Daughter Drift howls as Flint closes the distance and scores a savage hit with his scimitar. The blow doesn't seem to cause as much harm as he might otherwise have expected. Meanwhile Bel clears out the magic speeding the two of them up.
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/73HP)
Flint (110SP/72HP)
Bel (76SP/59HP)
Mother Maelstrom (shaken)
Daughter Drift (36 dmg, shaken)
Following his captain's lead, Ordyt surges into motion and closes with Daughter Drift, driving his estoc through the hag's thigh.
Flint freezes in place as Daughter Drift's spell paralyzes him. Meanwhile Ordyt and Flint both find their minds fogged by confusion! It looks like Mari's confused too!
1–25 Act normally.
26–50 Do nothing but babble incoherently.
51–75 Deal 1d8 + Str modifier damage to self with item in hand.
76–100 Attack nearest creature.
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/73HP, confused)
Flint (110SP/72HP, confused, paralyzed)
Bel (76SP/59HP)
Mother Maelstrom (shaken)
Daughter Drift (96 dmg, shaken)
Attempting to babble incoherently, Ben fails to do so as he is paralyzed. He makes quite the imposing statue, however.
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Shaking off the maddening magic, at least for a moment, Ordyt chases down Daughter Drift and launches another brutal stab. He makes a frustrated, disgusted sound "We've killed efreet, giants, and dragons; we've tangled with an alien demigod and a nanite superintelligence. What in all the blazing Hells made you think we wouldn't kill you too?"
But Bel resists before the telekinetic vise can close around her neck!
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/73HP, confused)
Flint (110SP/72HP, confused, paralyzed)
Bel (76SP/59HP)
Mother Maelstrom (36 dmg, shaken)
Daughter Drift (KO'd, dying)
His eyes widening, Ordyt whirls around to stab at Bel! "Ha, that trick won't work twice, shapeshifter!"
Flint rages impotently as he wills his blade to bisect Belmarniss from behind…but the counteracting paralysis magic stays his attack…for now.
Ordyt, confused, delivers a devastating betrayal.
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/73HP, confused)
Flint (110SP/72HP, confused, paralyzed)
Bel (16SP/59HP)
Mother Maelstrom (36 dmg, shaken)
Daughter Drift (KO'd, dying)
Potent radiation floods the area around Bel, Flint and Ordyt. Your armors work overtime to filter the harmful wave, but it still leaves you reeling. Ordyt finds himself particularly suffering and he grows weak.
The victim takes a –2 penalty to Fortitude saves, Constitution checks, and Constitution-based DCs. Every time the victim attempts a Fortitude save against the poison—whether he succeeds or fails—he loses Hit Points as per on initial exposure.
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/62HP, weakened)
Flint (110SP/61HP, paralyzed)
Bel (16SP/48HP)
Mother Maelstrom (49 dmg, shaken)
Flint regains his mind thanks to Belmarniss’ efforts. He focuses on breaking the paralysis by focusing his newly-regained willpower!
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"Shake it off, Captain! We need your help!" Pushing aside the sickly feeling left by the hag's spell, Ordyt rushes across the room, cybernetic limbs skidding on the floor to bring him around behind the monster!
Flint struggles against the paralyzing magic without freeing himself. Meanwhile Ordyt quickly closes the distance with your remaining foe and delivers a powerful stab. She staggers unsteadily.
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/62HP, weakened)
Flint (110SP/61HP, paralyzed)
Bel (16SP/48HP)
Mother Maelstrom (74 dmg, shaken)
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/62HP, weakened)
Flint (110SP/61HP, paralyzed)
Bel (16SP/48HP)
Mother Maelstrom (89 dmg, shaken)
Still paralyzed, Flint can only watch from a distance as his friends struggle against the hag. As his eyes glow ever brighter, though, he attempts to invoke photonic energy that requires mental, not physical, effort.
|||| INIT ||||
Ordyt (89SP/62HP, weakened)
Flint (110SP/61HP, paralyzed)
Bel (16SP/48HP)
Mother Maelstrom (111 dmg, shaken)
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"There is always hope," Determined to keep up the pressure, Ordyt keeps pace with the void hag and drives his estoc into her torso. "If not for us, then for others, and sometimes that's enough."
