|
Gallix nods appreciatively to Stali, "Hey, that's not bad! Although the verse I was taught was more about matching consonant sounds at the beginning of words than about rhyming and stuff. Like this..."
Gorgeous Gallix gazed over gloomy Gallowspire
His heart turned heavenward, his hand against Hell...
"See what I mean?"
|
A curious ten-foot-tall fountain stands at the center of a plaza in the Precipice Quarter. Shaped like a giant fist and built from steel that hasn’t become tarnished despite its apparent age, it looks almost as though some titan of old had punched its fist through the ground.
As you approach the plaza, the key in Mr. Peppers' hand starts vibrating gently, and glowing script in Celestial, Draconic and Osiriani appears along the fountain's surface:
“Here lies Gulgamodh, aegis of Absalom. When the city needs Gulgamodh, open the locks and call it forth with true and honest intent."
____
|
|
Gallix searches his new bardic knowledge to see if he's heard any tales of Gulgamodh.
He strikes an impressive pose beside the fist shaped fountain, raising his own fist in imitation of the design, and calls out to the titan, "Oh mighty Gulgamodh, whose fist moves earth and whose feet make the world shake, I come to test your might! I, the Gorgeous Gallix Granbonne, am the fist at the front of the Red Arm of Absalom! Let me see your strength to compare to my own!"
Finally, he takes a direct approach and tries to remove the pieces of the fountain that seem to have been later additions to the structure.
|
Mr Peppers immediately is draw to the glowing sigils as the key begins to hum. What a pleasant sensation. He muses as he starts dragging the glowing runes around with practiced skill. "I'll have these fixed in mere moments. If someone wishes to recall who exactly Gulgamodh is I'll be happy to add in any insight."
He looks to the others for possible solutions to the puzzle at hand, mostly on Stali and his nimble beak and claws.
|
|
Stali goes over to the sculpture and looks it over. Then he starts pulling parts away.
“This is in the way!”
“Don’t need to move that, it is irrelevant.”
“Now this has got to go!”
“They really could have placed this lever better!”
“Anyone ever hear the song about steel gulls? I’m forgetting some of the lyrics, but something about this place brings the song to mind!”
|
|
Gallix's history lesson on Gulgamodh is met with little response from the fountain, but his bluff causes an audible hiss as if steam were escaping from something from underneath the ground. Mr. Peppers reads between the runes and locates a series of miniature magical switches. Flipping all of them makes the ground rumble violently. Stali removes a fragment of the fountain which clearly doesn't belong, and Sirettis begins speaking of Gulgamodh's history... then, a metal fist punches through the ground.
At the same time, two robed men and their bodyguards rush over. "Oh no no, you will not be doing anything with Grandmaster Torch's pet golem!" The casters look on, preparing to cast, while the giant steel hand flails below...
The green wizard recites something arcane while out of view...
-- Bold is up --
Uesugi, Sirettis, D.
Blue, Pink
Stali, Mr. Peppers
Red
Gallix
|
|
"Torch? I think he won't mind if 'borrow' the golem to defend the city. Stand Down." Suggests Mr Peppers, until he is quickly distracted by the sweet, sweet sounds of arcane language nearby.
A scroll of fly huh. You'd think they'd have at least learned their third sphere of spells if they were challenging us. Please oh please have spellbooks.
|
|
"Grandmaster Torch is a citizen of Absalom. His unauthorized pet will be used for the city defense and be returned to its rightful place."
Sirettis casts Stinking Cloud, aiming it at the alleyway where the wizard and bodyguard went. "The wizard is casting a spell to grant himself flight."
"I will fly over there myself in but a moment."
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Uesugi rushes at the first bodyguard and tears him open with his katana, and D finishes him off with a kinetic burst of sand.
The wizard begins hacking and coughing wildly! "G-gah... This isn't worth it..." he grumbles, holding his belly.
Pink stumbles out of the cloud to meet Uesugi. "Alright baldy, I know my way around weapons too, and mine are much more manly than your puny katana," he laughs, brandishing his battleaxe.
-- Bold is up --
Uesugi, Sirettis, D.
Pink (nauseated)
Stali, Mr. Peppers
Red
Gallix
___
At the beginning of one encounter, the PCs can activate this benefit to treat the enhancement bonuses of all their weapons as 2 higher for the duration of the encounter. Treat the effective enhancement bonus of mundane weapons as +0.
|
|
Gallix launches himself around the edge of the fountain and charges toward the axe-wielding warrior who had emerged from the cloud. "You call that a weapon? Now THIS is a weapon!" He holds up a fist to show it off, then slams it down on the warrior's wrists, trying to break his grip on his weapon's haft.
|
|
"Augh!" Cries the bodyguard as his wrists are snapped by Gallix's metal glove. His battleaxe topples out of his hands.
