Session 35: Troubles with Telekinesis Report

General Summary

Previously

After entering the Hive in the outskirts of the Runespace system, the party discovers a message from the Arcane, imploring any who made it this far to end the menace of the Ravager by destroying the ten lesser eyes, each of which dwells within its own domain. They soon learn that each eye has apparently developed into a sentient incarnation, over the centuries since the deaths of the Sazuar beholder nation (who built the hive). So far, the party has destroyed the incarnations of Charm person, Charm Beast, Slow and Death Ray. Along the way, they freed the golden people from being charmed, removed the stabilizing control of the beasts, freed dozen of nixies who had been transformed into slugs, and introduced the King of the Ghouls (and his ghoulish minions) to a mummified beholder buffet. They also discovered a vast central chamber, with immense murals telling the history of the creation of the Hive and the Ravager. There is a large glowing crystal to one side, in a tunnel to another space. They suspect the crystal is (or houses) the central Queens Eye, but are unable to approach it in the Surprise, because of its magic-nullifying effect. They also learned that a crystalline starfish/scorpion entered the Hive, which they suspect it is an intruder from Runespace, They are worried what its purpose is, and what it will do with the "spiky armor" the golden people said it took. They have obtained a huge set of spiky armor, presumably similar to what the starfish took. Windellian has mixed luck attempting to control it, and the crew straps it to the hull (on the far side from the shuttle). In the Slow realm, they find another suit of armor (this one apparently infested with pink crystals, similar to the what the party saw on the derelict Vlleryn). In the Death Ray realm, they find another suit, but leave it untouched. While heading back towards the tunnel after defeating the Death Ray incarnation, they suddenly hear a massive rumbling, and the black tunnel extends itself, reaching towards the black crystal, and then recoiling as soon as it tries to grab it. The tunnel then retracts, and returns to its original form. The party waits to see if anything else happens. When it doesn't, they reluctantly enter the tunnel (which seems unchanged from what they saw before), and return to the central chamber. There, the air is hazy with dust, which seems to be concentrated around the massive murals. However, the party cannot tell where the dust came from, and nothing else seems to have changed here. Eventually, the party decides to proceed with their mission to destroy the eyes, and enters the tunnel to the Telekinesis room. The party is aware that the Hive could jump into the Phlogiston in as soon as a day.

Session Notes

The Telekinesis Room

The tunnel is similar to previous ones, but the party notices as they get close to the far end that there are far more of the silvery threads and veins running through the black rock, and a few of the larger forms of the silver slime, troweling bits of themselves into cracks. You surmise that this area of the tunnel has had extensive (and ongoing) repairs. As you take this in, a round shape whisks across the tunnel mouth, very fast. It's gone before you recognize it. Beyond, the party finds another giant room. This one looks like a cube with bare grey walls, but it's hard to get a sense of scale. Every face of the cube is carved with an orderly array of pale green symbols, all alike. It looks like there are about 100 symbols on each wall. You look up, and the face overhead is like the others. Again you experience vertigo and the sensation that you're standing upside-down above the ground. A bright light drifts slowly through the middle of the room. Shadows like dots move along the walls as it goes. The shadows are being cast by many, many round spheres that are flying straight across the room, as though shot from slings. They move in all directions. You can't see one close up, but at the rate they're travelling, you guess you'll see one soon. The party debates what to do, and the ship needs to periodically dodge a sphere as they do so, but the party decides to proceed to investigate the bright light, which turns out to be another faceted crystal, which is occasionally struck by one of the spheres and sent off into a new direction. Eventually the party spots near the crystal an object that stand out from the thousands of smooth spheres drifting through the room: an agglomeration of small boulders and rubble, 20' in diameter. As they approach, the rubble on both sides of a hemispherical line pulls back, so that the rocky surface seems to open like an eyelid. Inside floats a tiny sphere less than a foot across, which then begins to shift to various forms related to collisions, such as bighorn rams, hammers, bulls, battering ram, maces, etc. The voice of the tiny sphere (now appearing as a ram) echoes around them, "This is some kind of conveyance, this collection of items? I will dismantle them now. I want to understand it. No, you cannot stop me, so don't bother to try. You will be unharmed. Probably." With this, the rigging starts to unfurl on the ship, and some of the ceramic hull starts to separate from the ship. Prax manages to distract the incarnation for a while with talk of big interesting things that might collide (like planets and sphere), while the party debates what to do. Once the incarnation gets bored of talking with Prax, it goes back to disassembling the ship. The party attacks, and while the incarnation seems to easily deflect physical missiles, magic and Windy's "laser" punctures the protective barrier around the incarnation, giving Windellian (on the helm) the opportunity to ram the rocky barrier and finish off the incarnation. (The party gets the odd feeling that if it had to die, the incarnation was very happy it was done in a collision). While Zayer uses "Mend Hull" to repair the ship, Windellian quickly takes the ship back towards the tunnel. Unfortunately, as they enter, the black tunnel again twists and extends as if it were something alive. Windellian takes the ship through as quickly as possible as the tunnel sheath moves around them, but by the time they exit the far end, the tunnel has reverted to its fixed form.

Revelations in the Central Chamber

However, in the great central chamber, the party see that the huge murals have lifted off the inner surface of the sphere (which must be the source of the dust they saw before), and the party realizes that the pieces could fit together to form a huge sphere. The undersides of the murals look like stony beholder skin, and the party realizes that the murals and the tunnel sheaths must combine to form the huge, beholder-shaped Ravager. The murals seems to hesitate in midair, and the party hears two distinct voices, apparently in conflict: one, a monotone voice speaking in a harsh, unknown language, and the other they recognize (with horror) as the same voice they heard from the small floating sphere aboard the Vlleryrn, and from the Electric Monk as it was being attacked--the voice of the Mozck AI. They realize that the scorpion-starfish thing must be an instantiation of Mozck, and has entered the Hive and is trying to take it over. The two voices apparently argue, and then the murals descend back to the ground. After nothing happens for a while, the party decides that they need to take out more of the weapons of the Ravager before it can form, and so decide to enter the Disintegration room.

The Disintegration Room

Passing through the tunnel, and for a moment you think you must have sailed out into space again. But this is another colossal cubic room, with blank, black walls. In the center of the room floats a crystal like the ones you've seen in other rooms. Its light shines very brightly, bright enough to pick out the borders where one black wallmeets another. Looking back, you see the monolithic tunnel entrance you emerged from. This wall is also dead black. The outside of the tunnel looks shinier than usual. You see nothing else in this room. The party shoots a ballista bolt across the room, and watches it eventually reach the far wall, where it disappears in a flash of light. Not long after, the party hears a crash and shout from below, and find that something has passed through the ship from one side to the other, punching a perfect hole a few inches in diameter through the hull and the interior walls--and the chest of an unfortunate crewman, killing him instantly. As the party is reacting to this, the object, another softball-sized eye, disintegrates another path through the ship from below, erupting up through the ship. They have difficulty tracking it, but spy it circling around for another pass. Jessa leaps to the weapons port and raises her rainbow shield, which disintegrates when the eye impacts it, but succeeds in deflecting the eye from its pass. Windellian quickly withdraws the ship from the deadly room, and fortunately the eye doesn't follow. The party returns to the (fortunately still quiet) central chamber, and plans to rest up for a moment while Zayer again mends the hull, and then prepares to cast Resurrection on the crew man. They intend to move on to the slumber room next.

Campaign

Vagabonds of Greatspace

Protagonists