"It might prove valuable to speak with some locals about how long this has been going on. Are there any settlements nearby?"
“There aren’t any settlements near here anymore,” Joska answers. “If there were we would have started our investigation there. Is there anything else anyone wants to check while we’re here, or any preparations anyone wants to make before we leave? If not, we should get moving…”
"I believe we are ready, though, if you have no objections, I'd like to take a small sample of the water for observation." Gavin says.
He then empties a small vial into the grass and refills it with the water after rinsing it.
"Ready" Lyra tells her defensive charge, flashing him a quick smile and warns him not to get that vial confused with a normal potion.
Joska appears concerned that Gavin has chosen to disregard her recommendation to stay out of the water, but her own curiosity stops her from repeating it. After emptying the small flask, the priest steps up to the water’s edge and dips it in. For a moment the water pours in as expected but when a fleck of the azure fluid touches his submerged fingers it bursts in a brilliant flash of light, hurting his hand and breaking the flask.
“That was certainly an interesting result,” the mage remarks. “That can’t be happening with the wildlife or none of them would survive to adulthood. So, something about us triggered that- possibly our attunement to the Tower. That could lend some credence to the idea that this fluid is somehow ‘leaking’ from, or at least related to, the Tower.”
Lyra sends a quick glare at the mage's remarks, as she hurries over to help bandage the cleric's hand.
Gavin pulls his hand back, but not quick enough to avoid the breaking glass.
"Oh my," he says with a chuckle, "this water is certainly less interested in me than I am in it."
He sighs as he watches the shards sink and says, "I suppose we can move along now."
Chuckling lightly, "Yeah, I think moving along is a great idea. Didn't know 'water' could be so pissy. Sheesh."
"Odd though" Lyra says when tapping her chin with her gauntlet clad finger. "Since the water isn't exploding with us standing here, I wonder if it has to touch something from the tower, not just be near it. So if we found a container from this time, and scoped up some, would it blow up too?" she is wondering this while Gavin starts his spell "Not that I care to experiment, just passing time."
Choosing safety over further experimentation, the four investigators pause for a moment to resume the mist form available thanks to Gavin's windwalk spell. When they're transformation is complete they float out over the water and begin following it fairly rapidly upstream. They travel for about 5 minutes, covering around half the many miles, before Gavin's augmented eyes pick out two things ahead of them. First- partly submerged in the water, 90' ahead, there is a tangle of metal tubes and a large white stone that looks out of place.
Second- in the grass on the southside of the stream, 80' ahead, part of a snake is visible. Based on the tremendous girth of what's visible, the snake must be 30 or 40 feet long.
With his shield and his sword ready, "So, do we just go kill it? Or do we wish to be more subtle? Like, kill it 'secretly'."
Lyra the wind whispers back "If we don't have to kill it, that would be better. We could try scaring it away, but if I was a snake That big, I wouldn't see us as anything more than dinner." she thinks as they sway in the air. "How about fire? most animals with any sense fear fire, right? Maybe Gavin could try one of his big balls of fire?[/smaller]" she suggests if they decide that the rest of them are all ready to zoom in and finish it if it isn't sensible.
Continuing with their mental communication, "Fire sounds good. Gavin? What do you think?"
++The plan could certainly work, but we should also do what we can to prepare for conflict. We need to examine the machinery. Coming out of Wind form will take some time, we should do it about 500 feet from the snake, to allow time to prepare for the worst.++ Gavin thinks to the others.
++Joska, you may want to maintain wind form, for the added protection.++
Once they have landed, Gavin applies some protection.
After the others have had a chance to prepare, the group makes its way to the last known location of the snake. Lyra and Maximus walking, and Gavin flying about 25 feet over them.
+5 to your next initiative roll (anticipate peril)
Ignore difficult terrain (Featherstep)
Freedom of Movement
+5 to your next initiative roll (anticipate peril)
+4 morale bonus to attack, saves and skill checks, immunitytofear, 1+13 temporaryhit points(greater Heroism)
Ignore difficult terrain (Featherstep)
Lyra spends a minute stretching, enjoying the magic allowing her to move with even more grace and speed. "Thank you, Gavin." she says with anticipation. She might not want to kill if she didn't have to, but she still LOVED a good fight.
++I appreciate your concern, Gavin,++ Joska replies as she begins returning to solid forms with everyone else, ++but I am not without the means to be helpful if your attempt to scare off the snake fails.++
As if to illustrate her point, when the cleric begins casting his preparatory spells, she casts one of her own: wispy, moth-like wings burst from her back and her ears lengthen as she shrinks down to no more than 6 or 8 inches tall. Gavin recognizes the spell as fey form III.
