2024/01/10: The Formian War Part 7 Report
General Summary
Knight, Kit, Malakai, Starlight, Ash
We rejoin our party as they investigate an old derro office building. They are still being chased by an invincible golem, but it's having trouble fighting its way through the passage behind them. They passed through the largest door available and found a large set of stairs going up and a nicer office. The door and windows in this office appeared to have been bashed in, and someone had been horribly murdered and then burned inside. Kit, Malakai, and Starlight made a quick detour to check for important loot or keys in the office.
On the body, Kit found a set of bent and melted iron keys and a strange, spherical compass. Starlight found a lead safety box in a secret alcove at the back of a mostly intact filing cabinet. Malakai found a manila envelope that may be full of maps of the city, as well as a small crowbar in a secret compartment.
The next floor had more of the same. Four large rooms containing more generic office space and corpses. A spiral staircase led further up. A strange dwarven armor suit that looked sort of like a man-sized tank seemed to be melted in place. Ash detected cold spots that were probably ghosts. He intercepted the rest of the group on their way up the stairs and alerted them.
Protected by the silence power on Ash's armor and Kit's protection from undead, the party headed directly up the stairs. The steps made musical notes emanate from the corners of the room when stepped on, but this didn't seem to be anything more than an alarm. It delayed the party for a few seconds but was ignored once it proved harmless.
The stairs ended at the intersection of two hallways. The party followed Knight's compass to the door at the end of one. Kit compared the melted keys he'd found to the keyhole, and one of them matched! Or had matched, at least, before it was melted. Fortunately, Ash had an artifact-level "Universal Key" and was able to get through with some finagling and brute strength.
On the other side was an old (and moldy) storeroom. The party glanced around, looking for points of interest.
Then the coffee maker attacked them.
The moldy, tentacled thing jumped from nowhere and wrapped itself around Starlight's head. Things got confusing for a moment, and then the machine was gone and Starlight was wearing a set of slightly moldy, nerdy glasses over her mask. As the rest of the party reacted, Starlight's body started desperately trying to tell the rest of the group not to attack. It turned out she was being possessed by the coffee creature.
(The name of the enemy: "Work Juice")
After a dream cutscene, some attempted discussion, and some actual discussion once Kit used Mr. Sharps to clear Ash's silence effect, the party acquired the aid of the strange coffee creature, which had absorbed memories from many derro office workers over the years. It just wanted a place to sit, get food, give people energy, share memories, and live. It knew a lot about what had gone on in the city.
It turned out the mad derro ruler was a lich, and while resistance forces in the city thought they'd found three of the keys that supposedly led to his phylactery, they'd never managed to find the fourth. They'd ended up sabotaging the entire city instead using runes of confusion to ruin controls and machines, but the yellow formians had recently removed the sabotage and thus unleashed the lich and his armies.
The party discussed options and landed on Yvenna and Aishivastis trying a spirit-communion divination ritual to locate the keys. Using various buffs from the party and a donation of Kit's (weird) blood (which turned into little wiggling snake-things on the way down), they marked four areas on the map:
agricultural district, probably on the body of that cyborg zombie the party had encountered
residential district, in some home
inside the golem foundry
inside the pyramid, which turned out to be the military fortress for the city
The following was written on the bottom of the map in specks of blood:
"The Four Keys Lead to His DOOM at the Throne in his own mind. But only a bolt of Energy True can make him CHOKE on his OWN EGO" The party used Knight's dream travel to try to pass by any guard perimeter. They traveled through a dream city, riding the flow of Knight's sense of the dream. They were confronted by a silhouette of a drow figure. The drow downed the party's priest after Starlight attempted dialogue, then slipped around every attack sent his way as if he was barely there. Knight, still feeling the contours of the dream and frustrated by the prospect of working around another untouchable enemy, decided to try something new. He used the power of the Dream Master's Nail to slash a square around the shadow, cutting him out of the dream entirely. As the shadow fell away, the party got an image of him as a mannequin cyborg zombie of some sort, and his voice echoed out: "Don't let him get you too". Starlight healed the cleric with a potion, which was fortunately enough to get him conscious and moving again. The party carried on until they found an equivalent to the canning building they were trying to get to, and Knight safely cut the group a way back into the real world. They found themselves in a flowery courtyard, from which they were able to quickly locate themselves and find their way back to the cyborg derro they'd seen earlier. The cyborg, who turned out to be surprisingly independent for a zombie, identified himself as Ignar the Foreman. After some discussion, the party got some clues and the first key. He was remarkably polite for a derro, which meant he was very gruff and blunt rather than trying to bite a party member's face off. He had evidently been a member of the resistance in the past, saying that he and others had countered the mad ruler's plans multiple times before the ruler had killed the entire city. Still, ignar had no love for the holders of the other keys, saying they deserved whatever beatings the party might give them in the process of getting those keys. Of course, he said much the same about himself. He refused an offer of destructive release, saying that he wasn't going anywhere until the ruler was finally gone. And besides, he'd be released when the ruler fell anyway. The first key retrieved, Kit led the way to the residential area. The run went smoothly and without interruption. As the party approached the target location, they started to hear a disturbance, sounding like gasping screaming. Kit scouted ahead and found that the next key-carrier had been rigged up to a torture board, with a whole team of crack (zombie) derro torturers going at her in perpetuity. The key-carrier was a derro woman. The party didn't bother with subtlety. Knight eviscerated four of the torturers, dodging a collection of retaliatory deathtraps but getting caught by a high-powered bear trap that buried its teeth in his leg. Kit killed another three with Mr. Sharps from outside retaliatory trap range. The last torturer ignored the two attackers and ran screaming out of the room, running right into the rest of the party, where he proceeded to tear one of poor Yvenna's arms to scraps of wood and fine wire. Starlight blasted the torturer to death in response. While Starlight and Knight tried to remove the bear trap and its attached curse from Knight's leg and the rest of the party tried to comfort Yvenna, Kit tried to find a way to free the tortured derro. While the controls on the torture machines were uncooperative, apparently having random effects, Kit and Starlight eventually managed to turn the machine off and free the prisoner. The tortured derro promptly dragged herself over to some equipment in a corner, retrieved a knife, and beheaded herself, ending her pain. Kit ended up having to dig the second key out from where it was bolted to the dead woman's sternum. Two down, two to go.
