Slice of Glaive

We are trying to figure this out. Jarlyn prays to the Skyfather for guidance and then gets the idea that the key must be those little colored lights. We decide that the reason we can find nothing is that everything is covered in ice, so Ghoral starts hacking away at the ice. Everyone goes into a room to try and find anything now. Ghoral yells out that he notices one of the holes lacks a quartz light. Since he cannot reach, I replace him in the cubicle and use my rapier to depress the button in the hole. I yell when it starts to give, and then watch the back of the room move aside to the grinding of gears. We rearrange our order and torches and proceed down the hallway. We come to a room with flint floor and ceiling and obsidian walls. There is a stairwell heading up, sort of in the direction of the evil above us. Also there is a portal in the far wall flanked by carved out holes and before which is an altar with a gut-stabbed body. We think that this is the body of Ilie’s son. There is a piece of paper with runes and an approximate translation on the floor: His first servant long buried, Those missionaries of His will, Again they sleep and again they wait. Fire, Smoke, and steam make the call, Where fresh blood the faithful offer, For the true words of the First. We check out the carvings on either side of the portal and they appear to be braisers. We decide that the next thing to do is to climb the stairs. In the room at the top of the stairs there is a column banded with copper with copper tubes coming out of each bands and headed one toward each of the rooms below. Through my security system knowledge, I know that there are no traps around here, but there is a small door up on the column. We lift up Ghoral to look inside. He sees a glowing blue sphere nestled amid lots of copper gears. Jarlyn must destroy the evil so he starts smashing the column with his mace. Once he gets through the machinerey, the glow flickers and dies. He checks and there is no longer any evil. As we head back down the stairs, we notice a button. We arrange ourselves for the worst and push the button. It reopens the stone doors that we used to enter this room. We start to debate how to open the portal. We decide to create the steam and smoke in the braisers. I have the great idea to go out into hallway and gather ice chunks to melt for steam. There is smoke coming from the braisers and steam from the water. After about ten minutes of us chatting, the portal opens with a sliding of metal. It opens on a room made entirely of copper metal with a 4 inch slot about 2 feet into the room and another 5 feet farther in. I check for traps and find none although the slot could be a track for something. We can only assume that the room is circular because there are walls from floor to ceiling in the center in a pentagram shape. The outer walls are all smooth marred only by the joins in the copper sheets. The inner walls are a composite of tubes and gears held back by a fence. Perrol detects no magic. Ghoral mentions that copper is a soft metal and that the tracks could have been caused by a harder metal running over it. Ghoral runs across the tracks and the rest of us move forward a bit. He yells back that he heard an electrical pop followed by a zzt-clack. Suddenly we hear Jarlyn who is in the front of the line yell to Ghoral to get back here because the orange is glowing as well as the wave of energy he just felt.

Segment 12
There is a metal box 3′ tall, 5′ wide, 3′ long on 2′ tall wheels with two glowing blue spheres and a glowing orange nose on the tracks. It also has two skeltal arms coming out of the front. I make a half move and hold the rest of my action until it is needed. I see kross back up for a better position. It fires at Jarlyn but misses and Jarlyn then moves back into the room.

Segment 3
I hold for the moment.

Segment 4
The box moves forward at a fast clip and approaches Jarlyn.
Half move to be behind the box.
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 11 in the thighs? for 4 armor piercing body. I had a solid hit but it was something thick and so didn’t go through.
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 14 in the chest for more than 10 for 7 body. I got through the armor but it doesn’t appear to have done much damage.
Everyone else misses it.

Segment 6
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 10 in the stomach for 9 body
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 3 and miss

Segment 8
Kross jumps over the dead man on the altar and pings off of the robot. It tries to hit Jarlyn, but misses. However, Perrol manages to hit but gets only a small dent in the armor. Jarlyn missed. Ghoral hits and slightly gets through the armor.

