Session XVIII - The Sonapailes
12th of Tororima, 560 AL
From the red-tinted halls of the castle in the plane of smoke, Kirasum teleports the entire party along with her into a dark cavern. Their infiltration of the Sonapailes has begun. The cavern winds north and south, weaving in and out of the caves to reveal an enormous subterranean lake below them. The path hugs the western wall of the lake's encompassing cavern. A quarry of Dial shards has been set up to the north of the lake, manned entirely by golem servants. The shards are massive, stretching from cave ceiling to floor, and illuminate the northern end of the black lake.
Cloaked by spells from Flint, Cornelius, and Kirasum, the party snakes along the path unseen. Melinoe and Strattora are made invisible while Astra practically vanishes among the rocks in their hiding. A pair of figures heads their way, conversing and bemoaning their studies being too difficult. They seem to be students.
The party scatters off the narrow elevated path by flying around it and hugging the cliffside. Though the pair passes them, Flint's new steed slips off of the rocks and plunges towards to water below, barely caught by a featherfall spell from Cornelius. In the clear dark waters below, Flint sees the fins of a large shark in the depths. He is quickly lifted back onto the path with his mastiff steed.
With the pair of students gone, the party continues southward on the path. They quickly reach an intersection where a side path veers into a brass door. The doorway, worn and ajar, reveals a vestibule with a golem guard made of glass standing at attention. It holds a sharp glassy sword and is lit by magelights from within the chamber.
Discussing their approach, Kirasum suggests that they explore the rest of the path before deciding on a point of entry. The party agrees and continues down the cave path. The southern path opens up into the lake cavern once more and reveals a tall tower on the lake's southern end. A light flashes from within the tower's top floor, like a dysfunctional lighthouse. Astra stealthily flies over the dark lake to scout out the tower. In a moment of prodigious focus, Astra intuits that a portal within the tower seems to hold a prisoner of some kind. It is attempting to escape.
Astra flies back and reports the information to the party. They decide to press on and return to the tower if need be. Further down the path, they encounter another brass entrance. A guard of some kind is inside, accompanied by an earth elemental and protected by arcane turrets. Flint springs out of the darkness to cast suggestion on the guard. The spell takes purchase and Flint sends the man out of the room into the cave system. Luckily, the turrets do not activate and the earth elemental simply follows the man out of the chamber. They seem to be bound to the will of the guard.
Funneling into the room, the party searches the guard's desk. Strattora finds a writ of passage identifying the man as "Technologist Sarkar" and giving him access to the inner workshop. They also find a blueprint of the Sonapailes; a map detailing the floor plan of the entire factory. They pocket both documents.
Footsteps approach from the cave as the two students head towards them. Kirasum disguises herself as the Technologist and sits at the desk, the rest of the party invisible or hiding behind boxes and crates. The students are seeking entry into the workshop. Kirasum clumsily attempts to impersonate the Technologist, but luckily finds the switch that opens the inner door. She lets the students in and they take no notice of the strange behavior. With some buffer of distance between them, the party enters the inner door into the Sonapailes. They see what appears to be an educational facility inside the subterranean fortress. Apprentices are flitting back and forth, heading to a common area of some kind. They complain about their Technologist masters, the work, and the stress. It seems to be a prestigious institution. Slowly, the disguised Kirasum leads the invisible party through the hallways, reading various markings and signs along the way. They wind through metal corridors that smell of sulfur, following signs that lead to an "Omniforge" deep within the factory. Eventually, they emerge into a tall brass building overlooking a massive pool of lava. An obsidian bridge connects the building to a second tall building on the other side, and the lava rises to a dock on the western side where a massive colossus is being worked on by a dozen technologists. At one end of the forge, a fiery fountain of lava is captured in a large metal apparatus that connects to a thick collection of metal cables reaching north and east along the ceiling. Far to their north, a staircase leads out of the lava to an ornate gate that bars the way to a massive tower in the caverns. Taking in the strangeness of the Omniforge, Kirasum is troubled. She tells the party that no such occurrence of natural magma and burning elemental energy should exist on this plane. Each plane has elemental conjunctions: cardinal elements to which they are associated. They also have disjunctions: one or more elements that are "missing" from the plane. She explains that the conjunctions of the plane of storms are elemental air, water, and fire. Its disjunction is Earth, so it has very little landmass whatsoever. In the plane of moss, the disjunction is elemental fire. There is no natural volcanic rock or even much stone in Thrahin. Even the floor is made of spongy organic moss. That there would be such a concentration of fiery energy here is anathema to the nature of the plane itself. At this point, Cornelius chimes in to tell Kirasum that they found another pool of lava beneath the Valley of Denouement, in the lair of the Grey Wolf. Kirasum is equally puzzled at the revelation. She wonders why, if not for the workshop, there is such Disjunctive energy here. Beyond her surprise at the situation, Kirasum seems deeply troubled about the fiery morass before them.
After the discussion, the party decides to approach the colossus being assembled at the dock. On their way, they notice that a watery figure is patrolling the area around the construct. A marid is commanding the technologists working on the creature. He seems to be the owner of the factory mentioned in the books in the Brineroot Clinic: Talessi Goldbound.
