Journal Entry 23.00 The Living Tower
The party finds out the true purpose of the tower, to destroy the world that destroyed Perlachio's world. They are able to free the dimensional anchors holding it to Camoray and cast it free into the multiverse before it destroys the party's world.
After exploring the machinery of the room, Aja quickly determines it is only partially active. She stretches her vision, trying to match the harmonics of different shifts of reality to try and see if she is missing anything and sees a few controls out of phase on some of the machinery. From the placement of the levers and dials, she suspects that some of the controls are missing from the seven potential control panels she could find in the room.
Toward one side of the room is a large throne. Graykar is the first to explore the throne. On the arms of the throne he sees eight different slots or holes of differing size. One is a rectangle about half an inch across and three inches long. One is the indent of a 3-inch hemisphere. One is a simple hole about a quarter of an inch across. He deduces these are keyholes, however further investigation doesn’t provide any more information. He says, “I think they are activated by something magical, not an actual physical key.” The others examine the throne and determine it is likely a master control chair for the machine.
Aja asks, “We don’t know if this is even the master control room, do we? For the entire tower?”
Both Urik and Graykar start to speak, with Urik stopping to let Graykar talk, “It is, or actually, we know it is if Perlachio was to be believed. This room has a lot more equipment than we remember from our journey to the past, but he kept referring to this as the main control room.”
“So, up or down then from here?” Morvion asks.
Urik and Graykar look at each other. Graykar speaks again, “When we were here, the stairs up weren’t finished yet. This was the highest room we could go to.”
“We came down, didn’t we?” Aja asks. “From the ground level?”
Urik shrugs, “So? The wizard doesn’t seem to obey things like spatial directions very well.”
Graykar continues, “Up didn’t go anywhere. Down went to a large long room. I got the feeling it would eventually be a meeting hall or something, it had a raised dais at the end.”
Morvion huffs a little, “Let’s just pick a direction, not like we can’t go the other direction if the first is wrong.”
Pulling a coin from a side pocket in his pack, Graykar flips it. Not even saying how the flip resolved, he looks to everyone, “Up it is.”
They begin to work their way over to the stairs when Aja notices that Dunger is holding back. “You coming with us?”
“Nah, I’ll wait here. We have an open passage behind us. In case any of the giants make it through, I want to stand guard here.”
Urik nods, “Ok, I guess.” They then start to descend up the stairs to the next level.
As they do so, Graykar whispers to everyone and no one, as none of the party really pays attention. “Wasn’t the dwarf terrified of the giants just a short while ago?” He then shrugs and continues up the stairs.
The room they enter hums with low vibrations and is uncomfortably warm. Spread throughout the room are dozens of solid silver trees with their branches reaching and disappearing in the distance of an unseen ceiling.
Approaching a tree the hums get louder. Each tree is vibrating and together they are the source of the hum. Urik is first to reach out and touch a tree finding it warm to the touch, almost too warm to leave his hand on it.
In the trees the party sees several mechanical spider-like creatures skittering around, each about six inches wide. Upon further observation, three kinds of spiders appear to exist, moving around with no visible purpose. One of the three kinds, the golden ones with a large single red eye only move up and down the trunks, occasionally leaving a tree to move across the ground before ascending another trunk. The red-eye spiders are the only ones to touch the ground. One of the spider types has a vent for a face. It will move out on a branch and a green mist will spit out of the vent, solidifying into a web it then uses to cross to another branch.
As the party stands around looking, Graykar doing most of the exploring. They start to feel their skin burn, at first like a mild sunburn. Aja is first to mention, “I am not feeling so well.” Soon everyone begins to feel hot, dizzy and a sluggish.
They stay only a few more minutes. Once everyone begins to see their skin turn red and start blistering, they decide to depart.
During their absence, they see that both Klaus and Maugrin are in the room, glaring at Dunger, with the short dwarf glaring back. None of them are speaking. Both the giants are now human size. The obvious explanation is that one of them has cast a reduction spell. Now that they are human size, everyone can see that the giants are not exactly proportional. Their legs are longer and more stout, shoulders smaller and less pronounced, while their arms are more muscular than their narrow chests would suggest were they actually human.
