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Tizbiz Zeitgeist Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7400520" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p><strong>Crypta Heraeticorum</strong></p><p></p><p>We venture down the hall and are positively surprised to feel that our magic seems to be coming back. We find some objects on an altar: Iron trinkets which seem to act like magnets and magical torches. Ottavia explains that these items must be some kind of keys to the inner crypt, so we better take them with us. </p><p></p><p>However, we soon realize that there is a huge door blocking the entrance to the inner crypt. And while we quickly figure out the mechanism to open the door – an invisible chain that needs to be pulled down and locked behind a pole – even the three of us combined are simply too light-weighted to pull down the chain. </p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(Auryn being “small” and therefore pretty lightweight for an Eladrin is a running gag in our Zeitgeist campaign, but Carlyle isn't much taller and only a bit heavier. And Ottavia seemed to have an even smaller frame.) </span></p><p></p><p>So Ottavia says that she could continue her planned summoning spell to get celestial help in the form of a Bralani. We accept her offer and a slightly confused Celestial guardian greets the oracle only to be used as additional leverage. </p><p></p><p>The four of us finally manage to pull open the door only to face a towering tidal wave that seems to be locked in time. We quickly realize that the wave is rising and lowering whenever we pull or release the chain and so identify it as an illusion. We ignore the crashing wave and emerge as dry as before. </p><p></p><p>In the next room we find a rich library containing “heretic texts”. The books are far too many to read them all, so Carlyle and Auryn decide to sort them roughly by source: We ignore all texts written by or for or about demons and their worshippers and get all holy scripts and theological-historical tomes that look elfaivaran. Also, we find a rare collection of Miller's theorems which are signed by the philosopher himself and decide to free this library of their “corrupting influence” (<span style="color: #008000">*cough cough*</span>).</p><p></p><p>We tell Ottavia that while we'll surely read these books first, we'll also make sure to get them to places where they can serve their original author's intents: In the case of the elfaivaran books, we wish to get these back to Auryn's people as they were stolen from them. In the case of Miller's scripts, there are surely lots of scholars and researchers who'd be more than grateful to get their eyes on these authentic texts. Ottavia doesn't object and so we proceed to collect the tomes of interest. </p><p></p><p>We leave the library after a while and get to a corridor filled with water. There we see two boats, one of them fancy and decorated with ornaments, the other one old, rusty and barely able to float. We remember the teachings of Triegenes and his origins as a humble fisherman, take the old boat and succeed. </p><p></p><p>After the wet corridor, we find a door inscribed with the saying that courtesy is the most beautiful of decorations and we get that this door needs some sort of password to pass through. As Carlyle is master of polite courtesy, he tries his full repertoire of reverences, but the door stays close even if he gets the gut feeling that he's clearly on the right path. Auryn observes this for a while and jokes that, were that her door, she'd just demand it to open for her. The door doesn't seem to like that though. After a while, Carlyle asks the door to “please open up” and this seems to be doing the trick.</p><p></p><p>(<span style="color: #008000">“Wasn't that a bit too simple?” Auryn asked afterward and Carlyle responded that “maybe the simple minds of the Godhands wouldn't know much more expressions of courtesy than a plain old 'please'”)</span> </p><p></p><p>After the door we find a well-equipped armory. As in the library, ancient elfaivaran armors, trinkets and weapons are stored right next to those of demonic origin and Auryn sneers at so much ignorance. We take some time to sort the eladrin artifacts from the true corrupt ones and Carlyle even finds a small statue of Srasama that must have belonged to a priestess once. He asks to keep this one for himself and Auryn doesn't object as she knows that her colleague is eager to understand the nature of the goddess. She then writes a small note, remembering that “courtesy” theme, in which she apologizes for "plundering the armory" and explains that these items have to be returned to their place of origin and also their original purpose.