Sins of the Crucible: IC

[Jzadek]

Sins of the Crucible
http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/326/b/e/seed_by_sandara-d4h0gaa.jpg



"Enlightenment can only be truly experienced when one becomes a truly objective observer. This means eliminating fear, anger, hatred, or any other emotion that can muddy the waters of our quest to realise the will of Kyrth-Amaun. Only then can true nirvana be achieved..." - The Book of the Crucible, Opening Passage

Had an observer been present, they would first have noted that the four seemed an odd bunch - a winged goblin with a touch of the fey, a wiry human with the scars and muscles of a warrior, another human, but with blood red eyes, half open, but unseeing, and a man with blood so mixed to have an ancestry almost completely untraceable, though a closer look would have revealed the blood of the dragons.

However, no observer was present, and so the four slept in silence with no one watching over them... and then they began to awake from their slumber, one by one, coming to, finding themselves laid down upon stone slabs in a bare and empty cavern, stretching out further than any of them could make out, with the stalagmites on the floor rising between wisps of fog, with glowing blue ore refracting light through it. The stone slabs were laid out around a strange construct, ridged and made of the same glowing blue material, with tendrils stretching out... and, the four realised to their horror, leading into the back of each of their necks...

[The Big Orc]

Coming to, Sylth checks for his equipment. "Is everyone ok? I am Sylth."

[Jzadek]

Sylth found he was wearing exactly what he was when he had that encounter with the mysterious stranger, weapons and armour included. Whoever was keeping them here clearly had no plans for them to wake up.

[HearTheRequiem]

Phaedra twists oddly, his wing having crumpled underneath him at some point, and stretches out.

"...Phaedra. Argh, wing cramp...".

He then looks around, finally noticing where he was, and what had happened.

"What the....Did you do this? What's going on!?"

[OMG PONIES]

Keegan opens his eyes slowly and begrudgingly. While his dreams had at first been a puzzle and then became an annoyance, they were now a comfort--the only comfort he had, in fact. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and looks around; while a stone slab in a cave wasn't his idea of luxury accommodations, it still beat out the piles of trash he had become used to sleeping on.

Keegan sits quietly on his slab, trying to take in what he can of the situation without waking the others. Sitting upright on his slab, it is hard to place Keegan's descent. He is too stocky to be thought a halfling and too slight to be a dwarf, but too short to be considered anything else. His face is too soft to be fully human, but also too stubbly to be that of an elf. To a cursory glance, Keegan Tam seems a member of every race and of none all at once. Only upon closer inspection will one notice his skin with its slightly scaled pattern and his piercing silver eyes; two surefire signs that this man--this mutt--is a Platinum Pureblood, one of the descendants of Bahamut himself.

As the others begin to rise, Keegan moves slowly so as not to startle them and speaks low so as not to rouse the others prematurely. Slyth wakes and asks the others how they are, to which Keegan responds softly, "I am fine, Mister Slyth, and my name is Keegan Tam O'Donnell. Are you okay too?" The mongrelfolk tries to scan his mind to see if he knows the others from anywhere, but doesn't have much time to think. As the winged goblin wakes and takes on an accusatory tone, Keegan raises his palms in front of him. "Easy, friend," he whispers, "we did not do this; we are in the same boat as you." Feeling something odd along his back, Keegan reaches back to feel the tendril leading into his neck. His eyes go wide and he asks, "What do you think happens if we pull these out?" The man only half-listens to the others' guesses as he scans both the contraption and the cave itself, looking for any clues of the reason for their being here.

[roll0]
[roll1]
[roll2]
[roll3] to identify the odd contraption. If a different knowledge is more pertinent, please substitute. All knowledges are +12 for Keegan.

[HearTheRequiem]

Phaedra scowls and grumbles as he reaches for the tendril snaking into his neck, trying to look at it and the machine it leads into, thinking back to anything he might have read regarding this kind of thing, along with a hazy swirl of half-formed thoughts that sprang into his head as he swam in and out of consciousness before.

"Ugh, my head... I bet this is what's doing this to me. What is it? Have I seen this before...maybe in a book. There were a lot of books at the library...I hope they're okay. Oegawi would be sad if her books got burnt. She'd probably hobble after the arsonist and beat them with her cane! ...I hope she's okay, there was a lot of smoke. These rocks are pretty, they're so blue..."

