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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9796767" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 9: WHAT THE SHIFT JUST HAPPENED?PC Roster:Amris Goodwitch, celestial elf witch (wizard) 4                     Avoroth Bleakborn, fiendish human cleric 4                     Gonkle Bu'Onk, fiendish orc fighter 4                     Wilbur Von Schattenwalde, shadow human druid 4Game Session Date: 5 November 2025 - - -"Everyone, stop where you are!" commanded Avoroth, pulling back on the reins of the two fiendish horses, Victor and Blackie, bringing them to a halt.  The black, coffin-sized object upon which the fiendish cleric and Wilbur, the shadow druid, had been standing came to a halt as well, still floating a foot or so above the ground.  To either side of them, Gonkle and Amris brought their own mounts to a halt."Does anyone remember the shift?" asked Avoroth."No..." replied Amris.  "I remember we were standing just inside the perimeter of the town, waiting for the shift to occur, and then...this.""Anyone else?" demanded the cleric."We're obviously on Mechanus," observed Wilbur, pointing to a massive gear hovering upright just ahead in the distance.  It looked to be covered in a forest of thick trees, all blissfully unaware that the normal tug of gravity should have sent them all sliding to the bottom, where that gear interlocked with the one upon which the four planar scouts and their mounts stood.  This one was covered in a vast meadow, with grasses growing up from the soft ground.  Avoroth looked behind him and saw only the tracks in the yielding earth where the horses' hooves had kicked up divots of dirt."Someone's tampered with our memories," snarled Avoroth, indignant at the offense.  "Before we make another move, I want to know what exactly is going on."  He jumped down from the floating rectangle of blackness and gave it a thorough once-over.  "This is a force effect," he said."It looks similar to the forcecage spell," pointed out Amris.  "The size and shape are different, that's all.""Is there any way of opening it?" the cleric demanded.  He looked at it from all angles, but there didn't seem to be any opening mechanisms."Dispel magic, I suppose," offered up the witch.  "I can't cast that spell yet, though.""Me neither," murmured Avoroth.  Then something else caught his eye: there were black marks, like a tattoo, on the back of his left hand.  Looking closely, he saw the following:"What's this?" he demanded, trying to rub the glyphs from his skin, with no luck.  The others had the same markings upon their skin, in the exact same place: the back of their left hands."It's an arcane mark," Amris said.  "Placed there by a spellcaster.""Possibly the same one responsible for our memory loss," speculated Wilbur.The elven witch cast a read magic spell to see if she could decipher the runes.  "They mean, 'fourth of the final.'" she told the others."What's that supposed to mean?" snarled Avoroth.  "I don't like this - I don't like this at all!""Well," pointed out Wilbur reasonably, "there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it at present.  We seemed to be headed towards that big forest gear, I presume for some reason.  We might as well continue on, and perhaps explanations will present themselves.""Or we could ask that guy," suggested Gonkle.  The others looked over at the fiendish half-orc, astride his hell-mount Runtlemeat.  He was pointing ahead and off to the left; looking in that direction, the group saw a strange figure approaching.  It was humanoid in build, but seemed to be made of metal, with arms and legs made of mere struts, connected to a torso and head that were both boxy and seemingly made of metal as well.  His facial features, however seemed more of a fleshy nature.  The strange little being held a rolled-up piece of paper in one mechanical hand, and seemed to be running directly at them with some haste.  Gonkle noted the creature's lack of apparent weapons, but his hand moved to the haft of his warhammer hanging from his saddle, just in case.The odd mechanical being ran directly to Amris, chirping and whirring in some strange language.  He passed her the scroll, upon which was written, in the Celestial script:Amris read the message aloud to the others, then read it aloud again at Avoroth's request.  It seemed as if whatever they left with the leader of the Modron mining camp might be some kind of lead towards their missing memories.  They decided to follow the duodrone back to its camp, but since none of them spoke his strange mechanical language and he didn't seem to know any of the languages the scouts knew, they communicated by pantomime until they got the idea across.  But dawning comprehension crossed the duodrone's facial features and it nodded, then turned back the way it had come, beckoning for the group to follow.  Wilbur and Avoroth jumped back on what they had decided to call the "force coffin," Avoroth picked up the reins, and they were off.The modron mining camp was off to the left of the direction the group had been traveling when they seemed to have "awoken" in Mechanus.  When they arrived, they were greeted by another odd figure, this one with a three-sided, triangular body supported upon six legs.  Each face supported a single eye and a fully-formed mouth, and three mechanical-looking arms projected from the seams of its faces.  