Journal Entry 16.00 The Temple of Metal and Stone

The party enters the temple of metal and stone. Urik recieves his gift from the temple, a holy relic of Kristor.

General Summary

The next morning, the party awakens and prepares for another day of adventuring. Urik prays to Josca, possibly overly loud so that Morvion can benefit. Tars works his way through several battle stances to limber up, every so often rubbing the dice at his neck, scowling. Morvion, somewhat annoyed with Urik’s devotions, moves off by himself to studies his spells and focus on his own thoughts. Aja is furiously writing in her new book trying to make sense of a new complex formula followed by jumping up every so often exclaiming ‘yes, that's it, so simple’ while wiggling her fingers before frowning again, “Well that’s not it either.” Meanwhile, Graykar spends his time sneaking around temple plaza while vanished, trying his best to sneak up on some of the small animals and birds. He returns after an hour with a small brace of plump rabbits, “Dinner tonight, tonight we feast on rabbits, again. And some fox, if you care for a change.” He then proceeds to skin them before storing them in his pack, careful to put the pelts in afterward. Of all the things his pack does, curing small animal pelts is still just a marvel to him. Once they are ready, camp is broken. Approaching the second tiered stone pyramid, Urik points at the door, “That is the symbol I saw in my dream last night.” Looking at the symbol, no one recognizes it. “In my dream, I drew the symbol on the door.” He approaches the door of solid black stone and traces the symbol – nothing happens. Noticing that the door looks to be made of the same material as his axe, he tries his best Urik solution to a difficult problem. Swinging his axe, a slight mar is left in the door, nothing more. “This could take awhile.” He swings one more time and seeing a similar result, steps away. As the party ponders the problem, Urik sits down. “Puzzles,” he grumbles. “Always more puzzles.” He figures he will let the rest of the party figure it out, after all, they seem to like the puzzles. He pulls out his reading primer and starts to etch a symbol when he looks up at the symbol on the door again. If that symbol were but half an orcish word and reversed, it would be the symbol for blood. Suddenly knowing this is the answer, Urik jumps up and runs his finger across the edge of his axe. Using the blood from his finger, he traces the symbol on the door, and when that doesn’t work he continues to etch out the full symbol for blood on the door. Suddenly the door starts grumbling as it slides up into the top of the entryway. Looking inside, they see a passageway angling up toward the top of the temple, though one that is twisting as it progresses into the darkness. Graykar slowly moves further into the passageway. As the whole passageway twists, Graykar looks back at the party from about 30 feet inside. They are all standing at a 90-degree angle to him. To the party, Graykar looks as if he is standing on the wall. He says, “Down has changed for me it seems. It’s this way,” he explains and points at his feet. The rest of the party enters and catches up to Graykar. Looking back outside, they see they are all truly tanding on the wall – the ground outside the temple now looks like it’s a giant wall. “How odd, even with this new direction, you know I think I can still feel the normal down,” Aja comments, brow furled as she ponders the significance. Graykar continues deeper into the tunnel when it suddenly hooks and descends in a straight shot down into the depths of the pyramid. By his reckoning, the gravity of the floor has him standing upside down compared to what is outside, yet if he continues down the pit before him, he will be walking straight down into the pyramid. Once the entire party is now traveling down the shaft, the floor no longer shifts. For several hundred yards they walk until the passage way suddenly opens into a larger hallway. Ahead, they see what looks like pooled blood on the floor, yet as they close the distance they can see that there is a continuous drip of blood from twenty feet above into the pool. Even closer observation reveals that on the ceiling is a smaller pool of blood. Tars mutters something to the effect of, “not right.” This is confirmed once the party notices that the drops of blood aren’t just falling from the ceiling to floor, but some are going from floor to ceiling. Graykar quietly says, “Lava Lamp.” When Aja queries his statement, having barely heard him, Graykar shakes his head. “Stray memory, it’s gone now.” Deciding not to spend time investigating, they proceed past the pool of blood only to find two other similar columns of dripping blood, ceiling to floor, floor to ceiling. And then the columns begin to change shape, manifesting into grotesque humanoid forms, ten feet tall creatures made of blood. Acting quickly, the party takes battle positions and takes the fight to the blood creatures. With his first attack, Morvion strikes true wielding his electrified spear, however, instead of dealing crippling damage to the creature, the creature splits into two smaller creatures. Morvion continues through his attack routine and in no time he is surrounded by several smaller replicas of the original creature, each about four feet tall. The creatures attack with large clubbing hands and a new threat emerges. Once any of the party gets wounded, the blood which wells freely from the wound lifts slowly away from the skin and toward the creatures to be absorbed. Urik realizes that keeping everyone healed is a priority and he begins focusing on making sure that all cuts and bruises are healed as fast as they are made so they won’t bleed. The battle lasts longer than the party