Catsial circles around the sun, picking elliptical orbit, faking that he will be shooting his ineffective sniper rifle, but with another hand he pulls out his pistol and takes a shot.
Catsial manages to fake out the ball of fusion, and lands a hit that does minor damage. Sturmvanger holds back a bit too much, and falls short of doing damage to the orb.
---
Seggas
Sturm
Mizix
Catsial
Altorin
---
Miniature Sun (40, entangled -2 AC, ATK, RFX, DEX)
---
|
Seggas loads up a small ringfinger worth of something into her biomass of a gun. She takes aim with the literal muzzle of the weapon and fires.
However, trying to keep another ourburst of mad scientist mania under control, she twitches and the shot, with an AC degrading genetic strand in it flies into the back hole instead of the sun.
Seggas sees the huge potential of studying DNA under extreme radiation conditions, but fails to do any damage.
The Sun's orbit takes it through Mizix, coming at a rest over Sturm and Altorin. The intense gravity inside the sun scoop up a lot of rocks, dust and adventurers.
--
Seggas
Sturm
Mizix
Catsial
Altorin
---
Miniature Sun (40, entangled -2 AC, ATK, RFX, DEX)
---
Catsial moves close to the mini sun pretending be dragged into its center, just to move away and take another shot.
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Sturmvanger isn't great at dodging so he sticks with what he knows, jamming his bone blade into the sun as it gets close.
He then finds himself stuck inside the thing and struggles to get out.
The sun engulfs Sturm in a ball of plasma just.
The stars swells a big redder, a bit bigger. Catsial lands another hit, and Mizix finally disrupts the fusion flows of the sun to such an extent that it goes supernova, shedding its outer layers of gas, and leaving a glowing core of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (and some phosphorous) in the form of Sturmvanger.
It turns out there's something else lying here, a small photonic crystal.
A winding path leads down along the asteroid’s surface, curving back into a wide depression. A vast temple of stone like that of the asteroid rises from the depression. Rubble covers several areas outside of the complex, though a side stairway is visible along the building’s southwestern edge. A primary staircase admits entrance along the structure’s northern edge, beginning right at the end of the path.
Catsial reloads his pistol and scans the area around him with his sniper rifle. "That was unexpected ... Everyone is ok? SUrmwanger are you all right?"
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How was living inside a star? Mizix asks Surmvanger as they move along. Obviously not a true star of course. But likely as close as any of us will ever reach while being able to come back and talk about it.
Seggas gives Mizix an odd look. "You can visit the Burning Archipelago if you're curious about that. I'm sure they have museums even."
Everybody gets a general feel for the temple's layout from observing the exterior. Mizix notes that the structure's ceiling contains a crystalline dome. Stellar imagery has been carefully etched into the dome, and it isn't a stretch to think this has a religious significance of sorts.
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Sturmvanger falls to the ground below where the star was.
"Hot." He replies simply to the question about how it felt as he gets to his feet.
He gives a nod. "I'm fine," in response to questions about his health.
He scoops up the crystal. It's not useful for any of them but the man they're looking for can probably find something to do with it.
"Inside?" he asks.
Catsial looks at the building, he points with his cane "Two entrances, but assuming that Jadnura is inside he might be suspicious of us if we try to sneak on him. Why don't we go through the main door."
A fifteen-foot-wide set of stairs descends to the south, leading to the worn path. Silver doors lie partly ajar on the eastern and western walls of this wide entryway. A secondary set of stairs ascends further to the south, ending at a thick stone wall with a single golden doorway bedecked in astrological symbols.
A dull-blue, uncut crystal, roughly the size of a human child, floats in the center of the entryway. A dim light pulses from the bizarre gem.
Altorin notices a distinct pattern of lights in the gem, which to him provides indication that something is really rather off with the crystal.
Catsial moves carefully closer and attempts to shift the components with his four hands
"Ok, give me some juice Catsial..."
As Catsial and Altorin work on the crystal, the latter recognises it as an greeting crystal, used by the Ibran priests to welcome visitors. In its original purpose, it would harbor the replicated minds of former temple custodians, that would inform visitors of the temple's purpose. Something has utterly corrupted the crystal, though, with only a few corrupted, shattered psychic shards of energy powering the crystal. When Catsial reconfigures the crystal components, the psychic echoes fade away, no longer posing a hazard.
Now that the immediate threat is gone, Altorin also notices that the decoration are astrological symbols, which match those of several prominent topics within the church of Ibra. The door is locked, and would take significant engineering skill to open.
"Anyone wants to spend time opening those doors? I heard that side door are new main door now." He looks at others
A secondary entry chamber connects to a long hallway. Several ten-foot-square chambers stand east and west of the hall.