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Ordyt delivers an inspired strike, skewering the remaining hag through the chest. She gasps as he withdraws the bayonet. A few moments later, both she and her sister burst into stardust and scatter in esoteric swirls across the floor. By the time the dust has settled, Flint has freed himself from his paralysis and is able to move and act freely once more.
Combat Over! With that victory, you all advance to your 12th level!
Two hags are now gone, though you recall seeing a third slumped in a chair in the chamber to the north-east.
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"Couldn't have said it better myself, Ordyt," Belmarniss says before giving a relieved sigh as their victory becomes clear. But then her mind shifts to the possibly unconscious, but possibly dead, hag in the other room.
"We should check to see if that third hag is still alive or if she suffered the same fate as her sisters...maybe there was a reason she didn't join them in answering Nurleth's call...she may have been the one who contacted you, Flint."
She goes over to the room in question and peeks in.
"Whatever the reason, if she didn't join the fight I think she's missed her chance. She won't love us for shattering her coven but we've already demonstrated who is stronger."
As soon as the paralysis fades, Flint rushes over and hugs Belmarniss whispering, "I couldn't move, but I saw the spell force Ordyt to attack you. Are you okay?"
Flint is struggling--emotionally wanting to rip Ordyt apart for attack Bel, but logically understanding the spell forced him to do so, much as the same spell affected him...And he is deeply disturbed that he was unable to resist the spell's urging to attack Belmarniss himself.
Ordyt makes a choked, horrified sound as he realizes--he had stabbed Bel, thinking it wasn't really her! "Holy sunlight, I'm so f~+$ing sorry about that Bel, I wasn't myself. Um...I can heal you?"
When you peek into the remaining room, you find the last hag still slumped in her chair. She seems particularly old and doesn't appear to be moving. However when you get close you can see her chest slowly rising and falling. She seems to be in a deep sleep, perhaps sedated. She doesn't stir when you come near. Looking around the room, you see its packed with aged computer terminals and panels, flickering with dim illumination but without any content shown.
While Bel is somewhat injured, luckily its mostly to the degree of bruises and shallow cuts - a little rest should help. The worst of the more serious injuries came from that blast of radiation Mother Maelstrom unleashed on the group.
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"Apology accepted," Belmarniss replies dryly, coughing up a bit of blood. "I'll gladly accept some of Sarenrae's grace in return."
While Ordyt takes care of that, she proceeds to the computers to see what this hag apparently was working on before Nurleth presumably caught her and knocked her out to play her part.
With Belmarniss seeming to be okay, Flint takes a deep breath and investigates the room and the possessions of the hags for anything of use.
"Right, we need to find out how to get to the wishing engine and stop the efreet. Find anything on the computer, Belmarniss?" asks Flint, still slowly recovering from having his will wrested from him.
At a glance, Bel can tell that the computers in the last hag's room are not exactly functional, existing somewhere between ritual object and artistic treasure. However, when she returns back to the main room she finds the mainframe in an unlocked state and therefore easy to begin exploring.
After a little searching, she determines that the system here was once used to monitor and assist the Wishing Engine. More recently, it seems to have primarily been used to log individuals descending down the "well" toward the new staging platform for the Engine, and secondarily for Nurleth's personal notes. The log has 76 individuals entered as "martyrs", which appear to have entered over the course of the last several months with no return back to the Crucible. Other individuals labeled as "staff" have come and gone, and there are four there now. What most attracts your eye however is that "General Khaim" is currently down the well, along with two guards. Nurleth herself doesn't appear to have had time to write her own entry before she absconded.
