HP 83/83
AC 25 (+1 vs. traps), deny advantage, cold resistance 3
Fort +11, Ref +17, Will +12 (+1 vs. traps)
Hero Points: 1
Deviant backlash DC: 5
Effects:
Daehalya gives Nicky a nod as he dispatches the demon she was struggling with so mightily. Then, seeing her companions remain in trouble, she rushes through the nave, putting her body between the remaining fiend and Grundle, staff probing for weaknesses.
The giant leopard turns on the stage as the first daemon falls. His eyes blaze with golden light, and he bounds over the tops of the benches toward the daemon assaulting the other half of his tribe. Once within reach, he snaps at the creature with a ferocious bite.
Grundle, now on fire, loses his cool.
"Very well. If death will not take you, then let fear hold you in its grip.
You, creature of fire and sinew, pretend at strength, but I see through the performance. There is a part of you—small, buried, but still screaming—that knows what it is to be powerless. You remember the chain. The voice that commanded you. The hand that shaped you from suffering. You have spent your existence defying it, drowning it beneath violence and rage, but it never left. It waits.
And now, feel it rise. Not as memory, but as truth. The chain is tightening. You are not the master. You never were. All your victories were permitted. All your rage, rehearsed. You are a puppet, and the strings are being drawn again.
This is not your fear imagined. This is your fear remembered. Sink into it. Let it hollow you out. Let it ache in the marrow of your bones. There is no escape from the truth you’ve always fled: you were born a slave, and somewhere, something still owns you."
Alvarius attempts to hide behind Grundle as the flames burst from the demon.
It's marginally helpful in that the gnome takes the brunt of it.
He takes a brief moment of study the demon, hoping to identify it himself.
Having seen how well his magic worked before, he once more tries to freeze the demon in place.
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Daehalya rushes in smashing the end of her staff into the demons side knocking it to the ground. Onye leaps on top if it biting deep into its neck. The rest of the group converges on the prone demon. Nicholo stabs it while Alvarius freezes its back to the floor so Grundle can wreck its mind from the inside.
The attacks take out the large brute of a demon not allowing it to stand once more. With the curtain drawn Nicholo spots signs of a secret passage to the north.
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Dog Pile on the Demon!!!
He shouts as the group takes to smashing the enemy. Once things are over, and they are healthy and safe. He points down the hallway and gives indication of a secret door.
Anyone want to check to see if it's trapped? I can look at it with my magnifying glass? Or hand off the glass to other keen eyes.
Grundle, still on fire, nods wearily and heads for the secret door.
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This wide room is bisected by a dry sewage channel that dead ends against a relatively new-looking brick wall to the north. To the south, a set of four iron and wood chairs adorned with restraining straps sit against the wall. To the west, a ramp leads up to a door and a narrow walkway holding several barrels and crates. Two large metal tables sit elsewhere in the room, while to the north and further east stand shelves holding large collections of alchemical and surgical tools, books, and scrolls.
A wealth of knowledge awaits those that take the time to look through the dozens of densely-written notebooks and scrolls stored here. Etward kept these written notes in a mix of Common, Varisian, and Aklo.
Among the numerous books and scrolls stored on the shelves here are several formulas, including one for the inveigle ritual as well as formulas for Aether Marbles, Telekinetic Converters, Psychic Colors Elixir, and a Vat-Grown Brain. Additionally, there are two doses of slumber wine and a dozen doses of untainted cytillesh stored on the shelves.
Once the catfolk has finished tending to their wounds, he follows Nicholo through the secret door.
He prowls a circuit around the room to look for danger. The collection of wooden masks clack softly against his thigh with each step. Sensing no immediate threat, he thumbs through some of the notes. "Etward hides the meaning of the writing under a cypher with the language of the unravellers," the amurrun informs the others.
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Nicky speaks what Onye is thinking.
There's a lot of stuff here to process, and we still have more of this place to explore. Maybe diving into Etwards Mind Isn't what we want to do right now.
With that said, I am really good at Aklo and common. My Varisian is not so good, My girlfriend knows Varisian from her time in Sandpoint. But she only taught me the swear words, and the words that tell me I'm a dumb ass.
Um, anyone know why we have a bunch of Dero memory wipe drinks, and Two Predator Rapist Wine's? We have been working for a bad, bad dude this whole time.
We need to clear out the rest of this place and consider anything and everything as enemies. Who wants to head south with me?
Nicky points towards the portcullis in the southern hall.
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Leaving the research notes be for now Nicholo pads to the south heading deeper into the tunnels.
This room appears to have once been a large reservoir, but today the rectangular pool is empty. To the west, rusted iron gates have been battered open to allow access to a tunnel beyond, while to the east and north, additional dry sewage tunnels provide exits. Within the dry reservoir glows a ten-foot-diameter magical circle.