Heading out onto the bridge span, Kirasum activates an elevator that leads them down into the lava bed. Two small boats made of enchanted obsidian are docked at the elevator's base. The archmage is quickly able to deduce their command word: the Terran word for "lift". Uttering the word, the boats buoy in the water and are propelled forward slowly through the lava. Unfortunately, the second boat is ridden solely by the invisible members of the party. This draws suspicion from the nearby technologists, who approach to investigate. Kirasum seems to take the heat as they believe that her disguised Technologist form must have broken one of the boats somehow. The invisible party scuttles around the dock into the shadows.
As Kirasum avoids the potential disastrous attention, the party surveys the situation. The marid seems to be using a magic scepter to command the unfinished war colossus to perform various actions. Melinoe then activates her glowing eye. With its truesight, she sees multiple members of their allied forces. The gnomish necromancer, the tiefling demigod, and the two undead minions are all disguised as technologists shuffling about. Flint approaches the gnome invisibly, separating from the party. Melinoe and Strattora eye the colossal war golem, sizing up its construction to find weak points. It is made of incredibly resilient wood wrapped like sinewy muscle fibers underneath massive turquoise plate armor. Surrounding its neck is a protrusion of dozens of massive Dial shards arranged like a fur scarf. Workers are affixing a crown of shards atop the creature's head.
Amid their deliberation, the marid calls out an order to the technologists. He demands volunteers to accompany him to "the Crux". Two of the technologists reluctantly follow him to the "blackboats" that the party just boarded. Kirasum, in her disguised form, volunteers at the behest of the party. Four technologists, Kirasum included, board the boats. Astra and Cornelius invisibly fly above the lava to tail the departing fleet led by the Marid who simply floats above the lava. Flint invisibly speaks with their disguised teammate, the gnomish necromancer. The gnome hisses at him that they are siphoning power from the plane's Crux to power the forge's furnace through the pipes across the ceiling. He cannot teleport all of them to the other side safely.
Strattora draws close to the colossus. In one fell swoop, she lets loose a calamitous Shatter spell at the creature's weak neck joint, hoping to disable it immediately. The spell roars out, ripping into the metal of its connective tissue.
The spell is unable to pierce fully through.
In a flash, Astra and Cornelius appear and attempt to wrestle the scepter from the marid's control. He barely keeps it within his grasp.
The workshop's Omniforge has been alerted to the threat within its walls. The battle has begun.
Footsteps approach from the cave as the two students head towards them. Kirasum disguises herself as the Technologist and sits at the desk, the rest of the party invisible or hiding behind boxes and crates. The students are seeking entry into the workshop. Kirasum clumsily attempts to impersonate the Technologist, but luckily finds the switch that opens the inner door. She lets the students in and they take no notice of the strange behavior. With some buffer of distance between them, the party enters the inner door into the Sonapailes. They see what appears to be an educational facility inside the subterranean fortress. Apprentices are flitting back and forth, heading to a common area of some kind. They complain about their Technologist masters, the work, and the stress. It seems to be a prestigious institution. Slowly, the disguised Kirasum leads the invisible party through the hallways, reading various markings and signs along the way. They wind through metal corridors that smell of sulfur, following signs that lead to an "Omniforge" deep within the factory. Eventually, they emerge into a tall brass building overlooking a massive pool of lava. An obsidian bridge connects the building to a second tall building on the other side, and the lava rises to a dock on the western side where a massive colossus is being worked on by a dozen technologists. At one end of the forge, a fiery fountain of lava is captured in a large metal apparatus that connects to a thick collection of metal cables reaching north and east along the ceiling. Far to their north, a staircase leads out of the lava to an ornate gate that bars the way to a massive tower in the caverns. Taking in the strangeness of the Omniforge, Kirasum is troubled. She tells the party that no such occurrence of natural magma and burning elemental energy should exist on this plane. Each plane has elemental conjunctions: cardinal elements to which they are associated. They also have disjunctions: one or more elements that are "missing" from the plane. She explains that the conjunctions of the plane of storms are elemental air, water, and fire. Its disjunction is Earth, so it has very little landmass whatsoever. In the plane of moss, the disjunction is elemental fire. There is no natural volcanic rock or even much stone in Thrahin. Even the floor is made of spongy organic moss. That there would be such a concentration of fiery energy here is anathema to the nature of the plane itself. At this point, Cornelius chimes in to tell Kirasum that they found another pool of lava beneath the Valley of Denouement, in the lair of the Grey Wolf. Kirasum is equally puzzled at the revelation. She wonders why, if not for the workshop, there is such Disjunctive energy here. Beyond her surprise at the situation, Kirasum seems deeply troubled about the fiery morass before them.
After the discussion, the party decides to approach the colossus being assembled at the dock. On their way, they notice that a watery figure is patrolling the area around the construct. A marid is commanding the technologists working on the creature. He seems to be the owner of the factory mentioned in the books in the Brineroot Clinic: Talessi Goldbound.
