Marching past the closed gate of the Acadame, a rhythmic thumping is heard, soon you see Hell Knights marching down the road that leads to the castle. The leading edge does not slow for anyone, including an older lady that was standing at the rear of the group of townsfolk yelling and shouting through the gates for the wizards to do something. She is plowed under the steps of the Hell Knights. She ends up laying at the side of the street, un-moving as dozens of Hell Knights march past.
Behind you, in an upper floor of the building, a thump is felt as a flash of energy blows out a third floor window, and the wall around it. Debris rains down upon the courtyard to your left, and a few screams are heard from inside the building.
not overlooked, was working on rebuilding your dream since you changed your deity, the first one took a bit of research for each character, hopefully I will have it to you later today, hopefully.
Standing before the excessive number of guards, Gelein asks for permission to enter into Heaven and access the Great Library of Harmonious Scripture.
While standing before the gates, Gelein realizes that he has not seen anyone come or go, and there should have been a steady stream of souls arriving, if nothing else.
Without an audible command, the hound archons split down the center, opening a walkway that the central trumpet archon floats down, his feet inches off the ground. "Your god has chosen neutrality, not unexpected, your saving grace. Your request is being reviewed by Ragathiel. You may enter and rest at the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees while your request is reviewed."
Again thanking his protections his thoughts wondered but he kept them guarded none the less. Yet a thought of "here we go" creeped by. He bowed again, his mask hiding his neutral face.
"You have my thanks."
He took note of things as he walked towards the temple. Things were not as they should be in more ways then one.
Sense Motive and Perception 60 (take 10)
1d20 + 38 ⇒ (16) + 38 = 54
How is Fritz getting to the old woman? She is currently on the other side of a wrought iron gate that is closed, barring entrance to the Acadamae grounds from a mob of irrate citizens.
Yes, the explosion was from a building with in the Acadamae.
Ah, didn't realize that. If he can get to within 30 feet of the old woman, he casts bard's escape to bring her into the grounds. If not, he uses the spell to send himself next to her, then another to bring them both inside.
GeleinEnters into the lowest tier of Heaven, not a place he planned on going to any time soon. He found himself escorted by a trio of hound archons. Walking down a thoroughfare paved with white marble and trimmed in gold, Gelein gets the impression that Heaven is not as it usually would be. There are few beings on the streets, not that he would know what's normal, but it just seems odd.
Only a few minutes pass and six large banyan trees come into view around the corner. The trunks and branches have grown to provide walls and an open airy roof over the central courtyard. Scattered about the temple are several small tables, each with 2-4 chairs around them. The tables and chairs are all grown from the same banyan trees into the appropriate shapes. At one end is a small platform before a small fountain. The bubbling of the fountain provides a pleasant backdrop of sound, accompanied by the smells of the finest green tea, steeped to perfection and sweetened with a touch of purest honey.
A short humanoid stands near he entrance and bows at your arrival. "Be at peace, Lord Tathor."
Fritz moves towards the gates, getting to within a couple of feet of them, before casting a spell that pulls the wounded woman from under the feet of the marching hell Knights to his own feet.
Xara and Derric fly up to look into the window of what looks like used to be an arcane workshop of some sort. Several students lie in pieces or draped over smashed furniture, the feet of one person protrude from the back wall, they are kicking and feint yelling can be heard.
He secretly could not stand heaven it was too polished, too smooth. As if cut off from the reality that was life, paradise quickly got boring and false to him. He simply figured it was a flaw of his nature, the same way he found utter evil to be over the top and such. He would simply wait for them to give him an answer. Why they needed to consider it was beyond him, Nethys was a god of knowledge as such his priest went after knowledge all the time. It did not mean he was going to use that knowledge as he was with Nethys and so uninvolved like the angels said themselves.
Perception +11, Ride +5 (+7 to stay in saddle), Sense Motive +2, Stealth +0, Survival +2, Swim-3
"Damn! What do you want to guess some puffed up professor decided to take matters in his own hands and study that magically?" she says, pointing up at the anamoly.
Gelein finds a small wiry humanoid, possibly a wayang, entering the temple. Bowing low to the proprietor, he turns and bows to you, "M'lord, I have been sent to escort you to The Library."
The wayang leads Gelein up a winding path through several gates separating the different levels of Heaven. Each gate was closed upon their approach and guarded by archons of various types.
Along their travels, several patrols of archons crossed paths with the pair, and each time they looked at the wayang, nodded, and continued on their way. It was not long before Gelien saw the nine tall spires of the Library of Harmonious Scripture. Carved into the sides of each tower were symbols marking the major outer planes of existence.
The wayang brings him to a small wooden door set into the base of one of the towers. Upon their approac, the door opens and Gelein is motioned to enter. "This is as far as I may go. May all your answers be found within these walls." The door is in the base of the tower of Nirvana.
