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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1649190" data-attributes="member: 9626">TIE, the Final TestsThe next area appeared to be a natural cavern, but one without any apparent exits or entrances.  It looked a little unstable, but there were nearly a half-dozen stone pillars that were holding up the ceiling.  However, after looking at them for half a second, it was obvious that the base of each pillar was composed of a statue of various beings.  The statues were frighteningly realistic, which was especially unnerving considering the medusa the party had fought earlier!    But there were bigger concerns at the moment.  A sixth pillar apparently stood near the middle of the cavern, but it was toppled over, and was being held up by an apparently living giant.  Seeing a potential enemy, the party drew their weapons, but the giant only laughed at them.     Confused, Tal asked, “What are you doing?”    The giant replied, “Well, what does it look like? I’m trying to keep the ceiling from crushing me!  Heh, not that it matters anymore.”    “What do you mean?  How did you even get here?”    “Well, I’m one of TIE’s servants.  When he first recruited us, he gave each of us a habitat of our choosing.  However, when the test began, he tried to make the challenges less predictable by teleporting each of us to another habitat.  I got stuck in the medusa’s room, and the ceiling was too low.  I accidentally knocked the main pillar out of place, and I’ve been trying to hold it up ever since.”    Fnipper shrugged.  “Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to kill you and pass this test, should it?”    However, after hearing this, she only laughed again.  “Sure, if you all want to be crushed along with me.  As TIE’s servant, I’ll be restored to life.  But I doubt he’ll extend the same benefit to you.”    Realizing they had a dilemma, the party decided to explore the cavern a little more, and hope they could find a way of defeating their opponent and thus passing the test without being instantly killed in the process.  Eventually, Robin found the medusa’s personal equipment, including a larger number of sashes in many different colors, and a few pages of her journal.  Unfortunately, it was largely destroyed in the initial cave-in caused when the giantess toppled the pillar, and the few pages remaining were out of order.  The journal pages read as follows:…It appears that the central pillar in my room is weakening.  My master has agreed to help me support it, by indicating where a stone column should go next to ease the stress on the main column whenever it looks a little weak.  I decided that I could finally start a new collection of interesting figures this way, by using the subjects as part of the columns.  However, he warned that if they were set up or brought down in the wrong order, it could shift the balance of the ceiling a lot, and it could bring the whole place down.  I can only set them up in the right sequence to safely support the main pillar, and if I ever changed my mind about a subject, I’d have to first remove all the ones that I set up after that subject in reverse order to prevent a cave-in!  I guess I just have to be really certain about each subject before incorporating it into a pillar……In retrospect, I’m glad the sashes got arranged the way they did.  I prefer my male figures to have a little more color, and the gray one was too plain.  Not that is matters anymore……I was a little worried when I added the Yak-man to the collection.  After all, I had added the ogre mage to the other supports already, and two horned humanoids might clash.  Still, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers……What a great birthday!  I was able to add a third statue to my collection today.  Even better, I was able to force a sash of my choosing on my subject first.  I decided to celebrate by having the sash match my eyes……I always liked the color purple, so I’m glad I was able to get one on one of my subjects.  None of the statues that I could have brought in from home had one, but at least one of the recent gifts from my master could have one……I think the red sash was a good choice.  It suited his horns and brown fur well.  Too bad no one but me will ever appreciate it, but such is the curse of the artist, I guess……This was an amazing way to finish my collection!  This again proves that the aura of beauty, no matter how great, is no match for the aura of power I possess.  I wasn’t able to force a sash on her before the fight, but luckily she picked up a sash in the only color I didn’t use yet before the fight started.  