Dunger asks, without taking his eyes off Klaus, “Find anything useful?”
Urik spits in anger, possibly to cover up his need to retch, “There’s a bad air up there. Making us sick and causing our skin to burn.”
Morvion holds out his arm, “It is still getting worse, I see blisters wanting to form. We probably need healing soon.”
“I’ve heard about this, I think,” Aja says. “It comes from certain metals which are naturally warm, radiating an inner fire. Because of the radiating heat, it’s call radiation sickness. And I am not sure how effective curative magics are.”
“Bah, a cure is a cure.” Urik begins casting. Much of the burn damage is healed on the party, but the overall dizziness, general tiredness, and uneasiness in their stomachs fails to go away.
Maugrin watches and waits till Urik’s spells don’t have the full effect the party expects. “We know of this sickness in the mountains. The normal curative magic of a priest is usually ineffective. It takes potent magics to cure. Major healing from the gods.”
Graykar spreads his hands, trying not to be threatening, and approaches Maugrin. “Do you have a cure then, maybe some herb or another trick?”
Maugrin’s solid plate head nods slightly. Then after a deep breath, sounding metallic and hollow through the vents of his visor, “Yes, I know of a cure. Please approach.”
Graykar approaches, walking with a guarded stance. Then Maugrin starts muttering some soft mantras over and over while rubbing his hands together. He then places them on Graykar’s shoulders. A calm enters Graykar and as the peace washes through him, he feels the sickness depart.
With his success treating Graykar, the rest of the party asks Maugrin for a cure also. He agrees. As he does so, Graykar asks, “Monk disciplines? Am I right?”
All Maugrin says is, “Yes.”
Graykar muses, “Would be interesting to see a giant versus a halfling in a battle of monk styles.”
Once healed, the party decides the next step is to try going down from the main control room. Going down, they enter a large room which resembles the inside of of the main sanctuary of an empty cathedral. One end has large glass panels lighting up the main dais with red swirling mists moving around within the glass. Surrounding the inner side of the dais where it connects to the end wall are four tall mirrors evenly spaced.
Guarding the mirrors are three crystal constructs, each using their fists to attack the party once they engage. The party quickly takes the constructs down. During the battle, Aja tries touching one of the mirrors and as soon as she does, she freezes, her muscles relax and her stare goes blank. It is Dunger who knocks her hand away from the mirror. Whereas before the mirror showed a true reflection, it now shows a winter wasteland. Morvion tries touching the mirror and nothing happens. He is not ready to try and touch another mirror just yet, fearing it will do to him what happened to Aja in her mirror.
As they finish off the crystal golems, a new threat emerges from the far side of the sanctuary. A humanoid mass of swirling blue energy approaches, dressed in black pieces of wrought iron pieced in such a way as to resemble armor.
Morvion and Urik rush to engage and find their attacks, once they land, seem to have little effect the second time. As they work through their various forms of attacks, the creature seems to adapt and heal quick enough they can’t get the upper hand.
Additionally, it seems quite adept at striking even Morvion who is usually able to dodge all but the quickest of blows.
Remembering that Perlachio had mentioned there would be a guardian that only the red crystalline dragon Garkon would be able to bypass, Graykar reaches into his pouch and pulls forth the crystal dragon. The dragon sends a thought to Graykar as it is being removed, Is it time? Graykar silently mouths back, “Yes. Go forth and fight.”
As soon as it clears the mouth of the pouch, the dragon expands in size to its full size and returns to living dragon form, completely healed from the last time the party had seen him. Garkon attacks the energy guardian with a breath weapon, spewing magical flames around the creature. As this happens, the energy guardian changes form and turns red, converting into a fire construct. Unbeknownst to the party, Garkon can also change the energy types of his breath attack. He then attacks with an ice breath weapon, his scales darkening from a bright red to a dull black then a shade of blue, once again damaging the energy construct. The energy construct changes again, this time to an ice creature. As the battle progress, it appears that Garkon and the energy beast are fighting to a standstill.
