Tower of Atrocities

## To Summon...

 Fable considers summoning a Beholder Kin with Akibeko. Akibeko says, “That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

Brexx agrees. She suggests that we try to get information from it, summoning it only in this room, after all we fought several of these before and won….

Sera says this is not a good idea, Bart shrugs and doesn’t give any input; Fable makes the summoning circle unusable abiding by the majority vote.

The party continues to the third room

### Door 3

They find another ruined circle, several skeletons (which Fable is excited about adding to her army). Fable continues to “teach” Akibeko how to investigate. There are several dried stains on floor and walls, signs of old fire on the table in the room, some parchments referring to research on “Starspawn”.

#### Starspawn Facts:

* Found/captured somewhere and brought back to study, specifically a particular type called “**Starspawn Mangela**”
* Have the ability to hide within darkness, even for those that can see through magical darkness
* Have strange origins (the researchers do not understand how it works,
* Have some psychic elements
* Immune to psychic damage
* Tends to focus on one individual person until they are dead
* MAKE SURE TO HAVE AMPLE LIGHT SOURCES AT ALL TIMES

### Door 4

There are scattered marks on the floor, signs of a long-ago fire, bones, and a desk that has been ransacked. After Akibeko flips the desk over, there is some parchment that has been tucked away within the drawers with notes about the Far-realm, where the realities and fundamentals of the universe hold no sway - a place of madness and entities that cannot be fathomed. The writers speculate on what kinds of things may lurk there. The notes cut off.

From the writers initial findings, they were looking for someone or another source of research on the Far-realm. The notes point to:

* Someone within the Dagun Centarum (in Sonsha),
* A group called the Menadi (one of the major powers that vied for control against the other mage-ocracies in the Age of Arcanum, kinda mad),
* and someone called Helasta of the **Circle of Nine.**

Sera thinks Helasta may have something to do with Sherastes, the owner of the Seclusium in the Fae Realm. She suggests that once they are in a safe place that they go back and research further.

## More Exploration

The party continues on with SGT. Bones in the lead with his torch (since there is evidence to say that light sources help to avoid the possibly escaped Starspawn thing). Brexx & Akibeko follow SGT. Bones. The party goes down a hall and finds a broken set of double doors. Inside is a huge laboratory containing several desks, slabs/tables, glass constructions, some shattered, viscous fluids in the bottom, signs of destruction, fire, etc. Multiple bodies, vats with odd shapes floating within, scattered parchments, magical components, etc. Everyone enters with torches, Fable gets some magic ping off the liquids in the vials and one slight ping of magic from a purple crystalline substance. Fable & Sera identify it as **Crystal Monolith**, a resonant psychic crystal that has some semblance of life imbued into it with inherent psychic properties that could do damage or protect from psychic dmg (possibly). There are mentions other samples further to the south past the “containment rooms”. Sera decides to research into making a psychic weapon or protection with the crystals.

# STOPPED EDITTING HERE

2 other ingredients they were looking into: 1)**Witchfire,** a living fire that is attracted to magic- investigating its properties and how it could be used; none in this room; 2)**”Darkness”-** which can siphon magic??? Takes spells out of people, depending on how big this creature is, the more magic it can draw from someone, they are trying to research this for its spell siphoning ability and looking to protect themselves from magic. Fable takes all this information.

Evidence of dissecting Aberrational creatures, floating in a vat we see some sort of brain w/ crustacean appendages (ew), we decide to leave it alone after F says she has seen one of these before in her old Master’s (a mind flayer) lab, Sera looks up at the ceiling to make sure there aren’t any ones crawling up there that have escaped broken vats, she doesn’t see anything…

We go to the last table, more notes on alchemical research- trying to figure out how aberrations work, mainly focused on certain creatures- mind flayers, got some samples but not alot, did summon some lesser beholders, starspawn, and we also find some potions- they were shielded and now they are giving off magical essence-**Potions of Psychic Resistance (4)-**Ba, Br, Ak & F take them and they were also researching Intellect Fortress and several other psychic shielding and damaging spells. Notes discussing “strange Eldritch creatures” in the Far-realm.

