of pirates settled upon the Island of Empty Eyes. Led by a Mwangi wizard named Bikendi Otongu, they swiftly restored the Chelish fort and began quietly scouting the island's ruins.
Bikendi used powerful illusions to hide his people's presence from the cyclopes for many months, all so he could conduct his research without interruption. Obsessed with dreams and alternate realities, he believed he could extend his life without relying on an undead apotheosis like lichdom-turning instead to the heartstone magic of night hags.
Using such a gem, he hoped to bind his soul in an arcane ritual, preserving it as he separated his consciousness from his physical form. As his body passed away, his mind would remain vibrant and free to seek out the Dimension of Dreams, living on for all eternity in whatever world he could imagine.
To carry out his plan, Bikendi searched for the perfect gem to create a heartstone, carefully consulting the magic of ancient Ghol-Gan and looking for a flawless jewel among the ruins of Sumitha. He found exactly what he needed in the lens of revelation, and moved invisibly among the cyclopes of Sumitha until he could steal away the
stone used in their ancestral divinations.
But to craft a heartstone from the lens, Bikendi also needed to cultivate a relationship with a night hag willing to help him. Thus
he made contact with a night hag named Lodhotha and offered her a hundred souls from captives taken in his raids in exchange for crafting such a heartstone from the lens that he could use for his ritual.
Lodhotha readily agreed, accepting Bikendi's hapless victims even as she
made plans to keep the new heartstone, called the immortal dreamstone, for herself.
In the meantime, she feasted on the nightmares of those held in the fort's prison, raiding their dreams each night until she could harvest their souls for the dark markets of her nightmarish realm.
To fulfill his part of the bargain, Bikendi increased his raids, using the island as a base from which to assault passing ships. These efforts attracted the attention of the cyclopes, however, who discovered the lens of revelation was missing from the Eye of Serenity and rightly surmised that Bikendi's pirates had stolen it.
Ishtoreth sent warriors to test the fort's defenses, but the pirates held on, adding captured cyclopes to the allotment of souls due Lodhotha. Bikendi realized, however, that the giants would eventually overrun the fort, so he escalated his plans by imprisoning some of his own men-those who had shown fear or doubt in standing against the cyclopes.
This gave him enough souls to meet Lodhotha's quota, sating the hag's appetite and convincing her to craft the immortal dreamstone. Knowing full well that Lodhotha would rather use the stone on him than relinquish it, Bikendi anticipated her treachery, and sprang his own trap before the hag could double-cross him.
Bikendi instructed his apprentice, Ederleigh Baines, to pickpocket the dreamstone when Lodhotha arrived, thus depriving the hag of her most significant weapon and preventing her from escaping into the Ethereal Plane as well.
Bikendi and his followers then slew Lodhotha, even as Ishtoreth's cyclopes began their final siege of the pirates' fort.
Ecstatic with his prize, and realizing that the dreamstone's magic would last only 24 hours following Lodhotha's death, Bikendi retreated to the fort's tower to attune it to himself, intent on completing his ritual before the cyclopes breached the outer wall.
Unfortunately, not only did the ritual prove more challenging than
Bikendi had anticipated, but without the wizard's arcane assistance against the cyclopes, Bikendi's forces were quickly overwhelmed.
The giants sank Bikendi's ship with thrown rocks, then broke through the main gates and slew the fort's defenders before turning their assault
on the tower itself.
Rushed by this impending doom, Bikendi missed a vital step in the ritual, shearing his soul and mind from his body, but failing to open the right portal to the Dimension of Dreams.
Before he could correct this error, the cyclopes broke into his sanctum, destroying his preparations and reclaiming the gem that he'd stolen from Sumitha. While the cyclopes then returned the lens of revelation to the Eye of Serenity,
Bikendi's spirit lingered on the Material Plane. His trapped ghost still haunts the fort in a fruitless effort to reclaim the dreamstone so he
can finish the ritual.
But Lodhotha's sister, the night hag Haetanga, has sent her own minions to track down her sibling and retrieve the gem. These creatures also now
lurk within the fort, ready to threaten and interrogate anyone who ventures there.
Bikendi needs to stone to complete the ritual and tried to get Ederleigh Baines to retrieve it. Unfortunately as a Ghost the only way he could communicate with Baines was with the Nightmare spell, or by possessing him.
Which fails when he moves away from the fort. So Baines would black out and find himself in the jungle heading for Sumitha with no idea how he got there?
Between Bikendi's work and Haetanga's Animate dreams battering his mind Baines quickly went mad. Which was how you found him.