Regarding the tendrils and odd machine:
Knowledge: Arcana: [roll0]
Knowledge: Religion : [roll1]
Knowledge : The Planes : [roll2]

[The Big Orc]

Feeling around, he realizes that their is something in the back of his neck. He reaches around and tries to snap it.
Str check [roll0]

[Jzadek]

The strange construct is like nothing Keegan has ever seen before, despite all his studying. However, as he stares into the fog and the darkness, and searches the area allowed by the tendril, he notices that there is something vaguely wrong with the whole place. Perspectives are slightly wrong, bits of the ground that look uneven but are in reality smooth...

***

Phaedra can recognise no arcane heritage to the strange contraption, but vaguely recalls some religious background to the architecture of it. For some reason, it reminds him of a story he once heard about some fringe cult, but he can remember little more than that. He also recognises a definite extra-planar quality to it, but can't for the life of him place the plane of origin. It could be celestial, could be demonic, could be slaadic. He doesn't know.

***

The tendril slides from Sylth's neck with a sickening wet sound, but doesn't seem to have left a wound or any sign that it was there. More alarmingly, the cathedral cavern seems to flash, before going entirely black. Had he gone blind?

[HearTheRequiem]

"...This thing... It's not from here, is it? It's from a different plane...and I've seen something like this before, somewhere...The way it's built, what was it...I don't remember what it's called, it's something about a cult or something...There was a book about it back at the library, it was too high up for Oegawi to reach, so she used to make me fly up there to get it for her...What was I saying? I don't remember...This accursed machine is clouding my mind or something, I think...Need to get it out of me..."

Muttering the above almost incoherently, Phaedra reaches round sluggishly to the tendril and feebly tries to remove it.

Strength check: [roll0]

[The Big Orc]

"Guys, I can't see anything. I removed the thing in the back of my head and then there was nothing. I am gonna try and find a torch to see if that helps."
Feeling around in his pack, he tries to find a torch and his flint and steel.

Assuming that nothing has been moved around in his bag he should be able to find them because he put them there.

[Jzadek]

Despite Phaedra's display of strength, feeble as it was, the tendril came free in exactly the same manner as Sylth's, with the same flash of light. Doing so, though, stuns him, and he falls to the ground feeling sickened. Around him, the cavern is no longer there, replaced with a smooth, ten by ten square room carved out of marble, although the slabs and mysterious construct remain.
His darkvision is interrupted by Sylth's torch flaring up, although both sets of eyes soon adjust.
Other than the aforementioned slabs and device, the room seens entirely featureless, apart from a mahogany hatch on the ceiling. A faint humming can be heard, along with... something else, but not something you can really make out without concentrating. A vague smell of sulphur fills the room, apparently rising from a small grate in one of the corners.

[HearTheRequiem]

Holding a hand to the back of his head and rubbing gently, Phaedra groans as a a small, bedraggled, frightened-looking thing peeks its head out of Phaedra's robes, squeaking shrilly.

"...Argh, that's bad...but better, I guess...Ysolde? You're okay...good. Do you hear that too?"

Slightly placated by knowing that his familiar is here too, and safe, Phaedra turns his attention to the weird noise, trying to make it out over the hum of the machine.

Listen check : [roll0]

Do familiars get to make checks too? If so, Ysolde the bat's Listen check: [roll1]
EDIT : I messed up, that first roll should be +10, not +20. I mistyped, sorry. The result should be 26, not 36.

[OMG PONIES]

Keegan curses his bad luck; if only he had learned that Magical Insight invocation his dreamtime mentor had offered to teach him. Unfortunately, his intellect was limited and he was only able to pick up a few tricks. Still, he had learned from his travels how to spot the odd spell or two. This cavern seems illusionary, so he begins to check the corners. Beginning mages focus only on one item at a time, while apprentices learn to fabricate the image of a whole room, but only the masters have the power to create a picture-perfect reproduction, complete with sharply defined edges.

[roll0] vs DC 20+spell level

As the others lose their vision, Keegan begins to connect the dots. Whatever this device is, it is feeding them the image of this cavern instead of wherever it is that they truly are. He reaches a hand up to the back of his head and delicately pulls the tendril out. His eyes take a moment to adjust to the featureless room, but once he notices the hatch in the ceiling he makes a beeline through the air towards it. "Be cautious, friends," he says as he hovers near the hatch. "Anyone clever enough to feed us fake images surely knows to trap the only exit as well."

[roll1]

[distant quasar]

Jheltrex opens his eyes wide, screaming long and loud, anguish and fear apparent in equal measures. The sound is almost sickening. Suddenly he stops, blinking, and looks around, his eyes adjusting to the lighting.

