"Maybe he's just trying to piss you off," Stefani says to Damonkayo with a chuckle. "And if so, it looks like it's working."
The lancet is a basically a long needle. Shabad thinks it is possible it might have injected something into Damon’s bloodstream.
Shabad eyes the lancet warily. "It might have injected you with something. Do feel okay? No telling what these buzzards might have in their perverse medicine cabinets. Tell us if you feel sick or anything out of the ordinary."
Unless Damankayo complains about symptoms that might enable a diagnosis, Shabad says, "The map only showed two other rooms. That one," she points to the west door, "looked like it might be another maintenance room. Let's check out this room first and see if we can find a computer and use it for intel."
Although expecting another room with some computers, Shabad lets the fighters open the door and check it for hazards before entering.
Taking point, Stefani hefts her weapon and pushes open the door with it.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" she calls out as she looks insdie.
Shabad eyes the lancet warily. "It might have injected you with something. Do feel okay? No telling what these buzzards might have in their perverse medicine cabinets. Tell us if you feel sick or anything out of the ordinary."
Damon snorts. "I feel like I just got shanked in the ass. Does that count as okay?" Seeing Doc's concerned look, the old vesk softens his tone. "I think I'm alright, Doc. If I start hallucinating skittermander clowns or something, you'll be the first to know."
Damon takes up position behind Stefani, rifle at the ready.
Similar to those in the maintenance rooms on other levels of the black site, a computer console on the northwestern wall controls the lighting, security features, and doors throughout this level. However, the lighting on this level can’t be raised above dim light. Additionally, this room contains security-camera viewing screens and a microphone capable of sending public-address messages through the speakers located in many of the black site’s rooms. There are no screens showing the last room on this level, however.
Recorva will gesture towards the remaining door with one of her wings. "Well, if you are sure that you're okay Damon, looks like we've got this next door leading to the remaining room on this level. I say we continue quickly, as I'd hate for us to miss our appointment with Mr. Rhyse."
Recorva will gesture towards the remaining door with one of her wings. "Well, if you are sure that you're okay Damon, looks like we've got this next door leading to the remaining room on this level. I say we continue quickly, as I'd hate for us to miss our appointment with Mr. Rhyse."
"It's just a scratch. Let's go ice this crackpot and be done with this thing."
Damon heads for the door.
The door opens onto a long flight of steps leading down. A dark, foggy curtain blocks all sight and sound halfway down the steps--the edge of a private sanctum spell.
After passing through the fog, you can see that a metal platform built into the ice rises fifteen feet high to the west, a ladder leading up to it. A control panel built into the machinery beneath the platform houses a complex set of buttons and switches. Above, a huge screen occupies most of the wall. A pallid male verthani in a dark business suit stands on the platform and spreads his arms in welcome.
“We meet again,” Kaeon Rhyse announces. His protruding, jet-black eyes and crazed grin give his face the appearance of a mask. “These are my associates.” He gestures to indicate two muscular female verthani standing to either side of him. Their armor is cut to expose parts of their scarred flesh. Burns on their chests form the shape of humanoid skulls with chains strung through the eye sockets. Their faces are mangled by ritual scarification, and piercings through the bridges of their nose, cheeks, and foreheads stretch their skin to reveal open wounds. A blade is grafted to each verthani’s left arm at the elbow.
“I used to believe that poverty was the scourge of the galaxy, that overcoming it would create better worlds for everyone. Dr. Gragant showed me the truth. I now know that pain is the real enemy. Pain is a plague that preys on both the rich and poor.” Kaeon indicates the screen behind him. Images of amputees, starving children, wounded soldiers, and sick elderly humanoids punctuate his words. “Some people may be able to cheat death, but pain is inescapable. It is always with us. Dr. Gragant worked for years to eliminate pain, and she failed, until her transformation brought her enlightenment. The only way to conquer pain is to change our perception of it. That is the gift she offers us. Will you accept?”
As you listen to Kaeon's speech, you experience an inner conflict as voices whisper to you from the shadows, reinforcing the verthani's message.
Damon rocks back and forth slightly as Kaeon monologues, eyes fixed and claws twitching.
Stefani shakes off the whispers attempting to influence her - barely.
"You forget that pain is also a warning - a warning that you're doing something wrong. If you turn it into something enjoyable then you're on a quick path to self destruction. But if you're getting off on pain then I'll gladly give you some to consider."
She lifts her weapon and gets a good grip with the bipod. She then fires at Rhyse.
Before passing through the curtain of darkness, Shabad has the group hold up long enough for her to cast Lesser Resistant Armor to provide her with extra resistance to kinetic attacks.