expected. They quickly find that the smallest of the creatures, about four foot tall, seems to be the smallest they can effectively sustain their form. Urik also discovers that any of the creatures he strikes with his axe does not split while his axe’s rage growing quickly with each strike. Urik has always known that his axe has a preference for the blood of a worthy opponent, these things seem especially vulnerable. Defeating the creatures and looking further down the passage, the party sees a dark bank of black smoke. Peering into it, Aja finds she can’t see very far. “It is either very deep with the smoke extending beyond my sight or there is a something askew like a magical portal." For some reason, Aja seems perturbed that she cannot see through the smoke. Not wasting time, Graykar steps in the party quickly follows. It was a portal and it takes them to a large hallway lined with white marble tiles, each tile nearly four-foot to a side. Standing before them are two disgusting humanoids, covered in writhing chains which are coated with razors. A quick consensus is that these things are some kind of chain demon, something that the party can’t afford to waste time negotiating with. They bring the attack to the temple guardians. Morvion shoots past the front two toward the third and final guardian in the chamber, a tall creature appearing to be made of black stone with glowing azure veins coursing with blue energy throughout his body. The creature Morvion engages holds out his hand and out of the ether black metal and rock materializes and starts swirling inward to form an orb the size of a small melon. As soon as the orb is fully formed, the creature throws it at Morvion. It barely misses him only to shatter when it hits the marble wall. As soon as the first orb is thrown, a second one is already forming and the creature is preparing to throw it. The chain demons seem to have a telekinetic control over their chains and send them snaking in and out, attacking the party. The party responds and quickly dispatches the first chain demon, then the second. That’s when the party realizes the demons are regenerating quite fast. On top of that, they are wearing golden bracers with a single ruby inset into them. Every so often the ruby lights up and flashes, and when it does, it seemingly heals the demons somewhat. Aja wracks her brain, trying to recall if she knows anything about chain demons. Morvion can't recall anything either. Unfortunately, Chrailis is very limited on its demonology lore, however, she believes that a general weapon against most supernatural might work – that being silver. Using silver, they slay the demons permanently. Picking up the bracers, sized at armband size to a party member, they determine that they are magical and possibly link the health of the wearers to each other. Morvion and Urik place them on, now finding that they share health, if one is injured gravely, the other will sacrifice some of their haleness so that the other might recover. In front of them, they see three doors: one yellow, one green, and one blue. Above the doors, strange script. Once translated, it states the following cryptic message. “Choose wisely – One door leads to life, the other two lead to death.” Urik is ready to try one of the doors, but the rest of the party suggests maybe trying one of the two side passages first, as that might give hints to the proper door. Picking the left passage, they encounter and defeat another one of the azure statues and a new form of demon, one carrying a sword almost oversized even for it. The new demon is glowing with golden skin, nearly ten feet tall, and a fanged visage out of nightmares. As it attacks, its speed is an amazing blur. Worse yet, its attacks are worrisomely accurate. Each swing which connects has with it two other vaguely seen swings appearing as an after image. It’s like it is making three separate attacks and only the best one fully materializes. In defense, it does the same, moving left and right at the same time with each attack, and then the demon seeming always chooses the best course. As it attacks, the creature bellows out, “Do not pass, for I guard the essence of good and evil.” It takes some effort, however the party prevails and defeats this demon also. At the end of this passage are two pedestals topped with flames burning at the top, bright flames with no visible fuel source. In one of the flames is a floating orb, made of somewhat opaque glass. Urik reaches in gingerly to test the flame without the orb and it burns his finger severely, much more than a normal flame should burn. Using detect evil, he determines that the orbless flame is evil, possibly some kind of hellfire. Reasoning that if one flame is evil, the other might be holy fire, he tempts fate by again poking a finger in the flame of the other pedestal. He is not harmed. Feeling brave, he reaches in and removes the orb. The orb is nearly a foot in diameter and solid glass like an oversized marble. Through the hazy glass, it appears there might be an object buried deep in the orb. Testing a theory, Morvion reaches into the flame that Urik said was hellfire and it doesn’t phase him. He then asks to borrow the orb and places it in the other pedestal in the same fashion as it was floating in the first flame. The orb vanishes. Urik and Graykar are visibly upset at having lost their orb. Morvion states that it needed to be tried and was the logical step to take based on the information they had. Moving to the other passageway, they encounter two more of the chain demons, this time smaller in that they were only slightly taller than Tars. Each one carries a large scythe. With them was the third one of the black stone statues with glowing veins. They defeat these three easily and are confronted in this