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"Mmmm hmmm mmhmmm." Endoin hums to himself as he draws. He looks over and compares his work to his companion's. "Hold on." He goes over and looks again at the manual. He squints and tips his head a bit. Then looks back at his wife's work. Then at his own. "No, it looks like you have it right." He quickly corrects a few lines that he drew. "OK. Let's see what this does."
If we are doing one of the rituals:
Is there any information in the book about how to switch Ghaf and not-Ghaf back?
If we take the book and run, do we have any idea how Jassim will react?
And I don't have any idea what most of the other players are wanting to do. Probably because they are in the same position that I am that it is really hard to make a meaningful decision when we don't know how to mechanically do any of the options.
"Well, whatever it is, if we are going to get one of these ritual thingies going, we had best get started on it." Endoin goes back to the trophy room again and thumbs through the book. "So which one do we want to start with?" He flips a couple more pages. "How does this 'weaken' one sound? Maybe right here in front of the door. So he can't miss it."
Endoin stabs the deflating mass a few times for good measure. "Well, that was creepy. I don't think we are going to find much specific to not-Ghaf around here. Maybe we should just try a ritual without it."
"Not fire?" Endoin pauses as he is collecting ingredients. He puts one back and grabs a different one. "Cold then. Will at least protect from the room." He drinks down the concoction that he makes and then moves into the room again.
Endoin darts forward and slashes at the strange animated ... thing. Then darts back into the hallway, not wanting to stay in that room for long.
Endoin flips through the book again after Fey points out the few useful rituals. He hardly pays attention as Fey mentions going back into the other room. "I made it mad! Come help!" She shouts "Wait, that bedroom is dangerous." Endoin jumps up and runs out of the room and down the hallway, drawing his long knife as he does so.
Endoin paces around the cluttered room watching Fey read the book. He fiddles with the floating ice crystal a bit. He paces a bit more. He looks at the urn. "Either you have a lot more patience with reading gibberish than I do, or you found something," he finally exclaims to Fey. "What have we got?"
Endoin follows Fey back to the museum room when she mentions that she has the fake. "I found it in here," he says while gesturing to the open drawer under the armor. "It is the book we are looking for. I'm not making much sense of it." He hands Fey the book.
Endoin stays completely still, but looks ready to burst as the sound of water flows and springs release. When all that happens is the drawer opens, he looks somewhat relieved. After a few seconds he stands up and almost swaggers over to the drawer and pulls the package out. "Hah. Exactly as deduced." He sets the wrapping of the book back in the drawer and then hurries out the door after his wife.
In the hall he sees Fey outside the door to the other room, but doesn't hear any commotion. So, bored, he opens up the book to check it out.
Endoin helps adjust the bust and stands there expectantly for a few seconds. If he doesn't hear anything, he sends a whisper to Endoin and then Fey that it appeared to be a false alarm Endoin replies back, "So was it another bird? Did you catch it?"
"Endoin, there's someone here in the room across the hall! I'm going in! Come help!" Endoin pauses his fiddling around with the bust to reply. "Well, if it is another talking bird, just grab it and bring it back here." He looks to the rest of the group and calls out, "Remqaur is busting doors, or heads, or something. We should probably make sure he isn't getting in over his head on his own."
By the sounds of it, it should be made of wood instead of stone. Despite this, try as you might, lifting it from the floor to check it is not possible. It does spin with some effort, though. Endoin notices Tamhar fiddling with the bust a bit and comes to investigate as well. "Huh. Maybe get it to face the demon armor. What do you think?"
"Well," Endoin says as the armor has no reaction, "that's a bust." He looks over at Tamhar. "And so is that. Sorry."
Does anyone feel like staring into the eyes of this demon armor thing? Endoin grabs his hand mirror again. "Sure. Cover me though." He also grabs his long knife in his other hand and comes towards the strange armor - holding the mirror up so that the armor sees its own reflection. "Let's see what it does if it sees itself." Pretty sure in the end we need to blast something with this cannon "I vote for that giant mirror in the corner. Blast that thing." If the armor doesn't react to the mirror, Endoin lowers the mirror and looks at the armor directly.