Nurleth's notes are perhaps even more interesting, as she describes some of the difficulties she encountered coordinating efforts at the Archipelago, on Khalannal, at the Crucible, and now in getting the hags to act as she wished. Her descriptions paint the picture of a calculating and patient manipulator with few moral scruples, whose job is equal parts pleasure and duty. She seems to look up to Khaim, but idolizes the Malikah, who she describes as the "only hope for justice on the Plane of Fire".
Her notes also reveal that her earlier statements to you may have had more truth to them than fiction. She describes the ritual the void hag coven had to conduct for each visitor to the Heart of the Sun, one that infuses the individual with the cold emptiness of the void. This magic would hold at bay the crushing pressure, the overwhelming heat, and the temporal warp that exists at the Heart - conditions even the efreeti could not tolerate naturally. Her notes also touch on the nature of the Wishing Engine, a magitech marvel whose artificial intelligence designs, coordinates and utters an incomprehensible array of wishes capable of circumventing known limitations enough to raise a single demigoddess to true godhood.
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Belmarniss lets out a sigh as she collates the data.
"We may be at a true impasse here: They had the hags perform a ritual on each individual they sent down to the Heart of the Sun, to insulate them from the heat, pressure and temporal warping of the Sun's core. With two out of the three hags dead, we may not be able to follow Nurleth and confront General Khaim at all, or complete our sabotage of the Wishing Engine."
Flint finds a few very strange items between the three rooms. Each hag has a ritual dagger whose refinement and enchantments render them on-par with ultrathin daggers. In Mother Maelstrom's room, he finds a full-length mirror that is inscribed with tiny runes along its border. . In the south-west room, you find a luxurious animal fur throw that a naturalist can identify as coming from an ancient creature known as an owlbear. The throw could easily fetch 5000 credits.
Flint shares with the others what he has found, offering the equipment up as needed or putting it in the null space container if not. He keeps one of the daggers himself, just in case.
"A divination mirror, interesting!"
Moving to peer down over Bel's shoulder, the points to part of the readout screen. "What about this? The hags had some sort of ritual to anchor people in time and space--could we make use of that to still take the fight to this Khaim? Might be our only chance."
He glances over his shoulder at the sedated hag. "I'd prefer not to involve her if we don't have to, we did just kill her sisters."
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"If we can somehow find instructions and materials for the ritual, I supposed we COULD try to replicate it for ourselves. We'd probably need a third caster of some sort..." then she looks back to the hag. "...we may not have a choice about involving her."
"Let's make sure we've scoured the place. We need every advantage we can get at this stage."
She begins searching the other rooms.
You search the rooms and find plenty of strange bits and baubles, including an odd doll in Daughter Drift's room that screams and cries whenever you squeeze it. However without intimate knowledge of the ritual itself, you have no way of knowing if any of these items are important. Searching the computer system more exhaustively, there are a number of references to the ritual taking place, but it's clear that Nurleth had little interest in its actual contents. There's only some vague statements about the subjects turning an onyx hue as the magic surrounded them, and the hags needing repeated bribes and encouragement on top of their regular punishments, in order to get them to properly conduct it.
With two of the hags deceased, you'll clearly need to obtain the ritual some other way. Without it you'll be reliant entirely on whatever temporary protection your armor can provide you. Seconds perhaps. Maybe a minute if you're lucky.
”What about Uzmat? Doesn’t he have the capability to protect at least one person against the fiery plasma of the sun? Let’s contact him and see what can be done,” suggests Flint.
When you get back in contact with Ilor he holds the the comms device up close to Uzmat so the onkushu can speak. You hear their voice crackling and booming "EVEN CLOSER TO THE CORE? MY ELDERS WOULD HAVE FEW DIFFICULTIES OFFERING SUCH PROTECTION. BUT I AM NOT AS STRONG, AS WISE, OR AS EXPERIENCED. IF MY INADEQUACY RESULTED IN ALL OF YOUR DEATHS, I..." The uncertainty, forged by their failures protecting Rikard, rings in their voice.