I guess she chose it because it matched her eyes.  They were a pretty color, I guess, if a little to close to a typical human’s for my taste.  Of course, they’re forever brown now……My master was nice enough to summon the statue for my first support column from my old collection, though he warned that after this, I’ll have to take what I can get.  I know exactly which one I’ll ask him to bring.   After all, she was one of my finest pieces, and so hard-won as well…    Using this information, the party looked at the five statues, which consisted of a female warrior woman, a small dragon, a monstrous horned woman, a furry horned man, and a beautiful woman who looked very angry.  Using the journal entries, and the party’s knowledge that the dragon was a male (based on Tal’s experience with dragons,) and that the medusa had gray eyes (a fact that Fnipper will never forget,) the party was able to defeat the giant by slowly forcing the weight of the entire ceiling on her already-taxed muscles.  She soon was crushed by the strain, but her body was still able to hold up the ceiling long enough for the portal to the next area to open, which the party dove through at high speed.(By the way, the details were sparse in this area so you could try to solve the puzzle yourself.  The answer is in the OOC Notes at the end.)    The party ended up in a forest, but the trees were gigantic.  The smallest were comparable to redwoods.  “I’m guessing that this was where that giant came from,” Tsine commented.      Suddenly, Fnipper turned and said, “Shhh!”  He sensed that there was someone else here, but it couldn’t be seen.  His instincts were almost immediately rewarded.    “Greeting adventurers,” a voice out of nowhere said.  “I am Mintran-Thrain, and I currently serve the being you call TIE in exchange for my life, which he rescued from certain death many years ago.  I have no personal quarrel with you, but I must fight to test your strength.  En guarde!”    Fortunately, the party was mostly able to react faster.  Tal saw through his familiar’s eyes to see their foe, which looked at the moment like a brilliant and powerful elf.  He pointed out the creature’s location to the rest of the party, and then fired at the creature with his magic.  His effect vanished near the creature, but Robin, Grockith, Galeron, and Fnipper used his directions to charge at the creature.  However, with the exception of Fnipper’s, who was protected by his own anti-magic resistance, all of them were stopped short when they came near him.  Tsine noticed that this was similar to a spell he heard about, that creates a shell which prevented any living thing to come close.  Fnipper got a decent hit off when he did get close, however.  Realizing this small one might be a threat, Mintran flew about ten or fifteen feet away, and created a wall of force between him and his enemies, so he could pick them off at his leisure.  This tactic easily blocked Tsine’s latest spell, but Thorrun had more luck with his spell, which stripped all invisibility effects in the area.      Now that they could see their enemy, the party could attack more effectively.  Of course, they had to first deal with the wall, so everyone tried to climb, jump, or fly over the wall, or just try running around it.  Robin, Grockith, and Fnipper managed to get to the other side, while Tebryn, Tsine, and Tal used magic to fly over it.  Galeron and Thorrun were having more trouble, however.  The party’s fighters soon were punished for their enthusiasm, however, for the now-visible Mintran fired a prismatic spray of colors at the three of them!  No one suffered any permanent injuries, but Robin was almost killed by a massive bolt of electricity, and Grockith was injured almost as badly by acid.  However, they were prepared for the fight now.  Tal and Tebryn’s magic failed again, but Robin was able to hit him repeatedly with arrows, Grockith wounded him slightly with his breath weapon, and Fnipper got another hit in as well.  A panicked Mintran used magic to heal all of his injuries, but Tsine was able to dispel his anti-life shell, and Grockith was able to finally get close to his enemy.  He and his rhino devastated their foe, and the rest of the party was able to finish him off easily.  Mintran dissolved into sparkling dust, and one of the tree trunks opened up, revealing a path.They found themselves back on the mountain where this mess started, but they were much farther up it now.  They were on a ledge, and a giant gate carved out of the mountain itself stood in front of them.  