The party backs off and lets them fight, taking this time to explore the main chamber further. Before examining the mirrors in more depth, they look around and in a side chamber discover another stairwell going down. Taking this down, they enter a room with a large square opening in the middle. Looking into the opening, it opens upon the vastness of space, and entrance leading to the void of nothingness. In the distance, they can see what may be stars. Surrounding the opening at each corner of the square is a large mechanical pulley system, each with a massive chain wrapped over it. Part of the chain is coming out from the nearby wall, the other part of the chain descends over the edge of the hole, it’s length such that the chain shrinks to nothingness in the distance of the void. The width of the cross-section of each link is nearly a foot wide, the link itself being almost five feet long.
Each pully mechanism also appears to be a break/release type mechanism, with a large lever sticking out. Pulling the lever appears that it would release the chain.
On one side of the square portal is a large metallic chair with an attached desk positioned for use by whoever sits in the chair. As Morvion sits down to investigate, he sees the desk, or front of the chair, consists of a glass window. In the window is a cross-hatch like a target. Though they don’t know what to call it, it is obvious to the party that this is some kind of aiming mechanism. They mess around with the chair and nothing happens.
Out of ideas, Graykar pulls one of the levers. The chain releases and starts spinning out of the wall faster and faster and then falls away into the void. As this happens the whole room shakes. The party suddenly feels they are on the deck of a ship which was just rammed. The floor pushes up at them and knocks them over. Morvion almost falls over the ledge into the void, barely catching himself.
Deciding against trying anything further, they go back up to investigate the mirrors. During this time, Aja and Dunger had stayed behind trying to better determine the nature of the mirrors.
“Did you feel that,” Morvion asks?
“We felt a shake in the room briefly, nothing major.” Dunger answers. The effect from the dropped anchor was localized to that room, only slight felt one level up.
“When I initially touched that mirror,” Aja reports her findings, “I saw a gray fog and then was standing on a wasteland of ice. I felt different, not quite myself. Before I could even look around, that was when Dunger had knocked my hand away from the mirror. These mirrors, at least this one, transfers your awareness elsewhere.”
Dunger then adds, “I tried touching her mirror and then the others, none of them worked.”
Looking to the continuing battle across the room, they see that Garkon is still holding steady with the energy beast, “Graykar, you said that Garkon would hold?” Morvion asks.
“That’s what Perlachio implied. I feel fairly confident this was the challenge of which he spoke Garkon would be needed.”
Satisfied, Morvion reaches out to touch the mirror Aja had touched. Nothing happens. He then reaches to touch a new mirror. This time his eyes go dark and vacant just like Aja had. HIs mirror mists up and then in the mirror they see a seen a landscape which looks like a scarred war zone. The entire landscape is covered in ash and burned husks of charred trees. In the distances, the sky is glowing an evil red.
Not knocking his hand away, they look back to see that Aja has once again touched the original mirror. Her eyes are now vacant.
Urik shrugs and says, “What the hell,” touching a mirror. Graykar then does the same, touching the fourth mirror. This leaves Dunger to guard stand guard just in case, ready to knock their hands free should the need arise. Urik’s mirror’s view changes to a scene in the middle of an ocean at the height of day. His scene is moving indicating that maybe it’s a view from a ship. Graykar’s scene changes to the image of a white stone building, similar to the buildings of inner Chrailis.
Dunger waits watching Garkon fight. While he waits, he witnesses Garkon finally win. Garkon lets out a psychic, Hungry. And I need to rest. He then starts to shrink and is once again a red crystalline figure of a sleeping dragon about two foot long.
After about half an hour, all four of the party touching their mirrors come back to their senses and let go of their mirrors. Each one is now holding an item. Aja is holding a vile locust thorn dagger which looks plucked from a locust tree. Graykar is holding a bola consisting of three silver balls tethered together by tightly twisted black leather. Urik is holding small dark bronze badge with a relief etched into it. And Morvion holds a rune etched lapis lazuli wand.
