"Drat! I can't engage him fully until the ghouls are cleared, but I can still do some damage."
Channeling the power of the Empower Rod, Niu casts a Lightning Bolt at Drazmorg before flying a tight circle above the ghouls and back in to the corridor
Blue and Grey attack the dwarf.
plus disease and paralysis fort DC 13
plus disease and paralysis fort DC 13
"Ye smelly tings!"
vs. /19-20
He drops the ghoul and takes a five foot step.
Round 1 The Inner Seal
Rhen 65/65, Ziera 72/72, Ranok 85/85, Niu 42/42
Niu
Blue, Grey
Rhen, Ranok ✔
Black, Drazmorg
Ziera
Yellow, Green, Red
The corridor is 10 feet high for the flyers. The room is 30.
Ranok will begin by walking his normal 20' around the corner and out of the hallway, where he will take his second move action by beginning to fly, and taking an AoO from Blue. He will rise at a 45 degree angle for his first three squares outside of the hallway to rise to a height of 15' and then move forward one square.
"Hide from me now, creature!" Ranok calls out, in a slightly wavering voice, as he bobbles up into the air.
Drazmorg continues preaching from his book and flies in a circular pattern.
Black attacks the dwarf.
plus disease and paralysis fort DC 13
Ziera strides forward to confront the ghouls, while drawing her longsword.
Saluting, she invokes a prayer to Shelyn, bathing all of the ghouls in radiant energy.
Yellow, green and red move closer to the living intruders.
Round 2 The Inner Seal
Rhen 65/65, Ziera 72/72, Ranok 85/85, Niu 42/42
Niu ✔
Grey
Rhen, Ranok
Black, Drazmorg
Ziera
Yellow, Green, Red
Niu stops flying and settles to the ground, then walks behind Rhen.
Cast Boneshaker, compelling him to make an immediate move action toward Ranok
Grey attacks Rhen
plus disease and paralysis fort DC 13
plus paralysis
plus paralysis
/19-20
"Bye-bye."
Rhen drops another.
Niu
Grey
Rhen, Ranok ✔
Black, Drazmorg
Ziera
Yellow, Green, Red
I do not see how he can move outside of his turn.
I do not see how he can move outside of his turn.
Fair enough. I guess the way the spell is worded, I am controlling him like a puppet. It isn't an enchantment where I am giving him a command to follow.
It should probably be worded differently. Why does he need to take an action at all, even an immediate one? It is confusing, so I am fine with your ruling.
Niu takes control of the undead's bones and moves it to Ranok.
Seeing the undead involuntarily moving his way, he gives a toothy grin. "Gotcha!" Ranok leans his upper body forward and glides forward ten feet as he swings his might sword across a raging horizontal arc.
Whew!
Whew is right. Bless is +1 to attack, not damage but we will go with what you have this time. The crit confirms.
Ranok's rage, frustration, and over sized sword combine to deal a massively destructive blow to the necromancer. The undead abomination is destroyed. A foul wind blows outward from his corpse and then dissipates. The flying stasis crucible falls to the ground. His staff bends and twists on the floor like a wounded snake, then shudders and becomes inert, its eye open and staring.
The black zombie does not attack and takes a 5-foot step away from the party.
Niu
Grey
Rhen, Ranok
Black
Ziera ✔
Yellow, Green, Red
Same here. Awesome finale.
Niu claps his hands. "Oh, very well done, hee hee"
----
Ziera steps up to follow Black. "These other abominations must be destroyed as well."
With a prayer, she again releases a burst of divine energy.
Green is destroyed.
Round 3 The Inner Seal
Rhen 65/65, Ziera 72/72, Ranok 85/85, Niu 42/42
Niu, Rhen, Ranok ✔
Black
Ziera
Yellow, Green, Red
Ranok will continue in the direction he is heading and take a 45° dive to the floor. Boots scuffing up dirt, he will skid to a stop, and turn around. With a roar he lumbers up into a position behind red.
Niu glances at the staff and crucible laying on the ground, then glares at the undead blocking his way. "Hey! Get out of there!"
Moving his arm in a throwing motion, he summons a ball of ice and hurls it at Red.
Niu misses with the snowball.
/19-20
Rhen destroys black and moves south 5 feet.
Ziera ✔
Yellow, Red
Ziera moves up between the two remaining creatures and slashes twice.
Red attacks Ziera
plus disease and paralysis fort DC 13
plus paralysis
plus paralysis
Round 4 The Inner Seal
Rhen 65/65, Ziera 72/72, Ranok 85/85, Niu 42/42
Niu, Rhen, Ranok, Ziera ✔
Red
Beginning to fly again, Niu heads over to where Drazmorg fell and casts Detect Magic, beginning to examine the staff and any other items dropped by the necromancer.
-----
Ziera continues slashing.
Ziera drops the last undead fiend. End initiative. She knows that Niu used a necromancy spell against the necromancer. Isn't that evil? She gives him a stern yet inquisitive look and says "How did it feel to cast that?" She studies his response carefully.
Rhen moves over and searches the items the undead necro carried. He first inspects the tome labeled "Whispers of The Immortal".
Not really giving the question much focus, Niu continues studying tge magical emanations from the items.
"Feel? It didn't feel any different than any other spell, though the joy of setting him up for Ranok to spike does feel pretty good."