"Normally when I wake up from a dream I do not find myself in another one. But I am never aware that I am dreaming, which leads me to conclude that I am not doing so now." he stares at the others in the room in turn.
"Where am I?"
As he moves his head to look at them, he notices the tendril protuding from his neck. He reaches back and slashes at it with with vicious claws.

not sure if I need to attack for that, but here you are:
Attack: [roll0]
Damage: [roll1]

Spot: [roll2] <-what a roll to get a 20 on... yay
Listen: [roll3]

To identify tendrils/recognize any surroundings:
Knowledge (arcana): [roll4]
Spellcraft: [roll5]

[The Big Orc]

How high up is the ceiling?

Looking up at the hatch, Sylth says, "So the last thing I remember is some man approaching me. Anyone have any idea how they got here?"

[distant quasar]

"No. I don't even know as much as where 'here' is. However, that is the last thing I remember as well."

[HearTheRequiem]

Phaedra calls over from the other side of the room.
"I was running, crashed into...someone, and now the two of us are here too..."

[Jzadek]

Listening carefully, Phaedra becomes aware of what the noise is, other than the slight humming. He can make out the sound of people screaming and shouting, of the clash of steel on steel, and some more alien noises coming from above them, through the ceiling eight feet above them.

Meanwhile, Keegan knocks loose a panel on the hatch, revealing a network of gears and cables. Just like with the illusion, he can't tell for sure what it would do, but it looks like something that they might want to be careful around.

It was then that the final of their number, Jheltrex, awoke. When he slashed the tendril, like the others, his vision flashed, but like Phaedra, he became stunned, and fell forward off the slab. He felt sick. Once he'd recovered, however, staring into the shadows, he was able to see what the others had not - the floor around the grate appeared to be moving, and that area of motion was expanding. He realised that coming up from the grate was a host of strange-looking insectoid things, although like none he'd ever seen before.

[distant quasar]

"Hey there!" Jheltrex exclaims, pointing in the direction of the insectoids.
"Something tells me those aren't going to be friendly."

How close to us are they? Can we have a map of the room if there will be combat?

[HearTheRequiem]

"...I don't think they'll be the only not-friendly thing... People are fighting...or something...above us, I think..."
As if to illustrate exactly where "above us" is, Phaedra flaps his wings and gestures to the ceiling.

[distant quasar]

Jheltrex looks over at Phaedra and licks his lips.
"Terrific."
It's impossible to tell if he is being serious or not.

[HearTheRequiem]

"It IS terrific! We can sneak out or whatever while they're fighting....assuming, of course, you don't wish to stay here forever?"

[distant quasar]

"Wouldn't it be better to find out where here is before we leave? I don't like the idea of leaving here with no idea of who was responsible for this. Then how would I be able to let them know what I think of them?"

[HearTheRequiem]

"And suppose that whoever is fighting the one who did this to us kills them before you get a chance to `let them know what you think of them`, what then? Whether we fight or we flee, it stands to reason that we can't do anything if we just stand here in this weird room, so why don't we try and get out of here and decide what to do from there?"

[Jzadek]

The strange insectoids halt completely, in perfect rank, with one of them, slightly larger, in the middle. Now they have stopped, it becomes clear that they are in fact mechanical, and the one in the middle has, attached to its back, a key, and a rolled up scroll.

[distant quasar]

"Of course we should get out of here, as in this room. But before we leave the entire area, I want to figure out why I'm here. You all can do what you like."
he points at the mechanical insectoids.
"Why not get that stuff off them before we blow up the room?"
he says it as if there was no doubt that that's how they'd be getting out of the room.

[HearTheRequiem]

"Fascinating...I wonder what these are? Who would make them, and what purpose do they serve?"

Eyes glittering, Phaedra reaches out to take and read the scroll.

[Jzadek]

As Phaedra reaches out for the scroll, the little clips and bolts that held it in place click open, and it comes free. The little mechanical insectoids do not resist, but a myriad of razor blades click out of their sockets in case it becomes necessary to.
It is scribed in the language of the orcs, yet the writing is neat and sophisticated, a rarity among them.
"Dearest friends - if you are receiving this, then you are some of the only ones conscious in the entirety of the Temple who is not one of the foul and tainted Crucible Priests. If you are previously a test subject, I cannot stress how incredibly valuable you are to the war effort. If you are not, then at least know that as you read this, my soldiers and I are attacking.

