Finding the Spark (Pathfinder 1E Quest)

20th of Abadius 4708 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

A moment passes, two, you do not speak, and in the end even Sirim relents, though from the way Gorok steps forward, shield at the ready, you would guess not without yet another warning. The child steps forward and as she had done all those months ago when armed strangers had burst into her home fresh off a ambush of rat-kin, she declares her lineage and that of her mother before her... and the construct explodes into a burst of stuttering speech unlike it's earlier words.

"Wha...?"

Before you can even finish asking the question, turquoise light bursts from its mandibles aimed not forward, but angled up. There's an ear-splitting sound, stone on stone grating, and then a crash that somehow manages to be louder still. A block of basalt, its face sheer as sorcery could make it, now blocks your path.

"It said I was a traitor..." Anippe's words are soft with bewilderment as she tries to make sense of the senseless. "We aren't traitors, we're not. We kept the faith in Nex, even in exile to Absalom and beyond."

"What it said was access denied, young seeker," Sirim cuts in. "Do not pin your hopes nor permit yourself sorrow at the reactions of an overly-voluble earth-mover."

Speaking of earth-moving... you consider the block of stone. You would be able to shape a path through it, but not easily, two castings of the spell at least, and the 'earth-movers', as Sirim put it, might take that as a hostile act. So far Nex has proven himself a remarkably tolerant soul by the standards of arch-mages whose domain had been trespassed into, but who knows...

The sound of dozens of small brass feet echoing out of the dark pulls your attention to the corridor behind you along with the clink-clack of a heavier tread. By light of flame that burns and lighting that crackles at the end of its four articulated limbs you see a brazen approximation not of insect but man, even festooned with the approximation of a hood atop a head of glass.


This construct too speaks in the same harsh tongue as the other, precise as the clockwork in its innards. While Anippe just starts and stares, not believing her ears Mina does the translating again:

"I think it is trying to arrest us. It is quoting Nexian statute at us and says we are to be held pending the judgement of 'the Maker'. We are permitted to summon an advocate, mortal or immortal, though there are a series of limitations about the type, I think to keep one from calling on something the constructs can't deal with."

"Prison is close to middle?" Cob asks slyly. "We can lie then wham, hit them over the head." He pauses, considering the construct and the three many legged ones that showed up behind him. "Maybe not wham... clang?"

Gorok considers the options for a moment and shakes his head: "Too clever, we trick ourselves into a mire."

What do you do?

[] Fight
-[] Write in battle plan

[] Argue for Cob's idea, you're sure you can recover your weapons and armor even if the constructs have the wits to disarm you

[] Write in

OOC: No rolls for this one, this is just how the construct would react given the circumstances and what was said to it.

20th of Abadius 4708 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)

Mayhap it is hubris, but you find yourself agreeing more with Cob, the more you think about this. "If there is a prison in this place it's likely to be in one of the more secure areas of the Refuge, just where we want to go. Locks we can deal with more easily than this tangle of tunnels." Upon a moment's more of thought you add: "And Oriel can speak as well as fight." The compliment was perhaps excessive, but you do not grudge the small spirit's swell of pride... followed a moment later by doubt when he realizes that though you are handing off your weapons to the 'mage' construct, who in turn is secreting them inside drawers set in specific segments of her many-legged companions, you have no intention to actually stand trial.

What Sirim says to quiet him down you do not know for certain, eyes set more on your immediate predicament as the leader of the constructs requests that you continue down the passageway you have originally been following, now as his prisoners. At first you wonder if it is more defective than assumed... but then one of the other constructs passes right through the illusion of a stone. So a fight would have seen us caught between two foes...

