Mac grabs the other owlbear by the throat and pulls it down easily, then takes another bite out of its abdomen. It looks on the edge of death as it screams in pain.
Hillmer's frustration continues as it desperately tries to reach the terrible creature that came into its cave and started murdering for no reason!
Freyja (105/105 hp)
Trjega (75/75 hp)
Aubrin (47/47 hp)
Leif (51 damage, prone)
Thurt (so dead that I kind of feel bad for it now)
Mac (105/105 hp, touch of good [1 round])
Hillmer (45 damage)
Grevayne (91/91 hp, shield)
Bold may act.
Grevayne looks up at the enormous monstrosity, frowning. He doesn't have much left for ranged spells. But how is he supposed to fight effectively with one hand? And his off-hand, at that? Nothing for it. Get in there, Yang.
He rushes in, keeping his feet light to avoid the thrashing creature on the ground or its much bigger, weirder friend.
Once within distance, Grevayne strikes.
Leif is too busy dealing with being flat on his back and bleeding profusely to even notice that Grevayne is slipping by. Hillmer, however, has been waiting for exactly this opportunity. As Grevayne tries to slip inside its reach, the owl head reaches down and takes a large chunk of flesh out of his shoulder . Grevayne immediately gets his revenge with a swift punch with his good hand.
Freyja (105/105 hp)
Trjega (75/75 hp)
Aubrin (47/47 hp)
Leif (51 damage, prone)
Thurt (so dead that I kind of feel bad for it now)
Mac (105/105 hp)
Hillmer (57 damage)
Grevayne (84/91 hp, shield)
Bold may act.
Freyja takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly to steady herself, then fires four more arrows at Hillmer.
Trjega is bored and begins grooming herself.
The cave mouth is still so crowded that even Freyja is having trouble with aim. Aubrin again doesn't even try to fire her bow, and gives Mac another dose of touch of good.
Leif isn't very smart and struggles to his feet as Mac stands over him . He makes another feeble attempt at a claw attack, but has basically no chance of hitting Mac.
Freyja (105/105 hp)
Trjega (75/75 hp)
Aubrin (47/47 hp)
Leif (51 damage, prone)
Thurt (so dead that I kind of feel bad for it now)
Mac (105/105 hp)
Hillmer (88 damage)
Grevayne (84/91 hp, shield)
Bold may act.
Leif's claw swipe was doomed to failure from the start. Mac tears his throat out before he can even finish standing. A handful of seconds later, Hillmer suffers a similar fate to his companions.
The cave floor (and Mac's muzzle) is covered in gore. It is a gruesome scene. From where Grevayne stands, he sees only more cave leading off to the northeast. The back wall is shrouded in darkness.
Grevayne stares into the darkness of the cave as his adrenaline starts to dissipate, wondering what in the Nine Hells that was all about. "I thought this tower was run by a friend of the city?" he panted, putting his good hand on his hip as he tries to catch his breath. "What were a cluster of wild animals doing here?"
Realizing no one has a light source, Grevayne sighs and says, "Wait here, I will try to find a light source. I will call if there is further danger." He steps deeper into the cave to look around with his darkvision. As soon as the gloom hits his sockets, a small pain in the back of his head vanishes. He hadn't even realized how much discomfort walking around in daylight had been causing him until it's gone.
Mac sits and licks his bloody chops, then watches with a low whimper as Mal-skend enters the cave alone. He needs at least some moonlight to see by, unlike his dead-not-dead friend. He turns to Freyja, chuffs once, and looks back at the dark cave, awaiting his friend's return.
Freyja sends her ioun torch spinning around her head, grins at Mac, and follows Grevayne.
Now that the party has emerged into the main part of the cave, you can see that it doesn't continue too far back into the cliff. There is nothing of note in the cave itself, but to your left, a pair of heavy wooden doors hang, sundered and splintered, from their hinges.
Something powerful blew these doors open.
Grevayne studies the doorway, looking for traces of a blasting agent.
He considers his findings and rises, glancing at Mac. He nods toward the broken door, indicating the shifter should go first.
The massive wolf dips his head, then begins the violent, gruesome process of warping his body back to its human shape. He shakes his head as if to clear it, sending his matted, tangled brown hair and beard swishing back and forth. You're pretty sure a squirrel just fell out.
Mac extends his claws, then allows himself a partial shift back to wolf form. His nose and mouth elongate slightly into a short snout, and his ears become pointed and furry. He snuffles the air as he steps through the broken door, looking for trouble.