Gelein thinks finally he can get some answers. He looks for anything to do with the Library of Ages. While keeping an eye out for anything having to do with the strange events that have been going on.
A roll would certainly be the easy way... However, if you would like to roleplay it a bit, you could most certainly start listing areas/categories/etc that you would start searching in hopes of finding a reference.
Sorry I am from the computer age, roleplaying looking for books not a strong point. xP
Gelein moves thru the stacks looking thru the sections that could have some connection to the subject he was looking for. Taking books as needed giving them a look thru and dividing them into piles back at his table that may prove useful and those that have a connection to the area of study dealing with the subject.
As the people in the hot streets run about in panic a stoic figure lands before an empty block before the towering beetle husk. Like an angel from the sky the people turn to him for guidance and protection. After being informed of the sudden disappearance of Sothis's Observatory he walks upon the empty land, bends his knee to the ground and places his hand so his palm is touching the rock below.
"Tell me stone, who has done this?" He asks.
"We do not know young one." Came a voice in Terran echoing through his mind.
He stands and casts his gaze toward the sky. Then to the crowd that has formed at his back.
"People of Sothis! I will find out what has happened here for you! I will return what belongs to you and slay whatever demon has done damage to our skies." He bellowed
The crowd cheered as he grew wings and took off toward his home where he would collect his things and set off to find answers.
The old lady is soon healed and feeling much better, though she is still expecting that the Acadamae 'do' something!
The young student is quite thankful for the rescue. "We were working on enhancing basic alchemical mixtures. Not sure what went wrong. But that was extraordinary! I hope my notes survived, if I can control the rate of mixture, then the reactive force could be timed for maximum effect!" dusting off his clothes, the student runs back into the building, shouting a thanks over his shoulder.
While the lab is a mess, non of the students are hurt beyond some singed hair and feathers. The lab is a mess with pieces of equipment embedded in the walls.
Gelein spends most of the day and night in the library, his table has been piled high with books, more books piled on the chairs around the table. A notepad before him with pages of notes copied from the various texts.
Gelein realizes that all of the texts in this tower deal with the plane of Nirvana. Out of curiosity, he found that in one book the plane was only referenced one time, but it was apparently enough to have the book located in the this tower.
Some of the more likely notes written on the notepad are passing references to:
A mythological library that predates Thassilon.
The library does not have a static location.
A library that is a conjunction to more than one Golarion.
The library is owned by no one creature or race.
There are five pieces to the key of ages.
The library belongs to a cabal of ancient dragons.
Time does not pass in the library.
The library caused the sinking of Azlant.
There are 13 pieces to the key of ages.
All prophecies are stored there.
Entry to the library is possible only with a key.
There is a reference to another text that may give the location of a piece of the key.
Aroden is suspected to be lost in the corridors of the library.
Opening the library will cause a cataclysm.
The Runelords broke the key into eight pieces.
Looking over his notes, he marks a few common themes. It seemed he would need to move to another tower to look. He would focus on the shadow plane, the first world, and the material plane having to do with the ancient past.
The library has nine towers for each of the major Outer Planes. (this is noted in the write up about the library in the heading for the plane of heaven) The shadow and material planes are Inner Planes and are only referenced in other works. The First World is also an Inner Plane, though not a part of the current cosmology.
I think you misread it, it says other not outer. There are ten planes to begin with so their can not be nine outer planes when they all exist in one. The ten planes are positive energy plane, negitive energy plane, material plane, shadow plane, air plane, water plane, earth plane, fire plane, ethereal plane, and astral plane. The astral plane encompasses all of the outer sphere which is made up of domains such as heaven, hell, the boneyard, etc etc thats why all souls travel thru the astral to their respective locations. Also the reason they can attack each others domain without being blocked, does not take much to block extradiminsional travel. ;3
Edit-The first world falls under another dimension so its connected to etheir the astral or ethereal plane.
"You're asking me? I'm hardly an expert. Knowledge is always useful, so long as the danger in getting it is less than the danger you save by having it."
Though I have also used Great Beyond source book. Here I see that the Inner Sphere contains nine planes. The Astral plane surrounds the inner sphere on the wiki and is included in Great Beyond as a 10th plane ion the inner sphere. Then there are nine more planes in the outer sphere. So far we have 19 major planes. The publication Great Beyond, is one that I have been using extensively. It states that Golarion's planes are divided into two distinct sections, Inner and Outer Spheres (pg 2). The section concerning the library states that it has towers for "the other planes of existence." (pg 38) So I choose to assume that since Great Beyond lists 10 planes in the Inner Sphere and nine planes in the Outer Sphere, that the Library of Heaven was dealing with the Outer sphere only. I did provide an indication by stating twice that you were in the tower of the plane of Nirvana.