Fortunately, one of the tridrone's hands held an amulet of tongues, allowing it to understand and speak other languages.  "Thank you for coming to our aid, but this unit must admit this unit is surprised you survived the trip to the Factory.""You know about us going to this Factory?" demanded Avoroth.  "Can you tell us what happened to our memories?"  His planar studies had informed him about the River Styx, whose waters could erase the memories of those who drank it.  He wondered if they had they been forced to drink such waters."Ah, you have no memories of the Factory!  This explains your survival and continued existence.""You sent word you needed immediate assistance," urged Amris.  "How can we help?""There is an ant problem in the mines.  Somehow, the ants transformed the leader of this unit and those below this unit, a quadrone, into some kind of tentacled monstrosity.""A chaos beast, perhaps," mused Avoroth, drawing upon his teachings of extraplanar denizens."Unknown," replied the tridrone.  "But the ants then kidnapped the new leader of this unit and those below this unit, a tridrone like this unit that became a quadrone.""Does the word 'formian' mean anything to you?" asked Avoroth."'Formian' is another name for 'ant.'" replied the tridrone."I don't get the problem," interjected Gonkle.  "If they're just ants, why don't you just squish them?""Formian workers are the size of large dogs," replied Wilbur.  "Warriors are bigger than our horses.  Myrmarchs and queens are even bigger yet.""The ants showed up from and retreated to the new shaft in the lowest level of the mine.  This unit can show you the way, so you can rescue the leader of this unit and kill the invading ants.  Or this unit can take you to the tentacled monstrosity first, if you prefer."Talking it over quickly among themselves, and seeing as how the "tentacled monstrosity" - the former modron leader - still had the "important document" the party left with the modrons, they decided to deal with that first.  "Please take us to the tentacle-beast," replied Amris, dismounting from her own hellish steed, Flick.  The others followed suit and followed the trinary being as it scuttled along on its six mechanical legs.  They were led to an abandoned shaft currently being used as a holding cell for the monster.  This creature stood upon five legs, supporting a body rather like that of a starfish, with five thick upper appendages, each sporting an eye and a mouth.  It immediately began speaking in clicks and whistles, and when that produced no results, switched over to the Celestial tongue, which Amris spoke fluently."Greetings," it said to the witch.  "This unit is pleased to see you survived the Factory.""Can you explain what all is going on?" Amris asked the pentadrone.  It explained how modrons evolved: when one of their number is slain, the nearest modron from one rank lower transformed into the same type as the slain modron.  When the scouts were last here, the pentadrone explained, it was still a quadrone, peacefully leading the mining camp.  But when the ants attacked, they apparently slew a pentadrone, likely from one of the camps dedicated to containing the ants to the underside of the gear.  As the nearest quadrone, he was instantly "promoted," and the nearest tridrone likewise was transformed into a quadrone.  It was this new quadrone that had been taken by the ants, and which needed rescue."Why haven't you explained all of this to the other modrons?" asked Amris.  "They think you got turned into some sort of monster.""All modrons can communicate with those of their own rank, those beneath them, and those one rank above them," explained the pentadrone.  "The tridrones, duodrones, and monodrones of the camp cannot understand me.  This unit needs a quadrone to act as a go-between for this unit and those below this unit."Amris, the only one of the scouts able to converse with the pentadrone, hastily caught the others up as to what it had said.  Avoroth, however, was only interested in the note it had for them.  Using Amris to translate his question, the pentadrone happily passed on a document to the group.  This one read:"So we apparently agreed to having our memories wiped," mused Avoroth aloud.  There was no mistaking his own signature upon the document.  "But what are these runes here?" he demanded, pointing to the last two markings on the document.  Amris translated his question into Celestial, and smiled when the pentadrone gave his answer."'Omega Chi,'" replied the witch.  "And since they're in black....""Obsidian Omega Chi," sighed Avoroth, kicking himself for not having realized the answer himself.  Obsidian Omega Chi was one of the four leaders of the town of Elsewhere - the fourth of the final, apparently.The pentadrone began speaking in Celestial again, and Amris nodded.  "It wants us to go rescue the quadrone from the ants, so it can continue on with its normal functions," she translated.  Turning to the tridrone, she asked it to lead them to the mine tunnels where the ants had been spotted."Follow this unit," replied the tridrone, leading the group to another section of the mines, the lowest carved thus far.  About halfway down the shaft stood two formian warriors, insectoids with a centaurian build, their four back legs supporting their bodies while the two forelimbs served as arms.  Wilbur was the first to react, channeling a flaming sphere down at his feet through his shadowflame runestaff and sending it rolling down the mine to collide with one of the warrior formians.  