Ruins of Azlant Gameplay I

The man pauses, before managing to give a short nod. He opens his mouth, then closes it, swallows, and opens it again to speak. "Yes, I can," he gets out, working his jaw uncomfortably. "It's been so long under... that thing's control," he says, repressing a shudder, "It feels as if I've forgotten how to move my own body."

"You're free now," Aisha assures him. "And we'll be freeing everyone else here too, but anything you can tell us will help."

"The southern half of the cathedral is flooded," the soldier begins, speaking more smoothly as he readjusts to controlling his own body again. "There's a strange laboratory somewhere far below, where the other colonists are being held inside cells behind glowing sheets of green energy."

"Besides the faceless, do you know the identity of any of your other captors? The one who ensorcelled you?" Aisha asks.

The man shakes his head. "Too dark to see anything under the water," he says, shuddering again at the thought.

"It may take days for your companions to stop being under their control," Amissa says. "Do you remember the last time they refreshed their magic on you?"

"It's too much of a haze," the man says with a frown and shake of his head.

"We'll need to keep them under surveillance for the foreseeable future, then." Amissa nods. "Are you okay to stay here while we investigate further, or do you know of a more secluded space where you won't be noticed by the other faceless?"

"Erm... there were faceless sent out of the temple, recently, I think," the soldier remarks with a look of concentration. "Did you deal with those?"

"We did encounter a fairly large group of faceless. We managed to kill all but one of them," Amissa confirms. "The last one escaped."

"I can handle one faceless if it does find us," the soldier says with a nod. "So perhaps the safest place for us will be to make camp somewhere outside the temple."

With that handled, the party moves to explore the temple, methodically exploring room by room.

Gears, hammers, shears, springs, tongs, and plentiful other tools and components lie scattered on shelves and on the floor of the first room. The room’s main features are a large hearth with a darkened metal hood and exhaust duct above it, and an anvil placed in front of it. A single steel gear is lying on the anvil, and right next to the anvil is a stack of metal tablets with cogwheel-shaped indentations of different sizes on them.

The walls of this gear-shaped room have seven alcoves, each five feet deep and fitted with a horizontal metal shaft. Each of the hollow, cylindrical shafts has six notches cut around the outer edge. In three of the alcoves stands a trio of intricately sculpted metal statues, one in each alcove.

Three fifteen-foot-tall cylinders of polished bronze each stand on a dais in this long, curved room. The bronze shells look sturdy and heavy, and sizzling arcs of lightning can be seen and heard dancing along the surfaces of the containers. Silvery lines set into the floor connect these containers, and tiny embedded crystals pulsate with a dim light every few seconds.

Two stone cabinets stand against the south wall of this chamber. A few ancient robes lie crumpled in the room amid fine, colored dust and other debris. The party finds a couple of the magic robes are still in good condition, which they loot before moving on.

Stone shelves on the walls of this storage room are full of jars and vials of different sizes. A sweet but musty smell hangs heavy in the air. As the party begins searching this room, the floor creaks, then gives way beneath Amissa and Kaimana, dropping them into a pool of water below. Many stone coffins rest on shelves built into the walls of this submerged chamber. Kaimana helps Amissa climb out; by the time the two had reached the solid floor above, three of the coffins' lids slid off, crashing into the pool as a trio of barnacle-covered corpses crawled out and began to swim, then climb towards the party. Between Jax's claws and Kaimana's blade, the corpses are returned to death the moment they reach the party.

Once the undead are handled and the room is looted, the party decides to explore a hatch hidden in the water below. Aisha takes a bottle of air from the room and walks along the bottom, while Kaimana helps Amissa swim and Jax swims alongside through the doorway.
On a large dais occupying the central position in the room is a statue of a man sitting on a throne and holding a hammer in one hand and a closed book in the other, but the statue’s head is missing. Beside it stands another statue, and four others yet remain standing among the crumbled remains of other statues that litter the floor. The second statue on the dais depicts a muscular woman wearing a helmet with a Y-shaped opening for the eyes and mouth, wielding a nine-foot-long spear and a large, round shield adorned with a symbol reminiscent of a crescent moon. The statue standing left of the dais depicts a beautiful Azlanti woman with a look of mourning on her face, carrying a harp and a knife. The statue in the northeast corner depicts a bearded man in a flowing chiton, wearing a gilded laurel wreath and holding a large key in his hand. The statue in the southeast corner depicts a distant woman with long, flowing hair and skulls hanging from her toga. Her arms are crossed defiantly across her chest. Aisha can identify the warrior as Acavna, a long-dead goddess of the moon and defensive battle, while Amissa is able to identify the other intact statues. It recognizes the woman as Shelyn, and recalls that, in the days of Azlant, she did not yet have her brother Dou-Bral’s glaive, which she acquired after her brother was transformed into Zon-Kuthon. This statue represents Shelyn after she and Dou-Bral had their conflict that prompted him to embark upon a journey to unknown realms. During this time, prior to his monstrous return as Zon-Kuthon,
she was often depicted as being in mourning for her lost sibling. She identifies the man as Abadar; the ancient Azlanti saw him chiefly as a god of cities and gold, rather than of law. The fifth statue depicts Pharasma, goddess of death, prophecy, and rebirth. After looking through this room, the party continues through a flooded doorway into the corridor beyond.