Segment 9
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 14 for max damage and cause another gash to appear.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 10 for 4 damage

Segment 12
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 7 for 4 damage
It turns 180 degrees and attempts to whack me with its arm and fails. Kross fails to do any damage to it. Perrol also. Both Jarlyn and Ghoral wind up for a haymaker and both get partway through the armor. Gears whir and make noise.

Segment 3
Dodge=Thasori

Segment 4
Kross hit it for little damage. It attempted to hit me but was unsuccesesful yet again. Perrol, Jarlyn, and Ghoral wind up for haymakers. Ghoral’s strike exploded the orange glowing.

Segment 6
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 9 for 6 damage
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 6 for 3 damage, which just pings off

Segment 8
Kross does no damage, but it starts to spin. Perrol and Jarlyn wind up for haymakers.

Segment 9
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 7 for 4 damage
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 13 for 7 damage
The robot’s haymaker hits me in the chest for 2 body and I’m unconscious.

End Combat

I wake up to the robot dead/frozen. Jarlyn cocks his head to the side listening and says that he hears another zzt-clank like the robot being let loose.

The curtain of beads/stones starts to curl around Jarlyn. He yells what it happening since I’m unable to see any of this. I’m watching

Segment 12
I hold for the moment, because I don’t know really what’s going on. I hear a rumbling behind me and when I glance over my shoulder, I see these rocks falling on Jarlyn and Ghoral. Kross and Perrol dodge out of the way. Jarlyn rushes into the room. I make a half move forward which lets me see, but not attack anything. I notice that the wall where the rocks fell from appears to be a single shot trap/attack.

Segment 3
I hold for the moment since I still don’t know what’s going on. We all feel a creepy wave of energy sweep past us. Jarlyn yells from the room that the suspended figure has risen to the ceiling and is firing orange glow at him. I hear a whoosh that I recognize from the skeletal figure from the pyramid only it sounds quieter.

Segment 4
Perrol waits for the moment. I hear Jarlyn moving about the room. Ghoral moves forward and whacks off most of the strands of the curtain. He yells for us to move in and attack the wires holding up the figure. Therefore, I move in but am unable to attack as well as move far enough.

Segment 6
Attack the wires=Orushidaila with DCV 5 for 5 body which means I cut though 3 of the 5 wires
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 13 and slice through the rest of the wires
The left hand falls free and the figure looks at me. The figure moves to the back corner closest to me. His left foot twitches and a row of holes all around the room at ankle height open up and darts shoot out of the back wall only. They bounce off of Jarlyn’s armor and do not even hit me. Perrol jumps up so that they don’t hit.

Segment 8
Kross runs into the room and shoots armor piercing arrows at the figure but misses and snaps his bowstring. Jarlyn uses his dagger and, in two blows, cuts the wires in his corner. The figure falls to the ground in his far corner. Ghoral tries to get close, but can’t get there.

Segment 9
I half move to get close. Suddenly Jarlyn yells that his right foot has moved right before we are blinded by a bright light. However, I had my eyes closed in a blink and am fine. I use the last half of my move to get next to the figure.

Segment 12
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 7 in the arms for 5 damage which caused a small cut
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 13 in the vitals for 6 body, which causes him to look at me again.
His left foot wiggles again and darts shoot out of the left wall this time. They manage to miss all of us.

Segment 3
Ghoral attacks with his held action but misses.
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 11 in the thigh for 3
Attack=Orushidaila with DCV 13 in the head for 2
We feel another wave of creepy energy go out. It turns toward me and the mouth starts glowing orange. It barely hits me (DCV even) for 1 body and 1 stun. Perrol hits it but seems to do no damage. Ghoral thwacks it in the vitals and destroys it, ichor comes out, we hear wires snapping, etc.

End Combat

On the back wall is a full length painting. The first panel is a red/yellow/blue/green spray of small round dots. The next panel is a simple black square. After that is blue humanoid of the type we’ve been fighting kneeling next to a small white square with a red smear standing on it and five tall figures like those from before standing next to it with teardrop dabs of orange pigment on either side of the line of tall figures. Jarlyn tells us that from his knowledge this was likely a priest’s chamber and that these pictures are likely instructions on how to worship their gods, the oval-headed, long-fingered figures.

