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The party hopped out of the rope trick, and spent some more time learning the limits of the room. The way forward was clear: the north door beckoned. But not nearly as strong as an array of hidden doors, which the party exploited the living shit out of, gaining a few minor but permanent character changes, and a Xennish Parry Ball that Alenka obtained by being the closest one to it. The Xennish Parry Ball has an 8% chance to parry incoming attacks. 8% is a lot. As the night would show, 8% is a hell of a lot more like 80%.
Having Get Equipped With: All Kinds of Bullshit, the party made use of light spells, complaining mightily about being forced to track such things (note: no such complaints came from Morgrim, the only one with actual darkvision), and opened the door. The room to the north was the same silent stone, but view was a pillar crafted of some gemlike substance, holding in suspense many smaller spheres of varying sizes, colors, and materials (this eventually was obvious as one of three such structures). But, in such dim light, it was but a faintly flickering pretty object at the edge of dim illumination.
Action came in the form of a massive stone cat with a smaller construct riding on top. And then another, because the first pairing of this wasn't nearly cool enough. The kittyconstruct smiled a massive smile, and swallowed Alenka whole, transporting her to its extradimensional gizzard. The other one eventually managed to swallow Keichi. The smaller constructs attacked with poisoned fangs, but sadly the PCs had AC like WHUT, and no damage was done- or at least, no damage that the totem didn't quickly blurp away. While inside the extraplanar space, Alenka found a pizza-shaped something with a switch- when she activated it, a flumph hopped out, and, seeing that he was still trapped, asked to be placed back into the pizza-shaped stasis field, curling up again.
These constructs were the minions of a magical fiend of some sort- a creature with strange features, an alien robe, and six vipers for hands. The creature screetched mightily at the heroes, picking exorbitantly on the "woodland guardian" and fortelling his doom. Dispatching him was not fast, but it was thorough, with a random wand of cone of cold that Rigby had just looted in the previous room quickly becoming the bestest thing in the campaign. Stupid Proditial region loot!
With the enemy dispatched, the scoured the room, and found some doors leading south, as well as evidence that the three gemstone devices should be operating as a normal part of the Proditial region functions. Also found was a gunning-device of sort, presumably very effective at damaging the guardian constructs (the crew eventually learned that this was a power conduit, and normally not a weapon).
The Flumph introduced himself as XYZ, and stated that he had snuck through the same hole in realities that the mindflayers came through- they meant no good to anyone, and were mucking around with the interdimensional nature of the region- his task was to find native Caligans to defend the area. Unfortunately, he ended up being swallowed by a big stone cat. I'm sure everyone relates to that!
Because Alenka was, uh, out of the room, Ash decided to go ahead and open the door. That worked out well, because it Lithonian into a fused ball of flesh, capable of the occasional mmmrph or even miiiiiiiiiifffffiiiiiiff. This allowed Rigby to devise the cunning game of Elf*Ball, but sadly, the rest of the crew was more concerned about getting their priest back into a shape that more bipedal. Or, really, even monopedal. One of the doors led to the same spherical device that had transformed Alenka into a construct like the servants of Caelum, and they held the wad of elf up to the sphere, hoping that their hands weren't over whatever was the equivalent of an errogenous zones on spherical elves. This allowed Ash to assume his normal tripodal shape, as well as scout the immediate area, as this transition device was not walled off from the main body of the floor with the red walls that blocked progress- however, he discovered that there were gunning-devices aimed at him- he quickly returned, and chose his less bouncy form to resume.
The group then had two ways to go- they could approach as some kind of glowy thing made of triangles and shaped like tripods, phasing through the walls, or they could kick in the door and slaughter the living shit out of everything. They chose the latter, probably because Keichi already knows what stuffing something up the shitter with a katana does to it, but firing disruptors out of a transdimensional nostril is just more prone to failure.
