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When the Blue one attacked Azzirm, the sonorivore (aberration [extraplanar]) clearly noticed one aspect of the half-orc's armor - the shiny new spotlight on his shoulder - and Croaker saw it shy away from that side of his armor.
Croaker is also certain that sonic weapons will have absolutely no effect, and may instead actually make it stronger.
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Zir looks around, and sees the weird creatures come out of the darkness. He thinks real quick...using what others might have already mentioned to try to figure anymore about them.
Shrugging...he says, "Well...I said I would do this...."
And turns on the Brightlight Projector to be a radius around him....normally 50 feet, but with the problems with the Shadow, it is only 25 feet.
Then he aligns his armor to be more protective of blue, as he holds up his welding hand.....
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Croaker tries putting the whammy on the one that attacked Chip. It watches you speak, cocks its head to the side, and ignores your attempt to get inside its head.
Kultanien inspires Chip to get back in the fight, then goads her teammates to Get Red.
Azzirm turns on the big spotlight. The sonorivore’s bleeding wound fails to close in the glare. It looks across the room in a panic and then flees in terror towards the only place it can fight from out of the blinding light.
It attacks Croaker with its claw
Bold may act!
Map: Ambush! Duh
Active Conditions: None
Environmental Conditions: Completely Dark, Shadow Plane, Interior walls are only 3 feet tall, Umbral Tendrils around Red (inside red lines), Bright Light inside yellow arc
Blue Sonorivore
Roquefort
Chip
Carlos
Red Sonorivore
Croaker
Azzirm
Kultainen
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Roquefort listens to Kultainen and gets to work slaying the targeted foe.
The laser fires once more in the darkness.
Trick attack
Sense Motive Take 10 = DC13 tricked.
Attack vs FF EAC
Damage
+Bleeding Shot = 9 Bleed.
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Chip ignores the whole light/dark chiaroscuro thing going on, and focuses on slicing and dicing the red creature in front of him! He uses his nimble fusillade again, starting off with a full-attack!
vs. EAC
vs. EAC
Following this, Chip takes a guarded step away, hoping the umbral tendrils prevent the red creature from taking guarded steps, forcing it to provoke another attack of opportunity...
vs. EAC
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Blue easily evades Zir’s punch before it claws through Croaker’s armor. Croaker feels as if the room is beginning to become muffled and sounds more and more dim….
Roquefort peers over the small wall and seeing a clear line of fire burns the Red one and leaves it bleeding.
Chip does indeed slice and dice his target and drops it, leaving it unable to pursue him as he moves to support Croaker.
Carlos misses badly, though his spell continues to pummel the prone sonorivore . But even as Chip steps away, Roquefort sees Red’s wounds begin to heal. It’s not much compared to how much it’s been hurt, but given enough time in the darkness, it’ll surely get back up.
Bold may act!
Map: Ambush! Duh
Active Conditions: None
Environmental Conditions: Completely Dark, Shadow Plane, Interior walls are only 3 feet tall, umbral tendrils to the west of the red lines, Bright Light inside yellow arc
Blue Sonorivore
Roquefort
Chip
Carlos
Red Sonorivore
Croaker
Azzirm
Kultainen
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"Stupid, dagnabit creatures...fleeing...." Azzrim mutters as he comes moving around to get all the creatures (including Biter) in the brightlight projectors illumination.
Shooting the shoulder mounted cannon at the creature, as his armor capacitors kick in and funnel more power out of the cells than normal--about 3 times the amount...he hopes that the fact that the cannon also is highly illuminating will matter. And seeing that Chip is threatening....he sees that the little skitter is helping by making the creature stay on its guard to that lance...so maybe just a little easier to hit....
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Croaker feels the pain of the hit, but then feels his mind being attacked.
He takes a step backwards reaching for his knife, he swings the knife in the air, clearly to far away to make anyone harm with it. But his eyes keep on watching the creature
"You might not understand me, but most creatures attack Croaker only once in their lifetime, and that was yours!"
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Azzirm trudges across the room, and the brightlight projector fills the room with light and chases away the shadows. Red’s wounds stop healing and the creature expires from the damage it had already sustained. Biter doesn’t seem uncomfortable in the light as he continues watching your performance.
As he moves, the mechanic reflects on what he’s seen of these creatures so far. These seem similar to something he saw on a doco-vid, and he thinks they have some kind of Curse effect on their claws:
He shoots it with the cannon, and the 5-legged sound-dog is ungulfed in bright glowing plasma that seems to cling to its thick fur.
Kultainen keeps Croaker in the fight and directs the team with some tactical advise.
