Two horsemen ride up to a tavern...

As the glinting from Cal's star map intercepts the twinkling from the starry hand-wraps, a vision strikes the firbolg's mind: a bright guiding star in the sky. In his mind's eye, he sees it take him back west, through Fireblade and beyond. A guiding light for him alone, urging him to head west. Something in that star beckons him -- call for him and him alone. Something out there is...misaligned. Something to do with the famine...and something greater than that.

Emma H. said: As Ash slinks forward, Katrin leans over to Thrandimir.  "Can I talk to you for a moment? Privately?"  She speaks softly, and moves back towards the empty dorm room, indicating he should follow. Thrandimir arches an eyebrow at Katrin, but follows suit. "So secretive Lady Katrin,"  the wizard remarks good-naturedly.  "To what do I owe the honour?"

She stops in the doorway, and glances back down the hall at the group a fair distance away. She looks back, her grey eyes piercing as she sizes him up. "This morning. Seemed awfully eager to hide your face. Hat pulled down and everything. Just want to make sure you're not hiding something that may jeopardize  this group." She clears her throat, as her voice crackles at the end of her sentence. "Anything you'd like to say?"

"Oh?" Thrandimir asks with amusement. "Only my false teeth. Nobody wants to see a gummy old man," he teases, holding out one hand to reveal a set of teeth that shake and chatter by themselves.

Katrin raises an eyebrow, a little unimpressed by his joke. "I just hope that whatever you're hiding isn't more serious than an ugly mole on your chin." She abruptly turns, making as if to join the group. "C'mon Wizard. Wasting daylight." There's a slight smile in her voice as she makes the joke for a second time.

The fake teeth disappear into Thrandimir's robes with a flourish and a dazzling, pearlescent smile, upon which the wizard sets off after the group. Passing the puddles of gore on the dormitory floor, Thrandimir peers at them for a few moments. "Delightful," he adds with a grimace, before moving on.

Zachary H. said: As the glinting from Cal's star map intercepts the twinkling from the starry hand-wraps, a vision strikes the firbolg's mind: a bright guiding star in the sky. In his mind's eye, he sees it take him back west, through Fireblade and beyond. A guiding light for him alone, urging him to head west. Something in that star beckons him -- call for him and him alone. Something out there is...misaligned. Something to do with the famine...and something greater than that. Cal's eyes only widen as the images flood his mind. When it ends, he finds stumbles back a bit. "...My instincts were right... I haven't been led astray at all." Taking a moment to gather himself, he looks up at the others ashamedly and puts on a sheepish grin, "uh well we should probably get a move on y'know? Surely things will only continue turning up as we go!"  With an extra pep in his step the firbolg bounds down the hall to a large set of doors that bear yet another riddle:  What cuts through cities and wanders through fields, but never moves? His mind clear as the astral plane, the answer comes to him almost instantly, "Oh! Roads! It's roads!" With a low hum followed by a powerful shifting of stone, the doors start to open. He turns back to see Ash standing nearby and his face lights up, "Aw man did you see that young mister Ascian, I solved it so fast! The guidance of the stars has never shown brighter!" And with that he turns to face whatever lies beyond the precipice. 

Ascian turns the corner into the room. The room appears to be around 80 feet long and 20 feet wide, with floors and walls made of the same stone that the rest of the retreat appears to be made of. There appear to be two massive alcoves in the center of the room, forming a cross shape. A great crystalline chandelier has flared to light, casting light from the flame at its center all around the room. A table stands, covered in what looks to be old parchment, the writing on which is long faded. A large green crystal sits atop the table, glowing a faint green color. Two large shelves stand against the walls that slant back to meet the main room. Beyond those, a faintly shimmering white barrier can be seen. Past it, Ascian can see another table with scattered, ruined parchment and a ancient, desiccated body atop it.

