In an attempt to add even more holes to the thing's body, Stefani lifts her weapon and braces it before firing.
Shabad points at the monster. Shodrav, 12 o-clock! Evil--pure and simple from the shadow dimension! she yells. "Bright light is prescribed by Dr. Freebairn."
To emphasize her point, she shines her miniature sun lamp at it, calls her semi-automatic to her hand, and fires. The pistol sends out a tightly focused beam of light and electricity that shrouds the bullet as it flies at the target, the result of her recently added tritidair fusion.
Half damage is Piercing Half Electricity.
Recorva will aim her rifle up at the creature above the opening of the gate, letting loose a single shot once she has lined it up.
She then looks at Rain and sends him some mental commands to enable him to better get up towards this creature.
Looking up at the creature clinging to the rock face, Rain will then quickly walk over to the rocky wall. As he does, his legs reorient to walk along the wall itself, attached to it through small gravitic generators along the bottom of his feet. Moving somewhat slower than he does on level terrain, Rain still fairly rapidly works his way up towards the Shodrav.
Recorva scores a hit on the shodrav with her rifle as Rain clambers up the cliff to get to the creature. Shabad shines her minitaure sun in the creatures eyes, momentarily blinding it, but she misses with her shot. Stefani lands a good hit with her rifle, and Damon jets up to attack with his shadow chains.
The creature blindly lashes out, trying to bite the vesk. It misses!
More blasts from Stefani's weapon follow.
Shabad grits her teeth and fires two quick shots, hoping to take advantage of the creature's temporary blindness. The first one is close and allows her to correct her aim on her second shot.
Recorva will take another shot at the three-eyed creature as it is blinded by Shabad's miniature sun.
Clinging to the wall adjacent to their enemy, Rain will take two quick swings at it with his Storm Hammer, electricity sparking off of it with each swing.
Though Rain misses, Shabad scores a critical hit on the shodrav! Recorva and Stefani both hit as well, and the strange beast falls from the cliffside, smoke rising from numerous holes in its body.
A few seconds later, the gate finally finishes opening. Dim illumination from an unknown source casts shifting, unsettling patterns on the stone floor of this chamber, while the curved metal panels forming the walls and the ceiling seem distant, ephemeral, and unnatural, as if struggling to hold their shape. A smaller tunnel heads west, sealed by a smaller white door.
Shabad keeps her sun lamp on in hopes it can cancel out some of the disorienting shadows. She vows to take a vacation at the Burning Archipelago, a place with no shadows.
As she moves into the tunnel, she gets a strange sensation that makes her skin crawl. She has studied this situation but this is the first time she has experienced it.
"This area is ... it's hard to explain ... it's as if some powerful being has brought together aspects of the planar material and some kind of energy. I guess the upshot is don't necessarily trust your senses. Keep your emotions in check. Our past experiences with shadow corruptions will probably make us vulnerable to ... I'd hate to speculate. Just be ready for anything."
Gathering your wits about you, you head through the door to the west. This chamber looks like a filthy hospital room. The tiles of the walls and floor are cracked and broken, stained with blood and various fluids. A foul medicinal smell hangs in the air, and two badly damaged medical devices flank a central hospital bed, where a heavy white sheet conceals a misshapen lump. The machines spark, smoke, and leak fluids in shallow puddles.
Various images projected on the walls show a teenage human girl. She often appears calm, but occasionally, the images show her weeping uncontrollably or laughing nervously. A female voice fills the room over a static-filled broadcast, chanting in a cold, disassociated manner, “Monday—two blue pills. Tuesday—the red ones. Wednesday—both red and blue. Thursday—just the green. Friday—the injection. Saturday collect a sample. Sunday—holiday,” before beginning again.
Standing on the north side of the table between two statues is a figure that could almost be mistaken for human at first, though its featureless, pitted face and insectile wings quickly dismiss that assumption. It is bent over a book that it studies in detail, tracing the writing with a claw, but as you enter the room, it turns towards you and clacks its mandibles aggressively. "Fresh memories for the taking..." it hisses!
Shabad recognizes the creatures, but before she has a chance to share anything, the battle begins.
"Good. Something else to shoot," Stefeni says, steadying her weapon and loosing a single shot.
Recorva will move into the room, heading towards the corner to the left of the door in order to stay out of the way of the others. Shifting to face the insectile-looking creature, she will aim at it with her rifle. As the charge in her rifle builds up, she holds it back from firing for an extra second or two to allow more energy to build up.
