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Deep within the Archives of Absalom's Grand Lodge there is a particularly well warded room where the Society stores one of its greatest treasures, the Hao Jin Tapestry. Rumors abound among the younger Pathfinders at the Lodge about what powers this strange artifact has, with the most far fetched rumor being the most common, that the Tapestry is a portal to vast worlds. What you do know is that your being asked to summoned to the room where the Tapestry being held can be taken as a sign that your reputation within the Pathfinder Society is rising and that the leadership are starting to see you as an agent that can be trusted to get things done.
A five-by-seven-foot tapestry hangs on the wall, surrounded by a series of platforms and ladders to allow a close view of any spot upon it. The room is otherwise empty, save for the Pathfinder Society’s Master of Spells, Aram Zey, who paces impatiently before the Hao Jin Tapestry, glancing up as the door creaks open.
“Thank you for your quick arrival, Pathfinders,” Zey says curtly, speaking without making eye contact, as though his mind is moving faster than his mouth. As he continues his focused pacing, he gestures toward the tapestry.
“As I’m sure you know, we recently came into possession of this wonder behind me—the Hao Jin Tapestry—by winning the Ruby Phoenix Tournament in distant Goka. Within this piece of fabric lies an entire world in which one of Golarion’s greatest magicians placed treasures and mysteries beyond imagining. And it was supposed to be ours alone. This promise of exclusive access was made a lie, however, when the Aspis Consortium found a way into Hao Jin’s astral vault that bypassed the tapestry altogether, and Aspis agents are now busy stealing whatever they can move, hoping we will act too slowly to protect our winnings. Fortunately, a recent mission into the tapestry managed to uncover a clue about a possible Aspis base within the tapestry. That is your destination.
“The camp, interestingly, is within a great stone temple complex uprooted from the Vudran jungle many centuries ago by the sorceress herself. Since her disappearance, that part of the tapestry has been encased in a massive glacier. This temple—dedicated to a Vudran monkey-god, we believe—could prove enlightening on its own, notwithstanding the Aspis presence there. It’s a grim thought imagining what the Consortium has done to the place, but apparently more than three-quarters of it is still protected by the glacier, so we can still salvage a great deal.
“Vanaras—the simian humanoids responsible for constructing this temple—are great builders, and this temple is representative of the huge complexes that once graced the Vimada Forest before their wars with men and the rise of Khiben-Sald. It’s a representation of the cosmos, really, a series of nested squares with symbolic shrine-mountains all directed toward great Bahmenu, the mountain birthplace of the god Ragdya and, the vanaras believe, the center of the universe. This symmetry may serve you well, since it will help you predict the layout and functions of the temple as you make your way around it. Every corner of the temple will be fitted with a small shrine, all facing the symbolic mountain.
“Even an abandoned temple is a holy place to the vanaras, as it is to most of us Vudrani as well, and we hope you respect that fact. If you can save the sanctuary from the insolence of the gods-damned Aspis, it may draw the mirthful and enlightened eye of Ragdya himself upon our Society.”
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The handsome, burly nagaji listens intently to Aram Zey's briefing, the tip of his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth as he struggles to maintain his focus.
"So, we take this tapestry and use it as insulation to keep out the Aspis from this sanctuary? So, where's the sanctuary? And how can this small rug insulate a whole santuary? Is it a magic rug? Yagaji can sometimes make magic things work...they are so interesting. Does the rug make magic insulation, or does it grow really large and then it can cover the whole sanctuary? And do we have to clear off all the ice from the sanctuary? Do we do that before or after we insulate it? And who's Ragdya?"
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Upon seeing Yagaji, Kala is obviously impressed. He's certainly strong, and his reptilian form only adds to his charismatic appearance. However, as soon as he opens his mouth to speak, incredulity sweeps across her face. How can he be so daft? Was he dropped on his head too many times?
She is so distracted by his line of questions that for a few moments she completely loses track of why she is here.
