The Slave and Her Sovereign

[darkbard]

CHANVATI instinctively lashes out with psionic force, jumbling and fragmenting space around the beaked, tentacled horror and shunting it as far away as possible. He knows such dimensional interferences can be dangerous when interacting with cosmological nexes--witness the rift torn by Hakhaman outside the Sanctuary of Light earlier--but desperate times require desperate measures!

---

I'm using Dimensional Scramble to teleport the horror away from us in order to buy some respite for our next move: r(2) +7 = 9 vs ??? 16 Moderate DC? Fail.

Chanvati loses 2 Surges 5/7.

 

[Manbearcat]

1 Successes (0 Hard DC Available)/2 Failures/1 Secondary Skills Available/0 Advantages Available)

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Though it may yet only be an Astral experience, when the Caiphon Kraken’s tentacles grasp Chanvati and Pa’avu, the feeling of squeeze and the flooding of horrifying imagery tells the brain “this_is_very_real.”

Your perspective instantly shifts to being back on your home world. A compelled look skyward reveals the purple-hued Dread Star closing…becoming impossibly huge. The tidal forces pull and twist destructively; trees snap, basins of water climb and yaw, glass breaks and walls collapse. Horrors, unimpressed by the laws of gravity, fall happily from the sky…

Pa’avu’s grip on both her companion’s coat and the spongey-yet-rocky berg begins to fail as the creature threatens to pull them skyward with terrible velocity.

---

What are you guys doing?

Group or Single Escape (= DC 16)? Or do you “let it” pull you out of Caiphon’s plasma?

 

[Nephis]

PA'AVU senses her body's density suddenly increase and grow heavier as her l'pahb'gin seeks to protect her. Feeling more solidly in place as her feet melt into and become one with the spongey-yet-rocky-berg-now-part-goliath, she is now able to regain a firm grasp on her gosb'tar, wrenching him downward with both arms. Deciding to think later about her transformation - when there's time, perhaps - she thinks to herself that at least they are no longer in danger of drowning.

---

* use Stone's Endurance (to increase body density) as a buff (+2)

* Primary Skill Check Endurance (to keep from being pulled upward): r(15) + 8 +2 = 25 Success!

 

[darkbard]

CHANVATI'S mind reels as his consciousness experiences these multiple perspectives at once: both inside the nucleus of Dread Caiphon, with its gelid, purple ichor, its grasping kraken tentacles threatening to squeeze life from him, and outside, watching as the Wandering Star draws close to the real world, pulling all within its ravenous, twisted gravity.

And that's when he notices it: the tentacles of this aberrant kraken phase into and out of existence in brief, sporadic pulses, one then another. Did he not read, back in his days of study at Xerxes's, The Fables of Genga, that purported journal of the deranged alienist and her dreamscape planar travels? Had she not "surfed" the tale of the Limpid Leviathan as it undulated languidly through the Astral Seas, using its capacity to phase between realities to escape her plight and return home? Scholars doubted the Fables's veracity, but does not the existence of the grells, and gricks, and tembos, and id fiends that corrupt the steppelands west of Bantouk suggest that such planar phasing was possible?

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I'm using the one available Secondary Skill Perception r(19) +4 = 23 vs 12 Easy DC to yield +2 buff to

Primary Skill History r(17) +10 +2 = 29 vs 16 Moderate DC = Success. I hope that this sets up my ability to use Arcana (with Adept's Insight) to navigate phasing between planes against the final obstacle in this SC and thus avoid overall Failure. This would mean I need to roll no higher than a 4 (pending outcome of Adept's Insight d4, possibly even an autosuccess) to succeed at the Moderate DC for Arcana.

 

[Manbearcat]

3 Successes (0 Hard DC Available)/2 Failures/0 Secondary Skills Available/0 Advantages Available)

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The memory firms up the (un)reality before them.

The silvery strands of their Astral forms, the "connective tissue" of their "bodies" in this place and their corporeal twins in the material world, float "skyward" with a reach unfathomable. They intertwine with each other, with the Astral cosmos, with the phasing Kraken's tentacles, and all other facets of this planar excursion.

It is an extreme risk to attempt this for it brings about the prospect of The Dread Star's Doom; a terrible, psychic affliction of the mind. But the unfortunate reality is, the payload of those tentacles is the same that persists within Caiphon's plasma and they may already have endured too much exposure. There is little time to do more than merely consider the consequences...