His flying device looks like a giant glass tube set within a protective iron cage. The glass tube is scrawled with hundreds of mystic sigils and filled with strange tubes and fluids. Bolts around the iron lip of the tube allow it to be fastened into the wearers flesh, while dozens of tubes and probes connect to the wearer’s upper body. The device is designed for a creature lacking a lower body or at least missing its legs; it can only effectively be used by undead, as a living creature would almost certainly die from the item grafting itself to his body and removing extraneous flesh to do so (though the character could be raised from the dead or animated as an undead after this death).
The staff is now inert but the eye attached to it is not. This bloodshot eye is larger than a grown man’s fist. Its vivid green iris suggests strange depths, and is unnerving to look at for too long. It has a moderate aura of divination.
There is a spellbook containing clerical and wizard spells.
"Jest mumbo jumbo in dis." Rhen hands the book to Niu. He then begins inspecting the chalk marks and drawings on the seal and the walls and the floor.
Concentrating further on the eye, Niu attempts to interpret the magical flows around it.
"Divination... and shaped like an eye. Perhaps this helped him to see through all of those eyes throughout the complex."
Taking the book from Rhen, Niu takes a quick look at it.
"Rhen, would you mind examining that spellbook? Some wizard put traps on them."
Once per day you may use it to cast clairaudiance/clairvoyance. If you can cast scrying, you may use the eye as your focus object for the spell.
I found no reference to the language of the book. I do know where he found it, so common is my ruling.
Rhen inspects the spellbook for traps.
"It don be no trap."
Niu skims the book quickly to see if it is interesting, anticipating reading the book on the way back to town.
He then puts it in his backpack before examining the titles of the spells in the spellbook.
"The eye is only a little interesting. It does allow you to see remotely, but only in a single place. Do you want it Ranok?
We should sanctify the corpse before we leave. Wasn't there a pool of holy water around here?"
The book is unique and unknown. No amount of knowledge would have allowed that. At the High Academae other students sought power, Drazmorg sought immortality. Thus began his romantic fixation with the foolish works of obscure wizards and priests who also sought such impossibilities, and so it was that he stumbled upon a seemingly innocuous copy of an ancient text called the Whispers of the Immortal. Within the obscure tome’s faded pages, a disciple of Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant, documented his master’s journey from life into undeath and on to divine ascension.
Rhen returns to the chalk markings on the wall, floor, and broken seal. "I be tinkin dis be him figurin out how tuh breaks it."
Dis be too much fer me. Arggh. We wents to town an nuttin to bring down de tunnels."
Ziera tells Rhen "I will bring down the tunnel. "
You think you may be able to make sense of these scribblings. How many days of food and water does the party have?
"Now that he has been defeated, and we appear to be safe, we should learn how he was able to break this seal. The knowledge could help us to protect the other seals.
Tar-Baphon certainly knows what happened here, and will probably be able to pass that information on to other agents.
Using this book, and studying these drawings, I should be able to learn much, but it will take time. Perhaps several days. I don't require sustenance, but the rest of you are probably running short on rations.
Ranok, you have lived in the wild, you must be good at foraging. Perhaps you and Rhen can gather supplies while Ziera guards my back?"
Niu inspects the seal. There are eight cogwheels in all, each about a foot thick and decreasing in diameter from 35 feet at the base to 10 feet at the apex. Each cog turns separately, and when set to a precise pattern, the Seal opens, similar in function to a giant combination lock.
I will take you days to reverse engineer and repair the seal.
"I gots me 3 days on rations and it be 2 days to town. Huntin not me best ting tuh do. I can get by."
"Hmmm... yes, I see here, and here... yes, I think it might be possible to restore this seal.
If it is possible, we should take the chance. This is quite interesting work here. I see he was using the Carter algorithm in his calculations but then switched to the Denovian method..."
Niu is no longer paying attention to anything the others are doing. He spent ten years in the desert doing similar studying with only Neb-en-toti for company. He'll be comfortable doing the same here.
As Rhen watches Niu enter another reality, he decides to do some hunting. "I be yearnin fer some fresh meat, Anyone care tuh join?"
When Rhen exits the dwarven monastery, he sees the campsite Festia has set up. He politely admires the place noting a Coffee Pot, 2 weeks feed(2 horses), 2 weeks rations(2 people),1 bottle of Fine wine, 1 lb Coffee, ½ lb Tea. "Oh my girl, ye got it goin on, ye do. I be addin venison to dis soon nuff." He heads into the dark forest. When back with fresh meat, Rhen sets up at the camp and over the next few days will take food, water, and whatever the Paladin may need as she stays by Niu's side.
"...carry the one over the square of the hypotenuse, walking backwards through the Descartian streams, careful not to let them cross... yes, yes, I see what you did there...."
Stretching his back and shoulders, Niu jumps in startlement when he sees Ziera waiting by the doorway, then giggles lightly to himself before stretching his legs and looking down to Neb-en-toti. "I wonder whatever happened to that big cat? What was its name? Ranok? He was an excellent conversationalist. Not to mention warm and fluffy.
Warm and fluffy would be excellent right now. It is so cold and dark in these caves." Noticing the chalk diagrams again, Niu bends down and starts mumbling under his breath again.
Neb-en-toti impossibly rolls his eyes and scuttles over to feast on a ball of manure.
"Khonsu, it is good to see you again, my friend. Rhen, Khonsu and I can supply all the food we need here in the wild. Festia, keep that fire going and I will fill it." Ranok turns to head out into the wilderness with his friend when he turns back. "Niu said that he did not need food, but what about Ziera? We should maybe take some down to her, huh?" With that, the two are gone for the next few hours.