Unable to dodge all the strikes from the spiked chain, Elathras frowns at the attacker. "That's not nice." Tapping his heels together, he shifts his feet and attacks with the guisarme, striking out multiple times.
Elathras cuts Orange deeply with his last attack, leaving her nearly dead, and gasping with pleasure. her face shifts till it looks like that of Elathras' aunt, "I knew you would be my end!" She whispers in sorrow.
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Unnerving Gaze (Su)
Range 30 ft., Will DC 15 negates. A kyton can make its face resemble one of an opponent’s departed loved ones or bitter enemies. Those who fail their saves become shaken for 1d3 rounds. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.
Axton can now act!
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"Incorrect! A fireball will be your end!"
Axton's spell again fill the room with flame, yet somehow misses those of his party in the room. Red & Orange have taken too much damage and perish.
Elena, Bharak & Vhane can now act!
Without saying a word, Bharak moved in. The last standing foe was too far for him to swing his hammer to its full effect, but he still managed to get a solid blow in.
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Frowning, Elena watches the now sole remaining devil's face twist into that of a stern and cold looking woman as it tried to manipulate Elathras. "Are you all right?" She asks from the rear just as the ringing from the second explosion fades. "It's a monster. Whoever that was, whatever it refers to, it's meaningless. You're with us now and we believe in you."
Bharak ends Yellow, the Kyton's finding opponents who aren't strapped down a harder meal to enjoy.
Treasure:
The cloaks and robes that hang on pegs nearby are magical, remnants of the Therassic order that once dwelled here.
These items (two cloaks of resistance +2 and a monk's robe) are still functional (although covered with a thick layer of dust).
Moving on, or healing up?
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Raising an eyebrow as the thing changes its face into his aunt's, Elahras lowers the tip of his Guisarme. Curious as to what the creature might know. Hearing Axton's spell, he almost asks his friend to stop, almost. Instead, he smiles as Axton 'corrects' the Kyton's assumptions.
The stench of the creatures burning, Elathras nods as Bharak moves in and puts the last one out of its misery. Turning from the flaming pile towards Elena he nods, "I'm fine."
He cocks his head looking from Elena to the burning corpses. The Kytons had been monsters, Elena's words, 'You're with us now and we believe in you.' we're so different than what he'd heard from his aunt, heck from the whole order. Maybe the order had hunted monsters so long they had started to become like them.
Not wanting to think about his past anymore, Elena was right, at this moment and this time he was with the pathfinders he didn't know how long it would last, but he would enjoy it while he could.
Looking up from the corpse he turned towards the dusty robes on the wall. Leaning his polearm against the wall, he lifted he two dusty cloaks off the pegs. Holding them up, he smiled, "Well these would certainly look good on Axton and Bharak!" He realized the pathfinders didn't follow the 'hell knight' rule 'You keep what you kill' but those two had done a lot of the killing. He smiled, looking at Elena, "Don't worry, you can have the monk's robe."
His face taking on a more serious demeaner, Elathras shifts his shoulder, wincing slightly. Still looking towards Elena, he asks, "I messed this shoulder up pretty good, could you heal it?" He reaches into belt and pulls out a wand for healing, "Here use this."
Pointing to his friend Bharak, "Use it on the dwarfs as well."
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"Don't worry, you can have the monk's robe."
Raising an eyebrow, the Shelynite priestess inclines her head slightly downward, drawing attention to her colourful and patterned Varisian garments and accessories. Her exotic violet eyes trail to the somber, drab, dusty, ten-thousand plus year old garment, then back to the hellknight. She holds his gaze as to if ask "really?", then chuckles. "Maybe in another life."
The mood sombers when the topic shifts to injuries. "I can just channel... but If you prefer I use the wand, sure. I think I haven't used mine once ever since we started this search for the fragments. Might as well make use of them at some point."
"Okay, let's do a quick search for anything else and keep going. There was a door to the east in the previous room."