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Oooh! New smell! What is it? Stinky the wolverine, who had padded into the room obediently behind Kala, cautiously approaches the nagaji. Glancing up at Kala, whose body language and scent indicate that she is at ease, he gets right down to business. With much snuffing and sniffing, Stinky determines that, yup, this creature is both man and lizard. Huh. Interesting.
Curiosity satisfied, he plops down onto his hind end at Kala's feet and begins to furiously scratch an itch behind his ear. He makes a mental note of the ladders along the wall for when he needs to pee later.
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Lord Balrog listens to the briefing with mild impatience.
"Yes, yes, respect the holy places. Is it disrespectful to shed Aspis blood in the temple? What if I just whip them really hard? I guess that would shed blood too..."
The ifrit paces, cracking his whip now and then. He stops and concentrates for a moment, and violet flames flicker up and down its length.
Still, he seems to pay close attention to the details about the cosmic significance of the temple. Zarta will probably want to know this...
Lord Balrog shows greater annoyance when the Nagaji speaks. Who can believe that a society of explorers would have use for such a dullard?
"Hey Nagaji, don't worry about it, we'll handle the magic stuff."
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Snapping back to focus, Kala nods at the ifrit's question about bloodshed and asks: "Yeah, and are we supposed to look for how they got in there? Do we retrieve any items too, or would that be considered looting the temple? You gave us some good history and stuff, but we need to know what exactly we're supposed to do in there." She glances at the tapestry with a dubious, somewhat suspicious expression. How do you "go into" a hanging rug? I don't like this...
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Aram Zay doesn't look up from the book he is writing in as Yagajimoro peppers him with questions, but he begins writing faster and his knuckles begin to visibly whiten as his grip on his quill tightens and his hands start to move furiously across the page. Suddenly he stops and lets out an extended sigh before murmuring, "The rest of you need to keep an eye on this one."
Looking up briefly at the Balrog, Aram Zay states, "Ragdya is sacred to the vanara people of course, but hardly anyone in the Inner Sea worships him. Some Vudrani farmers and woodsmen worship him also. He is a monkey faced god, so most human clerics dismiss him. He is still a god, so make what you will of that."
Clearly wanting to get back to his work, or to get out of this conversation, Aram Zay begins scribbling in his open book again. At Kala's question he flings his quill down on the table, spilling several drops of ink on the pages of the journal. He grunts with annoyance and then looks at Kala with a look of surprise.
"That's a surprisingly insightful question you have there. We have no idea how those thrice damned Aspis are getting in to the Tapestry. From everything we know, the only way in should be through the Tapestry itself. If you can capture one of them alive, maybe you can interrogate them."
"The Aspis are almost certainly looting the temple as we speak. You are not to damage anything in the temple, but if it makes sense to remove something for safekeeping, do so. But the Aspis agents themselves may have enough gear and treasure on themselves to satisfy what is surely an overwhelming innate desire to loot and pillage."
Aram Zay gives another long, petulant sigh and goes back to writing in his book.
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"Good day good people! Sorry for being late! My name is Nirion! What did I miss?"
Turning to the newcomer, Kala replies (with only a hint of annoyance at his tardiness): "Pretty much everything. So here's the deal. The Apsis found another way into a vault that is only supposed to be accessed from this tapestry. They're looting it. We gotta stop them. Hopefully take one alive so we can interrogate them. Maybe find how they got in and block it or something. Don't disturb the temple or the monkey god will be mad at you. (It'd probably be worse than that sounds.) We can grab a few things for safekeeping only." She turns to Aram Zay and queries: "That about it?"
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Having slipped in just behind Nirion, Lunevi quietly takes advantage of his quick introduction to try to, ah... Fly below the watch? Some of the phrases were still a bit strange to her. Still, she didn't want to further disrupt a meeting that was already underway. Her lateness was her own fault, after all.
That said, the task that they'd been called in for seemed to be... Strange. Pathfinders were clearly the correct response, then!
"How do we get in? Once we're in, how do we get back out?" she inquired, a bit concerned by the mechanics of the situation. "Is there anything specific we should be trying to safeguard? Or are we meant to do our best with the situation we find ourselves in?"