Croaker seems a bit pissed at the audacity of the sonorivores. First they ignore his attempts to show them the error of their ways, then they claw him and try to curse him. He stabs into Blue’s mind…
But the sonorivore is stronger-willed than they look.
Desperate and with nowhere to flee to, it lashes out at the skittermander right in front of it.
Bold may act!
Map: Ambush! Duh
Active Conditions: None
Environmental Conditions: Completely Dark, Shadow Plane, Interior walls are only 3 feet tall, umbral tendrils to the west of the red lines, Bright Light inside yellow arc
Blue Sonorivore
Roquefort
Chip
Carlos
Red Sonorivore
Croaker
Azzirm
Kultainen
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Roquefort picks his way towards the next target and takes aim...
Trick attack
Sense Motive Take 10 = DC13 tricked.
Attack vs FF EAC
Damage
+Bleeding Shot = 9 Bleed.
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Roquefort’s laser pistol hits one of the sonorivore’s oversized ears and burns a hole straight through its brain. The beam comes out the other ear hole and scorches a small bit of the opposite low wall just below where Biter was peeking over it. The acolyte nods in appreciation of his cousin’s well placed shot before stepping out from behind his cover. He stoops to confirm the status of the two very dead sonorivores and types something into a comm pad.
Silent Strike suddenly speaks over the training room’s speakers.
”Now that we’ve satisfied your expectations, we can proceed with the rest of the trials. Oh, and I forgot to mention. Please do not do lethal harm to my apprentices. I’d prefer it if my assets were kept intact after our business is concluded.”
The forward door turns blue and opens, leading to a long hallway. After about a 10 minute walk through shadowy halls full of locked doors and dead-end branches, you arrive at one door that is blue-lit. The door opens, and Biter gestures for you to enter.
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Gears, pipes, and wiring fill this room. The sound of machines thrumming and electronics beeping creates an odd symphony of noise while the acrid scents of engine oil and battery acid tinge the air. A plinth in the center of the room features two oversized keyholes for ancient round-tipped mechanical keys, one on each side. They’re clearly spaced too far apart for a medium sized creature to reach both keyholes at the same time.
On top of the plinth are four posts with wires snaking between them in a loose weave—a large, round-tipped key sits amid the center of the wires. Both Croaker and Roquefort immediately recognize this as a version of the common ysoki children’s game “spider’s nest,” where a weave of lightly electrified wires surrounds a piece of candy. Children try and remove the candy without touching the wires, which would glow and make a loud buzzing sound if the wire was touched. Unlike the wires typically used in the game, however, the wires in this deadly chamber are obviously nanofilament razor wires that are excessively sharp.
On the forward wall of the room, a large mural depicts ysoki working in an engine room. Roquefort recognizes this as a depiction of the ysoki children’s rhyme, “Twitchy Nose,” that reminds them of the safety precautions to take in an engine room.
Within the mural are several buttons that from left to right depict icons for: air vent, big red button, computer terminal, conduit, cooling tank, crate blocking the door, black wire, exposed wiring, gas mask, power core, and red wire. Roquefort can easily recite the full text of the rhyme as follows:
“Twitchy nose, twitchy nose, leave a block.
Dodge the wires or you’ll get a shock.
Twitchy nose, twitchy nose, black after red.
Don’t breathe deeply or you’ll wind up dead.”
The only obvious exit from this room is the door that you entered from which is, of course now red-lit and locked.
As soon as the you and Biter enter the room, Silent Strike speaks over the ship’s intercom, “Now we shall test your resourcefulness and your so-called teamwork. Hurry, hurry; you have only one minute to escape this room before it kills you.”
You notice the sickly sweet scent of something even through your environmental seals and hear a slight whooshing sound as of gas entering the room. A quick glance around the room reveals a first-aid kit attached to the forward side of the plinth.
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Fort
Fort
The Mural
Roquefort springs towards the mural and recites the tune as he begins pressing buttons...
“Twitchy nose, twitchy nose, leave a block - CRATE!" - Roquefort selects 'crate'
"Dodge the wires or you’ll get a shock - EXPOSED WIRING!" - Roquefort selects 'exposed wiring'
"Twitchy nose, twitchy nose, BLACK AFTER RED!" - Roquefort selects 'Red Wire', then 'Black wire'.
"Don’t breathe deeply or you’ll wind up dead - GAS MASK!” - Roquefort selects 'gas mask'.
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Croaker breathes in the air "Keeping to the classics? The sweet smell of almonds"
He reaches to the lay lines and channels the magic through him, then he wraps himself and each one of his allies and Bitter with a Life Bubble.