However, it sidestepped the black-flamed ball of negative energy fire.Avoroth cast a bless spell and stepped forward into the mouth of the tunnel, his quarterstaff in hand ready to fend off any attacks from these oversized house pests.  But the warriors were much quicker than they looked, easily getting past the cleric's defenses and stabbing at him with stingers being thrust forward from between their legs.  Avoroth slapped one away with his staff but the other stabbed him through his armor, the venom leeching away a portion of his strength.Amris stepped up beside the cleric and cast a magic missile at the second warrior, who had managed to sidestep the flaming sphere partially blocking the tunnel.  Gonkle rushed forward with his falchion raised over his head and struck down at the same formian, bringing all of his considerable strength to bear.  The strike split into the warrior's carapace, severing thorax from abdomen, and it died where it stood.Wilbur pushed Amris aside and stepped in front of Avoroth, realizing his own shadowy nature made him better equipped for front-line fighting.  He mentally sent the flaming sphere to chase after the remining formian from behind, but it managed to dodge the rolling black flames.  Avoroth backed away and cast a shield of faith spell upon himself, all the while grumbling under his breath that this is what he could expect when he tried playing at heroics; best to leave such maneuvers to his underlings - why else were they there?The formian stabbed forward at Wilbur with its wicked stinger, while simultaneously clawing at him with its foreclaws and bending forward to try to bite him.  But wrapped up in shadows as he was, Wilbur managed to avoid all but the stinger.  He too felt some of his strength being drained away, but it was a much lesser dose than Avoroth had experienced, with a significantly less severe effect.Amris cast another magic missile at the formian warrior, while Gonkle sought to replicate his severing blow upon this new foe, with no success.  Wilbur's strike with his own weapon likewise failed, as did his attempt to guide the flaming sphere into the formian's side.  From the safety of being out of range of the insectoid's physical attacks, Avoroth cast a spiritual weapon spell that sent a glowing quarterstaff of solid force energy flying at the big bug.  This attack managed to at least hit the sole remaining foe, to the cleric's relief.Wilbur suffered another sting from the formian's barb-tipped tail-section, but the effects were once again minimal.  Amris tried casting a scorching ray at it, but perhaps from her concerns about accidentally hitting the shadow druid, she missed her target altogether, the gout of flames going wide from its mark.  But then Gonkle's falchion struck the warrior across its throat, and the sole remaining foe joined its fellow in death upon the stone floor of the mine.Avoroth wasn't yet powerful enough in his spellcasting to be able to cast a neutralize poison spell to deal with the venom coursing through both his and Wilbur's veins, but a guidance spell cast upon himself and a resistance spell cast upon the shadow druid helped them both to avoid any further weakening from the injections of poison they'd each received.  "Now what?" asked Gonkle, whose darkvision allowed him to see the tunnel in which they'd slain the two formian warriors was a dead end."There must be something here," surmised Amris, stepping down the tunnel.  Sure enough, a few slabs of rock had been moved into place to mostly cover a side tunnel to the right.  Avoroth allowed Gonkle and Wilbur to do the heavy lifting involved in clearing a path, but it opened into a winding tunnel leading into a much larger cavern.  Wilbur cast a barkskin spell upon himself as they traveled down the tunnel.This larger tunnel was full of motion.  Off to the right, four formian drones scuttled about, pulling rocks from the walls of the mine, marking them with specialized runes using some sort of marking rods, and then placing them into readied receptacles on the far side of the cavern.  These receptacles were in the shape of a wide arc, much like the Ω symbol without the lower appendages.  Off to the left stood two formian warriors, one facing the approaching group and the other at the far end, hovering over the missing quadrone.  Its cubic body lay unmoving.Wilbur cast a shillelagh spell on his runestaff and ran past and around the closest warrior, readying himself to attack it from behind where it would be least likely to be able to defend itself.  Avoroth cast an aid spell on himself - if nothing else, it would partially help counter the weakness he'd succumbed to from the venomous attack he'd weathered earlier - but he opted not to go rushing into the cave willy-nilly until the others had deployed themselves...as potential alternate targets for the warriors to attack.  The cleric was already pretty much out of attack spells and wouldn't be dealing a whole lot of damage with his quarterstaff, but he could at least ensure the quadrone's safety.The second warrior - the one over by the motionless modron - suddenly spun about and Wilbur found himself being attacked from behind.  Fortunately, this pair didn't seem as adept at their attacks as the first two had been, and the druid's shadowy nature once again assisted him in avoiding all attacks - at least for the moment.Amris cast a Melf's acid arrow at the formian warrior facing Wilbur, coating its exoskeletal carapace in a caustic brew that caused its outer surface to start to smoke.  