Well your the DM I go with what you say, personally I would think that heaven's library would have more information on the inner sphere rather then the outer sphere sense the outer sphere holds all its most powerful enemies who have the real ability to hide information from them. A tower of hell, abyss, and such does not make sense as it would be full of evil information but what do I know. Anyways Gelein will follow up on the other text related to a key's location. As well as try the tower's of axis, the abyss, and the boneyard.
"Alright Fritz - can you keep the people away. I'm playing with a lot of power here, and while it should be safe, being distracted could be a very bad thing."
Heaven is lawful good. And we have all heard plenty of jokes regarding awful stupid paladins. So why would heaven be any different? Point of advice, information in published paizo materials is my source material for the background information for this campaign. Where I differ from that background would be the clues to consider, such as not being able to greater teleport to a known location. I'm dumping quite a bit of information on you players over the course of these three days, some is valid, some will be red herrings, and some is just distracting (like the old lady getting run over). While I don't expect the players to follow my logic, I would hope that they would engage in some dialogue with each other concerning what they think the clues are and then only need a nudge from me now and then.
Gelein gets the idea from the texts that he has been reading that heaven is frequently more concerned with pushing it's ideals across the planes than focusing on just one plane, the material.
After gathering as much information as he feels that he could from the tower of Nirvana, Gelein returns to the tower entrance, off to one side is a small alcove with eight doors, one for each of the other towers. He approaches the door that is marked with the symbol of the Abyss, and places his hand upon the rune to open the door. The rune glows red then yellow, then fades to dark. A minute later the door opens and a wizened elven woman of several centuries opens the door. "I am sorry but this tower is closed, for renovation. Please come back in a year, or two." She closes the door in Gelein's face.
The rune on the tower to the tower of Axis glows red, yellow, before blinking a briliant white and the door opens. It must be someone's idea of a joke that the tower of information related to a plane of purest law would be in such chaos. Gelein spends the majority of his second day in the tower. At the end, he has been able to find additional documents that indicate the library is indeed very old, has some sort of key or keys to gain entry, and the last entry was during the rule of the Runelords. Throughout the day, a tray would appear near him bearing some simple foods and water. It is now the wee hours of the morning for Gelein on day 3.
Derric, Hase, and XaraWhat divination were you going to attempt?
For the moment, things have calmed down to a point just below a full blown riot in the streets. The Acadamae will probably be able to handle itself, and if the Queen has called upon the Hell Knights, the streets may run red, but order is likely to prevail there as well.
Gelein checks the time and heads to the tower of the boneyard if he has time. If not he returns to Mealstrom's Heart to await whatever the letter referred to.
Leave it up to the DM if he has time to check the tower for more information or not.
Hase, please note on your profile who/what your familiar is, or at least note it better.
Your familiar turns and looks at you and says "You must find the Library of Ages, therein lie the answers."
Sustos, the cost is $450 for a teleport, $910 for greater teleport.
Gelein finds the tower of the boneyard in disarray, with beings streaming in and out of the door. Through the door he catches glimpses that look like there was some sort of battle in the foyer, with scorch marks on the walls, and the smell of burnt paper and sulfur in the air. He is denied entry here with a terse statement that only official librarians may enter.
We now have Gelein at the evening of day three.
Hase, Derric, and Xara are all at some point in the middle of day two.
Vashoon appears to have lost his way.
Sustos is on day one, unless he wishes to move his time frame up.
Perception +11, Ride +5 (+7 to stay in saddle), Sense Motive +2, Stealth +0, Survival +2, Swim-3
Xara shakes her head. "The world could be ending, half a building is gone, they've blown a hole in the wall, and they're still just concerned with alchemical mixtures! This is why I never got really into the academic world. You have to leave common sense behind."
Male Human Sorcerer 20; 202/202 HP; AC 31, Touch 15, Flat 26, SR 24; Init +13, Perc +0; F +16 R+16 W+17
"Yeah, it's a little weird, but then again, that's how the people work. They try to ignore the world ending, because they can't do anything it. I suppose we get lost in our own power, Xara, because honestly, I think we have less common sense than they do. I mean, we're trying to stop the end of the world, if you take a step back and look at it, we look absolutely insane." Derric paused, "That won't stop us though I suppose."
Derric hauled the alchemist to his feat, looking the man in the eye.
"Be more careful next time, you gave us quite a scare. With the state of the world in the condition that it's in, we thought something was happening."
"Communication ability with Xara? Oh! Right! Let me use it. One sec."
He turns to look up to where Xara and Derric are hovering, cups his hands over his mouth and shouts, "Hey Xara! Hase wants to talk to you! Get your butt down here!"
