Sairina takes a long sip of her fresh ale and greets some of the newcomers who have come to listen to her story by the fire. Hello everyone! I was just telling the story of how we rescued "the King", would you like to listen? She motions for them to bring a chair over, and continues her story. So, as I was saying, Fergal had to leave, but we were soon greeted by Adalius , the mute... knife throwing.. man. Thankfully I can communicate with him due to my new magic shield, which is great! Now I finally know what's going on in that mind of his. Sairina shifts uncomfortably in her chair. So after our short rest, we headed upstairs to the next room of the tower, which appeared to be a lab. At first, the animated armor constructs didn't seem to notice us, but when Elphim attempted to stab one, they all of a sudden jumped into battle mode and started attacking us! Not only were these things extremely hard to hit, but the tower also started playing tricks on us. I can't tell you how many times we were tripped and fell prone, or we were pulled a solid 10 feet away from the creature we were trying to fight! It seemed like as soon as I started to get leverage so I could hit a construct while he was distracted, the person distracting him would be flung away! At one point I was knocked prone by who knows what, and at least three or four of these metal constructs started stabbing at me while I was on the floor. Those who tried to help me were quickly swept away and I had to crawl out on my hands and knees like a coward! It also seemed like smaller weapons such as knives and darts were all but useless on their armor! Uklah even tried to bite the armor off and wrecked her teeth! Eventually, we were able to take them all down but it was a struggle. These creatures all had dead gnomes inside, and it appeared as if they were... making more of themselves? Sairina shudders. Elphim then continued to sneak up to the next floor which was actually the library we promised the other adventurers we would try and help clear! But it seems as if the walls of the tower could actually SEE us. We heard a voice coming from everywhere at once, talking to Elphim. Now we'd heard this voice before, telling us to come back on the First of the month with the sapphires, but I assumed this was some sort of magical recording. But now this voice was TALKING to Elphim . It told her that he's operating on our friends and that we can't have them. Meanwhile, an animated suit of armor stands taking notes in the room ignoring us. I used my shield to telepathically communicated with the armor, and found a female gnome voice inside begging me for help! She seemed very confused, and I urged everyone that we should rescue her. The voice in the walls was not happy about this and forced the armor to attack us. I got into combat with it, but then it turns and blasts a lightning bolt at the rest of the party! Can you imagine that this plated thing has spells?! Not only spells but an incredible armor class not too far off my own! So this mechanical beast put up quite a fight in the library, meanwhile, the gnome instead was telepathically SCREAMING every time we hit it, both in pain and begging me to get her out. Eventually, we were able to defeat the creature, nearly suffering some losses ourselves. When the poor gnome emerged she was talking as if this man, her "boss" went crazy yesterday. After some brief questioning, we learned she had been in that armor for 200 years! Yet she was still alive and quite young?? I can't even begin to explain how this happened to her or why she's alive, and she seemed confused as well. She said he had been using necromancy for his constructs, so it didn't make sense for her to be alive. We left her safe and sound in the library, where we found a... where we continued upstairs. Anyway, this room seemed to be the personal quarters of the crazy man controlling the tower. Here we found a chest that Elphim was able to unlock and inside was a spellbook! You can find it at Goldar's along with an artificer book we found.... in the same room. Here we took another quick rest to heal up and prepare for the final battle: the man on the roof. The group of us, minus Elphim who stayed behind to guard the spellbook and armor, hesitantly headed upstairs where we found three active constructs, many inactive constructs, and a giant mechanical golem. The room had absolutely no railing, making it super dangerous to stand anywhere near the edge, especially with all the tower tricks. The mechanical golem in the center appeared to be inert as the constructs worked on it, but as soon as we went upstairs the constructs turned to fight us! I used my shield to talk with the nearest one, which was "the King "! However, another one across the way dropped a fireball on ALL OF US. Seriously, nothing has ever hurt so much in my life. It almost killed some of us outright! Both our clerics were down, but thankfully the fireball also hurt the construct with the King inside, so I was able to drag his unconscious body off the roof. While doing this I telepathically reached out to another construct which had poor Skrit inside! He was screaming for help but there was nothing I could do, as three more constructs came to life and started after us. With half the party down, and the other half barely conscious, we had to make the tactical decision to leave the others behind. Thankfully we were able to salvage a lot of the plate mail from these creatures, as well as the spell books, which you can find for sale here now. BUT I'm never one to give up. Many of us will be heading out in two days' time to finish the job. We'll kill this horrifying lich golem and his constructs, and rescue Varys and Skrit . Who's with me! Sairina shouts and lifts her mug into the air!
