Absolutely ok with that. Makes perfect sense
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Ok, I'm going to speed things up a bit. Answering all your questions and also the likely follow up questions. The monument where you are is a place where, before Earthfall, the Azlanti lured Will-O-Wisps in so that they could be captured and forced to become lights. Yeah, thats right, the Azlanti turned sentients into light bulbs. And you're talking to the lightbulbs :-). The faceless stalkers are allies of the Ulat-Kini (Skum) who live in a half-sunken temple on the east coast, near where the river meets the sea.. They prefer the sea and don't come on the land much. It used to be totally above the surface but land has sunk with Earthfall, They can give you more or less accurate directions to the temple. A7 on slide 22 (I've skipped a couple of fairly pointless encounters). You all presumably rest up somewhere for the night and head over to A7 reasonably early the next day. It takes you a bit of time to find it but you get there around noonish or so. You should also all level up to level 8 You see ahead of you a ruined walled plaza with steps leading down to the temple at the far end, See slide 25 The platform on which the statue once stood is 10 ft high and looks reasonably climeable The rubble is generally difficult terrain, but the rubble next to the pedestal costs 4 squares of movement The statue varies in height but is 10 ft or so on average. Climbable but more difficult than the platform. The statue itself is difficult terrain The walls are 15 ft high and fairly climeable
Sorry for the delay. I've been quite sick the last few days. Should make a proper post tomorrow
I can just answer your questions and assume that it is Fenna asking the questions. But I would like to make sure that others actually want to do this investigate thing
Ok, I'm getting the fairly strong impression that people are some combination of really frustrated and really bored with the whole "Investigate the Island to find out CLUES" part of this adventure. Am I right? Do you want me to just arm wave all this with
Uh, poke?
It works perfectly.
You have successfully greeted the Wisps, which will provide you with a bonus on all attempts to interact with them.
With that linguistic check you can definitely communicate sufficiently to them that you want to cast a harmless spell in order to communicate. So you can use the scroll of shared language if you want.
You have successfully greeted the Wisps, which will provide you with a bonus on all attempts to interact with them. You're sure that they speak 2 languages that you lot may speak. They speak Aklo and Azlanti. However, they REALLY REALLY REALLY hate people who speak Azlanti. REALLY. Not quite at the "will automatically attack anybody who speaks it" but pretty close to that. Or you can make DC 25 linguistic checks or DC 15 Charisma checks to communicate simple ideas through a rough sign language.
Sorry for the delay. No AC in my house and I've been exhausted the last couple of days from the heat (heat by Canadian standards at least) :-( The DC to greet the Wisps is indeed 25 The base DC of the Dungeoneering check to know how to communicate further is only 16. Although there is more information available if you roll a 26. Or, of course, you can just try various languages and stuff,
Fenna recognizes that the balls of light are, in fact, Will -o-wisps. Fortunately, you're pretty sure that they aren't immediately hostile, and seem mostly curious about people who are either (or both?) foolish enough or powerful enough to come visit them in their home. Fenna even knows that the appropriate thing to do is to greet them, using your Dancing Lights spell to have the balls of light dance correctly. Fenna, give me a Fly, Spellcraft, or Perform Dance check (same DC, just use whichever one is better). Give me a Knowledge Dungeoneering check to know how to communicate with them beyond that greeting.
The group heads off towards the marsh, getting there a little before sunset. Slide 22 shows you a little more of the Island. A5 is the 7 pillars, an area as yet unexplored
The land gradually gets boggier and boggier until you see before you the marsh. Perhaps a couple of hundred feet away in the marsh you see Six twenty-five-foot-long stone blocks, each tapered like an arrowhead, are arranged in a vaguely flower-shaped formation in the moist ground. Some of the ancient stone blocks are cracked and splintered, while others are half sunken in the marsh. As the sun sets upon the ancient stone monument, one by one, dozen upon dozens of lights appear in the darkness, hovering like ghostly lanterns above the fetid waters of the marsh.
