sdifjghkgf;ljnlfn

• Dorian succeeds in doing his exploration of himself and he feels much better
  • He can now navigate better
• People have been wrapping up their activities, enjoying their day off
  • Meph is in her room, prepping for the surgery, pacing and adjusting the floor space for the surgery
  • Dorian is in the common area turning every which way enjoying his lack of voice
  • Aster is still pouring over their books
  • Aella is working on the blueprint of the shield in the common area, we can start to see the design coming together, the one thing missing is the symbol in the center
  • Lya checks the windows, they aren’t super guarded, only really a person at the front door, she knocks on Dorian’s bedroom window, it is barred, she fey steps into Dorian’s room
    • There is no one in this room but she opens the room and there is Dorian and Aella, at the same time, Aster rushes out of their room, hair frazzled, inkstains all over and they say they figured it out and show the planes
    • Lya tells the group what happened to Maeve
    • Randomly Aster gets a message, he invites everyone for a cup of tea to talk, he says he will arrive at Luin
    • Meph makes a little joke that gets a tiny pity laugh out of Lya and says she is glad to have Lya’s laugh back
    • Dorian asks Aella if she knows how an Allip 
    • Meph tells Lya to follow her into her room because Aella was being rude
  • Meph and Lya do the surgery on Meph, she has 3 small ports under her arm
• Before dawn woken to start working, the guard leads us looking just as sacred as it had the previous days though still infected by the presence of the town, after a whole week we expect to see Neela behind the desk and instead we see someone sitting on it, Tolma Storsk
  • She is in charge of us for the week, something is happening in the depths, there is one other person in the room standing next to the desk
    • A human girl, pretty pink colors, kind of curly hair, a big high ponytail, she is holding a stack on papers with a big smile on her face, waiting for her professor to finish
  • We are to go down below the headframe and see what caused its stopping, we will be accompanied by Opaline and Taolo
  • The sun has started to rise and we see Lya on her way to work, “if we fall through tell our story”-Dorian
  • Opal introduces himself, she knows Dorian, she is also from Ancord, she lets us know that we will get our stuff at the drill
  • As we approach we see 4 people standing there and a few bundles, each bag had been repacked and standard issue like a nap pack, Aella runs to her Javelin
  • There are 2 guards, a human and a red genasi as well as Rhyme and Reason, Reason is coming with us
  • Lya comes up full running, she is joining us too
  • Taolo is tall, very strongly built slightly darker skin, wearing bronze chain and wielding a blade, he is our minder, and Singe our eye’s above, we introduce ourselves
  • Singe takes out a rope, ties it to the headframe and lets it down, a few moments later we hear a heavy smack as it hits the bottom
  • Rhyme just jumps in the hole, Lya follows, Reason follows as well, the rest of us descend down the rope, Opal takes up the rear
• Just before we reach what we hope to be the bottom, the stone changes, it goes from natural sedimentary stone into something worked and we find ourselves in a small chamber deep underground
  • We are standing in a stone room about 3meters on each side hewn from the frock and strengthened with stronger stone to hold against the pressure above, it's clearly handmade and there is expert work put into the craft, there isn't a single piece out of place that isn't structural. The chamber is relatively simple except for to the left there is a shattered portcullis(with a hallway behind it) that seems to have scattered into the room bits on the ground and hints of blue still in the wreckage, there is a door to the north but it remains closed, there is also a body, it's hard to say what it was, whatever it was was not organic, some kind of automaton and has seemingly been ripped apart an scattered across. We see the drill head, it lies in the hallway to the left as though it had been dragged there
    • Dorian goes to the mangled corpse and with his newfound knowledge of his own body, Meph tries to help, there isn’t a way to really see what kind of make it was
    • Only really the lower legs are once intact, whatever destroyed it destroyed the upper part more violently
    • Dancing lights came down with us
    • The other two doors are closed and the portcullis is the only thing open, Reason is looking down it and Rhyme wants to examine it
      • Seems it was forced open with brute strength, lying among the wreckage are a few scales, fainter with age but still blue in color
        • Clearly a reptilian scaleish but its size is much larger than a more standard reptile
        • Lya and Aella examine it with Sonoth in mind, clearly it has been faded with age, can’t deny similarity in scale and color to what they’ve experience with Sonoth, they never touched it but this has flexibility and give to it
        • Aella grabs the scale and casts shocking grasp on it, attempting to fry it to nothing, it remains unchanged despite her efforts
      • Looking through the archway, they see a long corridor with a door at the end, just before the door a passage of destruction comes from the left, lying in the corridor to the side is the drill, the head lies at the far side of the corridor, it seems like it was lain there out of the way
    • We hear a shift in the earth around us and a chunk of the ceiling breaks off and falls, Dorian, Rhyme and Aster are in the area, Aster gets fully whacked, the others get clipped
