The Veiled Lodger | Part 2

General Summary

The Battle

The moment was filled with tension. Tidran, Dante, and Farren froze. Sih’Teel’s reckless actions in the quotien’s lair cost the group any hope of reasoning with the ancient being. The shriveled, purple humanoid fully rose from its slumber and levitated itself into a sitting position, hovering steadily above the ground. Surrounded by detritus, old tech, and piles of shins, the quotien leveled a furious gaze at them and fired a psychic blast directly at Sih’Teel! The rogue dodged, of course.
Tidran bashed the creature with his shield and dazed it. Dante leveled his pistols. Farren attacked with her sword. Sih’Teel took a swing with his blade. They all continued to battle the humanoid, furious to take it down before it awoke from its daze! Then the quotien sent a psychic blast at Tidran. The brave warrior was taken aback at the harshness of the quotien’s attack. He quickly gulped a healing potion, desperate to get his mental strength back. While the group was distracted, the quotien flipped a switch in the room’s machinery with its telepathic powers. The room they were in zoomed several stories down Ivannia’s depths.
In the end, Farren’s blow killed the quotien. The ancient being sunk to the floor and lay still. Everyone divided the lair’s spoils amongst themselves. Sih’Teel received an ancient battle suit. He gleefully put it on and strutted about.
But the question remained. Where were they? Before its death, the quotien had activated giant, vault doors to block both entrances out of the lair. Farren managed to get a door open by operating the control panel. Sih’Teel simply walked through, his form phasing through solid steel. Dante and Tidran followed Farren into the next chamber. They had chosen the southeast path.

Mind over Matter

Sih’Teel arrived first into a box shaped room with corroded walls made up of synth and dimly glowing blue panels. In the middle of the room, there was a solid, black slab made of an unknown substance. Above the slab hung a yellow orb around ten inches in diameter. While gazing at the sphere, Sih’Teel suddenly found his consciousness sucked from his body. His mind floated weightless, sensation-less inside the glowing orb while his body simply stayed still. Sih’Teel fought against the sphere’s control and quickly returned to his body. He had just recovered as Farren, Dante, and Tidran walked through the now opened vault door into the same room as he.
“What have you found?” Farren asked.
“Oh nothing,” Sih’Teel said. His companions turned to the slab and stared at the sphere. Immediately Tidran’s face went motionless, slack, devoid of emotion. His body froze in place. Meanwhile, the yellow sphere now glowed brighter!
Inside the sphere, Tidran tried to break free. But his efforts were in vain. He could sense nothing outside of the orb. He floated sensationless and at the mercy at whoever was holding the yellow sphere. It happened to be Sih’Teel, of course.
“Would it bounce if I dropped it?” Sih’Teel wondered aloud. He gave the orb an experimental bounce and found that it only dropped to the ground and cracked a little. He quickly picked it up and held it a little more carefully after that.
Farren and Dante wanted nothing more than to leave the room immediately. Dante, a little claustrophobic, looked desperately for a way out. They went through the next door. Dante pushed Tidran’s body forward slowly.
Inside the next room, they found a strange machine with a helmet of sorts attached to the device. Farren surmised that its purpose was to increase the intelligence of anyone who wore the helmet. Sih’Teel tried to put the orb underneath the helmet but it did nothing. Farren sighed. She quickly unplugged the machine before Sih’Teel could do anything else with it.
It took a little while, but Tidran’s consciousness eventually left the sphere and returned to his body.
“Where do we go now?” Dante asked nervously. They had come to a dead end. There was nothing else to do besides to try the southwest door. After Tidran used the machine (and Farren plugged it back in), the group went back to the quotien’s lair. The body still lay dead on the floor.

Curiouser and Curiouser

The southwest path was no less strange than the opposite tunnel. Farren, having gotten the hang of opening the doors via control panel, easily got the group access into a new room. It was a triangular shaped room with relatively clean walls. There were sprinklers set up in the ceiling. As Farren opened the next door, she also poked the wall to see what would happen.
“Oh, great,” Dante said. Tidran groaned.
“Why…” he said, then ducked.
Acid began spraying down on the ceiling on them! Except Sih’Teel, of course, who was immune to these sorts of things because of his newly acquired battle suit. Farren quickly rushed everyone through the door.
They arrived into a vast chamber. It was easily a thousand feet from one end to the other side, where another door appeared. The floor of the chamber sloped down and then up in a long, half-oval shape. An energy wave, around five feet tall, coasted from one end of the room to the other. It stopped just short of the platforms that held the doors. Sih’Teel looked at the energy wave. Something about it seemed… harmful. The group decided to bypass it.
Dante took one look at the ceiling and decided to be epic! He took his grappling hook and swung super-hero style across the room, entirely missing the wave. Sih’Teel merely walked through, resisting any effects. Farren and Tidran remembered that they were wearing hover suits. They quickly rose above the ground and coasted safely to the other side of the room. A large vault door awaited them again. Farren easily bypassed the security controls.
Inside, they found a giant tomb of a mechanized warrior! The sarcophagus was easily thirty feet long! The matching statue, rising high into the ceiling, was easily as tall as the coffin. Tidran had had enough of weirdness for a day. He activated his hover belt again, rose fifty feet in the air, and coasted across the room to the next door. Farren opened this one as well.
Finally, they had reached a teleport of some sort. They stared at a glowing, blue pad big enough for a person to stand on. Dante rushed forward and stood on it immediately. Sih’Teel quickly assessed the portal and found no threats. Gratefully, everyone was transported out of the quotien’s tunnels.
It was night outside. Everyone transported right onto the streets of House Estelle’s shopping district.
“The shadows!” Farren cried. The group raced for House Estelle proper. Once back in their chambers, they turned on every light.
The murders were solved...

But the shadows were still on the loose!

Rewards Granted

370 Shins to Split
1 Battle Suit Artifact
Cyphers
Oddities

Missions/Quests Completed

Battled the Quotien
Escaped the Quotien's Lair

Character(s) interacted with

Quotien

Report Date

21 Jul 2020

Primary Location

Ivannia