[b]"One tutu coming up. He waves and one of the other wyrwoods comes over with a positively gorgeous pink tutu with several semi precious (and shiny) gemstones sewn into it. They spend a bit of time measuring you and adjusting it so that it is an absolutely perfect fit once they are done. You are positively effulgent in it. Its getting to mid afternoon now. The Wyrwoods offer to let you stay here for the night if you wish. They don't eat food but they can offer you some fish to cook (they use the fish parts for stuff) Do you wish to spend the night here or head on to the swamp immediately? I don't want to delay the game, so I'll just tell you up front that the only issue is when you arrive at the swamp (your night here will be safe and uneventful). If you head off now it will be nightfall by the time you get to it, if you spend the night and get an early start it will be closer to noon.
"Just stories, I'm afraid. My favourite is that you should wear a pink tutu when dealing with them but I strongly suspect that is just a story and I just like it because the thought of brave adventurers wearing pink tutu's amuses me. But we CAN sell you pink tutu's if you really want. 1 sp each for basic ones, up to 10 gp each for REALLY nice ones"
"We're pretty much self sufficient here. But the one thing we absolutely need are any and all Ioun stones you can spare and want to trade. We'll take as many of those off your hands that you have to deliver" "The ghost lanterns live in the swamps, not near those pillars. No idea what lives by the pillars, if anything. Nothing that has bothered us or been seen by us, at least" So, where are you off to now?
They look at the Ioun stone with obvious desire and satisfaction, "What do you want for it? We will give you any combination of alchemical items or potions worth 2,000 gold. Although you'll have to wait for us to make some things Do you have any other stones to trade? Maybe even more powerful ones?"
"No harm in telling you about what you claim are our common enemies and other dangers on the island. We’ve seen many ugothols <faceless Stalkers> here in the north, but the ugly creatures are smart enough to stay out of our territory. They live in caves near the river. They haven’t always been living here on the
Ulat-kini <skum> are common in the southeast, but we don’t know where their lair is. They live somewhere many miles to the south, and they like swimming better than walking, so we don’t run into them too often here. Ghost lanterns <will=o-wisps> inhabit the southern marshes. There is an ancient place built from stone where they gather at dusk. It is said they know everything that happens on this island, but I should warn you, they’re not very welcoming to visitors. The stories say you should carry a lantern or other light source when you approach them or they’ll think you’re an enemy. Many kinds of beasts also live in the woods and marshes." As to bartering
They have lots or potions and alchemical items (pretty much most anything they have or can make). They also currently have
"Ok, please come with us" At least some of the archers step out from behind cover. One of them goes in front and leads the way, a couple others follow behind. They take you into the centre of the circle of ships. Various of the Wyrwoods watch you from around the edge. In the centre is another wyrwood. Although he looks similar to the others he exudes an aura of age, of power both personal and political. All the following is in Azlanti. "Greetings. My name is Locwudu. We are creatures called <Word you've never heard before>. I am the oldest of us and they have chosen me as their leader. What brings you to our home? Are you willing to trade with us? We have some items that are little use to us that may be of use to you, if you have anything we would eant"
They pretty obviously don't trust you but you are detecting no active deception
Cool answers. I like them :-) "Ok, I sort of believe you. Mostly. Why are you here? What do you want with us? Never mind. You should tell our leader. Leave ALL your weapons where they are and come on in. No spell casting!"
"You say that you are humans but no humans live here. Where is your ship? Where did you come from. And you say that you're enemies of the shapechangers. What proof of this do you have?" While there are many approaches you can take to answering these questions, the following are some suggestions from the module Show body parts of a faceless stalker
But anything you can think of to convince them is fine with me,
Sorry for the delay. Partly I was waiting for all the players and partly life happened. Will post later today
These are Wyrwoods. They are small constructs. You've heard about them being a fairly recent race created by a cabal of wizards who needed nimble, skilled construct servants. At some time they gained free will and eventually escaped the wizards control. While somewhat xenophobic in general they are NOT intrinsically hostile to humans. They are known for being rational and unemotional, concerned primarily with the survival of their race. How they reproduce is a secret that is NOT known to you but they DO reproduce somehow. Mechanically, they are constructs with darkvision and low light vision who have class levels and all the interesting stuff comes from their class levels. But there is something very wrong with the above. What the heck are they doing here, literally thousands of miles from where they should be? And why are they speaking Azlanti? And its hard to tell with them hidden but they don't quite look right.