Endoin looks at the huge boar depicted being hunted on the vase and comments, "Huh. I'd be trying to avoid meeting one of those out in the wild." He goes over to the mirror and checks out the eldritch engravings. "Well, I don't really know what this does. Some sort of protected teleportation thing. Like a summoning circle, I guess. But on a mirror." "Would probably know more once we find that book." He starts searching around the room to see if he can find the book in here.
"It's good enough for me," Endoin says while slamming the door shut. He sits down and looks at his feet. "Can anyone check if I still have that ... whatever it is ... on me?"
So, I think that means that she can be creating 2 elixir of life Quick Vials every 10 minutes without using any permanent resources. Which is a pretty good level 1 post-combat healing option. What I am not seeing in there is any damage stats for the 'Quick Alchemy: Quick Vial: bombs' that it mentions. The Toxicologist notes say to replace the acid damage with poison damage, but nothing says how much damage that is. It is probably bypassable. Tamhar knows the formulas for both Spear Frog Poison and Blight Bomb. She can just use those for Quick Alchemy instead.
Since PC2 still isn't available on AoN yet, I am having trouble making sure that I understand how the new Alchemist works. From what I am piecing together from Pathbuilder, there are two pools of alchemical items that the Alchemist gets during daily preparations rather than only one. Previously, Tamhar had to choose how many reagents to use to create semi-permanent items that last until the next day, and how many are left available for Quick Alchemy during the adventuring. Now it looks like there is a pool of Advanced Alchemy items that are created during preparations and last all day, but there is no reason or availability to not create those into items. Additionally and separately there is a pool of Versatile Vials items that are not crafted into itemsm during daily preparations at all. There is just a maximum number of them that the alchemist can have. They can be used for Quick Alchemy during the day which can create a bomb - Tamhar would be creating poison bombs (that can also do acid damage if the target is resistant or immune to poison damage), or they can be used to create temporary consumables that are only potent until the next turn. And if Tamhar is down any Versatile Vials, she gets 2 more every 10 minutes of exploration mode. So she can be creating bombs and other consumables all day - just no more than 6 during any one battle. Is that how you are reading it too?
"Endoin," Fey calls out a warning, raising a hand. "Get out of the room," She says, voice tinged with worry. "The hair is...floating." Endoin looks around quickly. Seeing the hairs waggling in his direction, he blows at them and scampers out of the room. "Hey, dearest. Do me a quick favor and incinerate this room for me."
Endoin steps into the bedroom, leaving kobold tracks across the dusty floor. He starts to check out the hole punched into the wall. "I don't know what on earth happened in here, but it doesn't look like a study and it seems pretty clear no one has recently put a book in here." Endoin sighs and turns away from analyzing the damage patterns. "Yeah, probably not worth the time." He walks out and over to the other room. "Now this looks more like a study. A very strange one though." He looks around the room and his eyes settle on the tentacle. "Now that is fascinating." But then he spots the mirror. He looks from the big mirror in the corner of the room to the little mirror in his hand. Then back. "Well, if I knew that this big one was here, I wouldn't have brought this little one." He takes a step or two towards the mirror, but then stops. "Wait. What if this is the mirror that does the pulling into the mirror thing and swaps us out with a fake too?" He steps to the side and moves closer to the mirror, making sure to not let himself see his own reflection in it.
"Oh, yeah. Can never be too careful." Endoin comes back out of the armory room to go inspect the door Feyrial is looking at. "If this was my house, I would trap every door in here and half of the floors." He checks the other two doors for good measure.
I'm guessing we want to explore one of the others first. "Sounds good to me." Endoin goes up to the middle door in the hallway and checks it over to see if anything is amiss and to see if it opens easily.
well level up when, GM? :P (kidding, kidding) I vote for all level up being done in the middle of combat.
"Excellently done," Endoin calls out to his wife as the door opens. He goes into the hallway. "I don't think this is the study." He goes over and inspects the closest stone.