"Anyone is capable of picking a lock?"
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Looking at the vents...and knowing that his power armor can climb...he knows this ability to get to them is an advantage. So does his best to get the vents closed.
Maybe because he is getting closer to the vents than others...he starts to cough a little. Muttering to himself, "I knew I should have put in the filtration system in instead of the electrostatic shield."
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Chip blasts the web with a fire extinguisher, hoping to make the strands more brittle, before spitting on his hands and getting to work tearing the filaments apart to get at the key!
...only to just then remember that his environmental seals are on and he just spat on the inside of the helmet of his armor and now it's impairing his vision - gross!
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Jopsie studies the vials but isn’t quite able to figure out which one is the antidote. She’s pretty sure that administering the wrong one would make someone sick but not kill or completely incapacitate them. Kultainen remembers that since androids don’t actually need to breathe - except to make other species more comfortable around them - she simply stops breathing as the gas leaks into her armor.
Moments later, Croaker casts a spell, and the gas threat is neutralized. You no longer even notice the scent of the gas as the magic of the spell repels the toxins.
Meanwhile, your other ysoki teammate recalls his childhood days and the lessons that the “Twitchy Nose” rhyme taught him. He mashes several buttons while singing the rhyme aloud. As the Detective hits the last button depicting the gas mask, he’s rewarded with a block of cheese as a panel in the ceiling opens. A key matching the one inside the Spider’s Nest drops to the floor and Roquefort is able to pick it up.
And speaking of the other key, Chip starts by blasting the maze of razor wire with his fire extinguisher. Then he attacks the brittle strands with all of his many hands, tearing gaps in the wire that allow him to pull the key out and hold it aloft triumphantly. But the effort didn’t come without a cost, and three of the little skittermander’s hands are bloodied and bleeding.
Azzirm coughs a few times as he races around the room trying to jam all the vents closed. He doesn’t actually feel any effects of the gas, but even so unfortunately a couple of the vents remain open. Though with Croaker’s spell in place, the problem posed by the gas is likely no longer an issue.
But in all the excitement, no one really noticed a new threat. The walls have started closing in, almost exactly like those of a certain mythical trash compactor. Silently, slowly and inexorably the east and west walls moved about 2.5 feet every 6 seconds. However, because this room isn’t trying to actually crush things, it does look like a strong or smart enough individual could try to hold back a wall either physically or by rigging something to slow it down.
To recap, at the end of the 2nd round, you have both keys and you’ve neutralized the gas threat, though a new threat has now appeared.
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Azzrim gets the air bubble and smiles....he doesn't have to worry about finishing the vents then.
Seeing on his HUD that the walls are closing in, he moves to the other one and activates his descent thrusters--just to hopefully help a bit more with pushing against the wall--while bracing against a wall and pushing.
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The horrors that the Detective has experienced bleed over to Chip, whose wound seems to split open and bleed even more.
Croaker figures out a way to stop the wall just for a few seconds.
Azzirm and Kultainen both try to keep the walls from closing in as Roquefort tries to keep the team on task.
Chip puts five of his bloodied hands on the wall while handing the key off to Kultainen. Everyone notices the walls pause in their movement even as the little skittermander struggles mightily.
Carlos waits and watches, not sure what to do, while Biter moves about the room taking notes on everyone’s actions.
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Croaker scans the ten unmarked vials but isn’t able to figure out which one would help.
Carlos and Azzirm continue pushing against the wall and the big man encourages Kultainen and Roquefort.
Kultainen rushes over to the low plinth, inserts the key, and smartly pauses to wait for Roquefort. The Detective follows suit, inserts his key, and commands the countdown.
As soon as the two Starfinders turn their keys in sync, the walls stop moving, and a whooshing sound indicates that the toxic air is being forcefully ventilated out of the room.
Moments later, Silent Strike’s voice whispers over the intercom, “You live. I suppose working together has some advantages. Perhaps by working together with us we’ll both achieve our goals. Take a rest in my meeting room on the lower deck, and we shall speak soon.”
The floor slowly lowers like a giant cargo elevator, taking the team and their silent host to a lower deck. It lowers for several minutes before stopping at the bottom. This room is plain and unadorned. A single set of double doors is lit with blue light and open on the forward (east) wall. A dark glowing mass of something shadowy roils in the corner.
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Jopsie looks around the new room, Kultanien standing next to her in protective manner.
"Well, does anyone feel they need a rest?" asks Kultanien.
"It's been exciting, but we all look in reasonable shape... so far. Remember, we were asked not to use lethal force against the people on the ship. Right before that last challenge. The next area may be a test of our memory as much as our combat ability."