</p><p></p><p>This earns her an honest laughter from Ashima-Shimtu. “You truly believe that anyone will read your puny note? To them, you are nothing more than a demoness.” she whispers from somewhere down the complex.</p><p></p><p>Next we find a room with three doors. We find three keys on a long forsaken rack and while they do work on the doors, the corridors behind each door only leads back to the very same room. As we know that persistence might be valued by followers of Triegenes, we just walk down the same corridor a couple of times, but we don't really make any progress. We then take some time to search for hidden doors or clues. We do find an old note saying “Haha, you're dead, dummy!” but thankfully there is no trap or other deadly mechanism attacking us.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(Yeah, Tizbiz returned the favour. I used this very same note when his character searched Nina Glibglammer's room in my WotBS campaign. Nina really had her desk trapped with a poison needle though</span>)</p><p></p><p>After a while, we try to split up and this seems to work as we all end up in another room. But this time, a wall of ice is blocking our entrance. Now we did remember to bring the torches, but Auryn prefers to use her own magic to speed things up and so she burning hands her way through the ice. </p><p></p><p>Behind the icy wall are lots of cursed objects. We try to identify them from a safe distance and understand that many of these items can be quite lethal to a clueless user. So we better keep our hands from them. Fortunately, these items seem to be of human making and are therefore not really interesting for us. </p><p></p><p>We head for the next door, only to find ourselves teleported back to where we came from. “Ah, this one is easy. Does anyone have a golden loop? A ring? I'm not too fond of gold, you know.” says Auryn, looking curiously at her company. </p><p></p><p>“Well, you could just wear this golden choker over here. But I guess it would choke you quite literally.” Carlyle jokes while pointing at one of the cursed items. This, however, earns him nothing less than death stares from Auryn who isn't really keen on discussing the inappropriateness of certain jokes in front of Ottavia. </p><p></p><p>(<span style="color: #008000">This and the Fordren joke a week ago – or so – made her think that Carlyle really left his butler persona behind whenever he was impersonating Hector and then kind of “forgot” about Auryn's sensitive topics. And yep, he completely shocked her both times as she didn't see it coming.</span>) </p><p></p><p>We do still have our mage-cuffs with us though and these let us move through the teleporting door quite easily. Behind the door, we find a corridor filled with reddish looking mist. We get that this mist must contain iron as it reacts to our magnets and as we really don't wish to inhale floating rust particles, we clear our way with the magnets and reach another door. As Auryn approaches this door, she feels suddenly pulled towards the ceiling as her rapier moves upwards.</p><p></p><p>We soon realize that this is another magnetic device which caught Auryn's starmetal weapon and unfortunately no one of us is strong enough to pull it off again. She curses heavily in elvish as she's grown really fond of Dr. von Recklinghausen's gift and doesn't wish to leave it behind. Carlyle just makes sure to remove all metal items from his body and approaches the door. As soon as he reaches it, he finds a switch that opens the door and shuts down the magnetic mechanism, and both Auryn and the rapier suddenly drop from the ceiling. </p><p></p><p>To our surprise, we find that the next room contains living people who are imprisoned in cages. Ottavia explains that these poor souls, who look more like zombies than people, are cursed humans who were beyond saving even for the most powerful priests of the Clergy. Auryn tries to help them anyway by performing a sacred dance of Srasama and conjuring down the goddess' holy light. But it doesn't seem to have any effect on them, so we decide to leave them imprisoned here.</p><p></p><p>The next door requires a connection between two electric poles, so we all line up to close the circuit and the door opens. Behind the door, we find glass tubes in which more people are kept imprisoned. Judging them by the looks, we'd guess that they were once Paladins or Godhands of the Clergy who became tainted and corrupted by demonic influence. They try to trick us into releasing them, but we see right through their lies and apologize for not being able to help them. </p><p></p><p>As soon as we're about to leave them behind, one of the armored knights calls out to us again and claims that he knows this eladrin lady from 500 years ago when she came here in the company of a priest named Miller. Auryn answers that she's not Kasvarina, but she does know about her as she's her ancestress. She then asks the knight about the matriarch, her reasons to be in a cursed place like this and why she'd be with a Clergyman. He doesn't know much more, but says they must have been pretty close as they were holding hands.