You now know that the Lens of relevation & the Immortal dreamstone are the same thing, and why Bikendi & the Night hag want it. You also have to finish off clearing Sumitha of the Cyclops. What are you doing now?
Speaking to the group and Ederligh, Ashlei looks up and sighs.
"The Cyclops can be killed eventually, depending on how many are left, but how do we stop the ghost? What can we even use this magic gem for anyway? Can it tell us the future or something?"
Rhialla listens intently, running through her knowledge of otherworldly creatures and magic, considering the best way to deal with the ghost and hag, as well as how best to make use of the powerful stone.
Rhialla can't get much regarding the Lens of relevation, it is nearly artifact with the amount of work that has been done to it.
However on Ghosts & Hags?
Ghost
Bikendi is also a Wizard and has all his spells so he would be a tough opponent, but he is killable, especially if baited by the object of his obsession.
What now?
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I wont lie... I am uncomfortable trying to decide how to proceed further. I know nothing of hags or ghosts other than they exist and less than that on how to fight them. Im relying on you Rhialla and Cass on how to proceed. We will have to face them and rid them from this island to make it ours... We need to figure out how to attract settlers and business too. Any ideas on that front? that goes for anyone.
"Ghosts... challenging, as they mostly dwell in a different plane or realm of existence, and this one probably has spells. We'd need some way to force it to confront us, like a dimensional anchor, and ideally some way to protect from its powers," says Cass.
"Hags, similarly, tricky. Need a cold iron weapon. Probably need to be able to see the invisible, find a way to pin it down and then stab the hell out of it."
Ashlei pulls a dagger and starts carving some bad words into some random wood nearby.
"Let's focus on the ghost first? He's here somewhere. I doubt the hag is anywhere near us in this dimension...or whatever you call it. Those dream-nightmare things were similar to ghosts, right? So maybe we do something similar? Set a trap, draw it in, and then take it out. But we need something like Cassie's magical anchor thingy first."
She starts another carving scrawl in another wooden object...
"As far as attracting people willing to live and work here? We need to finally get rid of all the Cyclops on the island and anything else we cannot kill, destroy, or convince to leave. A safe place to live will attract them better than anything else."
"A lot of the same protections we used against the phase spiders would work on ghosts as well, spells that protect against the intangible or ward against or bind evil. Even then though, they're hard to deal with permanently, as most ghosts will eventually regenerate unless you deal with the thing that tethers them to this plane." Rhialla replies. "In this case, the eye."
"Cass is also right about the hag and cold iron, though magic weapons can hurt her as well." she elaborates, "Her bite carries fever and she can cause nightmares that take a physical toll on the victim. In addition to turning invisible, she can look like anybody, and become ethereal."
Ashlei rolls her eyes at the description of what the Hag can do.
”So the hag is ultra dangerous and can look like anyone. Great. Hey… the hag’s gem is s soul sucker thing right? Would that work on the ghost? Maybe we kill the hag first, take her gem…then zap the ghost with it?”
"Ghost can't be stabbed well can they?" Esmarelda asked with a raised brow. "Honestly never really had to deal with them before. Nor Hags, but I have heard stories about that."
Wincing, Ashlei spits in a corner.
"Those nightmare things were like ghosts, and they could still be hit somewhat...but it definitely takes magic weapons and heavy spells to do it. I'm more worried about getting possessed by a ghost. Last thing I want to do is hurt any of you, even if it wasn't ME in control. Anybody think we can whip up a fake Eye to draw the ghost out somehow? I don't relish letting a former wizard, or whatever he was, near that thing if we can help it. But we need to be able to draw him out somehow. Maybe an illusion...? BAH! Give me a dark alley filled by 100 assassins and I can give you at least 50 corpses before I would fall...but this stuff?"
"There's a spell I can prepare, that if the ghost fails to resist it, will allow any magical weapon to work fully for a while." Rhialla says. "The protection spells I used before can block possession."
.
With a nod as they prepare to enter the basement chamber to face Bikendi, calls upon the blessing of her goddess to grant them her favor in battle.
+2 deflection bonus to AC and a +2 resistance bonus on saves (all)
+1 morale bonus on attack rolls and on saving throws against fear effects.(all)
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Ashlei wanders into the room from the stairs acting a bit wobbly, casually appearing to have not noticed the ghost. Quietly she sings an old sea chanty as she goes...
"What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? Ear-ly in the morning! - Way hey and up she rises, way hey and up she rises, way hey and up she rises, ear-ly in the morning! - Shave his belly with a rusty razor, shave his belly with a rusty razor, shave his belly with a rusty razor, ear-ly in the morning! - Way hey and up she rises, way hey and up she rises, way hey and up she rises, ear-ly in the morning!"