"Don't worry, you can have the monk's robe."Raising an eyebrow, the Shelynite priestess inclines her head slightly downward, drawing attention to her colourful and patterned Varisian garments and accessories. Her exotic violet eyes trail to the somber, drab, dusty, ten-thousand plus year old garment, then back to the hellknight. She holds his gaze as to if ask "really?", then chuckles. "Maybe in another life."
"May I?" Axton takes the robe and gives it a good shake away from the party.
With the dust removed, archaic Thassilonian characters are written in faint script on the sleeves and shoulders of the garment. Axton explains that they talk about fluid movement and mental fortitude. If nobody else wants it, Axton asks with wide, childlke eyes if he can have it.
B6. THE ORRERY
Almost every angle in this roughly circular chamber is smooth and curved. Though its walls and 20-foot-high ceiling are flat, the flat planes all curl to meet each other-even the doors are curved, making a total lack of hard edges or corners, save for two broken sections on the western and eastern walls where long cracks have marred the perfect surface.
In the center of the room rests an elaborate clockwork construct of spheres. At its heart is a barrel-sized representation of the sun, while around it, metal struts suspend much smaller metal balls.
Just north of it, a smooth four-foot-tall podium rises like a stalagmite, its top bearing a small brass wheel and a lever.
A successful DC 15 Knowledge (arcana, geography, or nature) is enough to recognize the apparatus in the center as an orrery, a model of Golarion's solar system.
A successful DC 20 check with any of those skills is enough to recognize that, though the celestial bodies are not to scale, their positions represent their relative positions in their orbits for the current date.
What are you doing now?
Pleased that Axton liked the dusty old robe, Elathras follows Bharak towards the next room. Peaking his head in the door, he admires the shiny clockwork of constructed spheres. Shrugging his shoulders, he looks towards the others, "Yeah, I got nothin'."
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Elena lets out a awed 'wow' over the magnificent and ancient machine, apparently still performing its function flawlessly to this very day.
"This... this is a model of our solar system! These bodies, they perfectly reflect the current positions of their respective planets and stars! That means this machine was able to flawlessly keep track of, or predict, where they would be over ten thousand years after it was made!"
Her sketchbook is already out and scribbling has begun in earnest when she notes the lever on top of the platform near the party. "Hm... what do you think that does? Is that supposed to open the way forward?" she wonders.
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Bharak was still adjusting his new cloak (his old one had been stashed away for the group to sell), when they came across the room. The others were absolutely gushing over the majesty of the orrery. But to him? It was too esoteric. The planets and stars were in the sky. What did it matter where in the sky they were? It was like painting a landscape. It was neat that everything was in the right spot, but he didn’t see the significance outside of proving one’s craftsmanship.
”So…this is valuable, right? Not sure how we’d sell it, though. Or maybe we have to adjust it, so that it opens something up? Seems like the kind of puzzle these fookers would dream up.” With that said he began to carefully search for any signs of a secret door. If his musings were right then there had to be some sign, and it was at least productive given that he’d be of no use when it came to figuring out anything regarding constellations.
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"Hey Bharak? Vhane too, maybe?" Elena calls out to the two dwarves - the only ones she thought had any engineering experience. "Can you take a look at this? What do you think this would do?" Elena says as she, having finished her sketch of the planetary alignments, moves towards the platform and the lever standing on it perhaps too enticingly. She begins detecting magic on the room as she wonders if there was anything hidden here before they took the obvious door south...
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Dutifully, Bharak abandoned his search for any secret doors and heeded Elena's call to action.
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"This... this is a model of our solar system! These bodies, they perfectly reflect the current positions of their respective planets and stars! That means this machine was able to flawlessly keep track of, or predict, where they would be over ten thousand years after it was made!"
"Fascinating!
Axton approaches and looks at the representation of Golarion. He wants to see if there's enough detail to see the shape of the continents from before Earthfall. If so, he'll see if Elena is interested in sketching it.
