The Dauntless IV: Fury Road

Suki likewise takes a shot. "Never thought a Gold could be so... so....." She waves one hand vaguely in the air for lack of words. "I thought they were supposed to be the most righteous breed. The Cinderclaw must've had quite the influence."

”If his plan for the ritual is the best one, I see his reasoning,” Dorrak admits. ”Sometimes to destroy great evil you have to go to measures that would be unacceptable otherwise. This is too far though.” After a brief pause, he adds, ”Speaking of going too far, Commander, there is another problem you should be aware of. Have you heard of Uri Zandivar?”

"Head of talent acquisition? Yes, I'm familiar. Met him a few times, seemed like a decent fellow. Why?" Inizra narrows her eyes. "You gonna tell me he's a Dahak cultist or something ridiculous and horrifying like that?"

"A slaver, actually," Dorrak replies with a grimace. "He ran the largest slaving company in Katapesh for a decade after Mengkare scaled down his operations. He's dead, but that's not the problem at hand." He takes a slow breath, "This is information that can't leave this room, but I believe you can be trusted with it. He was trying to repair a broken Orb of Gold Dragonkind, an artifact capable of dominating the minds of gold dragons. Before we were able to stop him, he sent it to his sister, who lives here, and we don't know her name, only that Zandivar described her as "brilliant, beautiful, and dangerous," which, frankly, feels like it could describe a great many people here."

"... it's a terrible day when that's not the worst thing I've heard all day." Inizra sighs. "You're very correct. 'Brilliant' and 'beautiful' could apply to any woman on the island, as could 'dangerous' to any deceptive enough to rebuild an Orb of Dragonkind and bring it to Hermea under Mengkare's nose. Any other revelations about my home and the people on it I should be concerned about?"

"Alright," Inizra nods. "Well, I have good news and bad news on that front. The good news is that I can instruct the guard to let you move freely and cooperate with you for most of the city. The bad news is that the Archives are below the Golden Citadel, and the Citadel guards only answer to Mengkare, not to me. You're on your own for infiltrating them."

"Not a problem. Obviously we'd rather avoid a conflict with the guards, so we'll have to plan an alternative," Dorrak says. "We appreciate any support you can provide though, are you able to tell us anything about the Citadel and its layout?"

"Not much, actually," Inizra admits. "Not that I don't want to, but I'm not permitted to tell you anything about areas you aren't supposed to be. I can tell you about the areas that are available to the public, though." She sketches out a quick map, leaving several areas blank but giving you an otherwise decent explanation of the spaces you'll be able to freely enter.

The Golden Citadel is a colossal building with a domed roof that rises up to 400 feet at its peak, with four 600-foot towers framing it and walls made of what seems to be gold. The doors are 18 feet wide, though a smaller door is set inside for huse by humanoids. When you enter the council chamber, it seems almost as though you haven't gone inside at all. A large, octagonal depression is carved into the floor in the center of this enormous chamber. Sets of stairs lead down into the pit and allow access to a large stone platform at its center. A smaller group of stairs leads up to this platform where a table stands surrounded by thirteen elegant chairs. Two platforms, each holding a podium, are located at the north and south ends of the pit. The room itself is an immense, open chamber with what appears to be a four hundred-foot wide opening to the sky above. The domed walls curve down on all sides, decorated with carvings of glittering cliffsides and forested slopes on the dome’s inner surface, painted with exquisite, realistic detail. What  appears to be mist and clouds drift slowly across the painted landscape. Below, to four sides of the immense area, sit smaller structures built into the dome’s inner walls. These structures’ rooftops are covered with soil, serving as gardens with berry bushes, pleasant wildflowers, and small trees, giving the interior space four green swaths to help create the illusion that the central council hall sits at the bottom of a natural gully in a forested valley, complete with a ceiling that looks to the casual observer as though it were the sky above, complete with a shining sun and clouds gently moving across it. In this chamber, you see two guards standing vigilantly, casually observing the doors leading into the smaller structures.

After observing the guard's patrols and identifying a stairway leading down in a restricted area, you all use a solid window to head down the stairs and into the archives. Down there, you find a catalogue of individuals with archives access. After looking up your current candidates for Uri's sister, you head through a hallway full of sleeping quarters, before opening the door into a main library. Bookshelves fill the majority of this room. Each bookshelf is packed with dozens of tomes and scrolls. A large table and several stools stand against the room’s southern wall. A pair of doors are located in the southern wall. Another door can be found in the eastern wall. This room is not unguarded, though. A crystalline draconic figure is in here, and notes your presence immediately on entering.

