As a standard action, the shaman causes stardust to materialize around one creature within 30 feet. This stardust causes the target to shed light as a candle, and it cannot benefit from concealment or any invisibility effects. The creature takes a –1 penalty on attack rolls and sight-based Perception checks. This penalty to attack rolls and Perception checks increases by 1 at 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter, to a maximum of –6 at 20th level. This effect lasts for a number of rounds equal to half the shaman’s level (minimum 1). Sightless creatures cannot be affected by this ability. The shaman can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + her Charisma modifier.
Recognizing that the rust-risen likely has no mind, but still operates (ostensibly) on vision in its undead state, Ronan instead calls on the power of the Saints to conjure glowing dust around the creature. It begins glowing and will almost certainly find it more difficult to strike out at its original target.
Bas finally manages to push into the room, getting to the other side where his bardiche is more useful.
Though Saraon isn't able to hit the rust-risen, his strike opens just enough space up in the melee to let Kat get a shot in, and she fires point-blank at the undead's head. It collapses to the ground.
Ensnared in sand and with flashing dust clouding it's vision, the last undead feebly strikes at Saraon, but the druid is able to easily dodge the wild swing.
Seeing the tide turn almost in an instant, Saraon tries to finish the battle by striking at the monster!
Ronan motions for Kat to step forward into the open space, prepared to provide a bit of divine guidance from the Saints to ensure that her next shot hits the undead in center mass.
Katheryn, taking the opening and the gift as she reloaded and lined up her shot.
Sprig moved closer to the combat, ensuring he could see where to direct the storm he had created. With a gesture of his claws, the kobold changed to flow of his magical sands, slowly and relentlessly pushing the remaining rust-risen away from his friends.
"Bas, Ah've seen what you can do, finish this poor soul off for me! Some of us are hurtin'!" Sprig barked out to the scarred man.
"On it boss."
He spat a big hack of spittle on the grind and shifted his grip on his Bardiche before he swung it as hard as he could.
Thanks to the sand that the creature is trapped in, Bas brings his bardiche down with a mighty swing! It cleaves into the rust-risen's chest, slicing a good third of it's body clean off. The creature stands stark still for a moment before slumping to the ground, finally at rest.
"Will somebody tell me what that was?"
He asked prodding the thing with the end of the bardiche.
"Bad, that's what it was!" Saraon says matter-of-factly. "Who needs healing most...besides me?"
Katheryn looked at her minor wound. "I be fine, nothin' a bit of rest won't cure."
With a wiggle of his claws, Sprig settles the Shifting Sand into regular dust.
He looked at his injured companions sheepishly. "Ah'm sorry, That was entirely my fault. Ah should have been more careful. Didn't think there'd be something so hostile hiding in there."
The gang takes some time to rest and recoup.
The next room holds a door to more bathrooms, but these contain nothing of any great interest, aside from a pile of bones that someone bound with wire in the shape of a spoked wheel some indeterminable time ago.
Following the mystical urge provided by Ronan’s beetles, the party goes deeper into the facility. This room is scattered with yellowed sheets of paper, any writing on them is illegible and they seem to crumble to the touch. Four large metal structures stand on the right side of the wall, looking almost like shelves full of metallic boxes. Most of the boxes are dark or smashed, but a few have multicolored blinking lights that glow softly.
The left side holds a grislier sight. A desk with some sort of workstation is occupied by a rag-clad skeleton slumped over, it’s chest filled with what look like the remains of synthetic organs.
These cubes seem to be ancient information storage devices. Further study could reveal how to access whatever might still be stored.
"Will somebody tell me what that was?"
"T'were a rust-risen: undead to be sure, but one joined t'machine in unholy matrimony," Ronan says, moving back into the room and picking around the hacked-apart, burnt carcasses. "Bad news fer what more we might find here."
