4.3 Questions Beyond Answering

The Chosen of Astor continued across
the Hall of Knowledge which lead deeper into the tower. Here they
found a library of sorts, similar to the one found on the lower
floors. Wrynn drew from the library, trying to determine what had
happened in the tower t cause such havoc. The last entries spoke of a
secret that had caused the members of the tower to split into
factions. Whatever custodian warded the towers populace and policed
their rules had set some manner of forbiddence on the secret,
severely punishing those who spoke openly of it or tried to write it
down. The entry, and therefore all this trouble, appeared to have
occurred 2 months ago. Cara chimed in here, mentioning that her
mother had been taken hostage one month ago- raising some questions
as to the timeline of events and how things could have spiraled out
of control.

 They quickly came upon a forking path,
various dormitories and other rooms laid out before them. Many of
these rooms were locked but, as it turns out, the keys they had found
earlier came in handy for some of the doors. Each door was marked
with a symbol, their meaning not entirely clear. Usefully, whenever
they had a key that matched the symbol on a door, the key was
generally able to open the door, allowing the group to bypass several
barriers that might otherwise have been inconvenient. Some doors
remained locked, however, and these they had to navigate around. The
tower itself seemed almost broken down, covered in blood as before
but also marked by strange, black, vein-like growths on walls.

 They encountered first The Forge. This
proved to be a deep well of arcane energy used for channeling,
deconstructing, enchanting and experimenting. Doors nearby lead to a
horrid monstrosity of bodies stitched together which breathed
darkness and could regenerate freely. They were able to kill it
mainly thanks to the use of an item found nearby which could
disintegrate anything it was pointed at. Meanwhile, other members of
the party stumbled upon the living quarters of many of the mages.
While several traps had to be disarmed or triggered along the way
they managed to uncover a number of magic items among the refuse of
the tower, including a wand that could temporarily project
invulnerability onto one target, a protective robe, a crown of wisdom
that aided the mind in learning somehow, enchanted shuriken, potions
of distilled wisdom of unclear effect, and a staff that could
reanimate or ask question of the dead- but never both to the same
corpse. Among the dormitories, however, as another surprise. On the
walls was scrawled in blood the ominous phrase “we are
experiments.”

 Continuing further together, the party
was attacked by the animated dead which they had to dispatch before
moving on. It was after battle here that Timmeron learned he could no
longer be healed magically as the restorative spells necessary were
anathema to his current state of being. Instead, when injured he
could drain the life from living things in order to repair whatever
necromancy bound him to this plane. Though there was a door they
could not open remaining to explore, the party decided to ignore it
for now and head through a portal to the next floor.

 More apartments greeted them and the
party decided to explore as many of them as possible in the hopes
that some clues could be found. One house contained nothing more than
a tree bearing blue fruit which changed the skin of any who ate it
blue as well. Another house bore a wall covered in outreaching hands,
as if horrified mages had been imprisoned within the wall itself. The
group entered the master bedroom of the apartment, finding an elderly
dwarf asleep with a book beneath the pillow. When Travize attempted
to wake him the dwarf vanished and the Archbishop said he could sense
“evil” coming from Travize. The figures trapped in the wall below
also vanished, raising far more questions. The group took the book,
of course, which turned out to be a tome covering epistomancy- the
study of conjuring knowledge from the world itself. The next house
lead the party to be attacked by disembodied spirits. They quickly
left the house, Travize managing to catch two of the spirits in a jar
of mayonaise, proving that the “dwarven occultist” from Great
Trench may have known more than the group gave him credit for.

 They then found their way into a
magica maze of sorts, with various doors that could lead to any
number of locations. All one needed was the proper keys to open the
doors. Near the entrance they found another body, this one apparently
dead of a sudden heart attack. They used the necromantic staff to ask
a question of the body. They asked “how did you die” and were
told that the woman had displeased the entity that dwells in the
observatory, which had killed her instantly from afar. They collected
a golden key from her corpse as it disintegrated from the force of
the necromantic magic. According to the Ascendant, the key would
allow them to take only one path through the maze- they would have to
choose carefully.

 Fortunately, some of the doors of the
maze were marked with symbols of the keys they already had, allowing
the party to take a path without using the golden key at all. At the
end of this path they found a circular room housing a skull giving
off massive amounts of necromantic energy. The power was contained by
some sort of dark, buzzing fog that hung in a depression in the
ground, but the energy would boil free if the skull was lifted out of
the fog. Curious as to what happened in the room, the party searched
about and found little. Finally, Timmeron cast a spell to pierce the
veil of time and show the party what may have happened in the room
recently.

 A vision appeared to them of senior
mages of the tower- including the Arch mage- meeting in that very
room, though no skull was present in the vision. The three people
discussed events in the world- particularly the Void Spawn, the
Ascendant, and the problem of Albert. They decided that they needed
to know at least some part of what Albert and Wrynn both knew- the
same secret that had supposedly driven Wrynn mad. They had the means
to learn a piece of that truth- a soul imprisoned to contain the
knowledge. They summoned it- but before the magic could take effect
the vision ended. It seems the same skull they had used in their
ritual now sat in the center of the room. The party discussed whether
or not it was worth trying to learn that information themselves or if
they should destroy the skull. There was disagreement, of course, and
they eventually settled for having Karhanza put a bomb on the skull
tat she could activate from anywhere in the tower- just in case.

 Continuing their exploration of the
door maze- this time with the golden key, the party discovered a room
with a pool of water and two vials of liquid, one green and the other
blue. Pouring them into the pool changed its color, but each seemed
to negate the other. The party experimented for a bit, resulting in
Sal being blue and Sajaina, Travize and Dal being deep green. They
had no idea what the colors meant or did. Ignoring for the moment the
other maze-path open to them- the doors marked with the death symbol,
the party ascended a nearby staircase into the Arch Mage's quarters,
finding the woman in a state of suspended animation, her robes, staff
and a strange ball of flame sitting on a nearby bed.

 Using antimagic, they woke the woman
up- unsure what would happen to her when the field fell. Possibly she
might be killed by “the entity” or else fall back into suspended
animation. In either case, the woman seemed distraught. They
conversed with her for a time, learning that the Tower of Apotheosis
is a living being they built around. Further, with the right 'key'
one might be able to speak to the tower to convince it to give access
to certain pieces of information or open locked doors, in addition to
other things. Apparently the tower turned on the Arch mage for some
reason. Additionally, the tower itself was NOT the entity that dwells
in the observatory. At first she was reluctant to give the key to the
party, but was eventually convinced of the urgency of their quest and
suggested that she would be willing to do so, though it would cost
her very life in the process. The party was left debating whether
obtaining the key was worth the Arch Mage's life. Was it ethical?
Would she die anyway? Could she help them defeat the Void Spawn?
There was much to discuss.