Then she summons an angel, a winged form made of living light that is vaguely humanoid in shape. It carries an sword of light and flies rather than walks once in the room.
When Kaeon offers them a chance to transform pain into pleasure, Shabad doesn't even hear the whispers, so set is her will on stopping this abomination. She draws her sheet lightning pistol and calls her semi-automatic pistol to her other hand.
As Stefani raises her weapon, Kaeon sighs. "So be it!"
Kaeon dodges Stefani's disintegrator blast!
Damon's eyes bulge as his body shakes from top to bottom. "Nnnn... Nnnn... NOOOOO!" He thrusts an accusing claw towards Kaeon. "I'm not your puppet, you disgusting slab of delusion!"
Damon raises his rifle and launches a wave of plasma.
Recorva is able to keep her mind free of Kaeon's influence.
Once the fighting breaks out, Recorva takes aim at the nearest of the two female verthani, firing a single shot at her. She then concentrates on sending information to Rain.
Rain steps up towards the nearest of the two Verthani women, taking a defensive stance as he swings his hammer at her once.
Stefani's blast destroys Kaeon's mirror image. Damon and Rain miss the other verthani, but Recorva scours one with laser fire.
Kaeon flips a switch on the control panel behind him, and with a loud humming noise, a visible wave of powerful magical energy washes over the bunker! There are no obvious effects of the magic. He then pulls a grenade from his belt and channels magical power into it, causing it glow yellow and crackle with energy.
The two verthani raise their arms and channel negative energy, sending it washing over you all!
Stefani grunts against the wave of negative energy, but remains steady and begins firing at the suit in earnest.
Shabad:
DC 16 vs. 22 damage; so takes 11
DC 16 vs. 13 damage; so takes 6
Summoned Angel:
DC 16 vs. 22 damage; so takes 23
DC 16 vs. 13 damage; so takes 6
Shabad's summoned angel glares with righteous zeal at the enemies and flies at Kaeon, attacking him with her sword of light.
Shabad takes a shot at Kaeon around Stefani and the angel with her Semi-automatic pistol.
She misses, causing her to let slip some purple expletives. She is worried the others will put him down before she puts a slug in him.
The pulse of energy worries her, however. She glances down the hall, wary he may have summoned creatures from the shadow plane as he apparently did with the shadow mastiffs.
Damon holds his ground against the waves of negative energy, responding with a wave of roiling plasma.
Recorva is unable to resist the waves of negative energy sent out by the two verthani women. In return, she fires a laser shot at the same one that she had fired at previously.
Rain continues to hold his ground against the Verthani in front of him, swinging at her twice while maintaining a defensive posture.
Summoned Angel
NPC sheet
EAC 14; KAC 16
Hp: 17/40
She is currently flying 10 ft above the others, which I assume keeps her in melee range.
Shabad and her summoned angel attack Kaeon but neither one hits. Damon blasts both of the verthani acolytes with his microfusion rifle. Stefani lands one hit on Kaeon with her disintegrator rifle, though he seems somewhat resistant to the acid damage. Recorva blasts the more wounded of the verthani while Rain misses again.
Kaeon throws his grenade, which explodes in an icy blast and unleashes the magic stored within, flooding Stefani's body with electricity! The verthani women are unfazed by the cold, and they attack Damon with their arm-blades, landing one hit!
The soldier manages to avoid the majority of the effects and in spite of the enemy's demonstrated resistance to her weapon, she continues to fire at him.
Recorva is unable to dodge out of the way of the grenade, and feels the resulting frost coat her body. She reaches over to Rain, quickly fiddling with his Storm Hammer in a way to allow more power to be put into each attack made with the weapon.
Rain is able to dodge out of the way of the worst of the blast. Activating his power core to give a slight burst of extra power for a short time, he swings his hammer twice at the nearest verthani. For the moment he adapts a more aggressive strategy.
Shabad normally doesn't notice cold but this gets through her well insulated body and makes it all she can manage to pull the trigger of her semi-automatic.
Shabad isn't sure if Kaeon has a heart, but she feels certain her bullet came close to hitting where it should be.
Summoned Angel
The angel's brilliant sword swings down from above on Kaeon.
Summoned Angel
EAC 14; KAC 16
Hp: 17/40
The verthani manage to pierce Damon's armor, but the solar energy clinging to the vesk rebuffs Kaeon's grenade entirely. The vesk growls, "enough playing, Kaeon! We came here to stop you, and you are going to STOP!"
With Damonkayo's final word, a wave of distortion rolls forward, warping time itself.
Shabad scores a critical hit on Kaeon, but even as the bullet sinks into his chest, shadows surround the wound. One of the verthan women grunts and recoils as if she were shot as well as Kaeon siphons some of the injury to her! Kaeon then just barely manages to block the angel's sword with the sleeve of his carbon-reinforced business suit.