"Unless we can use some of my hair," She says, chuckling. "Or if anyone had some spare threads in general. I could make it look golden," She wiggles her fingers and demonstrates, casting Prestidigitation on her hair to give it a golden, metallic sheen. "Only works as long as I hold it, though." "As good an idea as anything else."
Endoin checks the two scenes carefully. "MmmHmm..." "MmmHmm..." "Yeah." "Interesting." When finished, he reports. "The time is a bit off. And we need a gold thread. Anyone find a gold thread?"
Endoin looks at the door with a bit of frustration. "Probably can't even bash that down since it is reinforced." He looks at the fake mirror thing with some interest. "This seems... excessive. More than just decoration." He double checks everything to make sure that everything matches up exactly.
He glances at the others, keeping his voice low. "We doing this the easy way or the hard way?" "If I knew what the easy way is, I would definitely do this the easy way." Noticing that something is off with that voice, Endoin tilts his head, listening. "Something's strange." He looks over at Marcus and Jassim. "How many talking birds does Ghaf have?"
Endoin looks around the area. "Mmm... lots of closed doors." "Jassim, do you think there is likely to be anyone else hanging around up here? Another hideout for guards or something." Noticing the hallway that doesn't have a door, Endoin motions that direction. "Might as well see what is down here before we open any doors. What do you think?"
"He also said something about binding. We won't know for certain until we can get that book, but it seems a reasonable assumption." Endoin looks over at the new rescues. "I am Endoin. And it looks like it is time to choose: fight or flight." He goes to the door of the dining hall and looks into the hallway. "The door is over there." He waves vaguely while looking the other direction - towards the rest of the building. "Let's go get this book then. You said the study, right Jassim?"
Team stealth has turned into team gaslighting, lol.
"Sounds reasonable to me. At least as reasonable as anything I can come up with on short notice." Endoin stows his hand mirror and considers the placement of the guards in the break room.
Endoin takes note of Fey writing to the mirror image again. We must touch. Binding needed. "Fascinating. I can think of about six different ways to interpret that." He looks down at the mirror that he is holding. "Most of which involve smacking things with this mirror." He continues watching, hoping that the image of the fake book sparks some more information.
It's all messages sent via Snapchat, they all say similar things. So... One bored teenager that hooked up a botnet to ChatGPT... Which isn't even the stupidest or most unlikely hack that I have heard of. The Mirai hack was three college students wanting to sabotage rival Minecraft servers.
Sounds like some sort of messed up new TikTok challenge.
"I'm not going to be responsible for captives or hostages," Endoin says. "Fight or flight is a choice everyone should be allowed to make." Endoin continues watching Tamhar through the hand mirror, noticing Ghaf getting in the way of the view on a regular basis. "I think we are going to still need that instruction book though. Otherwise I am just guessing at how to get Ghaf out of the mirror."
Endoin goes into the other cell with the mirrors and picks out one of the hand mirrors. He checks it over to make sure it is just a regular mirror.
"Can you tell if any of the mirrors are magical by studying them longer? Grab me a handheld mirror as well, ok?" Endoin grabs another small mirror and checks it too.
If they show as not being magical, he takes the mirrors out of the cell. He hands one to Remqaur and keeps the other. For the next several minutes, Endoin goes around the room looking at everything through the reflection of the mirror. Himself, Fey, Jassim, Remqaur, Tiqi, Fabian, Marcus, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, various other items and furniture, and of course plenty of checking out of his wife while he is at it.
"Marcus is not sure of your intentions be it coin, prestige or revenge. Freeing her in all three seem like a smart move, no?" "I haven't been wronged enough to seek revenge - at least not by Ghaf. Well, at least not by Ghaf, YET. We'll see how this night goes." Endoin starts fiddling with the lock on Tiqi's door. "I'm not the business of hostages either. Which is why I'm not keen to leave you lot locked up in here."
"I don't know what is going down around here, but people shouldn't be trapped in a cage while it happens." He takes a stab at Marcus's door's lock too.