At one end of the corridor stands a statue depicting a hooded figure with four arms. Her armor and mask are sculpted to give her the appearance of a woman, but the spaces between the plates of armor reveal that her body consists of clockwork gears. One of her arms is extended, pointing an accusing finger at a statue at the opposite end of the hallway. The other statue, standing in a semi-circular alcove behind thick steel bars, depicts a stern woman with no mouth.

Four Skum turn in shock at the open hatch, but quickly swim to engage the intruders and grapple both Jax and Kaimana before they are able to react. Aisha inbibes a potion, intending to swim up to help, but even restrained the two are able to tear through three of the Skum. The fourth swims away in a panic, leaving a crimson trail of blood suspended in the water.

Moving on, the group open another door, finding themselves in a library. Many long bookcases of fine marble stand side by side in this room. Some of the shelves have been smashed to pieces, and countless marble fragments and remains of ancient documents are strewn about the floor. The few surviving books and other documents on the shelves look wrinkled and fragile. The air in this room is stale and reeks of mold. Nestled between the crumbling shelves against the north wall a multicolored fungus faintly glows with swirling patterns, casting dim light in the corners of the library. Amissa holds up her hand, stopping the group from approaching.

"It looks like this is a primsatic mold," she says after a few moments of evaluation. "It's easily disturbed, and when it is, it expels clouds of spores that can have a variety of harmful magical effects. That said, it's simple enough to nullify its magical properties. Just a moment..." Amissa takes her spellbook and flips through it quickly, stopping on a set of pages and committing them to memory, then mumbles some words and makes some hand gestures. The mold's glow fades. "There. It should be safe to approach now."

Moving on further, the team finds themselves in a wide corridor with sturdy, ornate columns. Cracks mar their surface and a few of them have fallen into pieces on the once fine marble floor of the cathedral. At the south end of the corridor, water spurts out of a broken fountain. In here stands four faceless stalkers and a hunched, reptilian beast loping on two clawed feet, its eyeless head dominated by a huge circular maw filled with jagged teeth. Amissa relays that the beast uses powerful screams offensively and sees using hyper-sensitive ears, a piece of information that makes Aisha split into a grin when she hears it repeated in Celestial. After the group is rocked by a harsh scream, Amissa catches all the faceless stalkers with eldritch tentacles springing from the ground, while Aisha snaps her clawed fingers and fills the monster's ears with iridescent mist that dissipates quickly, taking its sense of hearing with it. With the monster deprived of its most important sense, it falls quickly to Jax and Kaimana, unable to avoid their attacks, only getting one last scream out before perishing. The faceless stalkers die just as easily, battered, melted, and sliced to pieces by Amissa, Jax, and Kaimana.

With those cleared, the group finds a secret door leading into a storage room, which they loot efficiently, then they walk into a strong vault with battered steel chests scattered across the floor , their contents strewn throughout the room. The thick stone walls are reinforced with steel bars and look nearly impenetrable, but the door to the vault has been torn off the hinges. Kaimana picks up a coin, and suddenly Amissa and Jax are struck with jealousy and attack. Aisha, recognizing the room as haunted, charges a healing spell in her hands and shouts at the others to leave while she works on it, but upon hearing Kaimana point out that he can't understand she realizes her curse is at work. Fortunately, after Kaimana only takes a couple blows from Jax, who he holds in place until Amissa comes to and translates Aisha for him. They flee the room, and Jax soon follows just as Aisha suppresses the haunt.

"Alright, it's clear," she calls back to the others, "We need to take all the valuables out of here to put the haunt to rest, so time to make some money I guess!"

"Seems as good an excuse as any," Kaimana notes with a grin, going to clear out the room.

"I'll help in a moment," Jax replies. He leans with his back to the wall, face cradled in one hand with his arm supported by the other. A careful look would reveal his other hand is slightly trembling.

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