One of the verthani women succumbs to Damon's time dilation. Stefani shoots Kaeon twice, causing him to growl in pain. Rain smashes his chosen foe twice with his hammer.
Kaeon draws his semi-auto pistol and fires on Shabad! Meanwhile, his bodyguards attack Damon and Rain with their blades.
The bullet heading for Shabad slows as it gets within centimeters of her armor as the technomancer spell she applied to her armor steals some of the slug's momentum.
Shabad wants to send an arcing surge at Kaeon and his flunkies, but Stefani is the way. She is about to fire another round at Kaeon when she remembers that Damon's armor has a jet pack. She powers it on and rises until she is above (and slightly behind) Stefani and sets off a bright snake of electricity that drives at the Verthani between and on through her to Kaeon.
DC 19 reflex save for half damage
"Have some pain, Kaeon! Just a small cover charge!" Shabad deadpans.
As the lightning crackles, the angel improves on her last near miss with another slice of her sword of light.
Angel Stats
Hp: 17/40
EAC 14; KAC 16
Fort +7; Ref +5; Will +2; +4 vs. Poison
Resistances Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire 3
Recorva takes a quick shot at the nearest of the two verthani women, before focusing on Rain's actions for the moment.
Rain will swing at the same individual that he had been targeting.
Stefani continues to fire at the suit.
Out of quips for the moment, Damon will lash out of one of the vethani women with knee and tail.
The verthani woman dodges Shabad's lightning blast, but Kaeon Rhyse takes the full brunt of it, groaning in pain as his body jerks spasmodically. The summoned angel slices into him, and it's clear that the technomancer is now badly hurt!
Stefani blasts him once, and it's enough to put him over the edge. He seems to sag into himself as his body crumples and he falls! The soldier shifts her aim to the remaining bodyguards, and between her, Recorva, Damon, and Rain, you dispatch them in quick succession!
Just to satisfy her own sense of annoyance, Stefani stands over the man's body and fires another blast of energy into his chest.
"Never can be too sure," she says with a shrug.
Damon slumps on the ground, scrubbing his eyes his the heels of his hands.
"It's done. Let's grab a breather and then we can nuke this place."
As Kaeon passes, Shabad mutters, "That's for spoiling our resort vacation!" To the group she says, "Mission accomplished ... I hope. I think we can rest and then work our way back out, dealing with any remaining former employees. I also want to make sure I have plenty of documentation of what was done here. No one who supported this place should get away with anything if charges can be brought and assets seized for reparations."
She rests with the rest, looking over the equipment of the enemy with casual interest. But once rested, she examines the control panel that Kaeon used that sent the weird pulse of ... something through the area.
Edit: Shabad will see if there's anything in Kaeon's secret compartment in his prosthetic arm.
Her heart is not in the process, however, perhaps suffering from burn-out after the intense infiltration.
Kaeon does not have anything in his arm's secret compartment. Shabad is unable to determine anything more about the control panel.
You head back up to the black site's first level to explore the remaining labs. Returning first to the medical lab where the animated corpse of Dr. Qindor labors, you find that the doctor's body has been possessed by an undead shade. The corpse falls inert as the shade emerges to fight you, but you make quick work of it. Searching the lab uncovers four doses of sprayflesh, two doses of tier 2 analgesic, four mk 3 serums of healing, two serums of enhancement (scientist), and two serums of enhancement (sensate).
The next lab has a ten-foot-tall steel cylindrical machine in the center of the room, connected by clear plastic wire casings to three mesh cages to the east, south, and west. Inside each cage, rabbits huddle in a layer of sawdust, their white coats marred by partially healed wounds caked with dried blood. Mechanical bladed arms are poised above each cage.
Shabad recognizes the machine as a large mass spectrometer, but like none she has ever seen before. It radiates a strong magical aura. Further examination reveals that the device analyzes and is powered by the suffering of the caged rabbits. When the device is activated, the bladed arms descend to deliver shallow, painful cuts to the rabbits. You find two shadow orbs in this laboratory.
The only other lab of interest in this area is an armor research lab. Sheets of transparent material are stacked in the southwest corner of this laboratory, while two metal tables to the north and south display incomplete suits of armor crafted from the same material. A translucent suit streaked with red and purple markings is suspended in a display case affixed to the eastern wall.
Shabad recognizes the sheets of material as graphene, an allotrope of carbon that is more than 100 times stronger than steel. Graphene is also flexible, transparent, highly conductive, and impermeable to most gases and liquids. The prototype on display is a hybrid suit of light armor woven from isolated graphene fibers. Upon closer inspection, you see that it has a tiny computer built into its retractable helmet, and a row of razor-sharp needles line the left sleeve of the armor at the wrist.