room with two more pedestals. Both have floating orbs above them, yet only one has a flame. This flame is a brilliant blue flame. Looking at the orb floating above the flameless pedestal, it is some mechanical device in constant motion. The outer shell has several holes in it, and inside of it are more shells rotating about. Through the holes in those other shells, tiny spinning gears and servos can be seen. The whole contraption is moving at considerable speed with the sharp edges lining the holes of the outer shell look quite sharp. Looking at it, Aja thinks she has figured out how it works. If she moves her fingers just right into the holes at just the right time and she stops this gear, while holding that lever back from that servo, the whole things should stop moving. As she studies it, she then sees a pin that looks like it would lock the thing from spinning if it were pulled through to lock in a latch near a small minor spring. Overall, it would take an amazing feat of agility to grab everything at once. Feeling up to the task, Aja darts her fingers in only to receive several nasty cuts. Feeling lucky she didn’t lose a few digits, she explains to Graykar how to deactivate the device. He reaches in, and the first attempt leaves him a little bloody, however his second attempt works. The device is halted and he removes it from the pedestal. Then looking at the other pedestal, they first experiment on the flame. After a few burns from the blue flame, which the party believes is from some type of polar flame, Aja reaches in. She is apparently immune to the cold of the flame and is able to remove the orb. This orb is also glass, however just under the surface is a multifaceted orb of metal with thousands and different planes. Each plane reflects light at a slightly different color. Overall, the effect is quite beautiful. Stuffing the orbs into Graykar’s pack, Graykar and Urik state they don’t wish to experiment with them any further. The party heads back to the doors. Impulsively, deciding that they aren’t going to figure anything more out, they choose the Green door and open it. It leads into a large continuation of the hallway they were in. Looking on the other side of the wall, they see that the other two doors open to this hallway also. Why it mattered what door needed to be opened isn’t revealed. Inside the room, they see a double stone door at the far end with stone engravings of fantastical beasts rampant. The beast on one door is the mirror image of the beast on the other door. To either side of the room is a golden life sized statue holding a round mirror. The mirrors are roughly five feet in diameter. From the angle of the mirrors, they currently show the doors the party had entered. One mirror seems normal while the other has a reverse image, appearing as if the party had entered on the right-hand side rather than the left-hand side they had entered on. Some of the party begins experimenting with the three colored doors and try to make something happen by opening and closing different cominbations of the doors. Meanwhile, Graykar opens the far double door and sees it covers an empty stone wall. No one is able to find a secret door leading out of the room. The party then starts moving the mirrors around and after some combinations, they turn the mirror with the opposite image around to face the stone wall behind the double door. In the mirror, the stone wall does not exist, the passage is open, continuing on. Gathering everyone around, Aja uses her puddle jump spell to send the party into the mirror and reflect back into the passageway seen in the reflection. It works. Turning around, they continue down the passage to another black smoky fog. Entering this one, they exit the fog into a different level of the temple. On this level, the marble tiles are black. There are no walls or ceilings, the entire level seems to be floating in space. In fact, the edge seems to drop away into a mighty abyss of a swirling maelstrom. A high pitch drone emanates from an unknown source, surrounding the party. Aja starts to fly up to get a better view and as she does, Tars lunges out and catches her leg, pulling her back down. Surprised and a little peeved at first, she looks down at Tars and he says, “I just had an uncomfortable memory – strange. Another Déjà vu. I saw you fly up and then my face was suddenly was coated in red paint." Morvion looks closer to where there are no walls and thinks he sees something slightly visible. There is something there obscuring his view just a little. Sticking the tip of his spear out, when it makes contact to where a wall would be, loud clanking suddenly occurs as tiny pieces of metal start flying all directions, many lodging into Morvion’s hands and face, but also causing minor cuts on some of the other nearby party members. Seeing this, they conclude that the humming is probably from thousands of tiny pieces of metal flying by at speeds fast enough to render them nearly invisible. Picking up one of the pieces of black metal, Morvion runs his finger across the edge, it is razor sharp. Looking around the platform, they see paths of marble going off in different directions. As they view the other landings connected by the paths, they can vaguely make out large shapes that look to be large giants lumbering about. Picking a direction, they encounter the first of the large shapes – stone giants. A quick fight ensues. While they quickly dispatch these giants, one dispatched by being knocked back into the wall of flying razors. As the giant hits the wall, it is instantly shredded in a spray of blood and body parts as the giant falls and disappears over the edge into the abyss below. The other vague forms, probably giants, seem alert and begin moving toward the party. It appears they are