Freyja kneels next to the largest creature and lays her hand on its fur. She examines its leather collars and its odd anatomy. It seems like it was somehow meant to be an owlbear but has been ... tampered with somehow. The collars give her pause; they indicate that, whatever else, this beast had a master. Was it Navah? Freyja suddenly wishes they had asked Mayor Crawbert for more information about his former companion.
She closes her eyes and whispers a short blessing to Gozreh, then joins the others by the blown apart doors, bow at the ready.
None of the telltale signs of an alchemical explosion are here; most notably, there is no evidence of any kind of accelerant. But Grevayne can tell from the scorch marks and the utter splintered destruction of the heavy doors that they were blown open. That leaves magic. Powerful magic.
On the other side of the doors, a few simple dust-covered trophies -- a shredded Molthuni banner, a few monster skulls, and what appears to be a dented shield -- hang from the walls of this otherwise bare, high-ceilinged room. A heavy double door stands to the west opposite the tower's shattered front doors, while a smaller door leads north. Spiral stairs to the south lead up.
Mac sees (and smells) nothing in this room. However, a strong smell of burning comes from the other side of the double doors to the west. It reminds Mac of a smithy; perhaps it's a forge?
Mac nods toward the double doors. [color=brown]"Fire. Burning. Over there."[/color] He takes up position near the double doors and looks them over carefully.
Grevayne pauses to sweep the bodies of the "owlbears" with his magic senses before stepping through the blasted door into the next room. At Mac's warning, he quickly sweeps this room too before stepping up to the doors and opening them.
Grevayne detects nothing magical anywhere in either the cave or the first room of the tower. However, if he swings his cone to the west, a rather strong aura comes from the room beyond the double doors.
The doors do not appear to be trapped or locked.
Grevayne nods to the others, then pulls open one of the doors with his left hand.
As Grevayne opens the door, the burning smell suddenly becomes almost too much for Mac's enhanced senses. Worktables occupy the north of this room, standing next to a large, still-glowing forge and squat iron anvil. Tables and shelves filled with tools and half-finished projects of metal and leather line the edges of the room. Strange animal hides are stretched along the western wall, and to the south, a humble kitchen is squeezed in among the industrial setting.
As Grevayne looks on, a smoldering mass of metal-encrusted goo bursts from the forge. Sharp protrusions resembling blades begin to form and then melt back into the goo, in a strange dance that happens alarmingly fast.
Shard slag, b+&+#! Maybe you should just close the door and tell the Mayor that Navah's dead.
I know that you know all about them, but I'll let you ask your questions for what the PCs know.
Aubrin cries out from behind the party, "What the hells is that thing?!" Almost reflexively, she grabs her holy symbol and calls out, "We're in the s~@#! Help!" A burst of white energy washes over the party.
Aubrin (47/47 hp, blessed)
Freyja (105/105 hp, blessed)
Trjega (75/75 hp, blessed)
Mac (105/105 hp, blessed)
Grevayne (91/91 hp, shield, blessed)
Creature (0 damage)
Bold may act.
Freyja's eyes widen. She doesn't know what that thing is, but judging by the heat radiating off of it, she has no intention of letting Trjega anywhere near it. "Stay!" she yells as she moves to get line of sight through the doorway. She lets an arrow fly.
Why am I even here?
Freyja's arrow hits the mass and enters it with no resistance whatsoever. Flames erupt from the hole she created and the arrow burns to ash in seconds.
Aubrin (47/47 hp, blessed)
Freyja (105/105 hp, blessed)
Trjega (75/75 hp, blessed)
Mac (105/105 hp, blessed)
Grevayne (91/91 hp, blessed)
Creature (11 damage)
Bold may act.
Mac rushes past the ooze and deeper into the room in order to make room for his friends, then pours the power of Magdh through his veins. His skin ripples and his bones crack as fur sprouts and parts shift, leaving a massive Dire Wolf standing in front of the giant fire-metal poop stack.
Grevayne calls, "Shard slag! They can make a random assortment of blades to shred you with. Keep your distance if you can!"
He stares down at his one working hand and flexes it, then looks uncertainly at the shard slag. That thing looks hot. Like, really hot. Why, almost as if it's made of molten slag. Punching molten slag seems like a spectacularly stupid thing to do, but neither he nor Mac have much choice.
He doesn't have much in the way of elemental magic... but he does have one spell that can help.
Grevayne moves northward into the room, and moves his off-hand clumsily through the somatic components of a particularly complex spell, then stomps a foot forward and roars His face contorts for a split second into the silvery, serpentine beak of a dragon as his bellow ripples across the shard slag's surface in frosty waves.
The heat is nearly unbearable for Mac and Grevayne as they approach. It becomes immediately evident that remaining next to this monstrosity is going to begin burning them... and soon.
