The Monolith's Grasp
The party navigates through a gas-filled room, solving a puzzle to deactivate the toxic traps. After taking a short rest, they find themselves in a room with two powerful entities tied to black and white crystals. After a difficult battle, they defeat both creatures, with Valerie delivering the final blow. They explore further, discovering a small hidden room with useful items, including a metal cube that grants a long rest. As they continue, they encounter a hostile construct powered by a newly activated obelisk. After a hard-fought battle, they defeat the construct and reach the main chamber, where they activate a large monolith, draining the vitality of the party. A final chip from Bitty reveals the disastrous consequences of the obelisks, leading the party to realize they have two months to disable the central monolith or face dire consequences. They gather their loot, including a bag of holding, a golden amulet, and other valuables, before leaving the ruins with a new mission: to survive past the two-month deadline by stopping the monolith’s power.
From the journal of Valerie, discussing recent events
The requiem of Diablo… a story never told. A hero of legend… in words he himself told.
Diablo Dorado…. He is…. dead… he is dead?
How can I write a song about my friend, I think… the first person I truly thought of as a real friend. Here I sit here still drawing breath and he is gone. So… take a deep breath Valerie…. you’re writing this down so write something!
take a deep breath
I can’t do this… I can’t do this right now. Not when everything is falling apart.
Let’s bring it back a bit… if I can’t write him this song I can write down my thoughts. So… Diablo is gone, and I find out it’s because some entity gave Emelyne a choice of which of her companions to bring back. Why she chose me… Valerie… Null and void a thing made of lies. She… confuses me, fascinates me.
NON.. focus on what is happening today.
We were led by Ro’Zaad to the temple. At the gates we fought some kind of mechanical entity designed in a similar fashion to Craumgacu. The battle was difficile but as usual we overcame the challenge. Finding our way inside, was a place that seemed a ruin… ancient… but advanced. Inside were ruined bodies similar to Craum. Emelyne, leading the charge with her brilliant mind, found the solution to power up a crystalline obelisk in the center of the first chambre, which in turn powered up a small automaton named Bitty. We were tasked with powering up the other obelisks in this “laboratoire” to find our way to a locked chambre.
I tried to lead the way, tried to… impress Emelyne. Instead I made a fool of myself falling for two separate traps. Why do I find this so difficult? Flirting is… easy, why do I want to impress her so badly? Focus!
After being poisoned and falling into a sewer of acid, I was then electrified with the rest of the party by some kind of lightning trap. Still we managed to power up a second obelisk, with our usual extensive discussion leading to a complicated solution.
We found several chips that replayed recordings of events that… appear to be over 1,000 years old. The Xoraxan’s were living beings once, but somehow transferred their souls into these automatons. We proceeded on to a chambre with coloured runic symbols on the floor. Craum making a quick deduction blasted the red marking with a firebolt, only for all of us to be blasted with fire in turn.
Identified as intruders, defences flared to life with a voice from another time. We prepared to fight. Craum’s past being laid out in front of us. Still… my thoughts are distracted by… I will pick this up another time. I will find a way to honor you my friend.
As the door sealed shut, poisonous gas began leaking from pin-prick holes in four statues, inflicting fire, necrotic, cold, and psychic damage on the party. Emelyne searched the room and located ten books, using four of them to decipher the correct sequence: psychic, fire, necrotic, then cold. Working together, Renatus, Craum, Thalia, and Naoki activated the corresponding arcane energies, ending the security lockdown and powering up a second central crystal. Rejoining the group, Bitty alerted them to strange energies emanating from a newly unlocked door. The Vanguard took a short rest, collected the books, and followed Ro’Zaad into a large chamber featuring two pedestals holding a black crystal and a white crystal. Two entities manifested from the gems, with the necrotic entity from the dark crystal remaining intangible until it made contact with the white crystal.
Valerie touched the black crystal, shifting into the ethereal plane alongside the white entity. Joining her on the ethereal plane, the party launched a concentrated assault, allowing Valerie to land the killing blow on the white entity. Searching the perimeter, Emelyne uncovered a secret compartment containing a small metal cube, a scroll of Lightning Bolt, and a metal flask that Ro'Zaad pocketed. Activating the metal cube granted the entire party the restorative effects of a long rest. Moving forward, they encountered a broken bridge spanning a massive canyon; Naoki wildshaped into a spider, scuttling across the gap to activate the crystal on the far side.
In the final unexplored room, the party discovered four blue crystals, a deactivated construct, and another obelisk. When Craum touched the obelisk to restore power, the construct reactivated with glowing red eyes, deemed the party hostiles, and morphed its arms into deadly weapons. It impaled Emelyne through the stomach and dragged her across the room; Valerie attempted to pull her free, but barbed blades held Emelyne fast until Thalia delivered the killing blow with her bow.
Quickly tending to Emelyne's wounds, the Vanguard returned to the unlocked main chamber containing a massive Monolith identical to the one from their resurrection visions. Bitty activated the structure, which immediately drained vitality from everyone except Emelyne. As Emelyne sketched the monument, Bitty accessed his final memory chip, playing a recorded log set to auto-delete upon viewing. The recording showed Doctor Kraigle and his Draxion scientists celebrating the initial activation of the monolith before a sudden pulse chaoticized the lab, absorbing the life sources and souls of everyone present. Panicked, Kraigle locked himself and Bitty in the treasury, revealing with a gaping chest wound that two sister obelisks existed in the east and west, tied to a primary central monolith. He warned that anyone resurrected by these monoliths lost control of their own souls.
Pieceing the realization together, Valerie understood that this central obelisk was driving the plague draining vitality from the undead—and that because of their own resurrections, the party had only two months left to live unless the main monolith was destroyed. In the treasury chests, they looted a colorful Bag of Holding, a golden amulet of the medicine god Dassus, four red potions, red-lensed glasses, a blue gemstone ring, 1,132 platinum pieces, several gemstones, and an Instant Fortress cube. When Valerie joked about dropping the fortress cube as a superweapon, Bitty voiced shock at her dark humor. Inviting Bitty to join them as a camp follower, the Vanguard teleported out of the ruins with a new countdown looming: destroy the central monolith to survive past their two-month deadline.