Sirim Diplomacy (DC 30): 1d20+14 = 31 (Success)

From what you can read of his body language Gorok is even less happy to have given up his weapon now, but you are the seer of the company as well as boon companion. The less said about how much guesswork you are indulging in right now, the better

On and down the path goes, accompanied by the ever louder sound of dripping water between the spiders and the four armed one's movements until the tunnel falls back suddenly into a sheer drop that falls into darkness. As you reach the edge the smell of rot, not overpowering as it had been a time or two but still strong, fills your nostrils. You realize that this is a circular 'well' of sorts is many hundred of feet deep... one that had been filled by something at the bottom.

"So do we just have to fly, or..." Mina says, though it's hard to say if it is directed at the construct or circumstances on general. Her question finds its answer in the form of a great floating disc, still much smaller than the opening, which darts in to pick you all up and whisk you upwards. Though your companions try to make some sense of the device their attention is quickly distracted as a quivering mass of sludge and half digested corpses lashes at the underside of the disk only to shy away from a discharge of golden light.

"Keep your hands and feed away from the edges at all times."The construct proclaimed, even as Sirim, having neither hands nor feet to trouble him, described a graveyard ooze, a rare form of undead misbegotten when the hunger of a slopper meets the malice of a specter.

"Or," he muses, "when a necromancer proves to be particularly creative in their work."


"I'm nor sure I want to meet particularly creative necromancer," Anippe admits with a shudder, which is all she allows herself before squaring her shoulders and trying to understand the arcane mechanisms of this place place.

Oddly enough, it's Cob who comes up with the most insight on the climb, about a mechanism far more mundane.

"Water, a reservoir, like they have in Cassomir," he explains. "Flows through here, used to flow through the tunnel, this is where they got the water for the garden."

"Then the enemy must have deactivated it, do you think?" you ask, but before you are even done so he shakes his head, ears flapping.

"Nope, been out for a long time." He knocks on the back of the mage construct. "Why didn't you fix the water?" he asks and waits for Oriel to translate, which the angel does, though with some hesitancy.

Contrary to the response a steward of flesh and blood might have given it simply raises one arm... to the sight of hundreds of constructs, a mass of gears and metal as tall as three men filling a gap in the wall with their bodies beyond which one could hear the moans and shrieks of things no longer among the living. A moment later a black steel lance rams through the weak spot, only for one of the trio of constructs that had been accompanying you to dart upwards along the wall and fill the gap.

"Nah ye daft, ninny? I meant 'fore you got invaded!" your friend asks, and again his words are relayed.

"Still... slumbering."


Finally you reach a bare chamber at the top of the shaft containing the twisted remains of what might perhaps have been pumps, though if that is the case something or someone had been running off with most of the gears. Gremlins perhaps? You guess at more fey trouble.

"Come, we must pass through the servants' wing. We must not disturb the Master," the construct continues as it turns away from an ornate door to the left, glass still intact in its frame forming the image of a bird... 'peacock', that was the name.

"Would your master have left this place fall into such a state?" Gorok asks after a moment.

"It is not our to wonder," comes the response, to which you distinctly hear your friend mutter: 'slaves then', which you would say is truer than not, even if the slaves had been made.

Through mostly empty storerooms marked with scorch marks and corridors still strewn with the splinters of what might once been furnishings and glass, you are lead into a long chamber with openings to the left and right. The leading construct motions for you to enter the cells one at a time. Cob, being untroubled by his ability to escape, does so and the stone starts to close like a curtain.

Looks like you're going to have more luck 'lock-picking' than Cob... Or so you think at least.

Before you can shape the spell to escape your cell you hear Cob's voice from outside: "I'm chipping Gorok out first so he can get the others out." Adamantine dagger, hidden by his odd magic, cuts through stone like a block of worm-blubber.

Which way do you go next?

[] Find that bug construct with all your weapons in it.

[] Into what the constructs had called the Master's room

[] To the opening where you had seen the undead. There is rather a lot of them, but logically you know behind that are the ones you seek

[] Write in

OOC: Nothing quite like the goblin amateur engineer being the only one with any insight into the construction of an archmage's home.