      • It looks like this has happened before, a lot of damage has worsened with time because of what passed a while ago
    • The door to the north is a simple affair and worn down by many hands, the one to the right is a much more ornate door and less worn
      • The symbology of the carving is not inherently religious, though when looked at very closely, there are 4 figures worked into the corners, simply designed, like welcoming spirits, designed as thought they hold the door open, there is an amount of myth worked into the door
      • It was hewn by one stone, the design is very simple, it gives the impression of strength, lots of concentric squares and a simple impression of almost like stratification, a motif of horizontal building
      • North door is a pull, right door is a push
      • Aella puts a hand on the door and looks around for a general consensus, seeing that everyone is doing their own door, pushes it. It opens very slightly and then seems to jam, there is something on the other side
        • Aella presses her face to the ground and tries to look through it, she sees the bottom of a stone hallway, she looks toward Aster and the two jam some of the fabric from the eye cloak 
        • It's a hallway, it is taller, tall enough for something to be hung from the ceiling, but instead of an array of candles, it holds a large glass bulb of some kind. Its made of bronze though there are hints of gold up near the top, a strange chandelier
        • The door is barred, is a bar of bronze, set in the stone of the door
      • Rhyme goes to try the other door in the north, it is also barred
    • We mage hand the bar on the right side, we cannot pick it up, they try for 10 minutes with 3 different mage hands to try to open it, it doesn’t work very well
    • The end of the drill looks heavily damaged, looks like wire of some kind wrapped  at the bit, and a huge ripped open hole and there are dents just above that. Seems like it got damaged a number of ways and got yoinked, not sure about the wire but what stopped it, the horrible wrenching sound was whatever ripped into above the drill
      • Some of the wire that was around the drill is also in the legs of the automaton
  • With some effort they try to mage hand open the north door.
  • We go through the left hall and take the left hall from that, it slopes slightly upward and seems like it was the original entrance that has since been buried by eons of dirt
  • The left door is closed, it is also relatively simple, it is well worn and there is a lot of carving to it but it doesn't seem to be fancy, this place is more religious
    • This is clearly the entryway to a temple or shrine of some kind. This is a stone door, the carvings are much like the other door, simple and elegant and not flowing, lots of hard edges and care taken in its construction, Aella has encountered an item like this before. Its a very welcoming entry way, the top is curved as though you are welcome. For a deity that seems very lay person focused, not a space for royalty or priests only, this is a people's temple. The notable detail on the door is that there is an inset clear whitish gem that fills the carvings, it has a shimmer to it
    • Aella opens the door, into a spherical chamber with the walls rising for a bit then curving to a dome at the top, about a 6 meter radius. The space is mostly occupied by a large set of low benches set around the walls, there are gaps in the benches in the other directions, the center sinks into a pit, currently there is refuse but we imagine maybe offerings had once been burnt or were kept, it has now been turned into a kind of fallow pool, there is a trickle of water from the south wall. Above the ceiling is made almost entirely of the same white gemstone and it is clear except at the center there is a flickering yellow light moving. The walls depict a journey.
      • The idea of the carving is that no matter where you sit, if you look at the walls, it is a journey from where you are, out in the world and then back home. Most of it is underground, there is a tree depicted, nothing seems particularly specific, more evocative of the world itself. 
      • Dorian thinks if he wasn’t made here, he was made somewhere very similar. He doesn’t remember this room or this place but this is right, the walls remind him of a room he’s once seen, he has flashes of rooms similar
        • Dorian pauses on carved faces, people he doesn’t recognize but he feels kinship with the stone, it was worked by the same hands that made him
      • Dorian tells the group that he knows of places like this
      • This is a god of travelers, anyone, if they took a left at the front door, they are home, even if they are far from home, Aella does not know this god, as far as she is aware, they no longer exist in the dwarven pantheon. 
      • Aella takes a seat, the seat is under a wall depicting a hill under a sun
      • Aster grabs a vial to fill and as they pull it through it clinks against something. Opal hears it and sticks her hand in, she pulls out a small piece of gold, a button or cufflink or something
      • Rhyme as he looks around the room, notices something move, there is a cushion on one of the chairs. Carved of a pumice like stone and painted. He goes to sit, gets the feeling of sitting on a chair that is lower than you expect and he sits in the cushion, illusion cushion
      • Dorian looks at the light. It looks like a little finch in a cage. What is lighting the room looks like a small glowing bird circling the space in the slightly milky stone. Dorian attempts to call to it, it does not respond to his presence and couldn’t come to him. It's just the light spell. Right before Dorian lowers his finger, a bird lands on it, its not there but it looks like a real bird