Lyra had already cast plenty on her before coming to this overgrown delight but after a moment's consideration, she casts one of her favorites... Fly.
Not wanting to be left behind, the burly knight scratches his chin for a moment and then quietly calls upon his inner strength to transform himself. His skin becomes rocky and wide wings and a second pair of arms burst from his body as he grows to over ten feet tall.
When Gavin finishes casting his litany of spells, Joska remarks, "whatever you're going to do with fire, I believe we are prepared for it."
With their preparations made, the group moves slowly to the river, keeping a lookout for the snake, when it is spotted, Gavin looses a magical blast of flame upon it.
DC 21 reflex save
As Gavin begins to walk forward, Joska quietly asks, “are you sure you want to approach on foot? As thick as this foliage is, we’d likely be within reach of the snake’s bite by the time we can see it.”
When they realize the grass is too high, Lyra offers to cast one of her flight spells on the cleric so he can firebomb it from the sky. "Fly with me?" the swordswoman hovers in the air, reaching down with her hand to him.
As Lyra floats effortlessly up into the air above the grass, the others flap their widely varied wings to carry themselves aloft as well. Together, they fly towards where the giant snake had been spotted and once again Gavin manages to pick its scales out from grass at a distance of 80 feet. From there, the priest attempts to drive the creature away with the application of fire.
The fireball bursts in the grass, provoking a nasty hiss from the singed creature.
The snake's massive head pops up from the grass and quickly spots the flying interlopers. It moves with startling speed towards the group and as soon as it's within 20 feet of them, it's head flashes forward at the most obvious threat: the 12 foot tall gargoyle .
Its fangs manage to slip past his armor and pierce his stony hide, but the burly knight is able to pull away when it attempts to latch on to him. Unfortunately, the fast moving serpent is able to follow it up with another lightning-quick strike.
Once again, its powerful fangs pierce the warrior's flesh, and once again he manages to pull free of them.
Roaring loudly due to the pain, Maximus "the Gargoyle" activates his mythic ability to give himself some healing before stepping forward and attempting to bite down hard upon the overgrown anaconda!
"I hoped that would have worked" Lyra sighed but only half-heartedly since now she could fight a GIANT SNAKE! Like an arrow following out of the sky, the swordswoman shoots at the creature.
She seems to be having TOO much fun, almost playing with the snake instead of trying to kill it.
The surprisingly swift snake strikes at both warriors as they approach.
Despite it's size, the serpent slips its self clear of Maximus' bite, but Lyra's first and final attacks pierce deep into its body causing its movements to become erratic.
"That's quite enough playing around, you two. Get to the business of fighting." Gavin says after the warriors get off to a slow start.
The old man lets a wave of healing energy wash over his allies.
++It seems to be a normal anaconda, save for its size,++ Joska shares, taking advantage of the ongoing telepathic bond. ++But a normal anaconda wouldn't be this fast. I wonder if continual exposure so close to what we're presuming to be the source of the anomaly has affected its speed... or how time passes for it?++
While she thinks these things to the others, she flies upward and off to one side on her tiny faerie wings. When she reaches a safe height, and a position that won't put Maximus or Lyra at risk, she reaches out one of her dainty little sprite hands and blasts a cone of cold down on the serpent.
The massive snake recoils from the cold, hissing, then falls limply to the ground.
Lyra flashes Gavin an exaggerated eye roll, spoiled by a smile. But before she could get to it, the snake was a frozen popsicle. "Nice work, Joska!" she calls to the spritely woman flying high above.
As he reverts to his normal self, he looks over toward Joska and says, "Are you serious? That's it? That's all it took? You couldn't have done that in the beginning?" Sighing heavily as he runs his hands down his face in frustration - probably due to the fact that he attributed NOTHING during the battle more so than anything else - "Anyway, good job little one."
"So, now that that's settled, I guess we can keep moving along."
"Someone needed to get bitten. That is why we are part of the party, don't you know Max?" she mock sighed, looking as put out as possible, but a grin erupted when she continued with "We Look Tasty. So the monsters want to eat us while they get all the important work like investigating strange machines in the middle of an enchanted river." the last part was directed at the mage and cleric.
"My spell only killed it because of the wounds you'd both already inflicted," Joska explains to Maximus in her tiny sprite voice as she begins flying down towards the strange machine. "And, unless you have some other means of flying, I would suggest you don't dismiss your transmutation until we're done investigating, since the water seems unsafe for us to touch."
The mage casts detect magic once again while flying and continues downward until she's within ten feet of the strange machine. She hovers there to begin her investigation.
