The Temple of the Exploding Eye
Through a mirror darkly...
General Summary
"I'm a slayer..."
The party proceeded to enter Trinity Village and spotted a trip wire like the one they had discovered in Farport. Jayne was first to notice the silken cord suspended at ankle height in the road and followed it into a copse of trees. At the other end of the copse he saw that the silk cord extended to an unwalled hut occupied by three Vril warriors, including a Firedancer who held fire in his hands and teased it around his body like a simple plaything. The darkness of the night and the accompanying foul weather rendered the sentries oblivious to Jayne's approach, and Jayne brought up his allies to observe and plan the next move. Zen used his psychic powers to conjure a wave of fatigue that rendered all of the guards unconscious. Jayne hurried forward to execute all but one of the hapless warriors, whom he instead clubbed with the flat of his blade. He then bound and gagged the concussed warrior and stowed him in the back of the party's travel cart. Adelle kept watch intently.
The rest of the party held their position at the now captured river bank dock while Jayne stealthily crept into the village to scout the lay of the land. He saw charred huts and human remains: signs of war and senseless cruelty. At the center of the ruined hamlet he saw a temple made of cut stone blocks and bearing the All-Seeing-Eye icon of the Exploding Eye cult. Incredibly, on the steps of the temple Jayne saw Rob, William, and Marsala, the comrades they had left back in Farport four days earlier. He roused them and then headed back to fetch the rest of the party
"What year is it?"
The three reunited members of the party were confused and bewildered. They spoke vaguely about a "furnace" and a "pipe" and behaved confusedly as though unable to fully recall their recent memories, like dreamers unable to remember a dream. Rob looked around puzzled and asked what the year was. William, who was badly cut up and seriously wounded, muttered something about "a woman with rat ears" and did his best to explain that he and the others had been in an underground chamber and had crawled out through a furnace pipe. No such pipe was to be seen nearby. Marsala used a healing hex to stanch William's wounds but offered little else in the way of explanation about their strange ordeal.
The party took shelter from the rain inside the temple, which was looted and ruined. A lone stone brazier cast a dim light around the chamber, which was cluttered with dust and debris. The stillness of the scene was disrupted only by the occasional crackle of the fire and the intermittent dripping of the leaking roof. They looked to the ceiling and saw it was decorated with a motley array of grotesque plaster sculptures, mostly faces with exaggerated or bestial features: a man with protruding eyes and a hideous rictus grin, a woman with rodent ears.
"The water's going somewhere..."
Searching the chamber, the party found footsteps in the dust around the brazier. Jayne and Everest tracked the steps through the wooden debris of the room and found they ended at a bare patch of floor below the leaking ceiling. Edmund knelt down and noticed that the dripping water was not pooling on the floor and realized that the water was seeping through a small seam between stone blocks. He called Rob over to inspect a stone block wedged inside the crevice and Rob found a second piece of stone hidden just under the obvious protrusion. Rob dug out his thieving tools and used a long metal hook to reach under the block to access the second piece. It moved easily and served as lever to activate a hidden door mechanism. The wet floor began sliding diagonally down into the ground and revealed a passageway into a secret prayer chamber.
The room was lit with three large candles set on metal stands and the floor bore the pyramid symbol of the All-Seeing-Eye. Around this symbol the party saw images of six human figures inscribed on the floor with black stain. On the far wall the party saw a raised dais decorated with seven life-size wooden statues depicting warriors bearing a mix of contemporary and Precursor arms and armour. The center statue was painted white, bore a mace and sword, and was inscribed with the word "Polaris." Behind this statue a large mirror hung upon the wall. The other statues bore obscure words as well: "Yildun," "Epsilon," "Ferkad," "Alifa," "Kochab," and "Anwar."
"Just wait for these things to come to life..."
Marsala recalled from his religious studies that there had once been a great monastery in Trinity but that it had been destroyed in an earthquake about a hundred years ago. William looked at the bodies drawn on the floor and remembered the subterranean chamber, which had been piled with rotting bodies. Rob recalled the date he had seen written on the wall: the year 476 of the Age of Princes, roughly 100 years ago. He then recalled why they had climbed a pipe to escape the cellar: the building, including the staircase, had been damaged as though by an earthquake.