Well, they were more likely than not to try keeping their things safe, but there was no sense in not asking. Sometimes there were specifics that people forgot to mention!
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Aram Zay looks your group up and down. "Did all of you remember to pack your cold weather gear? None of you look like you're dressed for the weather down there. Go to the commissary and buy yourselves a thick set of gloves and a decent winter coat. It would be a shame if you all died from exposure before the Aspis have a chance to get to you."
"And to answer your question, whoever you are..." Aram Zay points to the tapestry with his quill. "I don't suppose any of you have traveled to a demi-plane before, huh? You just need to say the command word and touch the place where you want to go. When you get there you'll find that there is an eddy where you stepped through. Even that smelly, overgrown weasel of yours will have an eddy. When you want to leave, just find your own personal eddy and step through it. You'll have to use your own eddy, so don't forget where you entered in. Nothing could be clearer, right?
Now run off. Keep the Aspis from damaging the temple anymore than they already have. Try not to get killed. "
Aram Zay begins to loudly shuffle through a pile of papers, muttering to himself, "These rookies are going to be the death of me."
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Kala mumbles to herself: "I knew I shouldn't have gotten rid of my furs when I came down south!" With a deep intake of breath, she glances around at her (now more numerous) teammates with an air of decisiveness. Her face falls suddenly, and the word that she speaks next are intoned as a dirge. "All right, let's go shopping."
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Yagaji does not like the thought of traveling in the cold, but duty calls. He too, will purchase a cold weather outfit. On the way to the commissary, he leans in close to Kala, "So, we're each getting our own personal Eddy? is he like a servant, or a guide? And are they all named Eddie, or is that what they are called?"
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"I'm wondering much the same," Lunevi adds from further up, having caught the repetition of Eddy. "My common is good, but I'm not so sure what he means. Are there currents we're supposed to find ourselves within? Whirlpools?" When he'd made mention of the 'eddy', she'd though he meant some sort of twisting channel of water, but perhaps it was less one of water and more some sort of energy?
She picked out an outfit that looked appropriate to cold weather and briefly considered the furs, feeling the softness of a particularly luxurious looking piece. Ultimately, she decided against them, unable to justify the purchase without further information. Eyeing a thick winter blanket, she asked, "Do you think we'll be in the painting overnight? Should we bring extra rations?"
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"That's good thinking, Loon-eve-ie. I, too will purchase more trail rations...and a spare waterskin." He winks at the undine. "I just hope my Eddie is half as smart as you. I'm pretty good at defeating evil, but it helps to have someone around who can point me in the right direction. It's not always easy to find the evil. And if I find I try and walk around concentrating on detecting evil, it just leads to big headaches. In so many ways..."
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Aram Zay sighs, his voice heavy with exasperation and light on patience. "An eddy, and eddy...It's a whirlpool. You know, when a current hits an object, it creates a counter current...No, you're not going to under stand that..." Aram Zay's grits his teeth and swears under his breath. Then he begins to speak very loudly and very slowly.
"When you step through the portal and get to the other side, there is going to something swirly and shiny. About this big," he says, holding his hands about two feet apart. "When you're ready to go back, just step through it. The eddy will bring you back here. It'll make sense when you get there. Now, really, I think it's about time for you to all go through. I don't think further questions are going to be particularly productive at this point."
Aram Zay begins waving his hands, attempting to shew the group towards the tapestry.
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Kala's growing unease about this mission is interrupted by Yagajimoro's questioning. Wow. Oh my dog face, he's dumb. Hope he knows which end of his sword is the pointy one.
She replies to her teammates' questions as best she can, but the obviously arcane nature of the tapestry has put her on edge. "I don't know about all that mumbo jumbo. Don't think eddy is a person, though. I know what an eddy in the water looks like, so maybe it'll be something like that in the air? I don't know. It's unnatural. Gives me the creeps. Don't know how long we'll be in there. Depends on what Apsis activity we find, I guess. Beats me." Why are they asking me? How should I know? How did I get picked to be the leader of this group?