      • We hear suddenly less than we had previously been hearing, a sort of shutting down noise and the lights go out. All the dancing lights do too, people recast it after that.
        • Aella noticed that the crack on the south side went dark first
        • The noise that had been there previously kicks back on again and the bird comes back on
        • Aster is investigating the crack. It is simply a split in the stone, probably a crack that goes through the stone until it hits ground water
    • Reason opens up telepathy with Opal before she leaves, Meph gives one dose of the gaseous form potion to Opal, she flows under the door and goes to the other side, she degasses on the other side and picks the bar up, its heavy but she is strong and she sets it down on the ground and swings the door open. 
      • In addition to what was seen with the chandelier, there are carvings in the walls and two alcoves near the end. There is also a bronze symbol worked into the carving on the left wall near the door. 
        • It's like two hexagons laid into each other. A bird appears in the chandelier.
        • In the first alcove, there is an automaton, inert staring straight out, its made of stone, what used to be wood and metal. It does not look the same as the remains of the other one, slightly more showy maybe.
        • Dorian walks up to it and places his hans on its shoulder. It is slightly shorter than him but thicker built. He tries to reach out through the connection a bit. It is not there. Dorian is looking for an on switch
        • In the other alcove is another automaton. The right arm, just above the right hand, is on the floor. Opal picks it up, it has the same wiring in it, sort of 
      • To the door. It is closed and opens towards us(pull) it is very much like the one we passed already, an ornate, welcoming door. Clearly the hallway for more important people.
      • We open the door and find a chamber that might once have received important guests. It is roughly the same size as the one we’ve been in already. The walls are decorated with silver and gold decorations. Two doors to the north, there is what must have once been really ornate chairs and tables but part of the ceiling has come in like before. 
        • One of the chairs vanishes. There is another light orb chandelier sort of set into the right wall, it is not on
        • Reason goes to look at the two doors, they are almost identical, supposed to be part of the same design.
        • A thrum of energy echoes through the room, we hear nothing. Everyone is deafened for now. Reason opens telepathy to each person explaining we can communicate like this and to raise our hands if we want to speak
        • Rhyme peaks into the left door. On the other side is a very short hallway and large chamber that connects to the north door from the first room. There is an opening to the bottom left of the large chamber.
          • The chamber at some point in the distant past was where the community happened. The path of destruction happens just across to the left. Where all the stone tables still stand, there is a great fissure running across the top left of the room and within the room are 6 shuffling
          • Rhyme shuffles back and closes the door, seemingly most of the things were also somewhat deaf so they do not hear him.
        • Suddenly we can hear again. Rhyme tells us what he saw, he can’t tell if they are friendly but thinks they may be rather chaotic and perhaps threatening. We may be able to take them by surprise.
      • We decided to look through the north right door. It is not latched. beyond the other door, we hear scraping, shuffling footsteps beyond a little bit, we hadn’t heard it before. We crack the right north door, it is the longest hallway we have seen yet, door at the end with a fork to the right just before the door. It looks just old, it is very very fancy, there is another light switch, Dorian turns on the light, a large automaton steps out, says something and charges.
        • What he says roughly translates to enemies or intruders, initiative
        • Lya turn, the thing is charging with a great hammer
          • She huntsmarks him and false life
        • Meph turn, she is startled and takes the dodge action
        • The thing, it tries to hit Dorian, missed and hits the wall then uses the recoil to swing it back towards Dorian who it strikes and he is knocked prone
        • Dorian wants to try something to calm the thing. Reason just casts bladeward
        • Rhyme uses summon fey and summons the mirthful spirit which attempts to charm this automaton, wis save DC 15, fail, he steps out of the way to see if anyone else can do anything
        • Opal is reading the enemy Cha saving throw
          • No resistances, no vulnerabilities, 142 hit points, darkvision 60ft, blindsight 10 ft
        • Taolo grabs Dorian and attempts to drag him out of the way of the next swing, he is dragged into the room a bit deeper
        • Aster healing word to Dorian, they cast a message on this thing and say, “please, we don't want to hurt you and we don’t mean to intrude, can we talk about this, you can reply to this message.” they get no response
        • Aella casts shield of faith to herself and then makes her way to the front of everyone to stand between everyone and the robot and uses her action to dodge
        • Dorian casts calm emotions Cha saving throw, everyone who failed is generally indifferent about the members of the party. The construct doesn’t deal with it because it is not a humanoid

