2023/12/06: The Formian War Part 2 Report

General Summary

Knight, Ba'alzamon, Kit, Terana, Sunderfury, Zaran   It turns out Lillith is a member of one of the adventuring parties that showed up to help the city! Apparently there were time shenanigans involved, because she's also out in space at the moment.   Zaran also just... showed up. Despite the fact that he is also supposed to be in space right now. That's... probably fine.   Player strike team: Kit, No Name, Sunderfury, Knight, Syrrecia, Ba'alzamon, The Witch of Wrath, Terana, Baby, Azyn, Cole, Zerkeel, Zaran   Ba'alzamon attempted to scry on the brain cave to find a location to teleport to. The brain was easy to find, but some artifact or shroud of elemental shadow made it difficult to get any detail. He did find a safe cave to teleport to nearby. The cave was near-vertical, apparently used as some sort of trash pit by the formians.   Ba'alzamon used Transport Via Renedge to drop Knight and Terana off first. They detected some very uncomfortable psionic probing. "It's like it knocked on your front door, knocked on your back door, and then tried to shimmy all your windows and see how thick the glass was." The trio returned to the rest of the party to consult and set up mental defenses. Syrrecia also did a ritual (i.e. giving people a kiss on the forehead) to give them substantial defense against fire. She wanted to avoid killing off her own party with her breath weapon.   The party teleported back in, fully buffed and prepared. The brain was about 50 feet above them. As they made their way up with air walk, they detected activity in (and by) the shadows around them. The shadows were skittering around, though they weren't attacking. Very quiet voice saying "Up here". The ceiling of the room was made of odd geometric bricks. Kit pulled some out without response, and then Terana knocked a hole. Inside the room above were a collection of bone totems. Some had been disrupted by the floor damage. Ba'alzamon, who is trying to train in shamanism, restored what he could and apologized to the spirits. In return, something whispered "out the door, to the right".   Knight went through the sealed door in shade form to check the other side. On the far side, out the center passage of the three available, he could see the split up the middle of the giant brain, with formians climbing around on the lobes. He was able to quietly push the door-shaped wall of stone out of the way and then set up a Void cloud as a smokescreen.   Terana detected a patrol coming. The party chose to hide and avoid being detected so early by the hive mind. A small shadowy figure appeared to Ba'alzamon, Zaran, and Kit and beckoned them over to a small curl in the brain. The party followed them into a narrow passage, likely too small for formians to enter. At the other end, it let out in front of a big, fancy, reinforced door guarded by a formian golem.   After collecting the party members who hid elsewhere, the party took advantage of the silence the spirits were summoning and attacked the golem.   Golem isn't immune to magic, but is highly resistant to psionics. Immune to sonic, lightning, blunt. Has 1600 health. Inertial barrier, which deals damage to approaching creatures and blocks most physical ranged attacks. Normally gets 2 initiatives per round.   The party killed the golem. Managed to avoid getting hit by its main attack, though Terana and Sunderfury did take some damage from its inertial barrier.   Possessed scrib sprite: "The Master is ahead. He will reward you for freeing him."   The "Master" is young and very hungry. He is also extremely impressionable, apparently. He currently appears to be an orb on a pedestal, the orb being full of darkness and purple smoke. Knight and Kit went to speak to him with the dream nail, and he increasingly mimicked Knight in appearance and voice. Lume checked the experiment records from the formians. Apparently this is a dungeon core, essentially, made by a dark god, though the dungeon core isn't actually evil. It eats death. Kit named it Valentine. Knight decided to bring him with.   On the party's way out, a shadowy figure beckoned them in another direction. The shadowy directions had been reliable so far, so they followed. The party happened across a patrol of oversized, burly formians, apparently soldier variants, with large, venomous mandibles and large weapons. They were followed by what seemed to be a formian servitor, melded with a floating cart covered in crystals. The crystals were powered by a whole bunch of brains inside the cart, apparently having come from all sorts of creatures and melded together. The cart has a sort of detectable, reality-warping field around it, and it seems to be one of the sources of the humming that pervades the areas.   The party avoided them and carried on. Found a major vault guarded by four of those big, skinny golems. Bypassed the guards by having Baby dig a hole through the walls and up into the vault. Inside was some sort of darkness fractal on a pedestal. It was constantly moving. Research notes revealed that it was apparently the remains of the old one whose brain this was. Some sort of soul-eating serpentine god of darkness. Apparently this was the source of the shadowy "assistants".   Kit named his new Old One knife friend Mister Sharps. The Old One wants to kill all the formians and then be left alone.   The party followed Knight's compass to their next target. They ended up popping up directly beneath another brain cart, with a bevy of varied guards. We'll see the results of that fight next week, on this very channel.

Rewards Granted

4 xp (or 1 level for Kit)

Character(s) interacted with

No Name, Syrrecia, the Witch of Wrath, Baby, Azyn, Cole, Zerkeel, Valentine, Mr. Sharps

Notes

Syrrecia is a flame leviathan, not a fire dragon.