Before D can launch his sand bullet, Gulgamodh's metal claw tears open a slab of rock near the fountain, and a tremor shakes his and Mr. Peppers feet.
D focuses his inner chi and is unmoved by the shaking. He accelerates sand that whips against the guard's body with such force that he's tossed onto his back.
-- Bold is up --
Green (nauseated)
Uesugi, Sirettis, D.
Pink (prone, disarmed, -33)
Stali, Mr. Peppers
Gallix
|
|
Mr Peppers rocks and sways, pin wheeling his arms as he tries to keep his balance as the cobblestones beneath his feet start to lift and separate. He teeters forward, then backward, then forward again until he finally comes to rest. "That was close.." Then he leans back just a touch and falls over in a small hole. B#*%%~+s.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sirettis was flying at the time, so the tremors do not bother her. Instead, she flies over the building, and sees the familiar elven traits when she glares at the wizard.
Of course. They are always Elven.
She approaches within 30 feet of the nauseated wizard loosens her Prehensile Hair. It's clobberin' time!
|
|
The wizard is stubborn. He continues to lurch away from the stinking, noxious fumes, holding his stomach in pain, yet he doesn't throw down his guard. As soon as his nausea wears off, he begins to cast... but with the entire Red Arm entourage surrounding him, he has no chance at all!
The rumbling below becomes loud as ever, until two iron hands grip the fountain from below, and the head of a 60-foot-tall construct is birthed out of the ground. It crawls out with little grace, destroying a few nearby buildings in the process. It looks almost like a gigantic suit of plate armor, and its left arm terminates in a cannon-like weapon.
In a metallic voice, it declares and stands there, staring at the world.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mr Peppers searches the corpses of the fallen mages fruitlessly, swearing numerous times in numerous languages as he finds no scrolls nor spellbooks. "What the crap. I find it hard to believe that only the bad guys are descendants of dragons and outsiders. Some of us have to WORK to do this!"
He does raise his eyebrows at the giant 'ass kicking' golem before them. "What are the odds they put a cockpit or a saddle on that thing?" I would name it: The Gnome-stinguisher 5000! He chuckles softly to himself.
|
Led from Misery Row by agents of Liberty’s Edge, most of Absalom’s slaves have cast off their chains to contribute to Absalom’s defense.
----------
The gathering clouds momentarily part as a beam of sunlight shines upon the Ascendant Court, heralding the return of Sarenrae’s holy warriors and the arrival of a small host of celestial guardians. These reinforcements rally alongside the paladin Ollysta Zadrian before dispersing to aid Absalom.
-----------
Warriors wearing the colors of a dozen or more noble houses course through Absalom’s streets, lending their strength directly to the First Guard. Numerous well-known aristocrats—previously thought to have fled before someone convinced them otherwise—appear at major sites and intersections to help coordinate the war effort and rally the citizens.
|
|
Zarta Dralneen, leader of the Dark Archive faction, meets with you on the ground floor of Skyreach in the Grand Lodge.
An overburdened table creaks in protest under the weight of ledgers and indices as Zarta Dralneen examines the records.
“Hopefully you’ve already heard about the missing Black Echelon codebook, Pathfinders. It’s a centuries-old volume that details scores of colored light patterns, each of which directed Taldan saboteurs to destroy a particular facility or perform some other action. Somebody—somebody who knew their way around the Grand Lodge and its vaults—stole the codebook and has used it to bring the oathbound Taldan spies back from the grave.
“Fortunately, the codebook that was stolen from the Grand Lodge is not the only copy; it was an approved copy of the original, which in turn is kept in a restricted wing of the Forae Logos library. With the original codebook, we might be able to disrupt their operation by sending contradictory signals of our own. The Forae Logos is a close ally of the Dark Archive, and you have Second Archivist Sandaril’s blessing to retrieve the codebook from the library.”
|
|
"The Second Archivist will know to be expecting Pathfinders. I doubt the Black Echelon could pass for you, after all," Zarta replies.
As you approach the entrance to the library, you can hear a racket coming from inside. As you enter the building, you notice signs of disarray and violence: books strewn about on the floor, blood spatters on the walls, and a smell of smoke in the air. You move through the place cautiously, but Second Archivist Sandaril is nowhere to be seen.
From the southern end of the library comes a cry for help. "They've got us surrounded! P-please! I don't want to die like this!" A man calls. You run towards the sound of the voice, and you see a crowd of librarians huddled together in the reading room, cuts and bruises marring their bodies. Two of them carry unconscious colleagues. "The undead... They're right behind us!"
You see four more Black Echelon operatives moving disturbingly in completely silence towards the librarians.
The undead approach, and skewer two more librarians on the ends of their sickles. The crowd cowers behind one another in cries of panic.
-- Bold is up --
Gallix
Green
Sirettis, D., Mr. Peppers, Uesugi, Stali
Pink
Librarians (-2)