You see a couple of small figures (there are probably more that you don't see. It is some kind of small wooden construct creature armed with a longbow. Knowledge Arcana or Crafting to know more.
A 25 is EXACTLY what you needed to remove the memory node. Well done. We seem to have consensus that you'll head on to the ships so that is where you now go :-). The trip there is fairly uneventful, and you arrive there in the late afternoon. Broken remains of ships and boats on the shore form a perimeter around heaps of barrels, crates, and other items that look like salvaged cargo. Additional ladders, nets, ropes, and weights have been attached to the ships and boats. A crimson flag on the mast of the largest ship proudly blows in the wind. Slide 24 As you approach it, a voice calls out in Azlant. It is coming from one of the ships ahead of you but the person shouting is hidden. You're currently 60 ft off the east end of the map, Perception check to see who is yelling
Azlant: "Stop there or we'll shoot. Reveal your true form, spies! You can’t fool us!”
Sorry, this weekend was very busy. Lots of gaming Sunday and I went off to the No Tyrants protest on Saturday (Can't have a No Kings protest up here in Canada since we kind of HAVE a King :-) :-).)
That positive energy is enough to (at least temporarily) put the haunt to rest. The only actual loot here is the Ioun Memory Node stone embedded in the device. Using brute force to remove it would likely destroy it. Disable Device would get it out far more gently with a greatly reduced chance of destroying it. And, whether or not you get it out, you have to decide where to go from here.
Not at all surprisingly, this is indeed a haunt. A haunt that has NOT yet acted. You all have another action to try and deal with the haunt
It takes some time (40 odd minutes) but Vexas is able to activate the mechanism. Running it with the current set of parameters you come to a terrible realization, that a huge number of massive objects are coming from space and headed directly for Golarion!!! Almost all of you (Perception DC 13) hear the faint screaming of meteors through the sky and see a bright flash of light in the distance and feeling the rumbling as if an impact occurred nearby. The roof of the observatory is blown away revealing 2 meteors in the sky approaching at a high speed. At the same time. a ghostly image of an Azlanti woman wearing a priests vestament appears hovering in the air, screaming out in Azlant a long drawn out "No!!!!!!". The meteors are coming!! You have a round before they arrive! What do you do?
Mechanism:
Combining your many knowledges and insights you manage to more or less sort of figure out what this thing is and activate it. This was an observatory back in Azlanti days and the clockwork mechanism is designed to calculate and display astronomical information such as positions of the sun, moon, other planets, several constellations. There was also a large telescope attached. While the lenses are now destroyed some of its magic still remains functional. If the telescope is pointed at a celestial object data is fed into the clockwork mechanism. A mere 2 entries allows one to calculate a linear trajectory and the objects speed, more data refining the trajectory and speed. Once a trajectory has been determined the objects position at any point in time (past or future) can be determined with accuracy determined by how many data points. All of these calculations are stored in a gem, a Ioun Memory Node The mechanism also has an output panel composed of thousands of pins that can be slid up or down, showing letters, 3D graphs. These pins can also be used as input devices. So, you've now figured out the mechanism. Do you wish to actually activate it? If you do so, you'll probably be able to figure out how to control it and run calculations of your own or see what calculations were last made on it.
Spyglass: Very slowly scanning the area with the Spyglass you eventually spot something that seems interesting. South West of here are 7 stone pillars set in a 1/2 circle, as you go clockwise around the circle from the northern pillar each pillar gets shorter and thinner than the previous pillar. The entire area seems shadowy compared to the neighbouring forest although there is no obvious cause for the shadow. Note that these pillars are in the part of the island that was NOT on the plaque since it had eroded away.