Idle chatter flits about. Astraea’s legs swing freely as they relax on the branch of a tree. Across from them, Reavers sit atop the Armide. Whether it stands upright or on its side they cannot remember. The important thing is the companions surrounding them, and the tall grass swaying peacefully in the distance. It’s home and it’s the island and it’s the old intact ship.

 

Then came the gray branches, thick and gnarled, bursting from the ground. Aster jumps from their perch in fright and by the time they land, the other trees are all gone. Only the bare, gray branches remain.

 

Looking around, they see fire spread. From where? And what color? No matter, it’s spreading. People are running about. Astraea recites a familiar encantation to quell the flames with an icy ray.

 

The wind picks up.

 

What burst from their hand instead was a horribly blinding ray of light. In the chaos, it strikes Aella. Dorian and Meph see this. Meph laments that this is what became of the Digit’s potential. Aster runs to Aella, inspecting her face, but she assures them she is alright. They find it hard to believe with the one blinded eye. Aella hugs them in an attempt to bring comfort. It only half works, as looking down Aster sees their freckles begin to glow impossibly bright.

 

The branches tower higher, bringing destruction. Aster panics aloud about what to do. In front of them stands Quill, completely resolute.

“What are you talking about?” he asks. “The obvious choice is right in front of us.” He disappears, engulfed entirely by shadow.

 

Astraea tries to go after him but he is gone in a puff of smoke. Instead they find Lya and Reldan. The former is simply giggling at the sight before her. Aster turns to Reldan, hoping he might know how to fix this. Before he can reply, his face morphs into horror. “You are one of them,” he says.

 

Looking down, patches of Aster’s skin have turned a deep purple.

 

The patches keep growing. “I don’t understand… what…?”

 

“Darling, your eyes…” Aella shows them their reflection from their old compact mirror. Both their eyes are purple and moonstruck.

 

The Magi is in the distance. “It’s a gift,” their voice echoes. Whether it’s the present or a memory is unclear.

Astraea looks up at them. “What sort of gift is this, anyways?” Silence. “Answer me!” they yell.

 

A white light shines from above. The chaos stills. Aster turns and sees a slender, elven, masculine figure, hair a flicked bob reminiscent of a crescent, robes pearlescent and pure white.

 

 “So, it is yours?  What do I make of it?” They ask Sehanine the Nomad.

 

He gives no answer, but Aella takes Aster’s hand and leads them towards him. A path carves itself towards him as everything else seems to fall away. Astraea looks up at the god in wonder, and any remnants of an old hesitation disappear. They follow, picking up pace, getting ahead of Aella.

 

They’re getting closer when they hear a yell from behind, then a thump. Chains of lightning shackle Aella and pull her to the ground. The Nomad looks on with a sad face.

 

Chaos still roars in the distance.

 

“I am lost.”

 

And the last thing they remember is a glowing hand on their shoulder and a wind blowing through.