"Doc? What the hell is this thing? Damon runs a hand down the outside of the armor, tapping the woven graphene surface.
With a successful DC 35 Computers check, you can reprogram the artificial personality, erasing its masochistic tendencies. This removes the curse effect and the wearer’s pain dependency, but also removes the morale bonus the wearer gains after scoring a critical hit.
Shabad will try to figure out a way to put the rabbits out of their misery, unless she thinks they could survive if released into the wild. She has enough experience with biology experiments that she should know how to euthanize them quickly and relatively painlessly. She documents the technology with her video cam to add to the crimes the tech company may be charged with.
She likewise documents the other experimental work.
She examines the armor and declares that it is made of graphene and describes its properties. When asked by Damon about how the armor works, she recognizes some elements of AI but can't figure out how well it works relative to other types of armor. But when she looks at it with her aura goggles and magical detection spells, she wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.
"Maybe Recorva can figure out more of how it works from an engineering point of view. But I don't advise putting it on. It's cursed. It will make you addicted to pain. I think we all can agree that is not a good idea. I think I could reprogram it to remove the pain dependency. It would normally give a boost when you get a good attack in, but that would be lost in the reprogramming effort. But it would render the armor wearable, once the little needles are removed."
Assuming Damon might want to keep the armor without the curse, she attempts the reprogramming.
Her first attempt ends in failure.
Shabad tinkers with the armor for quite some time. Eventually, she is able to reprogram the AI to make it safe to wear.
Unfortunately, the remaining employees of the lab are too corrupted by the shadow signal's curse to be rehabilitated. Putting them out of their misery is likely the best kindness you can pay them.
When you emerge from the black site, you discover that your ship is missing from the landing pad! It doesn't respond to any attempts to communicate with it. It seems your only recourse is to begin the trek out of the Klebani Range of mountains on foot.
Less than an hour later, you come across what appears to be an abandoned village. All indications point to this village being in the Ring of Nations. Continuing on your way, you reach a ruined city draped in shadows a little over an hour later. You recognize it as Cuvacara, but it is far more empty and desolate than you left it.
It should have taken much longer to walk to Cuvacara than it did. You should also have been able to see the sun by this point.
That is when Shabad comes to a terrible realization. When Kaeon Rhyse activated that control panel, he must have triggered a surge of planar energy from the particle accelerator. You have been transported to the Shadow Plane, with no apparent way back home...
The Shadow Plane lacks color, but its close approximation of the Material Plane makes the differences all the more stark. Wandering through the shadow version of Cuvacara is melancholy and disorienting. It is eerie, quiet, and illuminated by a dim ambient light that does more to deepen the shadows than to illuminate any open spaces. Tall buildings throw dark, long shadows as black as the Abyss, and other strange shadows seem to move between the many pools of darkness with no apparent physical object to define their source. Distant whispers of an indeterminate language hang in the air.
The bullet trains that normally traverse the city are silent and unmoving, making it difficul to reach the Cuvacaran spaceport, but from the shore, you can see no vessels approaching or leaving the area. In fact, the landing pads and hangars appear to be completely bereft of starships. However, there seem to be signs of life nearby in the private residential district known in Cuvacara as the Gloaming...
"Well isn't that just wonderful," Stefani grumbles. "We're stuck on the shadow plane." Her complaining lacks her normal intensity, though. Like the rest of her emotions lately, Stefani just doesn't seem to feel her anger as much as she should.
"Let's go see if someone there knows how to get out of this place," she says, gesturing towards the sounds of living beings.
"I don't think we're in Verces any more."
As the realization dawns, so to speak, that the adventure is not over and a hot spa treatment is not going to happen, Shabad grumbles, "Note to self: when we get back home, hire the best lawyers and sue the scthick out of Pendumbra corporation. They owe us big time."
Damon squints at the gloomy sky, idly fidgeting with his rifle.
"Hmph."
What seemed to be writhing columns of shadows turn out to be tendrils of smoke rising between the dark houses of the Gloaming. Approaching that area, you first arrive in one of the neighborhood’s open parks, though much of the greenery is gray and stunted. Several humanoid figures in dark cloaks move through the central area, while several small generators smoke as they provide power to many of the nearby luxurious houses and a handful of lights that attempt to illuminate the area.
It doesn't take long before a pair of guards approach, weapons drawn. These tall humanoids have pale skin and yellow eyes, and their lithe bodies seem to bled in and out of the darkness effortlessly. These are kayals, also known as fetchlings.
"What is your business here?" they demand.