Sho has a vague idea of the value of the statuette. She places it as kinda sorta maybe 500 gp or so. Your trip to The Wheels of Heaven is uneventful. Getting there, you find that there is a 20 ft tall building built into the slope near the summit of what appears to be the one of, if not the, tallest hillss on the island. You approach stealthily but nothing attacks you and eventually you see inside the building. Inside is a machine consisting of thousands upon thousands of gears. A giant tube similar to a a spyglass rises from the centre of the contraption. On briefly examining the mechanism the only things that are immediately obvious are that it is some amlagam of magical object and technological device and that it is in exceptionally good shape. It MAY be possible to enable it to function again (although at the moment you have little idea of what that function might be). If you want to do that it would take a minimum of an hour's work and you'd have to make one of a Craft (Clockwork), Disable Device, Knowledge (Arcana or Engineering) or Use Magic Device check Alternatively, if you have a spyglass you can slowly scan the island from this vantage point and maybe see something of interest. Or you can decide that there is nothing of immediate import here and move on.
Sorry, its been a really busy weekend. I'll get a proper post in tomorrow
You're all pretty sure that the statue is worth something MORE (maybe much more) than 1 cp :-) :-) :-). And none of you have a clue who it represents I'm afraid. Something obscure though as not even Fenna recognizes it.
And in a flurry of blows the final beast goes down, dead before it can inflict its terrible curse on you. Now that you have the chance to fully search the cave, it is obvious that this WAS the home of the Faceless Stalkers but it was abandoned a few days ago. You do manage to find a little bit of treasure hidden in the debris. A ring of the troglodyte and a quite heavy (100 lbs or so) jade statue of a humanoid/serpent hybrid creature. It would be a knowledge religion check to see who the statue is of and an appraise check to determine the value of the statue. Where do you wish to go from here?
Don't forget you're all hasted
The first blow puts down the blue meanie, the second thunks into red. One to go
I'm going to retroactively apply Fenna's haste and roll additional attacks Sosche's first blow strikes into bluw, damaging it. Then his haste attack also goes off
34 total, putting Blue at -58 Vexas's rapier strikes true, putting red at -11. Unfortunately, no second attack for him :-( Brannart drops his polearm and seizes his sword
His blow strikes true but fails to confirm Red is now at -29 Sho's first shot hits blue, despite the cover
Her haste attack goes off
Blue is now at -76 and clearly on its last tentacles but it is still fighting Blue attacks Sosche
2 hits, one of which is a crit!
And I need 2 Fort saves DC 15 please 21 more damage to Sosche Red attacks Brannart
Being a tank is working for Brannart. Only one of those is a hit
And I need a Fort save DC 15 please And all of the PCs are up. Time to end this!!!!
Fenna recognizes this as a Chaos Beast. It is amorphous, resistant to transformation (at the start of its next turn it will resume its normal shape) and has decent but not great SR
Sho - you can take a second turn if you want (I skipped a turn of yours)
Yeah, if you take a 5ft step to your NE you have pretty clear shots at either.
Ok, I'm skipping Sho to keep things moving. I'll let her retroactively take her turn (she is unlikely to outright kill one). These are outsiders so you need knowledge planes to identify them. Fenna knows a little about Chaos Beasts. They are medium outsiders with the chaotic extraplanar traits. What one thing would you like to know about them? The have interesting defensive abilities, an interesting attack, or of course you can ask something else. Vexas's rapier hits the Blue Creature for 11. All the other attacks miss. Blue : currently down 24 points, Red unharmed. Blue steps up and attacks Sosche
2 of those hit!!.
And I need 2 Fort saves DC 15 please Red attacks Brannart
1 of those hit!!.
And I need 1 Fort save DC 15 please Am I right in remembering that you have Hero Points or something similar? If so, I recommend making these Fort saves :-). Failure is quite, quite nasty. PCs all up
Sho, waiting on you. If she doesn't post by tomorrow evening could somebody please bot her? Or I'll just put her on delay
None of you have any clue what caused the rat to become what it is
Vexas's rapier and Sho's arrow fly true and strike the rat, ending its misery as it drops down dead. But, their cunning plan of luring you into the cave having failed, the REAL danger materializes.
2 strange beasts come out from hiding and charge you. Sosche gets his AOO but it misses
Bad guy Status:
Creature 1 unharmed Creature 2 : -15 pts They then get to attack
Both miss and hiss in anger at you. PCs are all up.
To be clear, there may be other threats that you have not yet perceived
The rat just manages to pull itself a little closer to the group (moved on slides).