"The Four Keys Lead to His DOOM at the Throne in his own mind. But only a bolt of Energy True can make him CHOKE on his OWN EGO" The party used Knight's dream travel to try to pass by any guard perimeter. They traveled through a dream city, riding the flow of Knight's sense of the dream. They were confronted by a silhouette of a drow figure. The drow downed the party's priest after Starlight attempted dialogue, then slipped around every attack sent his way as if he was barely there. Knight, still feeling the contours of the dream and frustrated by the prospect of working around another untouchable enemy, decided to try something new. He used the power of the Dream Master's Nail to slash a square around the shadow, cutting him out of the dream entirely. As the shadow fell away, the party got an image of him as a mannequin cyborg zombie of some sort, and his voice echoed out: "Don't let him get you too". Starlight healed the cleric with a potion, which was fortunately enough to get him conscious and moving again. The party carried on until they found an equivalent to the canning building they were trying to get to, and Knight safely cut the group a way back into the real world. They found themselves in a flowery courtyard, from which they were able to quickly locate themselves and find their way back to the cyborg derro they'd seen earlier. The cyborg, who turned out to be surprisingly independent for a zombie, identified himself as Ignar the Foreman. After some discussion, the party got some clues and the first key. He was remarkably polite for a derro, which meant he was very gruff and blunt rather than trying to bite a party member's face off. He had evidently been a member of the resistance in the past, saying that he and others had countered the mad ruler's plans multiple times before the ruler had killed the entire city. Still, ignar had no love for the holders of the other keys, saying they deserved whatever beatings the party might give them in the process of getting those keys. Of course, he said much the same about himself. He refused an offer of destructive release, saying that he wasn't going anywhere until the ruler was finally gone. And besides, he'd be released when the ruler fell anyway. The first key retrieved, Kit led the way to the residential area. The run went smoothly and without interruption. As the party approached the target location, they started to hear a disturbance, sounding like gasping screaming. Kit scouted ahead and found that the next key-carrier had been rigged up to a torture board, with a whole team of crack (zombie) derro torturers going at her in perpetuity. The key-carrier was a derro woman. The party didn't bother with subtlety. Knight eviscerated four of the torturers, dodging a collection of retaliatory deathtraps but getting caught by a high-powered bear trap that buried its teeth in his leg. Kit killed another three with Mr. Sharps from outside retaliatory trap range. The last torturer ignored the two attackers and ran screaming out of the room, running right into the rest of the party, where he proceeded to tear one of poor Yvenna's arms to scraps of wood and fine wire. Starlight blasted the torturer to death in response. While Starlight and Knight tried to remove the bear trap and its attached curse from Knight's leg and the rest of the party tried to comfort Yvenna, Kit tried to find a way to free the tortured derro. While the controls on the torture machines were uncooperative, apparently having random effects, Kit and Starlight eventually managed to turn the machine off and free the prisoner. The tortured derro promptly dragged herself over to some equipment in a corner, retrieved a knife, and beheaded herself, ending her pain. Kit ended up having to dig the second key out from where it was bolted to the dead woman's sternum. Two down, two to go.
Rewards Granted
2 xp (except Kit, who gets 4)
Lead safety box, orb compass, small magic crowbar, maps of Gertaglebrache
Character(s) interacted with
Dova, Ven, Aishivastis, Meis, Yvenna, Work Juice, Ignar the Foreman
Notes
Yvenna appears to be some sort of animate masterwork mannequin, judging by the remains of her arm and the lack of blood (though she did let out a shocked scream). The party certainly wasn't going to judge, though, and they haven't yet inquired further.
Starlight
Knight of Darkhome
Ash Falconherst
William Kit
Malakai
Report Date
10 Jan 2024
Primary Location
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