On the bright side, Grevayne's cold spell has an immediate and impressive effect. Everywhere the cold touches, the molten form solidifies and hardens. It doesn't take long for it to melt and begin to flow again, but the damage is done. As for the shard slag, it has no mouth and it must scream.
The shard slag gets its revenge in almost disproportionate fashion. Six blades emerge from its roiling form, nearly faster than the eye can see; two of them pierce Grevayne and two more hit Mac. The wounds are instantly cauterized by the searing heat and the pain is unbelievable.
The attacks are so vicious and the heat so oppressive that Mac and Grevayne waver on their feet.
Grevayne grits his teeth and fights through the pain, but Mac is nearly out on his feet .
Aubrin hears the screams from the other room and rushes past Trjega and into the room. She squints and recoils as she enters the radiating heat, touches Grevayne on the shoulder, and winces as the dark energy passes out of her and into him.
Aubrin (47/47 hp, blessed)
Freyja (105/105 hp, blessed)
Trjega (75/75 hp, blessed)
Mac (52/105 hp, blessed)
Grevayne (48/91 hp, blessed, staggered [1 round])
Creature (63 damage)
Bold may act.
Freyja has fought untold numbers of creatures and enemies with this group and, until this moment, she has never seen them suffer an onslaught like the one she just witnessed. They need to bring this thing down as quickly as possible or someone will die.
Trjega kind of wants to curl up and nap next to that thing. It's warm.
Freyja's aim is seemingly back to normal, as all four arrows whip past Aubrin's head and into the shard slag. Its form has started to deteriorate, so maybe it is close to going down?
Mac and Grevayne have been standing next to this thing too long; the heat has now begun to burn and blister their skin.
Aubrin (47/47 hp, blessed)
Freyja (105/105 hp, blessed)
Trjega (75/75 hp, blessed)
Mac (49/105 hp, blessed)
Grevayne (42/91 hp, blessed, staggered [1 round])
Creature (105 damage)
Bold may act.
Grevayne, useless at range, grits his teeth and stands his ground, pouring kinetic energy into his remaining fist and striking twice at the shard slag.
Mac whimpers and limps slightly from the grievous slashes and burns, but stands his ground and bites ferociously at the slag.
Grevayne, despite knowing it is going to hurt, pounds the ooze with two magically-enhanced punches. His first fist goes right into the thing, and the sensation is literally what it would feel like to stick your hand in molten lava. The second puts another gaping hole in the mass and it just deflates, losing what form it had and pooling in a rapidly spreading (and rapidly cooling) puddle on the ground.
Grevayne looks at his hands and tries not to scream as the skin bubbles and blackens.
Mac limps over to Aubrin and whimpers plaintively. Now that Grevayne has healed up some, Mac looks significantly worse than his friend.
Grevayne steps back from the boiling pile of spreading fire flan, gripping his "good" hand against himself and trying to ignore the pungent stench of cooked meat. He shakily removes his wand of inflict light wounds from his belt with nerveless fingers and holds it out to Aubrin. "A few hits of this, please."
Once Aubrin has slapped him around thoroughly with the wand, Grevayne sweeps over the room with his magical senses.
Freyja runs to Mac's side, pulls out a wand, and taps him a bunch of times.
Aubrin looks at Grevayne with admiration as she heals him up. "How did you hit that thing? I could barely stand the heat and I wasn't anywhere near it." She looks down at the goo, which has mostly hardened into a formless black mass on the floor. "And what was it doing here?"
Grevayne detects a particularly strong aura of enchantment magic coming from one of the animal hides on the wall. It has white fur and has been fashioned into a cloak.
This thick hide cloak is known as a skelterhide. It grants its wearer the divided mind of a skeltercat. While worn, the cloak imparts a +1 resistance bonus on Fortitude and Reflex saves and a +2 resistance bonus on Will saves. In addition, once per round, the wearer can reroll the percentile dice when determining her actions while confused and choose the desired result. Once the cloak is donned, the wearer cannot speak or write; she can communicate only in unintelligible growls. The wearer still understands language as normal.
If the wearer suffers from one or more permanent mental afflictions that alter her behavior, such as insanity or the effects of a helm of opposite alignment, for 15 minutes per day she can function as if unaffected by these conditions. This time does not need to be used all at once, but must be used in 1-minute increments.
It is worth 4500gp.
There is nothing else of note in the room.
Grevayne pulls the cloak off the wall, inspecting it curiously. Without looking up, he shrugs awkwardly and says, "I just hit it. Pain is... not really a factor for me. Not that I do not feel it. I just feel most things less... sharply? I suppose? At least, so far as I can tell from others' experiences."
Grevayne frowns, bundles up the cloak, and stuffs it in a pack. "Remind me to check on that again later."