As Elena explains the 'model' was of their solar system Elathras nods his head. He'd seen a picture before in a book in the fortress's but he wasn't suprised he didn't recognize it. The books image hadn't been very good, at least not compared to this and the Hellknights weren't really known for concerning themselves with detailed education.
Not wanting surprised by anything coming up the hall, Elathras stayed near the door so he could keep a keen eye out. Occasionally watching the others, as the explored the ancient relic.
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Bharak studies the device carefully. With ease he notes it is not trapped. Nothing happens if the dial is turned, but once the lever is pulled it gets very interesting!
This entire room is a powerful magical artifact that was once used by Karzoug to experiment with the manipulation of time, and exudes a strong aura of transmutation.
Manipulating the spheres by hand does nothing, nor does turning the wheel on its own. Once the lever is pushed, however, any planets that have been moved snap back into their current-date positions, and hidden projectors transform the walls, ceiling, and floor into a panoramic view of Kaer Maga and its surroundings, as seen from several hundred feet in the air.
The illusion is picture-perfect, with the party, podium, and orrery appearing to float in midair, though you can still feel the stone floor beneath your feet and the walls under your fingers.
Only the two long cracks in the wall remain visible, marring the projection.
The view is a live feed, and though you cannot alter your position or "zoom in," you can recognize particular people or locations in the city.
If the wheel is turned counterclockwise, the various celestial bodies move backward in their orbits, and the projected view changes accordingly, rewinding backward through time.
Turning the wheel slightly causes the view to rewind slowly, while turning it all the way causes years to shoot past in seconds.
Turning it clockwise causes years to progress forward at a similar rate-in this case, living creatures and some structures become translucent and flicker, representing the uncertain nature of the predictions, with the flickering spreading to more objects and becoming more erratic the
farther into the future the device attempts to peer.
What are you doing now?
Watching in amazement as the entire room came 'to life' Elathras realizes, as his friends experiment wih the controls of the magical machine. It seemed as if the entire history of Kaer Maga had been recorded. He looks around the room, noting that Axton seemed to be wondering something.
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As the chaotic mess of images flashen by with pulls of the lever, Elena's mind races, wondering what the single most valuable piece of information could be gained from either past or future. This was a device worthy of even gods! The ultimate untapped pool of knowledge concerning everything in this city.
But how to use it to their advantage? Watch someone or thinf from the past? But why and why? And the future seemed fickle, presumably cyling through possibilities of events yet to-
Wait. But if there were multiple possibiliteies, that meant that in at least some of those, they'd presumably succeed in recovering the shard.
Could it work...?
"Stop. Go back to the near future. The coming weeks from now."
She took careful note of the exact perspective of the machine from above, quickly sketching the outlines of obvious landmark.
"Now watch any high up structure for images. Roof paintings. Something unusual, that looks like I might have drawn it! Assuming we succeeded, and knowing we viewed the city from past in this perspective, versions of future me that survived would have drawn something big and high enough to warn of us what we need to know!"
She excitedly glances through the city to where she expected such hints to appear. "The images would have to be protected to last and we'd need permission to place them at all. Meaning the most likely places are the roofs of Duskwarden's headquarters, the Augur's Guild and the Scholars of the tower we are currently in. In other words, those here who us something, are about to owe us something, or are likely to partake in expiriments concerning fate and reading the future."
"...at least, in theory?" She blushes but continues watching, wondering if her resolve, coupled with this ancient machines power would carry any hints of her future self through space and time.
Future Elena would paint three images on the largest/highest roofs belonging to these factions, one each: one image portraying the great danger in the near future this party is least equipped to handle as we are. The second one portrays the most valueable hidden treasure along with a clue to its location or how to get it. And the last one is an image of Elena opening the Onyx tomb back in the Lady's Light.
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Bharak felt a lump in his throat as he considered what was before them. "This power." He said, staring at what was around them. "To make something like this. It is unthinkable how much power these people had at their disposal." He kept his eyes peeled, to see if this manipulation of time would unveil clues as towards where the artifacts they sought might be and what defenses awaited them.