"Why would one need to break open that gate?" the amurrun muses.
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Occultism, Pursue and Mag Glass.
Note to all players, you get a +1 to to your rolls as I'm sharing my insights.
Not understanding what he is seeing.
What is up with a dried out swimming pool? Did the doctor need to get in his cardio and swim laps? I bet the doc didn't get in more than 8 or 10 in a stretch. He wasn't a hearty constitution type guy.
With that said, This might be the perfect place to put an alarm snare - so we don't get caught in a trap. Also, does the gate look to be broken down outward or inward? I can't really tell from where the pieces scatter. Is it them opening up this sewer area, or something from the sewer area coming IN!
Nicky will set up a snare . Spend 3 gold worth of material, and I'll try placing an X when I can.
He will work on letting the others move onward and take up the rear, placing the snare to help guard their backs.
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Nicholo sets his snare. As he does so the temperature in the room drops precipitously, plummeting to freezing temperatures in the span of a few heartbeats. A moment later, as frost starts to rime the edges and corners of the room.
A ghostly tar oozes out of the cracks in the ceiling to float monstrous before Nicholo. "Welcome back into my presence Nicholo," The ooze forms into a roiling tangle of shadowy black tentacles, rolls of glistening ectoplasmic blubber, and dozens of pale, lidless eyes as it looks around. "Grundle, Daehalya, Alvarius, and Onye it seems. What happened to Odioki and Ezgara?"
"Nine bloody Hells," Alvarius curses, startled by the sight of the shadowy... thing. "I can't say that I know you, but my memory isn't perfect. Who are you?"
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Like Alvarius said, Who - Are - You?
You sure ain't the Juggler, The Strong Man, The clown, or anyone else I knew from the Circus of Wayward Wonders.......
though your tar like motif does remind me of the RingMaster.
You know me, and you allude to having been seen together before.
What up with that?
He looks at the other's faces to see if anyone recognizes or shows more that quizzical looks at the ghostly tar ooze.
Nicky tries to identify this creature.
A binding circle," Daehalya whispers as she immediately understands the magical circle's purpose.
She addresses the oozing blob. "We have learned much, but not all. Enough for me to guess you are a servant of blackfrost. Are you Dr. Ritalson? If not, what have you done with him? Perhaps if you answer our questions, we will answer more of yours."
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The creature thinks for several long moments in silence before shaking. "No, I am not Dr. Ritalson. I have not done anything with him. He is not here." The creature swoops around the air a small black tendril clinging to the ceiling. "Congratulations on coming so far. I promise you are close and will be with Osoyo soon. East of here you will find one of the blessed ones contained behind three vault doors. It will hasten your return if you so desire." The creature almost seems to shrug as the sides of the ooze ripple. "Alas you may need to search around for the combination, for I do not recall its details."
"Who are the blessed ones?" Daehalya asks.
"Say it! Just say it!" Daehalya growls quietly under her breath, even as she worries there may be some sort of lab down her and wonders what would be on the slab. Her gaze for some reason shifts from the ooze to Nicky.
Shaking her head slightly, she braces herself. "I guess we have little choice. But I suspect these will not be blessed by Findeladlara or anything the Guiding Hand would endorse."
"Onye Dinta does not like the floating tar," the amurrun growls behind his wooden mask once it is gone and paces. "Onye Dinta does not like that Onye Dinta does not remember the floating tar but the tar remembers Onye Dinta. Onye Dinta suspects the tar is an unraveller."
"I don't like it either. Smug little bugger."
"I will say that I know a lot about a lot. But I have no idea what that black, slurping monstrosity is."
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Nicholo recognizes the strange and unique ooze as what is known as an animated dream, likely drawn from missing memories with influence from Osoyo.
An animate dream coalesces from centuries of stray fragments of reverie and dream left behind as slumbering minds drift through the Dimension of Dreams. In most cases, these fragments simply disperse on their own, but when dreamers flee from nightmares back to the waking world, these fragments can take on a supernatural life of their own. They have little reasoning and intent except to seek similar fragments, absorb them, and grow. When enough of them gather together, they merge into a horrific form as an animate dream.
Individually, animate dreams can hold a wide range of appearances, but most take on rudimentary shapes akin to the living forms of the minds that spawned them. Animate dreams that rise from slumbering humanoids, the most commonly encountered, thus appear humanoid, but with distorted, nightmarish shapes that incorporate additional twisted limbs and frightening features. In these forms, animate dreams find their way out of the Dreamlands and into the waking world, only to discover they have no way of returning and suffer a relentless hunger that only new nightmares can sate.