As she does in moments of stress, she takes a few minutes to give Stinky some vigorous scratches behind the ears and on his belly. Afterwards, she feels somewhat better. Now if only there was no arcane magic involved, she'd feel great.
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When you finally touch the tapestry where Aram Zay marked it with a pinned piece of cloth and mutter the command word sui-pai, you find yourself instantly teleported to somewhere else. There is a humming between your ears and a brief moment of vertigo as you find yourself somewhere else, but otherwise there is no harm. The most shocking sensation is how incredibly cold it suddenly is and you feel the air knocked out of your lungs as you struggle to acclimate to the sudden drop in temperature. It seemed silly to bundle up in doors, but those of you who neglected to fully fasten up your coats or put on your gloves scramble to do so now as the crisp air starts to pull heat from your bodies.
Just as Aram Zay said, there is in fact a two foot wide eddy in the air behind each of you. It looks remarkably like a small whirlpool, but instead of bend water around it, the eddy is distorting light and air. It is slightly longer than it is wide and you can sort of make out your distorted reflection when you look close at it.
Dominating the view in front of you is a huge temple, almost completely encased in a colossal iceberg that looms hundreds of feet above you. The portion that is exposed hits at the scope and immensity of the Ragdyan temple.
Sinuous nymphs, mighty tigers, and trumpeting elephants—frozen in ruddy stone—encrust the temple’s outer friezes. Packed snow and ice clad depictions of vanaras in jungle scenes, creating an odd dissonance between the climate illustrated in the carvings and the frigid conditions of the temple. The wind howls, and muted voices drift from within the temple. Even more eerily, a strange hooting and shrieking issues from the temple’s cornices and spires, as if by some magical
or artificial means the calls of thousands of monkeys echo the sound of the arctic storm. A wide doorway stands unobstructed, providing ingress to the columned courtyard within.
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Lunevi will happily assist Lord Balrog, making a mental note to obtain such a wand in her own future. It seems like something that might come in handy.
Upon finding herself in this new clime, she shivers, quickly fastening the rest of her coat and yanking on her gloves. The sudden chill had certainly shocked her system! It was certainly uncomfortable to breathe for those first few seconds, but she soon adapted to the cold and began to inspect her frankly astonishing surroundings.
First, she checked behind them, curious about the eddy they'd discussed. As she'd suspected, it appeared to hold the same form as the eddies she'd always known and played in when she was younger, but instead of being in water, they were suspended in the air. How interesting.
The temple and its iceberg were enormous, and the cacophony that accompanied them was almost enough to match.
Seeing nothing particularly strange, she suggests, "Shall we go in? It's entirely possible the Aspis agents have already dismantled any dangers here."
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The feeling of the arcane magic transporting her body made Kala's skin crawl. An expression of mistrusting disgust is etched on her face as she pops into the familiar frigid temperatures at the temple. Certainly concerned about being able to return properly, (she definitely doesn't want to be stuck inside a piece of cloth for the rest of her life), Kala closely inspects the eddy from which she came. Drawing her dagger, she scratches a mark on the ground so she knows which one was hers. Never trust arcane magic.
Satisfied, as much as she can be, that she's done all she can there, Kala turns to examine the temple. Noting the muted voices, she listens carefully. Are they Apsis? Or supposed to be here?
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The party carefully searches the archway, and finding no signs of danger, you carefully climb the steps. At the top of the steps is an open air courtyard, which gives you a better view of the unfrozen portions of the temple. In the courtyard are four columns, decorated with carvings of apsara nymphs. The stone tiles that make up the floor are made from the same reddish brown stone the walls are made of and while smooth, they are not slick with ice or snow.
To the east, a huge banyan lies fallen across the wide bridge that once permitted access to the great gates of the temple. To the north and south
stretches a ten-foot-wide walkway running along the temple’s exterior wall. A wide moat of black ice separates this walkway and the inner complex. To the south, a crude wooden ramp leads from the walkway to the ice’s surface ten feet below.
Two steep stone stairways lead up from the ice to doorways in symmetrical chambers flanking the main entrance on the other side of the moat. A thin stream of black smoke is coming from the nearest building to southeast.