Rain will move up towards the creature, hammer ready to be swung at it. He is unable to actually do so for the time being however.
Damon moves in to attack, but he misses with his shadow chains. Stefani and Recorva both score hits on the strange being!
The creature shrieks and claws at Damon! The vesk narrowly avoids the strike.
Shabad shouts a warning before casting a spell. "That's a mementor! They steal memories. Hit it from a distance if you can."
Shabad then begins to summon an inevitable to fight the fey embodiment of the horrors of memory loss.
A large mechanical construct appears on the far side of the creature from Damon, immediately attacking the mementor with a punch.
"Hopefully it won't have any affect on Rain." Recorva looks down her rifle at the Mementor, trying to guage where best to shoot it before firing off a single shot.
Standing next to the insectile creature, Rain's hammer begins sparking with electricity as he brings it around to swing at it.
Shabad shouts a warning before casting a spell. "That's a mementor! They steal memories. Hit it from a distance if you can."
"That's always the plan, Doc," Stefani says as she begins firing in earnest.
Shabad conjures an inevitable that appears and punches the mementor. Recorva and Rain both miss the monster, but Stefani lands two good hits with her rifle. Damon misses again with his chains.
The fey creature shrieks and tries to claw Damon again, but once more the solarian's armor keeps him safe from harm!
The inevitable continues to punch at the mememtor.
Shabad steps up next to Recorva, her semi-automatic pistol appearing in her hand. She points her sun lamp and the pistol at the strange fey and squeezes off a shot, the tritidair fusion bathing the battle in light. The air crackles with electricity as the slug flies across the room.
damage is half Piercing | Half Electricity.
Bright Special Property: Attacks with bright weapons illuminate the area within 20 feet of your target for 1 round following the attack, increasing the illumination level by one step, to a maximum of normal light.
Stefani squints against the bright light the doctor is generating, but she continues to fire at the enemy.
Calmly aiming at the shrieking creature, Recorva will fire off a singular shot from her rifle at it.
Rain will swing twice at the mementor, doing his best to hit it with his electrified hammer. However, his first of his swings goes wide, and the second is close but still misses the creature.
Stefani lands two good shots while Shabad shoots the mementor as well. While Recorva and Rain miss, Damon scores a critical hit, tearing the fey apart with his chains!
As the mementor dies, the boardroom table splinters and breaks in half, and the statues deteriorate into piles of rusty iron flakes in the blink of an eye.
The book the mementor was consulting is a detailed history of Dr. Gragant’s life and a blueprint of sorts for these rooms, though it is written in a shorthand of arcane formulae unique to this mementor. The book’s leather cover is warm to the touch, as if the object were alive. The pages are made out of a material almost as thin as spider webs, but they can still hold the unusual ink that seems to squirm in the dim light.
As the battle ends, Shabad asks if anyone was hurt?
Shabad has the spell Comprehend Languages active for 24 hours, so after looking at the text a few minutes she says, "This looks like it will take a while to read. What do you all think? Should we take the time to go through it? It's possible after all that study I might not be able to make sense of it all. It might contain important clues to the way this place is constructed and also the bad Doctor's history."
Shabad studies the strange text for a bit. Then she says, "I think I can learn something important from this. It will take a while. Rest if you need to and keep watch."
Shabad sits with her back to a wall, resting the book on her lap. She makes notes in a text file on her computer using her data jack. She pages through the book reading every line first. Then she begins to decode the strange text, gradually figuring out the content. She writes as much of a translation as she can and saves it before announcing her findings.
Stefani simply grunts and finds a reasonably comfortable spot to rest while the doctor examines the tome. She occupies herself by breaking down and cleaning her weapon. No other sounds come from her other than the scraping of contacts as she cleans oxidation from them.
The book turns out to be a detailed history of the life of Doctor Gragant and a blueprint of sorts for this series of rooms you find yourselves in now. Likely, the rest of the complex will reflect the woman's pain and personal tragedies.
This goal eventually led Lestana Gragant down a dark and twisted path. After she spent her early career performing medical research without producing practical applications, her financing dried up. But before she could declare her life’s work a failure, she was approached by a corporation called Eclipse Innovations, which was looking for new ways to withstand the attacks of the Swarm. Eclipse set up a facility for Dr. Gragant in a remote asteroid in the Diaspora that was the site of a former mining operation, tasking her with creating a method to immunize soldiers against pain.