You make it out of the tunnel and find yourself in a larger cave, with water covering the southern portion (slide 23) A horrifying sight, and the source of the moaning, greets you. You see what looks like a giant rat writhing and thrashing in the water as if in great pain. Suddenly, the creature’s neck twists around itself, and a pair of legs grows from its stomach, only to melt away a moment later. For a moment, the rat looks normal again, but then the horrific convulsions start anew. As it sees you the thing starts to crawl towards you, gradually inching its way across the floor. This seems like a good time to roll initiative.
The night passes mostly uneventfully. On occasion, the people on guard hear the distant sounds of something passing in the forest but its never close enough to seem particularly threatening or worth waking the others up over. And its too distant for you to have any clue what is causing the noise. Hopefully it is just innocent wildlife doing innocent wildlife type things. You all wake up and perform your normal morning preparations. It is Day 2 since the fight back on the Island. Just a reminder that you hope to return by day 6 or 7. Unless you tell me otherwise, I'm going to assume that you keep your word and allow the table to live and head off. You'd pretty much achieved consensus that you were going to head off to the faceless stalkers home so I'll assume that is where you now head. As you leave the tower you do see southwards down the beach a small herd of grazing deer suddenly attacked from the air by a pair of mosquitoes the size of a large dog. They land on 2 of the deer and quickly suck them dry as the other deer flee for their lives. But you make it to the area of the island shown on the map without significant incident. It might have taken you quite awhile to find exactly where you were looking for except for 2 things. You start to hear the frantic screeches of what you easily identify as a rat, but there is something horribly unnatural about the sounds. What they portend you have no idea. Heading towards the squeals, you see little bits of debris, as if the inhabitants left very swiftly and didn't bother to pick up some minor things that they had dropped. At any rate, you easily find a crack in the hillside. The crack itself is small enough that you'll have to go in single file. You can't tell from where you are how deep it goes or whether it opens up into a deeper cavern. But the squeals definitely come from within the crack and are definitely at least some distance in
Glad to hear she is doing ok
It is definitely the end of a very long day at this point. It is night outside and you're all very close to (if not at) the point where you will be considered fatigued if you proceed. Absent lots of lesser restorations (or some other shenanigans) your basic choice is to camp here (a nice fortified spot but it has only one way in so there is the possibility of being trapped) or making camp on the beach or in the woods nearby.
Now that you've interrogated your captive, you search the tower. Only this chamber remains. The copper plaque mounted on the wall turns out to be a map, or at least the remnant of one. It is ancient beyond belief, cooper covered with huge layers of verdigris and, even now, there is a faint magical aura on it showing that it was partially magics that has preserved it as much as it has. The entire bottom half of the map has rotted away. It looks like the map originally showed several hills and valleys and NOT an Island. But recent modifications in the verdigris have modified the map to show that it is now an Island (or, at least, the north half of an Island or penninsula or the like) with some areas of the original map still above water and some now below water. Fenna identifies that this is a map of the island that you are currently on (her +1 on at sea brings het take 10 up to the 20 DC :-)) There are 4 locations marked on the map. A1 is the watchtower you are currently in, labelled Watchtower III in Aquan. A2, a little north of you and on the western coast (you're on the eastern coast) reads "Shipwrecks and ENEMIES". A3, due east and about midway in the island reads "Home" in Aquan. A4 is Right at the bottom middle of the map, a label in Azlanti reads "Wheels of Heaven". The words "Hollow Forest" have been written in Aquan over the area to the north of A3. At the top of the map is the name Zanas-Tahn, an Azlanti name translating to approximately Sacred Hills. This pretty obviously means that the entire area used to have multiple religious sites and/or temples at some point. The backpack on the table is a handy haversack that contains a ring of swimming and several smooth or otherwise pretty rocks. I've put the map up on the slides. That map on the slides is WAY more detailed and clear than what you have but I'm a lousy artist and its a lot easier to show you more rather than less. But to be clear the map will only get you close to the various sites, you'll have to look around to find them if, in fact, you choose to go there. The table will tell you that the area marked home is where he thinks the local faceless stalkers live. And they're afraid of the Hollow Forest. |