going to have to fight through this level marble tile by marble tile. Looking around, Aja thinks she can make out the exit several platforms over. Rather than fight every giant, the party gathers close and she puddle-jumps them from platform to platform, bypassing the giants. At the door, they open it up and see another black fog. This time not hesitating, the party jumps through. The next room is an enormous cube, possibly over 100 yards to a side. At the far side of the room sitting in a giant throne is a fifty-foot tall giant dressed head to toe in black plate mail. As the party enters, the giant stands up and starts approaching them, with the visible intent of attacking. Attacking the giant, the party quickly determines that his size is making him mostly immune to all of their tactics. While the party attacks and keeps the giant busy, Graykar hurries over to the throne to examine it. He finds nothing on or about the throne accept a large set of manacles. Each manacle sets on one of the armrests of the throne, the chain connecting them wrapped about the backside of the throne. Looking at the large manacles, Graykar surmises that they would definitely fit the giant attacking his friends. The next problem Graykr sees is that they look heavy for their size – each band is nearly 2 feet in diameter and the chain is a good 20 footlong. However, when he tries to lift the manacle, they are surprisingly light. It takes a moment of work, with Graykar hurried glancing over at his comrades worried they might be in danger, however he is able to actually lift the whole set by himself. He rushes over with the manacles and quickly determines they are too small for the feet, they will have to go around the wrists, an impossible task for him. Urik, looking at the throne himself, decides to run over and sit on the throne and try commanding the giant to stop. This did not work either. Tars yells out, “How about sitting on the throne and try wearing the manacles?” This gets ignored as Urik has come up with a new plan. By this time, Urik is already out of the throne and now approaching the goliath warrior in armor. Focusing his thoughts inward, he is summoning up a power from within which he has not used before. It is a power granted to him by the axe, a divine power but not one of Josca. Reaching out, he touches the giant and then releases the power into it. Spreading out from his hands, he feels a wave of timelessness expand. And what was moving just a second before is now frozen in time, the giant standing at an odd angle. If it had been a statue, it would have fallen over, however being stuck as it is in mid-swing, it looks more like an image in a battle portrait. Working together, Aja swoops in, grabs the manacles and then flies up to place them on the wrists of the giant before it becomes animate again. As soon as the clasp of the second manacle slides in place, Urik’s hold of the giant is released. In a loud pop as air rushes in the fill the missing space, the large giant shrinks to normal human size. Examining the armor, the party finds it is now an empty suit of armor made of some black metal with stone-like qualities. Urik claims the prize for himself after no one else claims they can use the armor. And it is when Urik places the new helmet on his head that he finds new possibilities opened up to him on how to use this recent temporal divine power that seems to lie at his fingertips. He’s not certain, but this gift is possibly the gift of the goddess of time, Kristor. If so, he isn’t opposed to having access to it, as she is usually an allied god to Josca after all. With the new armor in hand and nowhere else to go, the party assumes that their quest is likely finished. Looking at Urik as it was his vision which got them this far, he concurs. “This is what we were meant to get," he says as he taps the helmet on his head. The only way out of this room is the black fog they came in through. Entering the fog, they step out of it at the entrance of the temple. As the party leaves the temple, Morvion looks back at the dark stone door as it slides shut behind them. The symbol which was there has now changed. He then observes, “These temples are ancient. I did find it odd that a symbol of a current language possibly not known to the builders was used.” Aja nods. “It does imply that our presence can affect how the temples interact with us. It also implies we must consider that some of the future challenges might be more than a little attuned to who we are, not necessarily our items.” As they make camp, Graykar pulls out the two rabbits along begins to cook them, promising the gamey fox meat later for the orcs. The party debates which temple is next when Graykar looks up and points at one of the three remaining unexplored temples. “That one. It’s the water temple.” They look at him, obvious questions in their eyes. “Not sure how I know, it just is. When I was sneaking around earlier, I nearly had a third rabbit, that’s when I saw a fox sneaking up on her. Watching the scene play out, I saw that the rabbit wasn’t moving, it knew the fox was there, yet wasn’t moving. The fox had another quarry and at seeing that, I realized that the fox was quickly moving up on what must be a nest of kits.' 'Not sure why, maybe because I was thinking I had already taken two rabbits, I needed to return something. I unvanished and surprised the fox. It jumped back and landed in a puddle of water then stood up staring at me. From where I stood, I could see in the reflection of that temple in the puddle over there with a giant fox looming over the reflection. The fox yipped once and then ran off. Not sure how I know, I just do. That is where we are needed.” And then sheepishly, almost too quiet to hear, he says, “I think we need to save the rabbits.”