An animate dream thrives on the terror fueled by nightmares and fear and uses its supernatural abilities to invoke such feelings in the minds of its victims, cursing its prey by creating a permanent link to that individual's dreams. Thereafter, the victim is subjected to all manner of reoccurring nightmares. As the nightmares continue, the victim finds it more and more difficult to remain awake. In the end, the victim plunges into an accursed slumber from which it cannot return. These victims provide the animate dream with the purest form of fear and are its preferred sustenance.
An animate dream can subsist on the ambient fear generated by regular nightmares, but these lesser fears aren't as satisfying, often driving the animate dream to seek out new victims. Left without a source of fear, an animate dream won't starve to death, but it will grow increasingly violent and desperate. Famished animate dreams are the ones most often encountered, as they have been forced to abandon subtlety to pursue more blatant methods of harvesting fear. Yet such animate dreams also tend to be the least powerful of their kind. Those who have grown metaphysically fat on fear have generally done so by adopting a specific nightmare theme, such as being buried alive, being swept away by ocean waves, or being consumed by wild beasts. Such animate dreams often have similarly themed innate spells to augment their powers.
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So it's an Animate Dream. very funky collection of stuff.
So the quest for the mystery whale is back to the front of our “need to know” list. Refresh my memory, you know because I went through a gate and lost a bunch of it, but this is the whale that elves discovered it granted people amazing powers – but this boon had a side curse that turned them into mindless drones. It wasn’t really the whales fault, as it was cosmic mist that did it – but the elves did great magics that dropped the whale beneath a bunch of ice to keep the mist effects from becoming a pandemic of sorts.
If smarter people than us decided that mindless drones were a bad thing, why are we looking –-- going on a quest to maybe free the thing. I get that Whaley-bones-cosmic-badong-a-dong is probably an innocent victim in the grand scheme. With that said, a creation of powered up mindless drones sounds like an apocalypse for things with minds.
What am I missing here?
Alvarius almost doesn't believe Nicky. Almost.
Then he remembers that the tiefling has seen things.
"I haven't been travelling with you guys for nearly as long. Think you can catch me up? What whale thing?"
"We learned about Osoyo on Castrovel, shortly before we met you," she says, relaying what they were told.
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Daehalya gives a far better synopsis on Osoyo. But what to do about Osoyo is moot as they have more to explore here. Maybe exploration is required as they need to get some combination to open three vault doors.
Okay, let us start moving. I guess there's riddles and clues to unlock the combination of doors.
I have a feeling one of the clues might be in the library up north. Answers hidden within hours or days or research? That library seems like a time suck. Let's go to other rooms searching for easier to glean answers.
Let us head West. That looks right. It feels right. feels like an answer most of the group would agree on.
Nicky moves west towards the blacked out box area.
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Heading westward with many more questions than answers at the moment Nicholo finds a chocked cistern. Sheets of mold and patches of pallid mushrooms grow on the platforms surrounding this ten-foot-square open cistern. A pile of rubble and a broken metal ladder lie in a tangle to the northeast.
Nicholo's foot kicks something hard in the muck as he walks through the areaa. Bending down he uses the edge of his hand to lift it free. To his horror it is a human skull! The scattered remains of well over a dozen dead, headless bodies are entrenched in the muck. Most of them are little more than partial skeletons, but four of them are more recent, yet in advanced stages of decay.
The amurrun growls behind his wooden mask as Nicholo reveals the human skulls. "The tribe does not have eniugh time to put the dead to rest," he laments. "The tribe should hunt the other way."
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"You have so many cisterns here in the south," Daehalya murmurs. "I forget that you don't just live on ice where you can get your water."
She hesitates at Onye's words. "Maybe not to lay them to rest now, but I think taking some time to investigate here would be worth it."
She begins inspecting the corpses to see if she can find any clues as to their identity, or what killed them.
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I think you are bright and brilliant Onye. You have good ideas. We can move to another area. With that said, weren't we supposed to discover codes or combinations to unlock an important door? It might make the most sense to at least check this spot out longer, just so we don't have to back track. Otherwise, you are right, let us hunt the other way.
Nicky turns to Alvarius,
You have a way to talk with bones or skeletons? I'm not trying to be racist or "undeadist" or anything. I just an assuming you have ways to talk with bones.
Nicky looks to what Daehalya to see what she is doing, and then makes a mental note to ask if "undeadist" is even a word or state of discrimination. "D" is smart and tells him straight when he's being an ass.
He certainly has a unique way with Common, Daehalya thinks, her face not betraying her thoughts as she continues to examine the area.
"Unless Alvarius has some methods I'm not familiar with, I don't think we're going to learn much more here ... but you're the expert in investigations," she says out loud.