The room was filled with many of two different kinds of medium and small constructs- some were slowly floating metal spheres with trailing tendrils, capable of causing electric bursts- others were four armed horrors with two of the arms just shearing weapons. Some were steering the power conduits / electric cannons at the party, who positioned themselves to be out of range of all but one, and grinded all comers. At this point, with the area secured, they all transitted across the area in phase, and found the stairs upwards.
At this point Ash cast Protection from Evil on every single member of the party, a very clever plan- though these spells would run out before the final conflict, they would refresh themselves with similar protection spells to eliminate the possibility of being dominated by the mindflayers. This would make a very large difference in the way it played out, because my whole plan involved Alenka and Keichi focussing Ash first, then the wizard, with the pixie then playing the role of 9th key Pacman with no power pellets left.
The group proceeded south, and found an area of walls and narrow passages. In this way, a group of two... projections? Appeared. Both shapes were undefined, only shadow, but both wore clothing to indicated gender, and both spoke threats. They then retreated through solid matter, with the intention of alerting the mind flayers to the presence of the party- but Alenka's sword quickly cycled through all the things until it found a thing that could hurt the female projection, dissipating it. The male projection congratulated them, and told them that they were lucky- and that one day, they would run out of tricks. Morgrim, aware that this was something from another place that meant ill to all reality, decided that he had such a trick RIGHT THAT SECOND, by passing an SR check that he needed a 19 or better on.
Crawling around a bit more, the group then bypassed the last hidden treasure part (well hidden), but given their haul, well, whatever. They lunged into the room of mindflayers fully buffed, resisted or ignored a bunch of psionics, and then absolutely shredded my stupid roguey mindflayers before they had a single action, meaning that they had the AC of peasants and not so many hit points as the PCs had damage. Rigby, locatable by virtue of being the center of an ice cone every single round, softened the mindflayers nearest the door up, and the leader, prepared for just this sort of situation, did a vampiric life transfer power and touched Alenka, draining her for
XENNISH PARRY BALL IS HAPPY TO RUIN ENCOUNTER
EIGHT PERCENT IS A LOT
...Provoking an attack of opportunity, and turning his big life drain into a rapier through his tentacled head.
Two of the mindflayers were mind blanked by the pixie, and eventually ordered through the portal by the one remaining sane and functional flayer. The PCs disabled the portal, but in doing so were sucked through! They caught flashes of realities that they had had some contact with in some way, and then some others... and ended up on the world of Kylon (a planet, since I have to specify that sort of thing), on the island of Nerito, near the north side of lake Malice, close to the village of Senlin. The party, enamored of this world, took samples that they hope to be able to construct a planar tuning fork with in some fashion. Spells seem to take a bit longer to cast than they were used to, but rope trick worked just fine! However, when attempting to pray to Latukefu, a shocked Gyren spoke directly to Ash- but eventually gave permission to pray for Plane Shift.
But, where to get a tuning fork? Having only one extraplanar resource that they trusted, they opened the green door. While the entrance was the same, the rest was shocking- a hugely diverse horde of small fish-like creatures with irridescent scales and feathers flitted about, all with broad smiles, and all in syncronicity. They welcomed the party, and said that this was a momentous occasion that they had all waited for. In the distance was an ocean, and a mountain, and it was by all accounts a nice day to spend at an interdimensional doorway a mile in the air, surrounded by excited sentient creatures of an aquatic history. Soon enough, one large enough to handle the tuning fork floated up- a crab like creature with a smile as long as its body, trying to look as harmless as possible, man sized. It gingerly extended the tuning fork, which the group took, and turned and left.
Upon returning to Caligo, this time via the safe travel of Plane Shift, XYZ had organized their loot for them, and quickly helped them restore the runes, at which point he bid them goodbye, using a portal back to his home reality shortly after their departure. Once the central portal was restored to the air source, the entire Proditial building hummed with the flowing and the purification of air. As they left the room, they became wind- free to land wherever they chose.
I was hoping they would say "Ebon Citadel, outside Tanithluun, Umbra". But, instead, they chose Emerald.
BoOoOoRING
It is Dissonance 45th, towards the evening. The group is resting...
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