Jack's Journal pulsates with a soft warm glow, indicating the vastness of the wisdoms within. On a different day you might speculate that inscribed in enough, it might even grant its bearer the status of Hierophant, with a solid boost to Wisdom (Wisdom has a higher threshold in the primarily Midnight world as it takes ingenuity to scrape a living off the rocks until the big boys show up, although the new guys seem like fallen gods, something that is true of the other heroes though they just didn't perceive it sooner). The tome has a scritch-scratch of Jack's handwriting (assuming Common until you say otherwise, Jack) and it almost feels like the waterfall, which disappears after everyone draws a dagger, consecrates this meeting of gods torn asunder and forced to start over as regards the Sundering. The curved blades allow you to feel the Pround and the Lich, suggesting that they might be the same deity stranded here, but as a Fell ever tormented by astirax clouds until he is restored to his phylactery by the Shadow. Nisha and Lionel can feel their hair standing on end and perhaps know more than Jack about the history of the gods (Knowledge, dungeoneering for Jack (14) and for Mongo (23, Knowledge: Martial Lore, and 21, Lionel, Knowledge: Psionics seeing as the Pround is hoarding peat in dungeons, alongside people to be saved). The party as a whole comes to the consensus that the history of peat suggests the Pround reads at the library with a psionic eye, and people have located bodies nearby his towers that suggest a fetid connection to super-trained zombies with Fellcaller aptitudes, with blades that spin like Jack's guisarme, used as drones to harvest grain for kind payments). [Until I have the sheets for the other two new players, I assume they don't catch a look at Jack's Journal].

You become aware of someone knocking at the door to the tavern and a rather placid zombie walks in with a blade. "The daggers, you know the Striders? They told me to come by to gather information about my former boss, the Pround." He pauses, then continues. "His tribe kicks about the Archipelago of the Eywulf, with stormy rocks lashing against the shore. If you can bottle the waters up, we can access one of the god's channels to the Lost by siphoning the liquid into their bloodstream." He flashes his dagger. "Or maybe, you're an enemy." His form suggest DR of 5 from pulsating armor, just the same color as Jack's Journal. "I know you snuck in here, you three, so you either join me and the Proun' or we start to flood the place again."

OOC: He bears a scroll of Synchronicity. If you get it, you might notice the Energy Resistance that his armor gives off, something that with the water of the Eyewulf, might both temper Lionel's armor and retain Jack's ability to cast a Touch attack with the energies of the Journal referenced to Korophon, the Eye. Several of the Skeleton's eyes shift into a whirlwind of potent magical fields, and he attempts to skewer his pop-out eye with his own dagger. His AC is likely high, with adamantite, which seems like the portcullis you recall.

"Take ease animated intelligence, there is no need for conflict at this time, perhaps you should consider taking our side rather than whatever side you are on."

Jack has a spell at the ready to travel through his weapon that will likely cause the undead to flee, at least temporarily...
Readies Chill Touch to arcane channel, should the undead attack....

"Parley?"

In reply to wlake.gmtn (msg # 152):

Mongo scoffs. "Think what you wish, oh rotted one. Your shell, though impressive, is as brittle as glass to my touch, should I wish it. What need have you of our daggers?" he asks.

A man 2 meter tall approaches covered in armor with . "Let's say I am your enemy, little one. What are you doing to do about it?" This place brings some memories to Cahur. It is special for him and he knows it. "In other time, he would have crushed the zombie, but this Jack person seems to want to parley. There is no harm in it. He can always crush the zombie later.

"The striders?" Lionel shrugs. "Why don't you tell us more about your old and current bosses, undead? And why should we want to help them, of course."

OOC:
04:38, Today: Lionel rolled 28 using 1d20+14.  Knowledge Psionics

"I have already paid a price to destroy one like yourself, and the price seems to be higher than I am willing to repeatedly pay."

Jack points to his smoking eye, acquired only it seems moments ago,

Nisha silently moves aside, keeping at least 30ft of the zombie. "Nice dagger you have there. Is it like ours?"

OOC:
Move: move 30ft así de of the zombie
11:31, Today: Nisha rolled 22 using 1d20+7.   arcana. 

You sit apart from the zombie, whose rictus glows like a yawning fire. His bones spark a petit grin, highlighting the teeth that are already there. For a moment you can imagine him as a dead soldier whose desperate attempts to break from this reality led him down dark and enslaving paths. But luckily he looks happy despite the severity of his expression. Jack's eye draws his gaze numerous times as though they were compasses seeking each other, Jack's eye and his own. He stands on one foot and crackles like a blizzard, though undead in this world are susceptible to fire. Perhaps in his abyss the deep cold instilled a long depth. In another century he would be wearing a diver's helmet.