Slowly, Thrandimir comes around the corner and up behind Ascian, observing the crystals and the energy field with marked interest. Lifting his spellbook from his side, the wizard weaves a brief ritual of detect magic and is unsurprised to find that the colours of the crystals are in line with the phenomena described in Demarkis's work. Divination, necromancy, evocation, he muses to himself, before moving to within thirty feet of the barrier and conjuring a hand of force on the far side of it. He tries to lift one of the pieces of parchment but it immediately crumbles to dust. "Drat," Thrandimir mutters to himself as he thinks. "Ascian, could you see if you can lift the green crystal for me and tell me how it feels?"

Coming up empty from a skim of the shelves and pointedly informed by the parchment he'd tossed into the barrier that further close inspection was against his best interests, Ascian drifts back toward Thrandimir, glancing at him before shrugging and reaching out for the crystal with the sickly green aura. His fingers have no sooner closed around it than the glow seems to pulse beneath his touch and a frown twitches across his face; he pulls his hand back, empty, looking back to the wizard as his fingers flex. "Stings. Not terrible. But it isn't coming out."

Thrandimir nods thoughtfully as he roots through the scattered papers looking for anything legible at all. What little remains is in Old Tollanian. 'Barrier, crystals, chromancy, schools, casting...' "Resiq," the wizard declares aloud. "These are engram crystals. Incredible, I've never seen so much in one place." Thrandimir's tiny owl emerges from his robes and hops up onto the wizard's shoulder. His eyes mist over as he worg's into his familiar and Tasagrad flutters over to touch the grey crystal. A few moments later Thrandimir returns to his senses. "I think that I understand what we have to do," he says slowly.

Katrin follows the others into the room, allowing most to pass before entering. She watches the experimentations with interest, wincing a little when Ascian touches the green crystal. At Thrandimir's statement, she raises an eye. "Care to share?" She walks over to the crystals, careful to stay a good distance from them, waiting for the wizard to reveal his plan. 

"Engram crystals can hold magic within them," Thrandimir explains. "They have an incredible capacity for it. You can tell by the colours of these crystals the nature of the magic stored within," the wizard adds, gesturing to each in turn. "Red for evocation. Green for necromancy. Grey for divination. Ascian touched the necromantic engram crystal," he continues, nodding to their pale companion, "but was not significantly harmed due to his... unusual nature. Just now, I touched the divination engram crystal through Tasagrad," Thrandimir says, pointing gesturing to himself, "and received a vision of Kou hurling lightning, evocation magic, at the crystal charged with the same kind of power. This hasn't happened yet. It was a vision of a possible future. I believe that if we simultaneously infuse all three crystals with magic from the correct school, then the barrier may fall."

Katrin nods, and crosses over to the grey crystal. "Divination, you say? I have something for that." She touches her amulet, and a bright mote of light appears on her finger. She taps the crystal with it, the light flaring for one moment, then disappears as the crystal goes dark. 

Exploring an Old Tollanian ruin had been a dream of his and outside of the exploding undead he has not been disappointed. Especially now that the ruins themselves, gifted Thrand a vision. Taking a stance near the crystal he takes a moment to slow his breathing and gather his energy. Raising his rights hand to his chest he points two of his fingers upwards. In tune with his breathing he slowly shifts his stance, gathering Tempus' might in chest as he moves. In a flash he takes one step forward a juts his right arm out unleashing a bolt of lightning towards the crystal.

Ascian turns to face the green crystal that Thrandimir had said was charged with necromantic energy. If the pale young man could breathe, he would, but instead he simply moves , his harm extending in front of him in the blink of an eye to send pale grey wisps of smoke streaking towards the crystal. Nothing happens. A look of confusion, perhaps tinged with sadness, flits across Ascian's face and Thrandimir steps up besides him, placing his hand on his friend's shoulder. "We'll work it out," the wizard tells him quietly, before approaching the crystal and weaving his own necromantic incantation. The crystal darkens and the barrier flickers out of existence, allowing access to what appears to be a very old, desiccated corpse.