It squealed in pain but continued trying to attack the shadowy human before it; the worker drones, in the meantime, ignored the combat going on around hem and carried on with their task, assembling what Avoroth could only imagine was some sort of teleportation circle - no doubt the means by which they had gotten this far into the modron mines in the first place.Gonkle cut deep into the first warrior's carapace with the blade of his falchion, causing it to focus its attention upon this new threat and allowing Wilbur to disengage from battle, for he was starting to get concerned about what the worker drones were doing; no sense in allowing them to complete their circle and possibly gate in reinforcements.  Avoroth saw his moment and rushed into the cavern, swinging wide around the combatants and heading over to the modron.  This was the first quadrone he'd ever seen; it had a cube as a body, with spindly, mechanical arms and legs like the duodrone who had approached the group in the meadow.  A pair of incongruous wings, feathered like those of an angel, stuck up from the back corners of its cubic body, but it didn't have a head - rather, its two eyes and mouth were centered on the front face of its square frame.  At the moment, both eyes were closed and of course it didn't seem to be breathing, but Avoroth was fairly sure this was some sort of a construct in any case, so that didn't necessarily mean anything.  But if constructs could be rendered unconscious, that's what it looked like had happened here.Gonkle danced about, avoiding the attacks of the two formian warriors, both of whom had identified the fiendish half-orc as the current biggest threat facing them.  The Melf's acid arrow effect eventually slew the first of these in any case, leaving Gonkle only the one to have to worry about.  But then Amris stepped to the orc's side, slashing at their shared foe with her own longsword.Wilbur approached the teleportation circle and started pulling some of the previously-placed stones out of their sockets, tossing them aside behind him.  Immediately, two of the worker drones stopped what they'd been doing and moved to attack the druid.  He backed away over by Gonkle, and the drones followed.  That turned out to be a mistake, for Gonkle slew one drone with a single stroke of his falchion, then let the blade continue its swing directly into the side of the warrior.  Wilbur attacked the second attacking drone, slicing open its carapace.Over by the quadrone, Avoroth cast a cure light wounds spell into the modron, converting an unneeded spell he's had prepared earlier, "switching the polarity" from negative energy to positive through the Boccob's Tome of Knowledge he carried.  The quadrone's eyes flickered open and it struggled to its feet.  Figuring it wouldn't be able to understand him any more than the other modrons they'd met with, the cleric gave it a "stay here" pantomime and turned to look at the battle unfolding behind him.  The warrior formian managed to stab Gonkle at long last, injecting its strength-draining venom into the fiendish orc.  But Gonkle had a much higher reserve of strength than any of the other scouts in the group and it barely seemed to faze him.  Amris finished it off with the point of her longsword, driving it deep into the formian's flesh and watching as it fell lifelessly before her.The remaining drones soon found out they were no match for the planar scouts; Avoroth, weakened as he was, even managed to finish off the one Wilbur had wounded.  Slaying the rest of them was not particularly difficult for the team.Once they were all slain, the group was able to give a closer inspection to the formians' work.  Amris identified the little rune-wands the drones had been using to inscribe runes upon the stones they'd been fitting into place as magical in nature.  The group pulled all of the placed stones out of their receptacles, and then set Gonkle to the destruction of the receptacles themselves, by dint of smashing all of the surrounding rock with his warhammer, a project he seemed to enjoy almost as much as he'd enjoyed killing the formians.Then, with peace and order restored to the modron mining camp - and with the newly-rescued quadrone able to communicate with the pentadrone and pass on its instructions - the group prepared to return with their original mission: getting the hovering, black "force coffin" back to Obsidian Omega Chi, a project for which they'd apparently signed onto with the understanding there was a good chance they'd lose part of their memories as a result.  But they knew Elsewhere was on a slowly-spinning gear parallel to the one the group was currently standing upon, on the top edge of the forest-gear they had first seen ahead of them when they'd first become aware of being on Mechanus.  It was likely to be about a five-day trip, Gonkle guessed."Best to get on with it, then," suggested Avoroth, climbing back aboard the floating forcecage effect and grabbing up the reins. - - -We're eager for next week's adventure, since Logan has promised "all will be revealed" about our missing memories at the end of the session.  And I already know what Avoroth will be spending his money on: a +2 periapt of wisdom.  And we figure we should be leveling up again after the next two (maybe three) game sessions.</blockquote>

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