We decide to continue on to the hall across the way. Jarlyn senses evil behind the doors and high up. We check out the rest of the semi-circular hallway and find five doors with the sigil of the dark god that we’ve been following on each door. Each of us open a door on the count of three. We all see a small room/alcove covered in ice(it’s still very cold) but they are all individual and do not connect. Each door has a cross bar on the inside so that they could be barred from the inside. On the far wall of the alcove there are lots of very small holes. Each of the holes are half inch in diameter and arranged randomly in the wall. As we compare notes, we find that the only difference between the alcoves is the number of holes on the back wall. Jarlyn thinks about it and tells us that the bar and the bracket are metal and could be used in a magical thing. Perrol decides to test it out and so he walks into one of the rooms and latches the door. A few seconds later he walks back out looking very freaked out but otherwise no worse for wear. He tells us that as soon as he barred the door there were red/yellow/green/blue lights coming from the holes. The lights were just as bright with his eyes open or closed. Then he saw a white cube upon which he was sacrificing people, adults and children, while an outside force seems to be forcing into his head thoughts/feelings that this was okay. Jarlyn detects evil and finds the source from before as well as fading traces around the edges of Perrol’s aura. Jarlyn and Ghoral go into one of the alcoves to try and knock down the back wall. They are unsuccessful. We debate what to do next. Perrol does NOT want to go back into the alcoves. I wonder if perhaps all five of us need to be in all five alcoves to really activate it.

We decide to rest for a day and lightly investigate our areas. We find nothing in the other two holes. Ghoral tells us that all of these look to be recent excavations from which we can deduct that they were failed attempts to find the door that led to the cavern. Also, we learn from Perrol that the runes at the bottom were a natural being summoning. Likely, the rock snakes were the only three in the area and were summoned by these runes with the breaking of the ward over the entrance to the cavern. We wait the rest of the day to start again the next.

We go back down into the cavern. We see cave paintings of figures. Some were blue, similar to the blue markings on the faces of the people we killed, and those tend to be the heroes of the paintings. There are paintings of the blue people hunting, slaughtering whole villages, etc. However, at the end of the caveren, away from the door, the paintings change and show the blue people worshipping the figures (the only nicely drawn figures in the room) with elongated fingers and large heads. There was also a painting of a blue person seated with yellow wavy lines coming out of the head. Through the archway on the other side of the cavern we see a four way intersection. On the other side of the intersection we see what appears to be another room. We also very faintly hear the sounds of chanting. Ghoral peers ahead with his low light vision and sees that there is a pyramid in the center of the room with pockmarks up its side and a skeletal figure on the top. He also reports that it appears to have a thin coat of ice over it like the blue figures from before. When Perrol uses his magesight to look into the cavern ahead, he sees that there is magic around parts of the skeletal figure, especially the head. We start to head to the intersection. Looking down on either corridor we try to proceed cautiously. Perrol’s curiousity gets the better of him and he walks toward the figure on the pyramid. All of a sudden he stops, runs back, yells that the thing is in his head. Jarlyn says that mind based magic needs line of sight unless they have a detection ability.

Segment 12
I move slightly into the corridor in a half move and then delay.
Perrol runs away.
Kross tries to shoot at it and does hit it.
Suddenly Ghoral and Kross yell that they feel it in their minds.
Perrol shouts that when he was in the room he heard an increase in the chanting and that it seems to increase the farther in you get.
Jarlyn moves into the room in an attempt to detect evil, but fails.
Ghoral rushes it.

Segment 2
Move back to the center lane since being out of line of sight obviously doesn’t help.

Segment 3
I delay again.
The skeleton’s eyes glow orange and shoots two bolts out at Ghoral, which he dodges.

Segment 4
Perrol moves forward.
Kross changes out his bow for a sword and moves forward.
Jarlyn attempts
I move next to it.