Dunger raises his eyes, especially when he sees the bola Graykar is holding. “I see you found something interesting?” he says. Aja says, “Yes,” while Graykar agrees, “Yes we did, yes we did.”
The party quickly fills Dunger in and says they think they have the necessary pieces to operate the control room.
Heading back, they find Klaus and Maugrin still studying the several control panels. Not saying anything, Aja goes to the throne and inserts the thorn in the small hole in the armrest. As she does so, parts of the room come to life while other machines begin to hum and light up.
Maugrin looks at some of the controls, “Yes, this is good. I think we are getting closer.” It is obvious from the way that Klaus is looking over Maugrin’s should that Maugrin is the knowledgeable one.
Klaus says, “Can we make it work, can we bring down the barriers?”
Maugrin says, “If what Night’s Daughter told our master is true, I believe it to be possible. See here, this is a direct power transfer from the void.” He is pointing at a dial with a small needle gyrating back in forth in the lower quarter of the right side. “Once we reach this point here,” he now points at the top of a different dial, “the tower should be able to shunt all the barrier energy between this world and it’s closest worlds off into a greater void strengthening those barriers while eliminating the ones we choose.”
Aja tries to operate the controls on the chair, but they remain unresponsive. Shifting her sight to the planes one harmonic vibration above and below her own, she can see other aspects of the machinery, yet she still can’t make out actual controls. Whatever she did, it definitely brought everything more into phase with their primary phase. To her, it’s like her vision is starting to focus.
She gets up and motions for the others to come insert their rewards from the Marsh Witch. They do so and as they do, more and more of the control comes to life. Urik is last. He drops his badge into the rectangular slot. The chair glows and begins to float off the ground. Slightly panicked, he holds on tightly to the armrest until he realizes that floating is all the chair is going to do.
Aja climbs back in the chair and can’t determine any actual controls except to randomly start pushing buttons. She isn’t ready to do that yet. As she climbs back down, she notices several of the machines now have detailed schematics with lines representing the machine’s conduits glowing. She moves over near Maugrin and they start talking about what everything means. It becomes clear to everyone else only Maugrin and Aja have any hope of understanding the controls and the accompanying schematics.
As they look over the controls, getting a better grasp of what the machine can and can’t do, they begin to form a consensus of which control needs to be operated first, then second. Aja is fully aware of what Maugrin wants to do. He and Klaus want to bring down all the barriers between the nearby worlds. Aja’s goal is different, to release whatever hold this machine has on her world which prohibits gate travel to other worlds, at least that is the goal she understands from Dame Imokan. She realizes that once she does this, she also needs to disable the machine so that someone else can’t come back and finish Maugrin’s plan.
While they look over the controls, the rest of the party stands back allowing them to work. Only Dunger seems to still have an interest, but he seems more interested in needling Maugrin than helping. For whatever reason, Dunger is enjoying making small and crude jokes about Maugrin’s ‘feeble’ attempts to operate the tower. “Why don’t you just pull a lever, metalhead? Would it help if I came and bashed you about the helmet some, think you could figure it out faster then?”
About the time Aja and Maugrin are ready to pull the first lever they agree upon to initiate certain changes in the behavior of the tower, Dunger reaches out and hits a red button at random, “You guys are taking forever, just don’t something. How about this one.” The then pulls a nearby lever down.
As soon as he does the tower starts to shake. Dunger’s eyes get big, “Oops, maybe not that one after all.” He backs up, sidestepping as Maugrin and Aja both rush in to see what he’s done.
Maugrin gets frantic, “Power levels are spiking, this doesn’t look good.” Aja is also concerned. The various gauges are showing a sharp rise in overall power fluctuations, whereas before everything looked to be about level, the whole machine appears to be accelerating whatever it was doing. The room begins to vibrate at first with a minor hum that begins raising in pitch, reaching for a higher crescendo.
Maugrin keeps repeating, “This isn’t good, this isn’t good at all.”