Ronan looks at Saraon's deep wound caused by the whirring drill and takes a deep breath. "Lemme bind that fer ye if'n ye don' mind," he says as his hand glows and pulses with warmth and light. Beneath the light, some of Ronan's skin resonates as wispy strands of a pale blue in angles and parallels, surely some sort of tattooed glyph of some sort. Positive energy pours into the druid's shoulder as the flesh knits back together, leaving naught but the pink scar of young skin. "Feelin' right as rain, eh?"
Forging ahead, Ronan looks at the grisly workroom with its long-dead (and hopefully still dead) inhabitant. "I reckon these boxes hold secrets. Can someone make sure that feller ain't keen on movin' no more while I assess what we got?"
Sprig watches Ronan work, a puzzled expression on his face. "Ah didn't take you for a sawbones Ronan, yer jes' full of surprises!"
After taking a quiet moment to load his pistol, the kobold keeps it trained on the skeleton. He slowly crouches down and scoops a small rock off the floor, tossing it at the corpse.
"Nat me, 'fraid I don't have those skills." Katheryn answered Ronan's words. "But, iffin' they are, might be somethin' good?"
Saraon's eyes are wide behind his mask as Ronan heals him.
"Amazing...I've not seen healing that powerful save the elder druids of our Circle," he says, clearly awed. Then he's silent for a moment, seemingly thinking.
Ronan grins at the compliments, nodding with satisfaction. "Shucks, y'all. I'm right glad to serve, all told." The blue-skinned, tech-bedecked weirdo angles some progressively thicker glass lenses in front of his eyes as he prods at a metallic cube.
The skeleton is unmoving. The rock shifts it in it's chair slightly, but it is, for all intents and purposes, truly dead.
Ronan's able to get a pretty good handle on these datacubes with the guidance of the spirits. One tells him to take the dead man's seat and press a button on the screen.
As he does so, it flashes to life. A symbol that looks like a battery flashes red in the corner of the glowing screen. It seems like this only has enough energy to read a single datacube.
Three remain active on the shelves, labels on them in deeply archaic script. One is titled, Facility Guidelines, one is Director's Notes, GS 4327-4328, and the last is Field Implantation of Cybernetics.
Saraon looks over to what Ronan has activated.
"What is this?" he asks quietly.
Sprig peers over the skeleton. "How long you suppose this feller's been dead? Doesn't look all too recent... Maybe if we can find out how he died we can get an idear of what's happened in here."
Listening to the ancient spirits, Ronan presses the button and marvels at the electronic display. "Secrets," Ronan responds to Saraon. "One might say 'data', if'n ye've heard that word before. [b]"But there ain't much power left, so we hafta be choosy with what we wanna know."
Ronan looks back towards Sprig. "Now I don't rightly know how ye might learn it, but I think there are ways to help this old-world stuff remember itself. Ye seem a scholarly sort, Sprig, so mayhaps ye'll come up with someat might work."
Turning back to the cubes, Ronan translates the script for the gathered. "I reckon the second'll help us answer Sprig's question. The last is probably how the unholy matrimony I spoke of came to be. And the first might help us survive in here--or it might be a boring heap of rules and regulations what'll serve us no use a'tall. Now y'all are startin' to know me, and so these Director's Notes sound mighty fine. Those numbers there are lookin like dates to me--years, probably. So less anyone has a counter, I wanna see what's on this one."
Ronan lifts the Director's Notes cube and, if no one stops him, places the cube so that he and the others can read it.
Sprig took what Ronan said into consideration. "Hmm, using magic to salvage relics... Can't say that Ah've heard of such a thing, but if there's anywhere we might find a way to do it, it'd prolly be around here."
The kobold was flipping through his spellbook when Ronan brought up the cubes and what they did. He looked somewhat concerned. "Director's notes? Is that the same feller we were talkin' to earlier? Might just be the ravin's of a madman. Though, Ah ain't sure there's much else to go on, so Ah'll trust yer judgement Ronan."