With the barrier fallen, Cal steps up to the corpse carefully, noting to himself the deep recesses in its dried out skin. Its posture is almost resolute, yet relaxed, but the look on its face betrays an air of subtle desperation. In the end, hunger and thirst break even the most steadfast of fighters. The body sat slumped over the table, a hand outstretched to cover an old tome, and its eyes sallow and staring off into the space beyond Cal. His eyes catch on a metallic object just below the face, however. A leather cord strewn in weathered strands sits slung around the neck, affixed after a short cord to a sharp, metal... box? Hard to say. Cal hadn’t even seen something exactly like it before.  “Hey Mister Thrandimir, I found an old book! Oh also this poor guy has some kind of fancy box or something as a necklace. Is it some sort of old Tollonian fashion? Seems kinda odd to me, if I’m being real honest, y’know?”

Thrandimir steps into the alcove to inspect the firbolg's findings. "That, young Callahan, is a key ," he explains with all the patience of a parent helping their wide-eyed toddler to explore the world. Sliding the book from beneath the withered hand that grasps it, the wizard flicks through the pages, bright eyes moving rapidly as he skims the contents. "...and it seems that we have stumbled upon the final resting place of Aratreus Demarkis, Gods rest his soul. According to his journal, somebody transformed his assistants into undead creatures and he wasted away behind this barrier."

Ascian had been drifting between the shelves since his failure with the crystal, sifting through already-searched dust for a distraction; taking Thrandimir's promise on it was one thing, but attempting to push it from his mind another. He's only half-listening as the wizard explains the strange room, but at the end he looks up quickly, fingers stilling on the old wood.  "Does it say a way to turn them back?"

Thrandimir shakes his head sadly. "...onwards? We have a scroll to find."

The party moves back across the entrance to the door that has marking indicating it leads to Workshop 2 . The riddle, written in common, is written in the stone above the door. An adventurer rides into a village on Peldes. They stays for three days, then they leave on Peldes. How do they do this? Ash looks up impassively at the riddle. "The horse's name is Peldes," the scrawny man says. The door creaks open and reveals a hallway, immediately lit with torchlight. There is no door to the next workshop. But it doesn't light with torches. The room remains dark, except for another glowing barrier, glowing blue and serving as a backlight for a hulking, 15 foot tall figure slouched and unmoving. Kaed and Kou creep forward, with the keeper lighting a torch. In the flickering light, the hulking figure is revealed to be comprised mostly of metal, its slouched form a menacing presence in the room. As the two enter the room proper, they can see more clearly behind this automaton. Behind the blue barrier, a body twitches, then stands. An undead, about three-and-a-half feet tall staggers up to the barrier and begins pounding on the energy, trying to lash out at the two humans with gnashing of tiny teeth and fury in its cold, dead eyes. The automaton does not move as the two approach.

The automaton draws Kou's attention as soon they enter the room. He had always wanted to see one but the Citadel never had need for his skills in Karnopolis. Keeping his distance he tries to take in as much of the automaton as he can. It appears to be inactive though it does have a cable running from the back of it's head. He leans closer to Kaed and quietly says "I do not believe that there will be much opportunity for words here my friend."

" Hmm, you may well be right. I don't think the undead gnome in there wants to be friends either. He does have one of those keys though, or at least it looks like that to me." Kaed looks at the scene in front of them. " So do we need that key? If so we need to lower the barrier and take it, and if we can do that, are we going to make the big guardian angry?" He shrugs at Kou, then steps forward. " Hello, strange creatures, I am assuming nobody can speak here but if I am wrong then well met, I am Kaed and this is my friend Kou".

The construct stands motionless as Kaed's words ring out. Kou's eyes wander around the room looking for something he can use to bring the barrier down. Spotting a button on the far wall he decides to gamble and pray that Tempus still favors him.  Looking back to his companions he says in a controlled tone  "Be ready, this may wake the automaton. Note the wire on the back of it's head, it's removal may aid us if it comes to a fight."  He then walks to the button and readies himself to push it.