</p><p></p><p>Now this is getting more and more intriguing. We discuss what Kasvarina might have been up to and whether she had come here before or after the Malice. Auryn explains that she has always been an enemy of the Clergy and continued to hunt down high ranked Clergymen even after the war had ended. Carlyle adds that Miller had been branded a heretic, so they might have shared a mutual hatred against the Clergy. Or maybe Miller freed her from captivity? After all, we know that Kasvarina was said to be caught and executed by the Clergy, but that would be just one of the many lies they told to keep their populace in check. </p><p></p><p>We also discuss whether Miller might have been a Deva and survived his Pyre by reincarnation. Carlyle mentions the worrisome irony of such a coincidence, as they'd then be the second Deva-Eladrin pair to venture these cursed halls. </p><p></p><p>The next obstacle is a mirror who tries to fear everyone who comes close with a screaming face. We try to cover the mirror with blankets and other clothes, but that doesn't seem to help. One of the knights sees our futile efforts and brags that he does know the trick and he'd be eager to share it with us in exchange for his freedom. We thank him for the offer, but prefer to continue on our own. Finally Carlyle has a flash of inspiration, takes out his own pocket mirror and reflects the mirror's face back to its origin. This causes the mirror to become afraid itself and drag Carlyle right through it. As neither Ottavia nor Auryn know whether this was a good or bad result, the two women discuss other methods of interacting with the mirror before doing the same as the Deva. </p><p></p><p><span style="color: #008000">(We all know the horror-stories about dungeons, doors and spheres of annihilation. Mr. Carlyle's player had a high level wizard who lost an arm due to one of these. Not that I'd believe that a Zeitgeist dungeon would be so cruel to throw random PC deaths at us, but one should be cautious anyway...)</span></p><p></p><p>Fortunately, we arrive right behind the mirror where Carlyle has been waiting patiently.</p><p>“I thought you'd never come...” he sighs in relief and together we continue our way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7400520, member: 6816692"] [b]Crypta Heraeticorum[/b] We venture down the hall and are positively surprised to feel that our magic seems to be coming back. We find some objects on an altar: Iron trinkets which seem to act like magnets and magical torches. Ottavia explains that these items must be some kind of keys to the inner crypt, so we better take them with us. However, we soon realize that there is a huge door blocking the entrance to the inner crypt. And while we quickly figure out the mechanism to open the door – an invisible chain that needs to be pulled down and locked behind a pole – even the three of us combined are simply too light-weighted to pull down the chain. [COLOR="#008000"](Auryn being “small” and therefore pretty lightweight for an Eladrin is a running gag in our Zeitgeist campaign, but Carlyle isn't much taller and only a bit heavier. And Ottavia seemed to have an even smaller frame.) [/COLOR] So Ottavia says that she could continue her planned summoning spell to get celestial help in the form of a Bralani. We accept her offer and a slightly confused Celestial guardian greets the oracle only to be used as additional leverage. The four of us finally manage to pull open the door only to face a towering tidal wave that seems to be locked in time. We quickly realize that the wave is rising and lowering whenever we pull or release the chain and so identify it as an illusion. We ignore the crashing wave and emerge as dry as before. In the next room we find a rich library containing “heretic texts”. The books are far too many to read them all, so Carlyle and Auryn decide to sort them roughly by source: We ignore all texts written by or for or about demons and their worshippers and get all holy scripts and theological-historical tomes that look elfaivaran. Also, we find a rare collection of Miller's theorems which are signed by the philosopher himself and decide to free this library of their “corrupting influence” ([COLOR="#008000"]*cough cough*[/COLOR]). We tell Ottavia that while we'll surely read