At first, Aja doesn’t know if she agrees, however with a few more mental calculations, reviewing everything she has learned from Perlachio and his works, she then says, “I don’t think it’s going to stop.” Looking the others, “Think of a steam engine building pressure, eventually it has to rupture. That’s what the tower is doing”
With a dark glare, she hisses at Dunger, “You may have killed us all. The entire world. We live and I promise you the worst curse I can think of.”
Klaus asks more of Aja since Maugrin is so absorbed into the schematic he is looking at, “And can you stop it or redirect it?”
“I don’t know,” is all Aja can reply.
Morvion notices that Dunger has gone quiet and backed further away from the controls toward the center of the room where the exit stairs are located. Once Dunger is right by the stairs he turns and runs up the stairs. Curious, Morvion follows. As soon as Dunger gets the tp room where Urik had removed the giant metal blocker, right before the electrified maze begins, Dunger shifts to gaseous form and begins floating through the maze.
Morvion follows the dark cloud which is Dunger to the exit of the maze. Once Dunger exits the tower, Morvion decides it’s best to return to the control room, letting Dunger flee as he will.
Back in the control room both Aja and Maugrin are now moving levers, turning dials, and pushing buttons trying to calm the tower down. Finally Aja says, “I don’t think I can stop this process.”
Maugrin then says, “I concur, this tower will not only release all of its energy, but it will also likely destroy this world, not only this world, this entire plane of existence.”
Klaus asks, “One tower, this one tower?”
Maugrin replies, “Yes. You must understand, this tower feeds off the power of the found between the planes. The energy which keeps one reality from sliding into another reality is immense, greater than anything within that reality. Perlachio has found a way to harness that power, that’s what this tower has been doing all along.”
“I know that. The tower was focusing that energy and using it to lock this world from other worlds, making gate travel impossible,” Klaus says in an attempt to better clarify his understanding.
It is Aja who explains, “That’s what I believed from Perlachio’s writings, now looking at the schematics, I think this tower had an ulterior motive. I think its purpose is to destroy whatever world it latches onto. It is the ultimate bomb.”
Not unfamiliar with power matrixes himself from his study of spellcasting, Morvion asks, “How can anything hold that much power, much less channel it?”
Maugrin grimly replies, “This is not a battery. This is a spark to the flash powder. If we are correct, it will cause a cascade effect and begin by unraveling the barriers between this world and nearby worlds. Once the unraveling starts, it will accelerate until the barriers completely collapse. At that time, the walls of reality will disintegrate and be reabsorbed back into the great void surrounding all the worlds within this plane, returning to the nothingness from which our world found existence.”
Urik cries out, “Why the hell would he do that.”
It is Morvion who now understands, not the physics of the situation, but the motivation of Perlachio. “Because this world destroyed his world. Remember, this is the world that during Coalescence ripped through the other worlds. He himself has mentioned it in some of the writings Aja has cited to us. I know and understand this – this desire to completely destroy that which brought harm to you and your loved ones. He holds this world directly responsible.”
Klaus looks stunned. Quietly he says, “He would destroy everything? Adriana betrayed us and lied? How did our lord not see this?”
Maugrin mutters, “It doesn’t matter now, we have got to stop this machine no matter the risk. I don’t think we can.”
Aja looks up at Maugrin, “We could loop the energy back into the tower.”
Maugrin nods, “Yes, that will destroy the tower in the process so it can’t be used again. It won’t save our world.”
Aja smiles, “I know something. We know where the anchor room is which tethers this tower to our world. We release it back into the void, the tower will only release its energy back into the void where from whence it channeled it from. It may still destroy our world, but it may just as well won’t.”
Not wasting any time, Urik, Graykar, and Morvion rush back to the anchor room. Each of them heads toward one of the pully mechanisms. Bracing themselves for the violent wrenching they expect as the tower is released, Graykar pulls his lever first. The chain flies free and all three of them feel gravity switch from pulling downward to pulling them sideways. It corrects itself quickly. Then Urik releases his chain and again another wrench as the tower loosens its bond on the planet which it has attached itself to for the last several centuries.