"My boss is trying to observe the earth with his unending gaze, so that the prisoners being watched by others might be freed." His armor shifts as though rings clanking together. "My dagger is destined to stab out the eyes of others, should their being even connect to such things as vision. How much of a certainty the phylactery brings is up to the coven who sit now even cross-legged, speaking of visions of you around the magic ball. The very foundations of the earth shake (and the worms on the door handle rattle alongside his shield) and beckon us toward a common goal. The crystals are said to be gone, adornments in Hades' dog's bowels. In some of my bosses and my vision, several of the opuses brought our aims into Syncrhonicity. If we pierce the eyes of the spellweavers who destroyed Cauldron despite its resurgence in the Second Age, their own phylacteries would peter out into nothing, saving the city. The gods and the obsidian daggers are huge gambols, brimming to the teeth with a solid tie between cities, stuffed to the gills, as it were, with finery and precious metals. We might make a delivery and lead another Shadow outlet into breaking down the weapons, seeing as this helps us refine the true sword used to dethrone Zeus. The daggers are used to slash the sepulchral seneschal's throat, refining the blade in a peaty den, with other aromas involved in seances across the board.

"Resurgence," and his armor emits a strange scent akin to a dog's, "of the right ways to be in the realm is on the up-and-up."

OOC: If you fought him, he doesn't seem that intimidating, but Nisha's roll suggests freezing the fountain would shake up the realm in a sense that the aforementione parties would glean a scry, often done using a special augury scrying.

Mongo responds "Who, if I might ask, are the watched prisoners? If you seek to reforge the obsidian daggers, I would require a heat source akin to a fire elemental, for obsidian is forged in lava. I am a master of the forge where it comes to weapons, and can undertake such a task if need be. But to what end or purpose?"

"Wait, I too have been cast into the void in the totality of nothing and eventually perceiving not more than a mote or speck of light I moved to the light, and as I did the speck became bigger, and when I finally could see it, it was my own reflection in the dragons eye, I met this dragon beyond and she is my observer beyond.  There is no heat in the void and no air and no hope, had I stayed I expect my physical would have transformed, however she sent me here with little information.   Do we serve one and the same?

"And what visions does the coven have for us?"Nisha asks the zombie, not yet revealing the other what she knows.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:35, Sat 14 Sept 2024.

Cahur grunts and cracks his knuckles, waiting for a reply from the Zombie

"So, we need to kill this Seneschal? Understood."
He couldn't say more. The zombie was not his enemy yet.

"The daggers belong to those who had passed from this world eons ago. The city Cauldron had erupted prior to being laid under water in the central lake. Their visions were able to project the waters of central Cauldron and link them to the waterfall you just witnessed. The daggers permitted us to view the Shackleborn (#2 on Jack's list). who are being collected to bring from Redgorge the Tree of Shackled Souls. The Ebon Triad are fee noire who are working with my master. Having rolled Sense Motive you get the impression he might be uncomfortable in his armor.'Which digniary might he be, and does he truly work for the Pround? He levels his gaze at Nisha and Lionel and for a second admires Lionel's Tessellated armor radiating a pure white light. His own bones crinkle in response to Cahur's moment of bewilderment. <Red>"The Seneschal possesses the daggers that are the kin of your own, five of you and five daggers. Two of the Ebon Triad wield two at a time, like those strange barrels from the past. Their goal is to plunge them into the victims of the Tree of Shackled Souls, gouging a caesura into the skin of those Shackleborn.

Your Will seems to match a sense of Detect Magic, which chain reactions into a Seeming spell that you observe connects him to two ghosts, and the bulging bags of plutomantic cash upon his back suggest rumors that you heard from Jil about the mayor of Cauldron, Vhalantru. You suspect that his feral nature is lustinh after ever more cash (see No-Face from Spirited Away). The reticulus of his armor seems to bend light as though many eyes were attached to it that gazed outward, not part of his disguise but something else.

"In a sense I am the Seneschal for what goes on in my city is left for the reeves. But to become the Seneschal. The watched prisoners sit in the caverns at the distant parts of the plane gambling and whiling away their moments. The Shackleborn mark can only be laid upon with magic and to that end only graves or tumuli of their undead marks can be deduced from the dirtied hands of the graverobbers, those who seek to bridge the gap of living and dead, one of which I am. Dare you to provide for me the key to this undead enterprise?

Jack nods his head as he begins to understand at least some parts of what the necromonger is saying to him.