Sincerely, King Gugnir, Tiger of the Steppes and Bringer of Justice

[OMG PONIES]

Keegan raises an eyebrow at the mechanical insects, and raises the other at the text of the letter. A king? The war effort? Keegan pauses for a moment and wonders what he's in the middle of before snatching the key from the large insectoid and looking around for a keyhole.

[roll0] for info on the insects
[roll1] for info on King Gugnir
[roll2] for where this key goes
[roll3] for where this key goes

[HearTheRequiem]

"The Temple...? Crucible Priests...?"

Knowledge: Religion for information about the Temple and the Priests: [roll0]

[distant quasar]

"I'm just as interested in those test subjects... something tells me that we are those subjects."

Knowledge (arcana): [roll0]
information on insectoids, temple, crucible priests

[The Big Orc]

"What really matters is what they are testing. If they are hallucinogenics then we cannot trust what we see. Perhaps only one of us is real. Also, one of us might be one of the testers, seeing how we react and interact."

[distant quasar]

"If all I'm seeing is fake, and this is all a dream, I will wake up just the same as if I quit dreaming now. But if it isn't, I will only screw myself by doing nothing out of fear." His eyes narrows into slits.
"Then let that would-be tester watch and learn all he likes. May his own test be the death of him. I cannot see how any testers could possibly make me any more miserable than I was already, so I have nothing to fear from this whole ordeal. In fact, I look forward to the prospect of meeting these testers...

he closes his eyes all the way and leans his head back slightly.

"Testers... what a wierd word. Testers...

then he laughs, slowly and with absolutely no trace of humor.

[HearTheRequiem]

"If I am being tested, I know naught of what the test is, and if I am the tester, I know naught of that either."

Clenching his fist, crumpling the scroll slightly, Phaedra calls his familiar to his side, where she perches on his shoulder.

"Come, Ysolde. We go to meet this King Gugnir, so that we might learn of what's going on."

[Jzadek]

Keegan has heard of the insectoids, but has never encountered them before now. He identifies them as Akli-Narr, known more colloquially as Gearbugs, animated tiny automatons that operate as spies, or more sinisterly, as assassins when in large groups. They are programmed so seek out living things, and fulfil whatever orders they are given.

He recalls the name Gugnir, but not under the title king. Instead, he recognises the name as being held by the chieftan of Tigerclan, one of the tribes of orcs that ruled the steppes of the Badlands. Reportedly, the chieftan was honorable, if extremely ruthless against his enemies, earning himself the nickname "Gugnir the Hammer". Why he has proclaimed himself king is more of a mystery.

Looking for the slot for the key, Keegan finds that within the sinister mechanism is a deeply concealed lock, that seems about the right size and shape. Getting it in there, however, looks to be a challenging task.

Meanwhile, Phaedra is considering the implications of the involvement of the Crucible. A cabal of militaristic clerics devoted to the God of Conquest and Victory, the Crucible devote their lives to the way of the Heart of Stone, which teaches one to remove all their emotion, which ways them down in their quest to annihilate all they view as impure. What they are up to seems mysterious, as they are notoriously secretive.

[OMG PONIES]

"Be mindful not to catch a gearbug underfoot," Keegan says to the others. "I'd hate to see what the others do if we destroy one of their swarm, even unwittingly. Now, I've found a keyhole on this contraption," he says. "Let me take the first step into whatever lies ahead." After a quick search to ensure the keyhole is not trapped, he wrestles the key into the slot and turns it.

[roll0]

[Jzadek]

Keegan's quick check exposes no traps. The mechanism appears to be for some other purpose. As he turns the key, a great rumbling sound echoes through the enclosed room, seeming to shake the very base of the party's beings, before fading away again, leaving a strange-feeling silence and a ringing in their ears.

[distant quasar]

Jheltrex looks around.

"Well, that was... odd. Anyone have any ideas as to what just happened?"

[The Big Orc]

"I think we need to explore more of this place. I will go this direction and shout if I see anything." Sylth walks off in the direction were he would have been looking when he had been attached to pillar.

[Jzadek]

The wall that side seems to be almost totally featureless, aside from a few small cracks.

[distant quasar]

Jheltrex looks around again at the blank faces of the others, and the blank features of everything here. He feels a terrible fury rise up inside of him, begging to be released.

He walks over to the nearest blank wall he can find, and blasts at it with furious energy.

30ft cone directed at wall when I am standing 25 ft away.

[roll0] damage, half fire and half unholy.
I auto-succeed the will save on this ability.
The wall will light into unholy fire for the next 6 rounds, taking 1d6 damage (half fire and half unholy).