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"If nothing else, we've at least found signs of life," Lunevi points out, referring to the smoke. If one ignored the black smoke, the temple looked exceedingly peaceful. Even the ice wasn't particularly terrible, adding its own natural danger to the scenery.
Rather, when considering the way the ice contrasted with the reddish brown walls and the apsara nymphs, she'd have to point out that the ice definitely added an element of tragedy to the place. One from even before these Aspis agents, anyways.
Wait, but black smoke? "Do you think they weren't able to find anything dry to burn?" Lunevi shakes her head; That might not be very important. "How should we approach this? I'm not very stealthy, so if we're looking to capture a single agent, I'd vote we stay away from the smoke. Ought we take the northern stone stairway?"
Of course, if any of their number was sneaky, they might be better off moving quietly closer to the source of the smoke to gather some information.
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Shaking her head, Kala replies: "We were sent to secure this temple. If the Apsis are burning things, we should stop it before they damage even more." Pausing, she glances around at each of her teammates. "That's my thought, anyway. What do you say?" Crap. I sound like I'm trying to be the leader. Please don't think I'm the leader please don't think I'm the leader please don't...
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Well, this was going to be problematic. So far, they had something of an even split. "Is there anyone among us that is particularly good at sneaking about?" she asks, a small frown on her face. "While I don't mind charging in, let's do it in an orderly fashion and see if we can't get some more information."
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Whew! If I play this right, they won't think I'm the leader!
With a noncommittal shrug, Kala downplays her previous suggestion while totally ignoring what The Balrog just said. "Eh, I don't really care either way. It was just a thought. Stinky and I aren't that sneaky, but we're not too bad." Please work please work...
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Lunevi pauses as the group watches Yagaji make an executive decision and make for the smoke. Grimacing, she considers their options. Was it worth it to try and explain the merits and demerits of both paths? Did he already understand? Still, Nirion was already following him, so...
"If you cannot beat them, join them, right?" she murmurs. She gives a helpless shrug, before following after them.
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The party moves towards a staircase leading down to the frozen moat surrounding the temple complex. In the ice you can see a few dark shapes that appear to be large koi fish, frozen in the ice. As you get closer, you can see that there is a bored looking Ulfen man standing in the doorway, watching the walkway. As he sees your group, he shouts a warning and lifts begins winding up a massive crossbow.
Enemy 3
Enemy 2
Enemy 1
Balrog
Yagajimoro
Salvador
Kala
Stinky
Nirion
Lunevi
The Ulfen loads a bolt into his crossbow and leans into the doorway for cover. Shouts and movement can be heard from inside the building ahead that the smoke is coming from. Two distinct voices can be heard coming from inside, a gruff female voice and a relatively high pitched male voice.
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Lunevi flinches at the sudden shout, but quickly recovers.
Not wanting to start this particular job off on a bad, note, she immediately begins an incantation, the foreign words strangely lyrical. "Ընդունեք ջրի օրհնությունը, մաքուր եւ մաքուր." Spell cast, she takes a moment to ready her crossbow.
She'd wanted to avoid combat in order to gather information and heighten their chances of success, but Lunevi was equally prepared to take the task on directly, too.
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Kala warns her comrades as they move toward the threat: "Keep some distance between yourselves on the ice! We don't know how strong it is!"
Taking her own advice, Kala rushes across the pathway to the other side of the doorway. "Stinky, heel!" She carefully lowers herself off the edge, hanging by her hands, then releases and attempts to land on her feet on the ice. Please be solid ice!
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Everything was going fine. The air was crisp and cold, with a hint of smoke, likely from a controlled people fire, wafting into his nostrils. Ahhh! Just like home. Then a human across the way says something, and instantly the atmosphere is charged with tension. Action!
"Stinky, heel!"
At Kala's command, the wolverine scuttles one step behind her. He watches her lower herself over the edge of the walkway, hanging by her hands before she drops. He stares over the edge with an expression of concern on his furry face. Are you serious? Are you okay? I'm not doing that!