"I am ready, do it. And then step back, our little friend there looks like it wants to rip your face off. " Kaed draws his sword, keeping his eyes moving from the sleeping giant to the undead gnome and back again.

Kou presses the button. It grinds into the wall and locks there with a metallic click . Anticipation fills the room as five long seconds tick by occupied by nothing but silence. A vibration shakes the room and trails of dust descend from the ceiling. The cable at the back of the construct's head begins to glow with the same blue as the barrier. Suddenly, violently -- with the grinding of metal-on-metal and the tortured shrieking of ancient gears -- the construct jerks to its full height. Its knees straighten and its posture corrects. Its neck snaps up and it stands, fully erect, motionless. Then a low hum fills the room and two slits in the constructs head blaze a bright, crackling blue.  It scans the room with its two bright, blue eyes. Its eyes settle on Kou and it lets out a blast of sound -- no language, no words -- but the sound is strangely interrogative. 

Kou was prepared for the Automaton's activation, the former keeper sinking into a defensive stance, but what took him off guard was the inhuman blare that emerged. Tensing for an attack, he is further astonished when the construct stands there as it's blue eyes locked on Kou as if it had asked him a question. Loosening his stance he slightly bows his head and in friendly tone says "I am Kou Shin, my companions and I mean you no harm. We have come seeking help. Would you be willing to assist us?"

The automaton seems to take in Kou's statement. Silence stretches on for another few moments, then it looks away from the keeper. With its head turning about the room, it blares its interrogative again. This time, it sounds more urgent -- more threatening .

Ascian slowly lowers his bow, looking up at the huge creature with wary pale eyes. He looks from Kou to Kaed before edging into the room with his fingers still curled around the fletching of his arrow. The noises are incomprehensible, escalating as Kou tries to speak; he spends a long silent moment watching its head swivel with his hands poised to shoot. It isn't until the blaring grows quicker, a sense of brutal urgency Ascian has felt echoed himself far too often of late, that he moves up behind Kaed, begrudgingly relaxing his hold on his bow. They don't understand.  He doesn't quite know what  this thing's mind feels like, only that it isn't like anything else he's ever contacted before. Thrandimir was a lightning storm, crackling with motion, each thought forking out into three more; this is hard and metallic, humming with an undercurrent he can't quite place. Staring up at the automaton, he abruptly severs his link to Thrandimir, feeling the buzz of electricity always present in the back corner of his mind go dark. In its place he reluctantly opens himself up to whatever this  is, bracing for a shock that doesn't quite come. They mean no harm. What is this room.  

The automaton's gaze focuses on Ascian, still burning bright with intensity. It blares again, but this time, Ascian detects meaning and thought behind the interrogative. "Authenticate. What is the passcode?"

A slight frown creases Ascian's face as those blinding blue eyes swing his way. He glances at Kou and Kaed in front of him, reluctance tangible.  "It's...looking for a passcode."

As Kou presses the button that brings the automaton to life, Katrin slips around the corner, moving north to inspect the stone walls. She runs her hand along the ancient stonework, and her heart drops slightly at Ash's revelation.

Having watched Katrin inspect the walls, Ascian looks back to the automaton as if its impassive face might give anything away. Before another blaring noise can escalate he follows the mental current of metal tension and replies, "We're looking for it. We're trying to figure out what happened to Demarkis. Did you know him."

Another blare of noise. "Demarkis. Workshop 1. This is Workshop 2. Dietrich and Meetrich Solvan. Now, authenticate."

"The first workshop was Demarkis'. This one is Dietrich and Meetrich Solvan's," Ascian states, attention unwavering on the automaton. "Are those names in that book."

"No," Thrandimir tells Ascian with a grimace, his eyes fixed on the enormous automaton. "I know of their work though." "If you want a shot at shutting this thing down," the wizard adds more quietly, "then you're going to need to get on its back with a blade. That's if it works the same ways as the modern ones."