As the years passed, Dr. Gragant made no further progress, and as pressure from Eclipse’s board of directors mounted, she began to grow desperate. She turned to mysticism as her experiments slid into amorality. She and her team performed unspeakable atrocities—torture, vivisection, and prolonged death—on unwilling subjects, all in search of an elusive answer.
One day while in a melancholy humor, Dr. Gragant devised a thought experiment: Instead of blocking or eliminating pain, what if it could be transformed into another experience? If pain could become something the body craved rather than feared—pain perceived as pleasure—such a procedure would serve the same purpose as an inoculation. Dr. Gragant threw herself into this new avenue of research, using some of the arcane techniques she had recently learned. She was certain she was on the right track, but Eclipse’s patience had grown thin and the corporation threatened to shut down the project if it didn’t produce concrete results. Dr. Gragant’s understanding of sensory transformation and the magical techniques involved were still in their infancy, but the fear of failure had soaked into her consciousness, driving her to recklessly test her theories on the subject she knew best: her own body. The procedure failed catastrophically and tore a rift in reality, transforming Dr. Gragant into a terrible fiend and trapping her on the Shadow Plane while killing everyone else on the asteroid.
As far as Eclipse Innovations knew, a massive explosion in Dr. Gragant’s facility resulted merely in a devastating loss of life. The corporation shuttered the project and moved on, but Dr. Gragant continued her experiments on the Shadow Plane for the next 13 years. She continued to alter her own physiology, which she soon discovered was connected to a mote of shadow energy. She also attracted the attention of several Shadow Plane denizens, including a few velstracs, who helped her learn to blend pain and pleasure until she could no longer tell the difference.
In addition, she fostered her connection to the shadow mote, which allowed her to sense and affect living creatures at nearby locations on the Material Plane. Using her knowledge of engineering, she crafted a machine around the mote to amplify this power. Similar to a subauditory signal, the psychic energy the mote projected onto the Material Plane could subtly affect the portions of a subject’s brain that experience pain and pleasure, warping these sensations until the victim experiences unreasonable urges to inflict pain on themself and others.
Over the years, Dr. Gragant affected multiple Material Plane victims with her shadow signal, all the while refining her techniques and continuing her experiments. She came to believe that she had solved the question that plagued her all her life, and that it was her duty to share the answer with the galaxy. Her crusade began when a company built a luxury resort on the asteroid that used to hold her research facility. Eventually, she warped the mind of a visiting Eclipse Innovations executive named Kaeon Rhyse, making him her most loyal acolyte. The two worked to take over the corporation and set up the first test of Dr. Gragant’s shadow signal on a wider basis: the corruption of all the resort’s guests and staff at once.
Though a few beings escaped New Elysium, Dr. Gragant felt the test was a success. The beings thwarted a similar procedure using Eclipse’s Penumbra app on Verces, where they also put an end to Kaeon Rhyse, but Dr. Gragant doesn’t give up easily. She is already plotting other means of bringing her message of pain as pleasure to the galaxy..
Shabad reads the results of her research to her team. "So it appears this place is some kind of material manifestation of Gregant's consciousness, memories, hopes, and fears. It's the last place any of us wants to be but all the folks back there in the normal world are depending on us to stop this b**$#. So, break's over. Lock and load. Let's rock 'n' roll! We're here to kick a$$ and chew bubble gum; and we're all out of bubblegum. Insert your favorite action Tri-D cliché here. Let's end this."
You exit the boardroom and step into the next chamber. This chamber looks like a filthy hospital room. The tiles of the walls and floor are cracked and broken, stained with blood and various fluids. A foul medicinal smell hangs in the air, and two badly damaged medical devices flank a central hospital bed, where a heavy white sheet conceals a misshapen lump. The machines spark, smoke, and leak fluids in shallow puddles. Various images projected on the walls show a teenage human girl. She often appears calm, but occasionally, the images show her weeping uncontrollably or laughing nervously. A female voice fills the room over a static-filled broadcast, chanting in a cold, disassociated manner, “Monday—two blue pills. Tuesday—the red ones. Wednesday—both red and blue. Thursday—just the green. Friday—the injection. Saturday—collect a sample. Sunday—holiday,” before beginning again.
A few moments after you enter this room, the girl’s voice turns to an angry shout: “No more doctors, no more procedures, no more pain!” The medical devices emit a cacophony of high-pitched beeps and electronic feedback, and the creature on the bed sits up, revealing its horrid form.