"Do I understand correctly that there is a group with a thing called the tree of shackled souls, and much like a wicker man, it will be used in some ceremony requiring the sacrifice of the gathered shackleborn so that some magical change in the world can occur on a large scale, that you work towards this goal with the Ebon Triad, and the daggers are a means of locating the shackleborn still needed and necessary for the ritual to be started?"


"I have heard of such rituals, those that open the mouth of hell and release the dead into the world of the living, resulting in what is often called armagedden, ragnarok and other such end of days events.  I am not sure I am able to side with you at this time, I do not see a way it benefits my life.  I assume we are required to give you the daggers or fight you now?"


"Is there something else that we might do for you at this time, so that we retain the daggers and a fight is averted?"

Lionel had little to add. Jack was making a great job. Only one thing remained to be asked. Something frivolous. "Your armor, creature. You seem to not be comfortable in it. Hasn't it been made for you?"

The mighty warrior says "Mongo sees easy fix of problem. Uproot tree of Shackled Souls. Tear it from the Earth, and thus save the shackleborn from dire fate. This has added bonus of waving genitals in faces of Gods."

"Well, now this one dagger belongs to me. And if anyone wants it, I welcome anyone to try it. And the gods have decreed that the dead and the living must be separated. Whoever wants otherwise is an enemy of the gods."

"So... you have more of these nice daggers?"
Cahur of Typhon gave him a wolfish smile.

Consider the undead aberration as something like a Morhg, who serves as those who would know of the distant god Morgoth. Topped with a hairstyle that seems to suggest snow, its cold and white locks almost aflame, streaked with rage. But it quells its anger, the creature and you can see the same daggers that you have in its hands. They start to quake gently, and you have a hazy picture of the Ebon Triad whose dark skin radiates a mental cool. A giant tongue flips around their mouths when consuming their ale. The morhg might be the source of this feature.

The Mohrg's improved grab and +12 to slam you, push you, and potentially constrict and crush you, gaining a free grapple action, and expanding his three disarms from a cloud of rotating daggers and fists to five, the entire party. He addresses Jack: "I will slam you into dust if you betray me. My armor pays no witness to the mere scrapes of the claws that those represent. If you agree to assist me, there is an entire dragon's trove that will align us with those who are lawful evil amongst the gods. We see beyond the petty squabbles of gods and Izradors. Would you agree that this armor (he shifts uncomfortably) would be a suitable trap for the Triad? If we get them all in the same place, we can undo the planar junction, freeing the bound Shackleborn."

"The lands of the dead belong to Hades but Cerberus might see us ride the dragon Chark into glorious destruction of the Pround, who holds one of the keys to the caves of the Sunken Tribes. From there the peat of the Anduin can be magically unwrapped by us Mohrgs since we are undying like the elves who simply are reborn aside from Izrador, who compete with the Triad." His huge hands seem ready to avoid just one called shot from the adventurers, since his armor is so thick (and we're not using AoOs). Several towers with a coelum of peat exist around the legendary city of Alvedara, which rests upon the Anduin.

"Easy big fellow, If you want to figure out how we can work together, we can do that, in a sign of good faith I can give you my dagger and perhaps one of the others here would likewise want to do that, give us time to get some trust going and to sort out everything that we may need to do. For all I know this entire realm is supposed to be a portion of the underworld. As you know I have not been here very long and just for some reason now have a smoking eye."

Offers the dagger....

"If you take this it is a sign of peace and we can speak again in a few days, perhaps after we get back to Cauldron."

The Mohrg's fan of knives betokens a swiling flash before the daggers seem to reced like desert tides. The daggers might end up damaging not only him but the group as a whole. If Jack's dagger leads the group to surrender the knives, chances are good that it will become some kind of artifact. Worn around the neck, that would leave the slight blue glow that magic items in this world tend to emit. His ability to smash and bite leave his almost winged form to seep through the ragged clothing that would be considered mere accoutrement to the armor that he's wearing. The daggers likely have a connection to his flight, so if you defeated him (1)after gifting all the daggers, (2)giving him some of the daggers, (3)try to bludgeon the artifacts into non-existence, or (4)surfeiting them to try to sell them back to Cauldron which would give rise to harder encounters in the future (this last option is base don Jack's inclination to peddle highly important magical items to a major city without attracting attention.). Gifting the daggers to Skye recalls the group and the dolphin glass that now like an alien planet soaks up the magical loam on the Sea of Pelluria. Chances are good that the Tree of SHackled Souls would synchronize there deep under the water, with a chance that the Smoking Eyes that are in existence would slot into the throne, ensuring their destruction.