We head out of this room, this door is broken outwards and we can see beyond-branching hallways with cells on the side, some bars are broken, on hall to L there is a set of stairs at the end leading down, Ba sees something moving in darkness w/ tendrils creeping out of one of the cells, it appears to be melding with shadows; We battle the Starspawn thingie and kill it- F uses her mage hand to go through its corpse afterwards

We investigate the other cells, find some busted bars and manacles, etc. Find more locked “offices”- find more info on **crystalline monoliths**- they think they “talk to eachother?” so they think its best to keep them in lead-bound containers to keep them isolated. F quickly takes her original piece out and puts it in a lead container as well as getting several more samples of crystals (3). Find something in a liquid vials that is moving- we figure out this is **Witchfire**, Fable also takes some vials (3) of this and there are additional warnings- says this thing will try and escape if it is not properly handled. If it gets in contact with you it will do more damage to you if you are of magical mature- says not to combine them, all these vials are lead lined. In the last room, we find 2 vials that are contained and whole of Darkness as well as 1 broken vial on the floor! F asks A to walk into the room after divesting himself of magical items since he doesn’t use spells and he grabs the intact vials and the parchments- his new investigation skills pay off and he takes them out of the room- notes say to keep the samples in bright light or handle them in a room with bright light and those that handle them should be non-magic users as they do not seem to bother those folks.

As we are heading back to go the other way down the hall towards the stairs, we smell the same acrid smell since we came down to this level, it smells closer now as if coming from the lab room we left. We are worried something is following us but find nothing.

We head down stairs to the next level, immediately get a heightened sense of tingling-electricity in the air, amplified static ozone feeling; find another room with bodies, 4 doors, destruction, scorch marks, grooves in floor, stuff thrown everywhere and in disarray. All of the doors look caved in and impassable for all 4 chambers. We start to move towards a hallway at the end of the room and the feeling in the air gets stronger and we also hear sounds of crackling distantly….We continue down the hall to a giant Frankenstein-like-lab- large arching electricity going back and forth to coils, discharges of lightning, arcane symbols on the floor, collapsed chunks of walls, remains of magic circles, another coil machine w/ arcane runes on it, desks piled up on one end of room, when we go back in the sounds get louder, F thinks this is a device that was used to store or house an elemental creature, she is not sure how it works but it does look like a portion of it is damaged.

Bart destroys the device after we notice that it is arching lightning to anything that enters the room. We get attacked by a Storm elemental who is NOT happy with Sera’s attempts to talk it down. We defeat it and then F searches the room, finds a lot of info about controlling elementals, some notes about genies, something about a cult called the **Novis Cult** (symbol of a **purple flame**)- a cult that was around during the time of the Enlightened One, speaks of people that were worshipping or serving some sort of powerful elemental, this elemental was captured, put in a **Primal Cage** and given over to the **Magista** for safe keeping!!! (We have this primal cage!) and there is a group connected to this cult, a newer group called **The Illuminating Flame**

We take a long rest. Sera sees a centipede construct down the hallway during the night. Next morning we go down the hall and find a box of potions in one room- **Potions of Resistance (5)**- Fire, Acid, Cold, Lightning, Thunder

We go down a floor and find a ghoul? In a cage that is sentient, intelligent, and seems friendly? Says he has been imprisoned and experimented on, has a magic bowl that keeps him fed, says he will not harm us and cannot remember his name, says that the mages were all killed a long time ago or may have escaped through a secret tunnel. When asked what killed them he mentions a possible wizard with a magic blade, mentions they may have been trying to go to teleportation circles.. F and everyone discuss. He does not seem to be lying. We give him a temporary name of Gregory

Says wizard in charge was named **Adreshi**, and she didn’t like the Consort and they were trying to keep her from getting in here and taking over the project and finding the **Key to Gilkadur** or the **Tenets**