 

[darkbard]

CHANVATI sees their chance and grasps it! As their Astral forms, their silver cords twist and phase with the tentacles of the kraken, he opens his mind, dissolving all sensible boundaries between ego and what lies beyond. Both his form and Pa'avu's become wave functions as they fluctuate between realities. And then it happens. As if by a great vacuum, but whose inevitable effect transcends the vastness of time and space, their projections and bodies occupy the same form once again.

---

Primary Skill Check Arcana r(8) +10 +r(4)+1 = 23 vs 16 Moderate DC. Success. Overall Skill Challenge Failure averted from the precipice. Whew.

 

[Manbearcat]

Nested SC complete. 1 Success in the macro-SC:

1 Successes (1 Hard DC Available)/1 Failures/1 Secondary Skills Available/0 Advantages Available)

XP

* 350/2 = 175 apiece

LOOT

* Residuum worth 100 GP

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The words of Eyo-urth-shala, not speaking through her herald, ring out from somewhere that seems far away, but growing nearer as the pair reacclimate to their worldly bodies.

"I said...I bid you good luck in your hunt."

Shunted back into their bodies, their senses accept that their world is not sundered. The trees remain. The water washes correctly downward from mountain tributaries into lowland reservoirs. The integrity of structures persists. The Dread Star is not actually imposing upon their world. Perhaps a brief glimpse of a dark future?...or an alternative one?...or perhaps a promise by the celestial alien entity?

Pa'avu feels something in her hand. Residuum torn from the "Caiphon-berg" that somehow managed the journey from Astral to Material? As she looks at it, she's forced to reflexively snap her hand shut to protect it. The winds that carried the divination to Hakhaman have suddenly shifted...and violently.

An unthinkable cosmic secret is screamed at the gathering, riding this galeforce wind. Determined to convince them via force or force of will, a telekinetic, psychic assailant made of deranged word and raw fear demands they turn...no, flee...from their course.

---

Medium DC

 

[Nephis]

PA'AVU quickly stuffs the strange substance into her pouch, knowing that her gosb'tar will find it useful later. As vibrations from the cosmic scream shake the goliath's body, her l'pahb'gin feels the challenge issued and digs deep to bring forth not stone this time but iron - the iron wolf of her warrior forebearers.

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* Primary Skill Check Intimidate: r(1) + 10 = 11 vs 15 Moderate DC = Fail.

 

[Manbearcat]

1 Successes (1 Hard DC Available)/2 Failures/1 Secondary Skills Available/0 Advantages Available)

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In a battle of fearsome forces of will, Hakhaman’s sponsored magic rarely loses out.

Pa’avu takes the brunt of the spell with steely determination, but the test leaves her rattled even if her stoney visage doesn’t betray as much.

---

Pick your consequence for Round 1 of the coming combat with the Warlock @Nephis :

* -2 to Hit UtEoYNT.

* Down 1 Healing Surge worth of HP.

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The entrance to the subterranean complex beneath Tarquin’s estate is profane as it cuts through the heart of the family cemetery and dredges the bowels of the crypt.

The chain is slack and the wrought-iron gates are narrowly open, swinging subtly in a chill breeze. The mausoleum stares at you, well downrange of the long avenue that bisects the grave plots. Vultures look on like sentinels in the trees (1). The stench of carrion does not hang in the air. Hunger does not direct them. They are in service to another master.

The litanies required (2) to circumvent the main avenue by walking the perimeter that is the ancient family plots are inscribed on the gravestones in “the old tongue.” Either deeds of the family or the sacred rites and hymns must be delivered unbroken, lest the spectral guardians of this place will cast you as grave robbers and defilers whether it be true or not.

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Chart your course.

1 = Hard DC.

2 = Medium DC but failure is a combat encounter with the spectral guardians.

Regardless, if you fail here, you lose the SC and we cut to Hakhaman’s lair where he’s prepared for you (+1 Standard worth of Encounter Budget).

 

[darkbard]

CHANVATI has visited the family crypt on several occasions in the past, for no death of a significant relative has gone unmarked by the rites and hymns passed down among House Audaseie in maintenance of the family deeds and achievements. But though he knows the old tongue, he is no Custodian of the Annals. Is his reading true, and does his pleasant tenor carry the proper nuance?

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Using his knowledge of Draconic (should that warrant +2 buff, like an Encounter Power?) Primary Skill Check History r(15) +10 (+2?) = 25 (or 27) vs. 15 Moderate DC. Success, regardless.

@Nephis says Pa'avu will start the next combat down a Surge's worth of HP.