You see a moment in which the Pround almost runs his hand along his astirax-like cloud of weapons but his inclination is to armor himself with a Synchronicty spell so that he can continue to reside upon the throne nearest the Tree of Shackled Souls, which continues to sit astride the beasts that reside deep in the lake, in this case cold water where kentos are found, whetstones that allow piercing weapons to take on bludgeoning capacities (hence why the uruk-hai all use hammers, gifted by Izrador to level shockwaves and ruptures of sundering in such a way as to crush their undead enemies. The Mohrg seems to almost blurrily tap, in the ethereal plane, what seems like a kane, indicating that he is more ancient than you might expect. He is a CR 6 creature in this instance but being a leader type means that the five of you almost certainly can catch him flat-footed for a longer duration, several rounds of surprise. The astirax could morph into a CR 7 encounter, but with your abilities none of you would suffer an extreme chance of death (so a CR 6 encounter followed back-to-back by a CR 7 encounter). His nature would incline this toward seeing the encounter as a bleak one, and the wounds won't be easy to recover from, but as I said, chances of death wouldn't be too bad.

OOC: Mechanically, is is the Familiar of a Master Puppeteer, a lich bearing Frostmourne.　CR 6 and 7 yields 1400 and 2100 XP respectively and in my opinion constitutes an ECL of 8, with a 4 as absolute potential spread of enemies. Any opinions on how to optimally compute monster/party balance and power, feel free to weigh in (wit your kento, or dip the blade into the peat to be able to set it ablaze).

"The daggers exist beyond them. We shall duel, or the evening is lost."

"Do you wish to duel?  Is it that you hope that we destroy you and end your misery?"

He cackles before the astirax start to swarm like blades and energy seems to surge through his body.

Initiative:

Jack - 28
Mongo 24 - Natural 20 on Initiative, I couldn't find where you had posted initiative, so I'm going with "4+I" which I assume means you have a plus 4, landing on 24.
Nisha - 19
Morhg - 13
Cahur - 16
Lionel - 13

The room has one door that materialized as he taunted you, meaning you're in the outside space with the fountain followed by an inside space with a statue of a kuo-toa. The inside space is about 60' by 60', with a height of 100'. The enclosure with the fountain seems al most infinite.

The floor of the chamber is a mosaic with frescoes of dolphins suggesting a doubt and a half of a source of essentia, the physical manifestation of which might be aligned with the astirax spinning around floating like there is a source and destination to the very room. The floor is covered with porcelin shards and there are stone double doors. Jack's eye seems to pop out and may even be fueled by essentia.

(Aside from the modified stat block I posted some of earlier, the monster is like this: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/mohrg.htm).

"What's with the scars and tattooes?" the astirax chimes in before taking flight and perching in the northwest corner of the room. He has a version of Jack's Journal from which he begins to read aloud:

"The former ruler of this layer (the water plane) a fallen planetar named Adimarchus, found it amusing to keep me around as his prisoner. He found me a kindred spirit, I suppose -- where else are you going to find an angel around here? Adimarchus also thought it would be amusing to torture me repeatedly and put these blasphemous sigils on my chest." He indicates the chest in the other corner, floating, emitting light.

Monk 3/assassin 3/wizard 2: If you defeat him by closing the chest with a totem, you gain a bonus 500 experience, in addition to the 1400 and 2100. He attempts to swim up to the corner to access the chest before combat meaning you can stop him if you catch him flat-footed (22 to slice him up), as the air and water planes converge in a giant river where floats a demodad army aligned with the kuo-toa. You can almost feel the experience from the wraps of his resurrection. If you defeat him at night (using magical light to sift through the magic ether), then Nyx manifests for a short time to grant a wish.

His words count as a bluff check opposed to your own sense motive or similar skill to keep the chest locked with essentia, which is akin to shadowmelds (the chest emits a wave and worm-like shadow cresting as waves of water, which may interact with his armor (which is like your own, as we recall). His caster level is 8 and he has many appendages to reach into the chest and you sense he gains a discrete boost (gradated, like Pathfinder) to his mysteries and he will cast Necromancy to bring you back from the dead, downgrading you into astirax form. If he slams you, you're in trouble as it blasts you into the kuo-toa sphere which surrounds this room like a waterfall full of fish (images dancing like dolphins).
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:24, Wed 27 Nov 2024.

"So let the battle be joined!"

Jack whirls his Guisairme into action calling upon his inspiration and channeling magic through the weapon as his Duskblade training calls for ....

Attack roll 25; weapon damage 8; electric damage 8