these books first, we'll also make sure to get them to places where they can serve their original author's intents: In the case of the elfaivaran books, we wish to get these back to Auryn's people as they were stolen from them. In the case of Miller's scripts, there are surely lots of scholars and researchers who'd be more than grateful to get their eyes on these authentic texts. Ottavia doesn't object and so we proceed to collect the tomes of interest. We leave the library after a while and get to a corridor filled with water. There we see two boats, one of them fancy and decorated with ornaments, the other one old, rusty and barely able to float. We remember the teachings of Triegenes and his origins as a humble fisherman, take the old boat and succeed. After the wet corridor, we find a door inscribed with the saying that courtesy is the most beautiful of decorations and we get that this door needs some sort of password to pass through. As Carlyle is master of polite courtesy, he tries his full repertoire of reverences, but the door stays close even if he gets the gut feeling that he's clearly on the right path. Auryn observes this for a while and jokes that, were that her door, she'd just demand it to open for her. The door doesn't seem to like that though. After a while, Carlyle asks the door to “please open up” and this seems to be doing the trick. ([COLOR="#008000"]“Wasn't that a bit too simple?” Auryn asked afterward and Carlyle responded that “maybe the simple minds of the Godhands wouldn't know much more expressions of courtesy than a plain old 'please'”)[/COLOR] After the door we find a well-equipped armory. As in the library, ancient elfaivaran armors, trinkets and weapons are stored right next to those of demonic origin and Auryn sneers at so much ignorance. We take some time to sort the eladrin artifacts from the true corrupt ones and Carlyle even finds a small statue of Srasama that must have belonged to a priestess once. He asks to keep this one for himself and Auryn doesn't object as she knows that her colleague is eager to understand the nature of the goddess. She then writes a small note, remembering that “courtesy” theme, in which she apologizes for "plundering the armory" and explains that these items have to be returned to their place of origin and also their original purpose. This earns her an honest laughter from Ashima-Shimtu. “You truly believe that anyone will read your puny note? To them, you are nothing more than a demoness.” she whispers from somewhere down the complex. Next we find a room with three doors. We find three keys on a long forsaken rack and while they do work on the doors, the corridors behind each door only leads back to the very same room. As we know that persistence might be valued by followers of Triegenes, we just walk down the same corridor a couple of times, but we don't really make any progress. We then take some time to search for hidden doors or clues. We do find an old note saying “Haha, you're dead, dummy!” but thankfully there is no trap or other deadly mechanism attacking us. [COLOR="#008000"](Yeah, Tizbiz returned the favour. I used this very same note when his character searched Nina Glibglammer's room in my WotBS campaign. Nina really had her desk trapped with a poison needle though[/COLOR]) After a while, we try to split up and this seems to work as we all end up in another room. But this time, a wall of ice is blocking our entrance. Now we did remember to bring the torches, but Auryn prefers to use her own magic to speed things up and so she burning hands her way through the ice. Behind the icy wall are lots of cursed objects. We try to identify them from a safe distance and understand that many of these items can be quite lethal to a clueless user. So we better keep our hands from them. Fortunately, these items seem to be of human making and are therefore not really interesting for us. We head for the next door, only to find ourselves teleported back to where we came from. “Ah, this one is easy. Does anyone have a golden loop? A ring? I'm not too fond of gold, you know.” says Auryn, looking curiously at her company. “Well, you could just wear this golden choker over here. But I guess it would choke you quite literally.” Carlyle jokes while pointing at one of the cursed items. This, however, earns him nothing less than death stares from Auryn who isn't really keen on discussing the inappropriateness of certain jokes in front of Ottavia. ([COLOR="#008000"]This and the Fordren joke a week ago – or so – made her think that Carlyle really left his butler persona behind whenever he was impersonating Hector and then kind of “forgot” about Auryn's sensitive topics. And yep, he completely shocked her both times as she didn't see it coming.