He returns to the previous room and stops at the door, glancing at the giant wolf in the room. [color=brown]"You are never going to fit through the door like that."[/color]
Mac prances in place a little after Aubrin heals him, then pads out into the previous room to join Grevayne at the door.
He snorts indignantly at the dhampir's comment, turning his muzzle up at him. He can so fit through doorways! Just a little snug, is all.
He pokes his big head toward the door, eyeing it carefully and snuffling.
Aubrin has seen and healed some nasty wounds in her day, but what she saw today will stick with her for a long, long time. Grevayne's nonchalance about it somehow makes it worse; he already is somewhat of an "other" to her because of his aversion to positive energy, but to shrug away burns that should have killed him two or three times over? She shudders, but vows to herself to learn more about dhampirs. She has seen enough of Grevayne to convince her that he is a good person; his differences are simply things that she doesn't understand. Instead of being afraid or turned off by them, she wants to learn about them.
The door to the north is neither locked nor trapped.
Grevayne cautiously swings open the door. Shelves stuffed with dry goods and alchemical supplies line the walls of this musty room. A well drops 40' to the water table below.
Searching the shelves, you find a motherlode of potions:
- 8x potion of cure moderate wounds
- 3x potion of cure serious wounds
- potion of gaseous form
- 2x potion of neutralize poison
- potion of nondetection
- potion of remove blindness/deafness
You also find two dusty bottles stuffed in the back among the spices. One contains 1000gp worth of diamond dust and the other contains 750gp worth of gold dust.
Grevayne carefully sets aside the diamond dust. "One might hope this does not end up being needed, but keep it close just in case."
He gives another scan of the room before stepping back out.
Mac looks at the little room, then at the narrow stairwell, then sighs and shifts back to human form. He does, however, keep his claws out. When Grevayne is ready, he leads the way up the stairs, drawing out his wolfish instincts to sniff his way up the stairwell.
Grevayne has never been more sure that a room has been thoroughly searched than he is right now.
At the top of the stairs you find... two more doors. Mac hears a faint noise coming from beyond the northern door, like a scratching, scuffing, maybe even mumbling type of noise?
Grevayne frowns and puts a hand out to stop the party, stepping back from the door and waving Mac up to it.
Mac nods and steps up to the door, retracting his claws and opening the door as quietly as he can.
Once he's cracked it open enough to look in, he scopes the room out.
Mac opens the door without the slightest sound and peeks his head in. The eastern half of this room sports a table crowded with alchemical implements, clay jars, glass vials, and arcane implements, while a large still takes up much of the floor. Notebooks and alchemical reference manuals fill a bookshelf to the south. Doors rest in the southern and eastern walls.
A strange metal ... creature? ... stands at the eastern end of the room, working with some of the alchemical equipment at one of the tables. Its back it to Mac and, now that the door is open, it is clear that it is the source of the noise. As Mac watches, it continues to work, oblivious of its observer.
This is a clockwork mage, the pinnacle of clockwork inventions. An ingenious combination of mechanical devices and magical conduits allows a clockwork mage to channel the power of a wand into a variety of arcane powers. They often serve powerful arcane spellcasters, or as unflinching and unquestioning casters to those who wants the benefit of spells without ego or free thought.
A humanoid figure of mithral and steel, a clockwork mage has large crystal ball filled with shifting vapors for a head. It stands 7 feet tall.
Ask your questions.
Mac cocks his head curiously at the metal person in the corner. He glances behind him and waves Grevayne over, finger to his lips.
Grevayne shrugs and slips over to the door to peek in.
Grevayne quietly closes the door behind him and steps back to the stairwell, motioning the others to follow him over. Even a short ways from the door, he whispers, "Clockwork mage. An intelligent automaton. They are usually employed by powerful spellcasters."
He chews his lip thoughtfully for a moment."They are wily opponents, with not only magic at their beck and call, but all the benefits of being made of metal. I hesitate to confront it without knowing who controls it or whether or not it will be hostile. If it is under the control of another, I would rather face that person first. The clockwork might be more amenable if we liberate it from its master. But maybe not. I cannot claim to know the mind of an automaton." He sighs, and rubs his right bicep with his left hand. His rings glimmer on his fingers in the pale light of Freyja's ioun torch. "Of course, if we speak to whoever controls it and they themselves are not friendly, it is possible they can call the clockwork to them. Then we would face two casters at once."
He glances uncertainly at the others. "I am open to suggestions."
Freyja looks at the closed door while she thinks. "Facing two casters does sound like a nightmare. But I don't know much about magical things, so I defer to you." She shrugs and looks at Grevayne apologetically.