William remembered another detail. The three wayward party members had been blocked from escaping the cellar by a peculiar barrier: a giant degenerative eyeball, its pupil replaced with a mouth of razor sharp teeth. The monstrous eye wailed and wept as it hung suspended in a wall of pulpy yellow mucous. The eye had stayed their progress until, faced with its own reflection, it melted from its yellow membrane and shrunk down to normal size. Reaching into his pocket, he realized he still had it. Zen produced the incorruptible eye taken from the Vanguard Church in Farport and they both stood on the pyramid icon and directed the two eyes to face the Polaris Mirror. The mirror presented a hazy field of moving stars and then displayed three images of the ancient furnace room familiar to Marsala, William, and Rob. First it showed a dark-haired woman dressed in black armour arguing with a young fair-haired man in purple robes. Second it showed the same room with damaged and crumbling walls and supports. Amid the wreckage, temple acolytes and physicians suffered under an attack by shambling worm ghouls like the ones the party faced in Farport. Lastly the mirror showed an image of a purple skinned woman with rodent ears torturing a man lashed to a table. Then William, Robb, and Gooze appeared in the room and began struggling to free themselves and the torture victim.
"Which of us are still alive?"
After the images faded, Zen pulled out the platinum mirror taken from Pacui and faced it at the Polaris Mirror. A flash of light preceded a vision in which the party saw their future selves calling from the mirror and warning of a threat to come. This brief message unleashed a wave of psychic feedback that shattered the Polaris Mirror and revealed an old star chart printed on Precursor paper. The chart was unlabeled and lacked any reference coordinates. Edmund examined it and noticed that it was similar to the actual orientation of the sky but that most of the stars appeared to be at least slightly out of place.
"I'm going to shake him out."
Math started shaking the statues and found one of them was hollow and that a person was hiding inside. After giving it a good shake, out fell Brother Nestor, the last surviving acolyte of the temple. He was delirious with fear but calmed somewhat after being fed some rations. Through his shock, Nestor eventually explained that the Pump Station was deactivated. His master, Brother Ottmar, had tried to seal the station off from the Vril but inadvertently shut it down. Though the Vril tortured him for instructions on how to use the key to unlock the station, Ottmar refused to give up the secret even under pain of death. Nestor explained that the only instruction Ottmar had given him about using the key was a brief assurance that "heavenly lights would illuminate the way." In order to make use of this knowledge, the party would have to wrest the key away from the Vril garrison leader, Kalima. Nestor gave the party his blessings but was too scared to come out of the temple and help until after the Vril were defeated.
Standing in the shadow of the looming Water Wall cliffs above Trinity Village, the party had a look at the Pump Station at the center of the dried up lake bed of Trinity Cauldron but without the key they realized it was time to press on and face the enemy. Before leaving, Everest discovered some graffiti inscribed on a cracked pillar located near the Pump Station.
And in the morning promise me great times will come again,
And the homelands in our hearts will never fade away.
Let the legends promise me the earth shall rise again,
And homelands in the hearts of men shall never fade away.
"Don't look a gift horse in the 'maa-ooth.'"
After crossing the river from the cauldron lake to the north trail towards the desert, Edmund saw a guard up ahead and warned the party. The guard likewise saw the party and called to his allies alerting them of the party's approach. The party began readying their weapons and steeling their resolve for battle...
Rewards Granted
- 4 White Potions of cure light wounds (1d8+3) (alchemical)
- 67 silver coins
Missions/Quests Completed
Party discovered the hidden prayer chamber
Character(s) interacted with
Adelle Mirodar
Brother Nestor
Brother Nestor
Notes
Edmund identified the insignia crest depicted on the statues as that of the Star Seekers, an ancient adventuring band of the Road Wars. The sword wielded by the white statue labelled "Polaris" bore a distinctive pommel carved in the shape of a number seven.
The Forbidden City of the Phoenix: Chapter V - Part 1
February 4th, 1000 PCE
Player Characters
William BenjaminRob
Marsala
Edmond Andrew
Zen
Matthaeus “Math” Mannheim
Everest Bell
Jayne
Campaign Info
Setting:
The North American CampaignNext Adventure:
The Burning Sands of TrinityPrevious Adventure:
The Road to TrinityRewards Granted
- 4 White Potions of cure light wounds (1d8+3) (alchemical)
- 67 silver coins
Missions/Quests Completed
Party discovered the hidden prayer chamberCharacter(s) interacted with
Brother NestorAdditional Notes
Edmund identified the insignia crest depicted on the statues as that of the Star Seekers, an ancient adventuring band of the Road Wars. The sword wielded by the white statue labelled "Polaris" bore a distinctive pommel carved in the shape of a number seven.
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