The automaton lets out another garbled, blasted noise.  Ascian hears,  "Insufficient authentication provided. Restarting previous protocols."  The automaton cocks a fist back to pummel the intruders.

The automaton raises its fist, and Katrin is already whispering, "Burn."  Much to her disappointment, the creature seems to have no reaction to her spell, though she is still connected to the magic. What the hell.......?

The feeling of that crackling undercurrent is still fading from Ascian's mind as he turns and sprints back for the hallway by Thrandimir and Cal, the feeling of malice and ill intent unmistakable. Behind him, he can feel the spike of anxiety slough off of him in the form of those pale, cool wisps; looks over his shoulder just in time to see them soar towards the automaton, intent as arrows, and – dissipate. Oh. Watching the surface of the creature ripple with a haze, Ascian skids to a stop and lifts his bow, aiming not for the metal of the automaton but instead that which protrudes from it, sending an arrow soaring towards the cord that connects it to the wall. Though his aim isn't terrible, the arrow tip glances harmlessly off of the hard exterior to clatter instead against the wall and his lips press into a pale, thin line as he reaches back into his quiver.

Something beneath the two large grates on the floor belches smoke and a sulfurous odor. Then, with only that as a warning, the grates explode with a blast of blue fire. Kaed can feel the heat radiating from the plume and the shorter hairs on his arms, neck, and face curl and roast away. Then almost as suddenly as it appeared, the blue flames dissipate, leaving nothing behind but the smell of ozone.

Feeling ever-more confident since the vision he'd received only minutes earlier, Cal is quick to let the familiar cold of space envelop him, relinquishing control the the stars. Instantly, the higher consciousness lets loose a now-familiar bevy of bolts from its celestial bow. The shots connect with pinpoint power and accuracy, and for a moment the normally emotionless form around him looks like it may just smile smugly. Then the image around the automaton shimmers and blurs as it seemingly absorbs the energy harmlessly. "We have erred.  It would be in all of our best interests to leave. Now.

Kaed's eyes go wide as he experiences the intense heat, he steadies himself and waits for the construct, his weight on the balls of his feet ready to dodge out of the way if possible.

Thrandimir curses and hurls a cluster of ice at the automaton, hoping to freeze its gears and protect Kaed and Kou.

The automaton takes two large, trundling steps and closes the distance between itself and Kaed. Its fist slams down toward the barbarian, but the combination of Thrandimir's ice and Kaed's nimble reflexes, the automaton is unable to connect.

Seeing his companion's spells bounce off the machine, Kou bolts forward calling out in a calm but loud voice  "I believe the cord is the key.". Reaching the automaton Kou jumps streaking up towards the machine and grabbing hold of it's neck. Steadying himself he tries to grab hold of the cord and pull it free, but fails to generate enough force to pull it out. A bit of embarrassment leaking into his tone he calls out "I may require assistance"

Seeing the automatons focus on Kaed, she pulls her hammer from her belt loop and runs forward to the edge of the grate, preparing to throw it. "Oi! Metalhead! You want a passcode? Try hammer !" Her shout echoes through the chamber as she chucks the hammer. But it sails by its head, clattering to the floor on the other side of the far grate. She takes a step back as the hammer misses it's target.

Agreeing with Kou, Ascian pulls his bowstring back and aims again at the cord. Again, the arrow deflects from it harmlessly. He frowns faintly, perturbed and uncomprehending; Ascian has faith in few things, but his bow has never let him down quite like this before. 

Once again, the blue flames ignite with a shout of crackling abjuration. Then they disappear just as quickly leaving the room's air hot and thick.

Kaed winces again and prepars himself for another attack. " Do you need a hand? " He calls up to Kou as the servant of Tempus struggles with the heavy cord. "OK, big guy, be gentle with me." He mutters to the construct as he waits for the inevitable attack.

"Slip something metal between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae on the right side of the spinal column!" Thrandimir yells from a distance.