Simple doors connect to each of the smaller rooms, though the southernmost rooms remain inaccessible due to fallen debris.
Catsial moves into the corridor he knocks on the door and then open the first one to the right
Catsial opens the door, and finds a small square room, 10 feet on each side. It looks like a mediation room of sorts, where priests would go to isolate themselves for greater focus. The hallways contains many similar rooms.
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Catsial walk inside looking for any signs of Jadnura "My guess is that there will be plenty of such rooms, I think we should check them for any signs."
Catsial walk inside looking for any signs of Jadnura "My guess is that there will be plenty of such rooms, I think we should check them for any signs."
When Catsial steps into the room, the rest of the party hears Mygueessisthat with increasingly high speed and pitch thewibepleofsurooo, at which point the pitch becomes so high to be inaudibly high. The door slams shut.
The meditation room seems to have transformed, and no exit is visible. Time itself seems off in this room, as if it is flowing at an accelerated rate. Catsial just stepped in, but how long has he been in here? A few seconds? A year? Has the black hole finally swallowed up all of the universe by now?
Catsial reaches for the gun and his sword, he first moves around wondering what to do, then he shoots a bullet at one of the walls. (not the one where the door was).
"What is this place?"
The meditation room looks to be set up to challenge the senses. Brutally. The sensation in the room is one of time flowing uncontrollably, possibly allowing for an extra hurdle in mediation.
Mizix opens the door, and finds Catsial inside, looking a little worse for wear.
Catsial pushes his way out of the room, he recalled when the doors were and pushed his way there.
Seeing everyone back he tries to calm his breath and reloads his pistol. After couple of seconds he say
"The door disappeared, the room felt like the time have slowed down there, it felt like I've been there for really long time. Fortunately, I recalled the medication techniques from Master Bojan. I looked into my soul and find the peace needed to free myself."
as Catsial is clearly obscuring the truth about how he got out ;)
Mizix goes through the door into a grand hall that stretches almost fifty feet from north to south and is slightly more than half as wide. Regular stone pillars support the ceiling overhead. Engravings of astrological
markings including stars, moons and constellation patterns cover the sides of each pillar in dizzying displays. A golden door exits to the north, while silver doors provide additional exits to the east, south, and west.
"So what? towards the door in the end? "
Roughly forty feet long and fifteen feet wide, this chamber would appear austere if not for the collapsed hunks of rock along its western side. A vast crystal dome opens from the ceiling some thirty feet above. Starlight rebounds to form intricate, immense images of dragons, bull-headed monsters, stars, and indistinct humanoid figures. Three closed wooden doors are set along the southern walls here, with another wooden door slightly ajar to the west. A silver doorway leads out to the north. Stone seats lie shattered and broken along with the debris of the western ceiling.
the stone seats are not part of the original collapse along the western wall; they instead look as though they were thrown in that direction
The figures cast by the dome represent common outsiders and entities known to act on Ibra’s behalf, including several creatures known as animate constellations that often come to the service of Ibran priests
---
(She and Sturm share the higher init)
An orangish flying creature with long tendrils emerges from the rubble and exterts a strange gravity pull on Catsial
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Catsial
Seggas
Sturm
Mizix
Altorin
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Monster
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"The dome depicts common servants of Ibra, outsiders and animate constellations." Altorin marvels as he moves into the room, spotting the enemy threatening to pull Catsial in. He quickly moves to put himself between the two.
Once closer, he mentally wracks the mind of the creature with the intention of stopping it.
"We can't have that."
Altorin blasts the monster with pure thoughts, which somehow seems to hit a raw nerve with the creature. Sturm moves in and takes a swipe with his bone blade, missing barely. Mizix slams into the tentacled beast and covers it in acid.
Mizix recognises the creature as a void hantu. Where the previous encounter was all about light, this creature is the embodiment of the force of gravity, altering space-time to suck that around him in. It does that not only in the physical sense, but also in the mental sense, as it devours the sanity of those around him. It was probably this creature that corrupted the gem at the entrance, draining the memories within and turning it into the dangerous trap that it was. One can only wonder what it would do to - say - a meditating second seeker.
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Catsial
Seggas
Sturm
Mizix
Altorin
---
Monster (28)
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Catsial withstands the pull, and moves to the side, while taking a shot at the creature
Catsial resists the pull of gravity, but has trouble getting his aim right in the altered field.
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Catsial
Seggas
Sturm
Mizix
Altorin
---
Monster (28)
---
Seggas gives the gravity creature a good spraying of acid.
The creature turns its tendril on Mizix, hitting the gnome and sucking out some of that dark, entropic sentience...
-
Catsial
Seggas
Sturm
Mizix
Altorin
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Monster (41)
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