It opened automatically moments after the party arrived, and with some apprehension, the party went through it.  They found themselves in a long corridor filled with luxurious items and artwork.  At the end, there was another opening, which led to a gigantic bedroom.  Inside, there was large dragon with dark gray scales sleeping on a large bed.  It was apparently oblivious to the party, when they entered the room, it suddenly spoke.  “Well, it’s about time.”Tal nodded.  “TIE, I presume.”“Yup!  You finally passed all the tests needed to speak to me.  Congrats!”Galeron, however, looked troubled.  “What about the creatures we killed to get here.  You forced us to fight a creature of good for your own amusement?”TIE laughed.  “Oh, them.  Don’t worry, they’re fine.  I rescued them each from otherwise certain death, and they agreed to serve me for a while in exchange.  It was only fair.  And I already brought them back to life, with no ill effects.  Though, it was all for my own amusement, to be honest.”“But why?”“You try living for five million years, and see how bored you get sometimes.  Besides, heroes are supposed to fight challenges like this.  It’s character building, so stop whining about it already.  Now, you may be wondering why you’re even here, right?”“The loot, I’m hoping,” Fnipper replied.Tal quickly stepped in front of him.  “Well, actually, we have been having these mental compulsions every time we’ve been hearing your name.  And they have been very painful actually.  We thought you could explain why?”TIE smiled.  “Yes, actually I can.  I have a message from The Lady Memory for you.”“Well, what is it?”TIE shook one of its massive, claw-fingers.  “Tut tut.  I’m afraid you’re not ready for that just yet.  There is one more test to complete first.”The entire party groaned, and Tal asked, “What’s that?”“You must fight me.”  As it said this, it suddenly got up out of its bed.  As it did so, it uncurled its tail, which was previously under its body.  This alone was very unnerving, as the tail appeared to be made entirely out of energy, glowed, and didn’t so much end as fade into infinity.  “Don’t worry.  I won’t use anything near my full power, of course.  Gods would fall easily to it, so expecting a much of mortals to go against it would be pointless.  Plus, fighting at full power takes effort, and you guys aren’t that amusing.  So, are you ready?”Without waiting for a reply, it curled the end of its tail into a circle on the ground, and then somehow leapt into the hole, causing it to disappear.  Apprehensively, the party followed, and ended up in a strange new landscape.  The sky was a strange purple color, and except for various ruined stones, the landscape was completely featureless.  TIE leapt into the air, and took flight.  Robin opened fire with his arrows, while Tal, Tsine, and Tebryn fired with magic.  Fortunately, unlike many of their earlier foes, TIE didn’t seem to have any spell resistance.  Strangely, their attacks merely struck a force field a few feet from its head.  “Hey, what’s with this thing?”  Tebryn yelled.  “How are we supposed to fight you with that thing?”“Don’t worry.  It takes energy and effort on my part to keep it maintained.  If you do enough damage to me, I’ll concede defeat” TIE replied.  It then dove behind a stone column, and as it flew, it released a dozen energy spheres.  These appeared to be arranged at random, and initially didn’t seem to do anything.  However, when Grockith and Fnipper followed its path, the orbs suddenly turned and flew at them whenever they got close.  Fnipper was able to easily evade them, but a few struck Grockith and his mount hard.Robin, fearing the future effects of these orbs, began to direct his fire on them, while Galeron moved to follow Grockith and heal him, and Tebryn caught up to Grockith to catch a spell on his mount, that would let him fly to face their foe.  Meanwhile, TIE flew from one column to another, while firing an energy ball from its tail at Tsine, whose magic was doing the most damage to it.  The energy orb struck Tsine hard, and almost knocked him off his feat, but he kept his focus.  Grockith charged at his foe, while much of the party was forced to watch impotently from the ground.  Galeron and Thorrun were able to heave a few ranged spells and crossbow bolts, but poor Fnipper couldn’t even get close to their enemy.  At one point, he tried to taunt it, in an attempt to lure it to within fighting range.  “If it were up to me, you wouldn’t even be allowed to exist!” he yelled.At the time, he didn’t realize the foolishness of this tactic, since if he actually said something that did make TIE mad, it might forget about holding back and turn the poor gnome into a smear.  