[/COLOR]) We do still have our mage-cuffs with us though and these let us move through the teleporting door quite easily. Behind the door, we find a corridor filled with reddish looking mist. We get that this mist must contain iron as it reacts to our magnets and as we really don't wish to inhale floating rust particles, we clear our way with the magnets and reach another door. As Auryn approaches this door, she feels suddenly pulled towards the ceiling as her rapier moves upwards. We soon realize that this is another magnetic device which caught Auryn's starmetal weapon and unfortunately no one of us is strong enough to pull it off again. She curses heavily in elvish as she's grown really fond of Dr. von Recklinghausen's gift and doesn't wish to leave it behind. Carlyle just makes sure to remove all metal items from his body and approaches the door. As soon as he reaches it, he finds a switch that opens the door and shuts down the magnetic mechanism, and both Auryn and the rapier suddenly drop from the ceiling. To our surprise, we find that the next room contains living people who are imprisoned in cages. Ottavia explains that these poor souls, who look more like zombies than people, are cursed humans who were beyond saving even for the most powerful priests of the Clergy. Auryn tries to help them anyway by performing a sacred dance of Srasama and conjuring down the goddess' holy light. But it doesn't seem to have any effect on them, so we decide to leave them imprisoned here. The next door requires a connection between two electric poles, so we all line up to close the circuit and the door opens. Behind the door, we find glass tubes in which more people are kept imprisoned. Judging them by the looks, we'd guess that they were once Paladins or Godhands of the Clergy who became tainted and corrupted by demonic influence. They try to trick us into releasing them, but we see right through their lies and apologize for not being able to help them. As soon as we're about to leave them behind, one of the armored knights calls out to us again and claims that he knows this eladrin lady from 500 years ago when she came here in the company of a priest named Miller. Auryn answers that she's not Kasvarina, but she does know about her as she's her ancestress. She then asks the knight about the matriarch, her reasons to be in a cursed place like this and why she'd be with a Clergyman. He doesn't know much more, but says they must have been pretty close as they were holding hands. Now this is getting more and more intriguing. We discuss what Kasvarina might have been up to and whether she had come here before or after the Malice. Auryn explains that she has always been an enemy of the Clergy and continued to hunt down high ranked Clergymen even after the war had ended. Carlyle adds that Miller had been branded a heretic, so they might have shared a mutual hatred against the Clergy. Or maybe Miller freed her from captivity? After all, we know that Kasvarina was said to be caught and executed by the Clergy, but that would be just one of the many lies they told to keep their populace in check. We also discuss whether Miller might have been a Deva and survived his Pyre by reincarnation. Carlyle mentions the worrisome irony of such a coincidence, as they'd then be the second Deva-Eladrin pair to venture these cursed halls. The next obstacle is a mirror who tries to fear everyone who comes close with a screaming face. We try to cover the mirror with blankets and other clothes, but that doesn't seem to help. One of the knights sees our futile efforts and brags that he does know the trick and he'd be eager to share it with us in exchange for his freedom. We thank him for the offer, but prefer to continue on our own. Finally Carlyle has a flash of inspiration, takes out his own pocket mirror and reflects the mirror's face back to its origin. This causes the mirror to become afraid itself and drag Carlyle right through it. As neither Ottavia nor Auryn know whether this was a good or bad result, the two women discuss other methods of interacting with the mirror before doing the same as the Deva. [COLOR="#008000"](We all know the horror-stories about dungeons, doors and spheres of annihilation. Mr. Carlyle's player had a high level wizard who lost an arm due to one of these. Not that I'd believe that a Zeitgeist dungeon would be so cruel to throw random PC deaths at us, but one should be cautious anyway...)[/COLOR] Fortunately, we arrive right behind the mirror where Carlyle has been waiting patiently. “I thought you'd never come...” he sighs in relief and together we continue our way. [/QUOTE]
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