Morvion is last to release his anchor. As the chain falls loose nothing happens. “I guess we are adrift in the void of which they are speaking.”
Graykar looks down into the emptiness below them, “I wonder if jumping now will escape. This tower is still set to explode if I understood them.”
Uncertain, they all head back up.
Aja looks only slightly relieved, “Well, we are free, however we can’t stop the build-up. If we even saved our world, that is, we definitely won’t survive staying in here.”
It is Urik who says, “Well, I am not dying inside. I am at least going outside.”
“I might be able to teleport or something. I couldn’t before, but who knows now.” Aja and Maugrin spend a few more moments making sure that the tower does indeed loop its energy back into itself.
The party heads outside followed closely by Klause and Maugrin. Once outside, everyone looks around. The world beyond the temple plaza has disappeared. A gray wall exists at the edge of the plaza creating a dome which covers everything. Aja concentrates and begins to cast teleport only to stop. “Still blocked. The spell won’t work."
By this time, Klaus has joined with the other giants outside, talking to them. He looks over toward the water temple and says, “The dwarf ran that way – to that temple. What’s inside?”
It is Morvion who pieces it together. “It’s a portal to another world.” As soon as he says it, he takes off running to the water temple, “We might be able to leave. The pool of water is a portal to that other world. The one we got the dragon from.” The rest of the party takes off running. Graykar arrives first at the pool and waits for Urik to hustle up.
“It either works or it doesn’t.” Urik dives in. When he doesn’t reappear the rest of the party goes in. Morvion is last to go. As he enters, he sees the giants not far behind running in not far behind
They all surface in the water world, back in a pond similar to the one they first arrived in. Swimming to the shore the group up.
A few moments later, Klaus’s head breaks the surface. Followed by Maugrin, and then the rest of the remaining four giants. Even Klaus’s two wyvern pets surface. They swim to a nearby shore. To get into the pool, someone had to have cast reduce on the other four giants and the two wyverns. The party now witnesses that it was Klaus who did it as he is the one who releases the spell and they all return to normal size.
The two groups talk briefly. It is Maugrin who says, “The tower should have activated by now. I would say we are safe as we haven’t felt any effects.”
Aja nods, “I agree. However, we have been here before. There is a temporal displacement here in this world, about one month to a day roughly. One month here has only a day passing in our world. At least last time we were here.”
After a little more explanation about Dunger fleeing, Morvion mentioned that Dunger had navigated the maze by turning into a dark cloud.
At this Maugrin curses something in his native tongue. Klaus spits, “I didn’t see that one. Adriana is one of Perlachio’s disciples. She is also known as Night’s Daughter, as she is a thief who has never been caught. She is the one who first alerted Lord Azurelicus about the tower and it’s nature, telling us how we could use it to expand our master’s power.”
Seeing not everyone is understanding, Klause adds, “She is also a master of disguise. If we had known she could shift to shadow, we would have immediately been suspicious and possibly deduced her ruse.”
The giants move off to a side and continue to talk quietly. Getting up as one, they prepare to head south to the mountains. Klaus says, “Should we meet again, hopefully it is not as enemies. I fear our master holds little love for your master. We go to the mountains, where our magic is strongest, and seek our way home from there.”
The party nods, gathers up their supplies and head north, knowing that the traveling village should be waiting for them.
Graykar sticks a rock into his pouch and watches it disappear. He looks perplexed.
Seeing this, Aja smiles, “You are wondering if this world really is the place everything in your pouch goes to, and then of course, where did the rock go? It’s a big world, I suspect you just moved that rock to a distant location.”
Graykar visage takes on an even more confused look. “How is my backpack here?”
Aja chuckles, “It’s magic dear friend. Good thing it is here also. If it wasn’t, I fear we would all be dead when the Tower detonated.”
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Author's Notes
Events occur in the month of Tanlo, 920th Year of Her Prominence. (1228 AC) Tanlo 8th.