"Hey, Tamhar, sweetie," Endoin calls out to his partner. "You want to come give me a hand with these too? They are being stubborn."
Endoin pats Remqaur on the back. "Sometimes you just need the right tools for the job," he says. "And if you have the right tools and it still doesn't work, then you need a Kobold." With the cell to the debris in the excellent care of his wife, Endoin turns his attention to these two prisoners.
Endoin is unsurprised at the guards lounging in their break room. That is what a break room is for, after all. He is a bit shocked that there is actually a functioning jail room down the stairs. And even more astonished that there are people in those jail cells. His mouth gapes open when Jassim mentions that he doesn't know why these people are in the cells - and that he knows one of them. Then his mind completely short-circuits when Jassim casually mentions picking the locks on the cell doors as though that is a thing that jail door locks are intended to have happen to them. After a few seconds, Endoin recovers enough to realize that one of the people in the cells asked a question. "Come to bail Marcus out, or just sightseeing?" "Just sightseeing currently," he replies, still clearly a bit distracted. "Unless you happen to have a mirror."
"Did window Ghaf tell you where to look? If not, we should ask him and he can nod 'yes' or shake his head 'no' when we say different locations. Otherwise, it's a big place to search..." "He said there is no key and to get the mirror from jail. Whatever that means. I figure we will have better questions to ask once we know what all is in this house."
Endoin stares hard at the guard for a moment or three. "Fine," he says finally, as he puts his flyssa away. "But it feels like we are dead either way. This smells like a setup. It couldn't possibly be coincidence that we were tasked to be here on the very night that Ghaff gets locked permanently into a mirror dimension; the very night that he is supposed to be giving a public speech. And when he doesn't show up to the speech and people search his house looking for him, all they find is us holding the instruction book for how to lock him away." "So I am going to search the house and see if I can find where and how Ghaff was trapped and get him out. So that when people come here looking for him, they actually find him instead of just me." Endoin heads towards the door of this room and calls over his shoulder towards Jassim. "So either help, or stay out of the way."
I'm trying to go for an 'offering an uneasy alliance' kind of vibe. I don't know how much the other people of the house staff know about what is going on. Currently Endoin doesn't know much about what is going on. But we can't do much without the guard knowing that we are up to something, so we might as well be up front about it at this point.
He puts his hand on his own hilt as his gaze meets Endoin's, and his demeanour changes rapidly. "What is this?" "What is this?" Endoin repeats while pointing his blade towards the window. "This is why smart Kobolds are always ready to throw down at any time. I have no idea what happened to the master of the house, but I don't intend to suffer the same fate." Endoin crosses his arms across his chest, while still holding the long knife. "Now, I don't know what kind of working relationship you have with the guy, but I don't think leaving him there is going to be doing you any favors. At least not from his employ. Are you wanting to get him out of there, or not? From what he is miming at us, he doesn't have a lot of time to get free."
After spending a minute or so conversing with Ghaf in the window, Endoin adds that to his list of things on his mind to investigate. unsure. unlikely? "Well that tears it," Endoin spits out while turning around. he shouts to get the man's attention over the music. "Come over here and take a look at this. What do you make of it?" Endoin gestures at the window currently pressed into service as a mirror. When the guard comes over to inspect the window, Endoin surreptitiously moves around out of direct line of view and quietly draws his blade.
Investigations: ▸ Where is the real book Advanced Protective Measures in Practical Arcane Relocation and Summons: Stability, Warding, Binding located? ▸ How did Ghaf get trapped in a mirror?
spelling out the words "MIRRORS" and "JAIL" before the water evaporates. "Yeah, I can see that part," Endoin grumbles. He foggs up the window again and writes, 'KEY?'
"No idea. But it almost looks like he is trying from his side and that definitely isn't working."
Endoin watches curiously. "He needs something to write on," he finally says critically. "I suppose that may be hard to get when trapped." "Maybe one of us could fog the window? Well, maybe not you, hon. Let's not melt the window in the process." Endoin moves closer and breathes over the window trying to fog it up.
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