Gavin laughs as the pair discuss the combat. After channeling again, he turns his attention to the snake. Looking it over closely, he notes length, girth, approximate weight, size of fangs (acquiring one if possible).
Lyra is standing guard as the investigators investigate.
Maximus awaits the others to finish what they're doing.
Gavin finds that the giant snake is nearly sixty feet long from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail, and just over three feet wide (or, over nine feet around) across its midsection. The aging priest has no accurate means of measuring the creature's weight, but it must be several tons. He also discovers that the snake does not, technically, have fangs (which would be hollow to allow the injection of venom), but large, slightly-curved teeth that look like fangs; these curved teeth are firmly attached and would require some work with a knife or other small blade to remove.
As he's finishing up his investigation, an agitated Joska flutters upwards from the mysterious tubing in the river. ++The device is damaging our link to the Tower++ she calls out frantically through the telepathic bond. ++We don't have much time left before we're pulled back through the portal, but we can't leave this here like this- I'm going to try to destroy, which could further destabilize our link. Brace yourselves.++ With that, the sprite begins weaving together a disintegration spell.
Gavin will ready an action to heal (by channeling energy) if any of the group are injured by the collateral damage.
"Thank you for your patience, Joska. Please, proceed."
After a moment of trying to get a fang out, Lyra had been chatting softly to Maximus so not to disturb the investigators. At the moment before Joska makes the announcement, she is saying "I hear snakes takes like chicken, and this is One Really large chicken, so-" what the rest of that was going to be is lost to agitated river machinery planned destruction.
Once she realizes what is going on, she says to Maximus "I'll take Joska" and flies quickly to the sprite to help if danger erupts. She would normally do this for Gavin, but in explosive situations, Maximus is simply better at taking the brunt of something like that.
Lyra just manages to yank one large tooth from the giant snake's mouth when Joska complete's her spell. A bolt of green energy arcs from the mage's outstretched hand to tangle of tubes and white stone in the stream. The mysterious device crumbles to dust and vanishes as water floods into the void it left; at the same time, a wave of azure energy flashes outward, streaking through all four investigators. As it passes through them, they feel the somewhat familiar, and always painful sense of being suddenly yanked backwards by their insides. It passes just as quickly as it began and they find themselves sore and standing once again inside the Tower, next to the doorway that had been a portal when they left.
"Well..." Joska remarks as she slowly moves her body around a little bit with a slight grimace on her face, "that was a more abrupt ending to our excursion than I'd hoped for. Still, it was a productive outing. I think you may have been more correct than I anticipated, Lyra. The white stone seemed somehow connected to the Tower, and the tubes were part of some kind of magical device that was leeching energy from it and concentrating it into that liquid, which then did leak into the surroundings."
"Who would have built such a device?" Gavin wonders out loud.
"Who could have?"
He works quickly to counter the energy blast.
"I have no idea..." Joska answers with a hint of concern, "I've never even heard of liquified temporal energy, much less someone or something who could create it... or, refine it, I suppose..."
Joska stares off for a moment, lost in thought. When nobody else speaks she eventually asks, "well... shall we head back to the institute to file a report?"
"Didn't we see something similar in that manor with the creepy dolls?" Lyra asks Gavin, since he was the only other person there. She will relate everything she can remember
[dice=sense motive]1d20+17
[dice=survival]1d20+5After a moment of trying to get a fang out, Lyra had been chatting softly to Maximus so not to disturb the investigators. At the moment before Joska makes the announcement, she is saying "I hear snakes takes like chicken, and this is One Really large chicken, so-" what the rest of that was going to be is lost to agitated river machinery planned destruction.
Raising an eyebrow, "Really? Chicken? Not sure I trust that one. But if they do and we found a way to preserve the meat from it, we could eat for months off that bad boy," he says, nodding quite confidently.
Joska listens with great interest as Lyra recounts her and Gavin's second day in the Tower, when the two of them--along with Fenrick and the Witness--passed through a burning two-sided fireplace into Rosethorn Manor. She describes the strange, featureless, porcelain faces of the anitoms there, and the unusual cube one carried that made whirring and clicking noises like it contained some manner of clockwork, and leaked a similar azure fluid when one of the fine metal pipes on it cracked open. And she recounts the explosion that occurred when that fluid hit the floor, and the damage it did on that floor of the Tower.
"I see..." the mage utters at the story's end. "That can't be a coincidence... The area we were just exploring is the same region where Rosethorn once existed. And that piece of white stone in the stream could have been a mantle, it was certainly a worked piece of stone and approximately the right size..."