Fortunately, TIE retained its light mood, and replied, “Well, it isn’t really up to you, now is it?”  However, it was sufficiently annoyed enough to attack him with its tail.  Instead of striking him with it, however, TIE wrapped its tail around his legs, and then lifted him into the air!  It then flung him at Robin, giving them both a very painful injury when they collided.However, this didn’t affect Grockith, who was now right next to TIE and was beginning to tear into its shield with his weapon, or Tsine and Tal’s continued magical assault.  TIE flew out of the way of Grockith, evading his party shot as it flew, and then ducked behind another column.  Suddenly, its tail flew into the sky and seemed to split and grow until it filled the sky, and then created multiple portals in the air.  Tons of seemingly random junk rained out of it, striking the entire party multiple times, though some of them were able to partially or totally evade the dimensional debris.  Angrily, Grockith, Robin, Tsine, Tebryn, and Tal converged on TIE, and even Galeron and Thorrun were able to fire bolts of searing light at it.  Under the torrent of blows, TIE finally rose up and shouted “Enough!  The test is over, and you have passed!”It created the portal with its tail again, and flew through it, and the party again followed.  They were again in TIE’s bedroom.  “Okay, now that you have proven yourself, I will give the message.  The goddesses, the Twelve Sisters that you worship, are not the original versions of themselves.  In my journeys across other dimensions, I met the original Twelve Sisters, and was admittedly interested in them.  I mean, you’d be surprised how female-exclusive pantheons there are in the multiverse.  Now, much later, I ended up on your dimension again…”“Again?” a suspicious Tal asked, but TIE just continued its story like it didn’t hear the question.“…and I noticed that things were not going well as of late.  This was shortly after the two empires first started to come to power.  Now, I decided to take some time to relax and see what was going on, and I began to occasionally visit the old gods.  At one point, I was speaking with Wee Jas, and I mentioned these Twelve Sisters.  Wee Jas was fascinated, and the two of us came up with a plan.  To counteract Nerull’s power, we needed to create gods that drew power from him.  Eventually, shortly before she had to flee the plain, Wee Jas set actions in motion that would create Bha-Ael, who would then create the other goddesses.  In other words, not only are your goddesses completely made up, they’re tied intrinsically to Nerull, the god of death!”“But why would Lady Memory use you to give this message?  Why does she care at all?” a shocked Galeron asked.“Well, I’m nigh-omnipotent.  I have no good reason to lie.  And like I said, I was pretty instrumental to creating your gods, so it makes sense to her that I’m the one to tell you.  As for why she’d want you to learn this, well, I guess she just has reasons for you to know the truth about your gods.”Suddenly, Tsine had an idea.  “Wait, does this mean you know who she is?  Can you tell us?”TIE shrugged.  “Can I?  Sure.  Will I?  Nah.” Seeing their hostile looks, it quickly continued, “Oh, save your outrage.  I’ve done more than enough to help your stupid plane already, and your struggle to learn the truth should be far more amusing to me.  And it’s really for your benefit anyway.  These heroic struggles for the truth don’t work unless you actually work to earn it.  If some random pretty-much-all-knowing being gives you all the answers, it cheapens them.  You have to learn to solve your problems by yourself.“However, that doesn’t mean I won’t help you at all.  You lot have been far more interesting than most of the things I’ve had to deal with.  I’ll be happy to answer a few questions for you before you leave, and if you really need help later, you could come in later to ask.  Or maybe I’ll get bored again, and I’ll come asking for you.  I’ll make it worth your while.”Robin had the first question.  “I have a good question for you.  Who exactly is it that has been trying to kill us with those stupid ‘nothing personal’ guys?”TIE nodded.  “Ah, that would be the Nightmare Prince.  He’s recently discovered a new spell that lets him bind others to his will, and has apparently been having a lot of fun with it lately.  If you want to put a stop to it, I’d suggest you talk to Quercus’ sister.”Tal then asked, “About Bas.  What should we do about her next?”TIE pointed at Robin.  “Pretty much the same thing I told him.  Seek out her Strife Masters, and try to learn more about Bas’ organization from them.  If you can prove Bas’ existence to your kingdom, that would be helpful as well.  Oh, and Fnipper, you have another reason to go after the Nightmare Prince.  He has a few of your family members in his home, as slaves or prisoners”Tebryn then asked, “What should I do?  I don’t know anything about this Lady Memory thing, and I have no idea who Bas is.  Why am I here?  How can I find my place here?”  Grockith nodded.  It was clear he had the same question.“Well, in your case, I’m guessing you were sent her by the goddess you call Lolth.”“Why?”“I think she’s trying to taunt you somehow.  If you could figure out what Lolth has to do with this plane, maybe you could use this knowledge against her.  As for you Grockith, it’s pretty much impossible that you could save your kingdom at this point.  Even if you could go back in time and somehow stop the empires from forming, the temporal paradoxes and destiny re-writings it would cause would be cataclysmic.  However, you can find a life here, and after discovering much about the events that destroyed your kingdom, you could work to rebuild your land, and possibly even revive some of the people you remember from you past from the dead.”Only Fnipper remained, since Galeron and Tsine were happy with Tal’s question.  “I don’t suppose you could tell me more about what is happening to my family, can you?”TIE responded, “Not without penetrating Bas’ divine barrier.  And I could do that easily enough, but not without getting involved in the politics of this world to a degree that I’d rather not be.”“Well, then, my question is: where’s our loot?”TIE smiled a big, toothy grin, which is easy for a dragon to make.  “Yes, some reward for passing all my tests would be appropriate.  I think that, say, one copper piece would suffice.  Now, where would you like it?”Fnipper thought quickly and responded, “Since I’m guessing this is a trick somehow, place it right in front of me.”TIE chuckled.  “Clever little gnome.  Right, here’s your reward.”  It curled its tail into a portal again, and a solid block of copper five feet high, wide, and deep landed on the ground with a deafening thump.  “I don’t suppose you’d mind moving it to our home back in Methosilang, would you?” Tal asked.“Certainly” TIE replied, and created another portal under the block.  “Now then, you can rest here for longer if you like, but I’m guessing you’re currently in a hurry, so I won’t insist.”“We agree,” Tsine replied, and prepared to teleport the party away from here.  Even now, however, he was feeling dizzy and feverish, as the magical aspects of the disease he caught in the technological dungeon began to take effect on him.  However, he wasn’t the only one who was getting sicker.  Unsatisfied by TIE’s answer, Tebryn began to harbor thoughts of destruction, and getting revenge on this whole stupid plane.  Grockith wasn’t much better.  His mind began to get disturbed, as the code he swore to follow began to fade as much as every old symbol of the home he lost was.OOC Notes:  Told you this would be a long one!  Of course, much of the puzzle was just copy/pasted from my original notes, but still.  Anyway, as mentioned before, TIE is a character I’ve been working with for a very long time by this point, so I could handle its personality very well by now.  Hopefully, that came through a bit in the writing.    I was just a bit disappointed with the fight with TIE, however.  Mostly because it had a few moves I didn’t get around to using in time (including a breath weapon!)  There will, however, be another fight with it later in the campaign, which was handled a bit better.  I was also a little disappointed with how they handled the coin question.  Not that I’m sorry they got the money or anything, but it would have been amusing if they either were annoyed by the amount and gave it to the poor or something, or if one of them asked to put it in his hand!    Oh, and the puzzle solution was (spoiler tags ahead) :[SPOILER] 1.    Female paladin woman, black sash.2.    Male wyrmling crystal dragon, purple sash.3.    Female ogre mage, gray sash.4.    Male yak folk, red sash.5.    Nymph, blue sash.So the party had to remove the statues in reverse order from that.  [/SPOILER] If you have some questions about the puzzle, I can help you figure it out, though you may have to give me a few minutes, since I haven’t had to actually figure it out myself for a while!</blockquote>

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