Saraon rubs the back of his head.
"Almost everything here is completely outside my realm of experience, so I will trust your judgment, Ronan."
"Tellin' me Saraon... out of my depth." Katheryn said with a small smirk.
Ronan sockets in the cube and the screen flashes before an audiolog starts to play. The voice is distinctly reminiscent of the one over the loudspeakers, but it seems younger and less, well, unhinged. Even still, there is a distinct tiredness to the voice, "This is facility director Davin Traznaff of Research Station Mu-9-Alpha with the yearly progress report for the research staff and the Board. Development goals are still being met in some capacities, but shortages are limiting our overall developmental capacity. I am aware of issues taking place in the Core, and hope that the Board has anticipated their response to it. For one, I am certain that our research here will likely be useful in ensuring that their interests and influence are maintained through this period of difficulty. Mind-suspension technology is progressing well, along with mass-scale combat cyberization. Still, there is some limiting factor to the overall implantation capacity of an individual person that we just cannot seem to identify. That said, we foresee the ability to continue our work indefinitely even if supply shipments from Ontiriachis cease. Interruptions to the terraforming network could prove problematic, but those are unlikely. This has been facility director Traznaff, signing off."
With that, the voice stops as the computer screen freezes for a moment and then goes dark.
Once it became obvious the audio would not continue, Sprig opened his mouth.
"Ah could barely understand what he was saying. Cyberization? Terraformin'? And what is Mind-Suspension supposed to be? Was there someone's mind in those zombies originally?"
"At least there's a few names to work with, the Core and Ontiriachis... though Ah ain't sure ah've ever heard of such places." He wrote down the names as best he could in his journal, just so he wouldn't forget.
Ronan had encountered many wondrous things in his travels, but this was still new. The spirits had whispered fragments of things like this to him, and he had (what he assumed were) past life memories of these shining screens and phantom recordings. But to see and hear it in person--in this life!--was a treat.
So this was indeed--or had been--a research station, which Ronan had already suspected from a handful of other clues. Designation Mu-9-Alpha might have some meaning in the wider context, if they found other research stations. The report was for the year GS 4327-4328--a calendar designation that Ronan wasn't sure he grasped. But it seemed to him like this report was from before the Calamity. They might have even known that the Calamity--or something like it--was coming. They might have even caused it with their terraforming efforts.
Ronan provides his oral analysis as best as he can, his lilting drawl slipping a bit as he gets technical. "It's strange to be sure, but I think I have a theory. Mind-suspension sounds like it might be some way of either preserving a mind after the body's death or else shutting the mind down to make soldiers with implants. Implants like drills and whatnot. Why you'd want mindless soldiers 'stead of thinkin' ones I don't rightly know. But they were buildin' some sorta army fer some sorta reason."
Ronan turns to the others with a more direct seriousness in his face. "When we find Davin Traznaff, he might not be fully human. He might not even be corporeal no more." He didn't want to say it. He didn't want to say lich. But what else could live through the Calamity and retain some sort of mind?
Ronan wracks his brain and the whispers of the spirits to think of something, anything to connect to this...and comes up blank. Some of the older spirits are roused to faint recognition by Ontiriachis, but they can't provide anything of use.
He is certain though that mass-scale cyberization refers to implanting as much cybernetics to a person or creature's body as their body and mind can handle...though if this facility is any evidence, perhaps even more than that.
While the others may not be able to see Saraon's expression under his mask, Saraon's body-language makes it clear he's frowning behind it.
"I think I maybe understood one word in that whole thing. Some of the elder druids of our Circle have referred to the earth as 'Terra' when addressing its spirits. Perhaps 'terraforming' means 'earth-forming' or something? Shaping the earth? That doesn't tell us much, though, the earth can be shaped by ramming it with wooden poles..."