"MY POWERS EXTEND ONLY A SHORT DISTANCE AROUND ME, AND ANY MISSTEP OR LOSS OF CONCENTRATION WILL LEAVE YOU TO THE MERCY OF MATARAS. THEY WILL ALSO NOT PROTECT YOU OR MYSELF FROM ANY STRANGENESS IN THE FABRIC OF TIME SO CLOSE TO THE CORE. IF YOU HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE, THEN WE MUST, BUT I FEAR I WILL FAIL YOU."
”Let’s send Sammad and Mari up to fetch Uzmat while you rest, Belmarniss,” suggests Flint. ”If we can bring the last Hag around, I will see if she is willing to help with the ritual.”
With a nod of agreement at his captain's course of action, Ordyt moves to examine the sleeping hag and check if her condition is magical in nature.
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Belmarniss kneels and makes the sign of the sword.
"Holy Spirit, forgive my tactical errors which have put this crusade in jeopardy. Grant my sword-arm the strength to see things through, and the wisdom to make my courage count. And should I perish, let it be to protect my friends and comrades, and may I stand before you in Heaven a worthy Star-Knight now and forever. So let it be."
For a moment, a warm glow begins to spread from her heart to suffuse her form, her wounds healing as if they'd never happened!
"Thank you, Iomedae," Belmarniss says reverently, before concluding her prayer and turning to her spell-tablet, gathering and organizing the new arcane data.
Sammand and Mari head on up. Meanwhile Ordyt concludes that the hag's condition doesn't seem to be magical. He knows that void hags are immune to magical sleep, but this particular hag is very much unconscious. A person trained in medicine might be able to understand more.
Careful inspection of the hag and the wounds leads you to conclude she may have been exposed to mindhaze, a poison that blocks telepathy, and which can result in unconsciousness in strong enough doses.
Flint knows only a little about such things, but he gives it a shot.
Looking at the Hag, Flint says, ”See the bruise at the back of her neck? I think she was poisoned, maybe something that blocks telepathy and induces unconsciousness.”
"Sure, why should the Legion stop at war crimes and slavery--let's add in a little medical abuse for flavor," Ordyt mutters bitterly. "Captain, see if you can find something to counteract the drugs, I'm going to see if I can make any sense of that magic pool."
You deduce that the silvery fluid within is infused with the magical essence of moonlight and starlight and possessed powerful restorative properties if imbibed. It can heal the body, restore the mind, and refresh the spirit. However, linked as it is to the hags' will it can do the reverse to people who do not have the hags' approval.
You can also sense an enormous amount of magic flowing down through the cauldron and twisting somewhere out of view. It seems beyond its more traditional powers it acts as a conduit between two places in space. That said, there's nothing inherent in what you sense about the cauldron that reveals its use in any protective rituals.
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Belmarniss follows Ordyt to examine the pool.
Her eyes widen so much they can be seen behind her shades.
"There's POWERFUL magic coursing through this, Ordyt. While at base it's the hags' "cauldron" for lack of a better term, it's so much more than that, whether it's because it's here, so close to the heart of the sun, or because it's been tended and empowered for a long period of time. Whatever this fluid is, it's infused with pure moonlight and starlight...it can be drank to heal a variety of different ailments. But it's bound to the will of the hags too, so they can reverse that healing to be harm if someone drinks from it without their approval."
She frowns.
"Either way, it's another power we can't really work on our own. If we don't have a means of waking that other hag, and mollifying her assumed grief and anger, we may be out of luck yet again."
Nodding in agreement with Bel's assessment, Ordyt heaves a sigh.
"Seems like everything comes back to the last hag, then. I hope she's willing to be reasonable."
Moving from room to room, Ordyt checks for a medical cabinet of some kind, hoping to find a purgative or counteracting agent for mindhaze.