Segment 6
I see that the eyes are glowing orange and that it has crystalline fangs with swirls of green in them. Also the lower skull of the three guard/step skulls looks off. I tell this to my adventure-mates.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 13 in the shoulders for 9 body
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 16 in the legs for 9 body
The eyes of the skull try to shoot glowing beams at Ghoral.

Segment 8
Perrol moves forward so that he can hit.
Kross does the same thing.
Jarlyn postpones and yells at Ghoral to move to the side.
Ghoral moves and crushes the chest of the skeleton causing a geyser of flames to shoot into the air for a good twenty seconds. I see metal bits come flying out of the head and the collar bone area after the crushing but before the column of flame. It also appears that what ever orange liquid that was in the eyes has pooled and is the source of the flame. There was a slight change in the chanting during the flames, but it returns to normal then. Those standing next to the columns hear it better. Also, the eyes of the skulls embedded in the pyramid had glittered in the light like gems.

End Combat

Perrol says that the magic that was in it is fading. The sides of the pyramid that were covered in ice have now melted. I notice that the lowest skull, the one that was a bit hinky, has moved down. I see that a piece of the metal that flew out of the skull is at my feet and appears to be machinery like I’ve seen in clock and gears and locks. As we look at the skeleton we see that while it had appeared to be a skeleton when intact, we can see the Ghoral examines the columns from which the chanting sound is coming from and is amazed by the workmanship of the tubes/holes. Ghoral then becomes preoccupied with prying gems out of the eyes of the skulls. Jarlyn walks to the back of the pyramid and notices that there is more cold and that there is evil in the right branch of the chamber on the back side of our current room. Ghoral goes to look at the chamber in the back. On the right hand fork there is a group of frozen over women like the first room. They are armed with flint daggers and at least one has an amulet with a large uncut ruby. We decide to attack the evil women before they can melt and/or attack. I attack two of the women in the head, killing one and wounding another and causing her ice to crack. Jarlyn wounds the other two women. After Ghoral takes care of the three wounded and unconscious women, he collects 6 rubies and 4 emeralds from the bodies. Then he goes and returns to prying out uncut diamonds from some of the eyes of the skulls on the pyramid. Kross comes in to assess the pelts on the floor of this y-shaped chamber and says that they are from animals he doesn’t recognize meaning that the animals they came from are likely to be extinct. So that means they are exceedingly expensive. Ghoral really wants to take these back with us. There is a total of 20 diamonds (1000gp), 6 rubies & 4 emeralds (300gp), and 50 pelts(1000gp) in all. We split it up so that everyone gets 6 gems to hold for the moment and we pile the pelts in the pyramid chamber so that we can explore a bit more. We turn down the passageway (the intersection we passed earlier) that had alcoves in it an and end. Ghoral sees a male-female couple armed with flint daggers in each alcove frozen in ice. They are lying side by side with feet pointing out in tombs of solid ice. Jarlyn detects evil from each of them and Perrol notices magic around the skin of each of them. They would be difficult to chip out, so we decide to go in the opposite direction and deal with them later if we have to. Ghoral yells back that there is a tee, to the left is a curtain of frozen polished rocks that appear like beads, and to the right is a tee at a curved path with a door. Jarlyn detects evil in the form of a meshwork figure behind the curtain, so he punched a hole in the curtain to look through. He sees a 20′ tall ceiling with a suspended humanoid 10′ off the floor, spread eagled and facing the floor. There is no ice on him. He has pale skin with a greenish gray pallor with lines of dark green appearing as veins and arteries. From each finger and toe is a wire extending to the walls that appear to be holding it up and spread eagle. A single wire emerges from the thick hair and reaches to the ceiling. There is also a scene painted across the opposite wall, but he is unable to see the particulars. As we are talking and looking in, the head comes up and we see green eyes similar to the veins. Suddenly the fingers on the right hand clench and Jarlyn sees the bottom of the curtain starts to curl up and wrap themselves around Jarlyn.