Sprig idly picked at some sand stuck in his scales. "If what yer sayin's right Ronan, then Ah think we can safely assume Davin is the 'Brain Man' Gog mentioned. The big lug said he was mostly metal and could shoot fire... That don't sound like any spirit Ah've heard of."
He sighs heavily before continuing. "Though that doesn't make me feel too happy about meetin' this feller. Sounded to me like the world was collapsin' around him and he didn't care. Ah'd hoped we could reason with him t' some extent, but this ain't lookin' too good on his character."
The kobold appreciated Saraon's insight, chiming in with a faint hope in his voice. "A 'Network' sounds large-scale, much more so than diggin' a well. If they really did have some hand in what's happened to the world, there might be something that can fix things as well!"
With renewed enthusiasm, Sprig hopped up from the shelf he'd been sitting on, pushing towards the door to the next room.
"Bein' fair, most people can't care." Katheryn said. "They be helpless ta do much."
"Formin' could also mean shapin'." Katheryn suggested to Saraon when he was thinking on terraforming. Mayhaps we find Olok Redtusk?"
"I know for sure, I ain't lookin' forward ta this fight." Katheryn sighed as she followed after Sprig. "Cause, ya know, it gonna be a fight."
"Right," Ronan says, rubbing the back of his head and taking out his pistol. "Hope fer the best, prepare fer the worst. Let's keep movin'."
Ronan gets up from the chair and follows Katheryn and Sprig.
The next room has several tables with chairs, the same ancient screens sitting neglected and unattended, doubtlessly no longer functioning. The door to deeper in the facility slides open slowly, to reveal larger, more comfortable chair with a single screen in front of it. The room is also filled with clutter. Most pertinently though, a mechanical figure stands in the middle of the room, one arm looking like a gun, the other seeming like a hand.
A voice emanates from it, "Unauthorized access detected. Present proper credentials or lethal force will be authorized."
As it does so, the voice of Davin Traznaff, the current one, rings through the facility, "Is it that damned security droid? I thought I told you lot about it! It started acting up beyond repair so I withdrew from that part of the facility. Damn OggtaCorp...orc science never works how you want it to. Whatever. Whatever I said! Show it your security badges, and get on with it."
The voice goes quiet as the party ruminates on the facts that he never told the party about the droid and the fact that they do not have security badges.
Saraon mumbles a spell as he hardens his skin.
"get back folks or behind something, let me get its attention."
He heft his bardiche and ran his tongue along his teeth and cheek before spitting on the floor. He prepared to charge forward and engage it when the others looked ready.
"Bugger me," Ronan says as the so-called security droid makes its declaration and modern Davin either lies or distinctly misremembers reality.
Ronan takes a step back and looks at the others. "Any bright ideas to get it to stand down?" he stage-whispers. Ronan didn't remember seeing anything in the previous rooms about badges, and although he had many spells he was short on illusions or conjurations that might convince a robot.
"Not another one of these!" Sprig growled as he ducked behind Bas. "They only follow their rules and nothin' else, can't trust the lot of 'em!"
Taking out a small stick of chalk, he quickly begins a magic circle.
Ronan's heard of these robots, both in his travels and from the whispers of the spirits. They have a wide variety of names throughout the wasteland, but most call them gearsmen.
Their sturdy construction is resistant to most types of damage, though especially grievous blows and electricity are especially harmful to them. They can also use their power cells to charge their attacks with electricity.
Most of Ronan's usual bag of tricks wouldn't have too much of an impact on this thing. For better or worse, although he was in-tune with these mechanized, whirring constructs, they were currently beyond his ken in many ways should they be at odds.
"We have no cre-den-tials," Ronan announces to the gearsman, each syllable equally spaced, "So I reckon we're at an impasse." He reaches his hands out to either side, drawing on the latent power running through the defunct research station, as he starts casting a spell.
"I ha'e always been right." Katheryn said with a sigh as she looked to Bas, "Wanna switch places... again?"
As the robot raises it's arm-mounted gun, Kat and Spring spring into action.