"HALT," it declares in a monotone. "THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA. ACCESS TO THE ARCHIVES IS CURRENTLY SUSPENDED. PLEASE REMOVE YOURSELVES FROM THE PREMISES."

The draconic construct immediately hits the whole group with a wave that strips the strength from them, which hinders them greatly going forward. The group surrounds it, though most of the damage comes from Suki and Antoinette's flames rather than any strength behind blows it takes. Dorrak shields what he can, and Django heals the most grievous of wounds, even hitting it with a couple potent spells, then right after that weakening breath wears off, Antoinette's jaws bite into the crystal and shatter it.

The dragonshard guardian shatters, leaving a pile of blue crystals. One shard from the center of the creature stands out though, made not of crystal but what seems to be solid gold.

"Well isn't that interesting?" Suki says, approaching the shard. Picking it up, she looks it over carefully. "I guess we've found one of the shards that Uri never could, though I wonder why Mengkare would be keeping it here of all places. Or why he'd be keeping it at all."

"If he can't destroy it further, this would be the safest place," Dorrak guesses, "Citizens of Hermea can't enter, and even if anyone else could, they'd have to destroy that construct to get it. Which was far from an easy task."

"If you keep your weakness nearby, you at least know where it is," Antoinette adds. "It's got power, being a piece of a major artifact. That's definitely useful. Probably what allowed him to give this construct gold dragon breath attacks. As for what we do with it now, I think we take it with us. The artifact it comes from is an abhorrent thing, and we may want to gather all that we can to find a way to permanently destroy the thing."

The group begins to explore the archives further, coming upon evidence of someone who had to abandon the reading rooms quickly, likely when Mengkare revoked all archives access. The group then comes upon citizens records in another room. Upon searching, they do not find entries for Emaliza Saris or Uri Zandivar. Suki immediately goes to check the other room for council records. Antoinette and Dorrak begin searching the room for any hint of Uri and Emaliza. While perusing the L's section, Antoinette sees something deeply unnerving. "It's right here, Emaliza and Uri Logner. Emaliza is the sister Uri was scheming with."

"Damn her. She lied to our faces, and not one of us could tell," Dorrak curses. "Once we finish searching these archives, we should get this information to Inizra immediately. We need to figure out how to either get the orb from Emaliza as soon as possible, or at least make certain that she can't get anywhere near Mengkare when he returns."

"Should we even retrieve the box she asked for? We have no guarantee that it has anything to do with convincing Mengkare. For all we know it's just another weapon she could use against him," Antoinette asks. "The information in these archives is still useful, and may help us somehow, but anything she told us is now suspect."

"We can see what it is, and if it's a weapon to be used against Mengkare, we leave it here," Dorrak suggests. "We may even want to consider doing that with the shard, until we ourselves control the Orb."

"Agreed. If it really can help we should grab it. Otherwise, we leave it here. Either way I say we pay Emaliza a visit after this. I don't like being treated like a pawn in someone else's insane game," Antoinette states.

"We definitely don't want to give the shard to Emaliza, it's safest left here. But yes, we should absolutely take this Inizra once we're finished, get some backing to deal with her," Suki agrees.

Moving forward, the next chamber is identified by Antoinette and Django to be Mengkare's personal archive, and searching it, they find his journal. After reading through, Dorrak sighs, "Well. We know what he's planning, and we know why he thinks it's necessary. I don't believe this is Dahak's influence, that was Emaliza manipulating us."

"His involvement in major historical events is fascinating. His story of the founding of Breachill is disturbing," Antoinette comments. "It's hard to believe his actions led to the eruption of Droskar's Crag. Most disturbing though is that this confirms our suspicions. Our only hope is that he can still be talked down. He carries a lot of guilt, and it's driving him to do the wrong things. We may be able to turn his core drive back into something better though. We have to hope at least."

Dorrak and Django turn their eyes to the shelves, looking for anything on this anima invocation and Django finds many pages of notes on it, identifying that it also would not work with souls that are not sacrificing themselves of their own free will. Dorrak also finds Ekujae writing among the notes. "We've found the ritual. And it looks as though Commander Arumelo's friend was down here working on it."