The Patient is a composite creature, looking like two grotesque adult humanoids in tattered hospital gowns were fused together, back to back, their skin cracked and flaking like dried chalk. Bones protrude from the skin of the limbs, their eyes burn with an inner light, and smoke leaks from their mouths!
"That ... that's just wrong on so many levels," Stefani says as she steadies her weapon and fires at it.
"Agreed. Let's end this thing quickly." Recorva will aim her rifle at the grotesque creature, firing off a pair of rapid shots at it in order to try and do as much potential damage to it as possible.
Rain will quickly move into engagement with the creature. Not able to attack immediately, he will do his best to assist the group by setting up a potential flanking position for someone to take. Scuttling forward on his four legs, he moves in a way that will likely avoid giving the creature the change to attack him.
Shabad is taken aback by yet another grotesquerie. Just when she thinks she has seen the worst this shadow plane has to offer, something tops it. She is therefore slow to react. Fortunately her friends are more focused and battle ready.
Stefani lands a hit on the bizarre monsters, while Recorva sets it ablaze with a critical blast! Rain move to flank the thing as Damon rushes it with his shadow chains. The monster tries to retaliate but the vesk's armor absorbs the impacts of its strikes.
The soldier continues to fire at the abomination as her weapon heats up.
Shabad angles across the room to get a clear shot at the monster. Other than fear, the only emotion she feels is a desire to end the creature's pain. She hopes the afterlife will be kinder to these victims of Dr. Gregant than this life has been. She draws her sheet lightning pistol and sends a jolt the the creature, hoping it might disrupt it.
Fortunately, despite its bizarre appearance, the creature doesn't prove to be too tough. Stefani blasts it three times, disintegrating it to ash!
When the Patient is destroyed, the room suffers a power failure. The girl in the images screams in agony, and the room is plunged into darkness. When light returns, the room contains only the emaciated remains of two humans stitched together on an old, rusting hospital bed, all wrapped together in chains and barbed wire.
Stefeni narrows her eyes in suspicion. "That was way too easy," she says, not lowering her weapon. "Can anyone detect anything?" She continues to look around the room expecting any moment for something else to leap out at them.
Shabad keeps her pistol pointed where she is looking and stays away from the strange medical machines. She casts detect magic and looks around after the effect has matured.
Then she remembers the Aura Goggles she picked up what seems like a lifetime ago. She puts them on but does not activate the use of arcane sight effect until she was close to finding Gregant.
"I think that was related to the doctor's childhood, when her parents were suffering pain as doctors tried to treat terminal conditions that eventually claimed their lives. I think that voice we heard saying 'No more shots,' and all that was the child Gregant. I don't think any of this was clearly planned out, so I wouldn't read too much into the fact that we blast that thing to bits before it could hurt us."
"Anyone need a rest or healing?" She looked at RAIN and asked Recorva, "Does RAIN need any mending? He should be at full strength for the last few fights. I can casting mending spells if need be."
"So all this is because Mommy and Daddy died in pain?" Stefani says, her lack of empathy obvious. "Boo-f#$%ing-hoo." She rolls her eyes. "Just let me know when we're ready to move on."
With Recorva and RAIN ready to proceed, you head into the next room. Passing through into this room is like walking into an explosion in a laboratory frozen in time. Shattered glass vials and liquid hang in midair and arcs of electricity flicker from exploding machines. A flurry of half-burned papers covered in diagrams and formulae are suspended throughout the laboratory. The smell of ozone floods the room, and a constant, low rumble assaults the ears.
A haggard and mutilated figure stands in the middle of the room, its body wounded and bleeding from paper-thin cuts, its coat smoking from acid or chemical burns, and its arms run through with scalpels and glass. The woamn turns towards you with fury in her eyes. "My calculations were perfect! This must all be your fault! You sabotaged my research on the cusp of my success! You will suffer for your audacity!"
"More visions?" Stefani questions as she steadies her weapon. "Or is this actually her?"
"I don't think it matters all that much. She'll try to kill us either way." Recorva will level her rifle at the furious woman, letting loose a single shot at her before sending computational power to Rain.
Rain will rush forward to get into melee with the woman here, hammer sparking with electricity as he brings it down in an overhead swing.
The woman grunts and rocks as Recorva and Stefani blast her and Rain delivers a powerful hammer blow. A crackling field of mystical energy springs up around the woman, slowing time to a crawl, and she reaches out to touch Rain to try and overload his systems.
Meanwhile, one of the pieces of malfunctioning scientific equipment floating in midair behind the docot begins to emit painful jolts of electricity.