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After defeated the small squad of Church guards, you hear steps coming from behind. One of the riven you met earlier, the woman claiming to have been sent by House Seleucos and assisted by Certa, appears.

"The alarm has been dealt with, it should buy us some time. There are a few others who came with me but they are elsewhere trying to ensure a clear escape path. If you want, I can stay with you and help you fight off any further guards you come across. Or I could go on ahead, and use my stealth to deal with other potential threats.

"Either way, you need to decide what path you are taking. House Seleucos has arranged a way out, but you'll need to get to the bottom of this temple, and reach the open sky below us. From the maps, you have a few clear paths to take.

"You could travel through the unmarked regions, which Verity partially explored at an earlier time After passing through, you would be able to take an express teleporter to the bottom levels. From the reports of Verity's earlier party, the unmarked region is almost void of guards and church personel.

"Or you could go through the library. The entire library complex, both restricted and public, snakes through the center axis of the temple, from the upper levels to the bottom levels. There generally aren't as many guards in the library.

"Take this key, it'll allow you to open any door you come across"

Discuss course of action here. Or after battle rp. Companion character discussion should be kept in the general thread.

Clearing the blood from his newly ill-gotten mace, Moroi looks to his companions from beneath a soldier's battered, but highly polished helm. "Seems like the world has gone soft these days, doesn't it? Untrained, unwashed masses throwing themselves upon us like waves breaking on stone. They rush in, then fall away in a wash of their own blood." At this, the Battlemind smiles a dark and perhaps disquieting smile. "I've killed plenty of magi in my day, but I have to say, these were by far the worst depiction of a mage. Perhaps they sent apprentices to slow our movements?"

The scarred veteran lifts the tip of one of the mace-blades to his nose, sniffing at it before flicking his tongue out to taste the spilled life's-blood of the fallen mages. "Thin blood. Weak blood. Tell me Masoom, are all mages besides yourself worthless? They certainly die before us regularly."

Shrugging a shoulder in a 'who cares' gesture, Moroi slides his mace into his belt. "I say we head to the bottom of this place, killing everything we come across. Make a statement to this "church" for their insolence and ill-mannered behavior." The battlemind's eyes shift to Verity, as if to gauge the woman's reaction to his statements.

As I did last time. Here are all the database entries you looked up.

Masoom (Mycenae experimental Subject)
Arcane Power: Medium-High, growing
Arcane Potential: Unknown
Spiritual Alignment: Meta
Status: Confined Previous subject of experiments. Fuel for project netherworld. Results under possession of House Mycenae

Through examining the information off to the side, you see some cryptic designations of records that show up in a section called "footnotes"
Record: 4gw76k: Restricted Library
Important Records in enemy possession. Acquire from Mycenae


Theia Pallas
Arcane Power: Undeveloped
Arcane Potential: Alpha
Spiritual Alignment: Sigma
Status: Soul confined. Checked in by High Priestess Delia. Soul capsule secure and under restricted access.
Capsule: High value item key code: 989k4j


Moroi
Arcane Power: Medium-high
Arcane Potential: Unknown
Spiritual Alignment: Meta
Status: Confined,Subject Miletian infusion experiment. Type: unaware. Possessing abnormal human abilities of psychic nature. Possible spiritual connection to spiritual being Rasha. Fuel for project netherworld

Joshua Fessdan
Arcane Power: Medium-high
Arcane Potential: Unknown
Spiritual Alignment: Meta
Status: Confined. Abnormal precogniciant abilities. Mages considering possible use as fuel for project netherworld. If cooperative, possible use as spy

Rhea Helios
Arcane Power: Undeveloped
Arcane Potential: Alpha
Spiritual Alignment: Confirmed Sigma
Status: Location unknown. Find as soon as possible

List of confirmed Spiritual alignment Sigma's:
Rhea Helios
Theia Pallas

List of suspected spiritual alignment Sigma's:
Vega

Detection of spiritual alignment sigma is highly difficult. More are suspected to exist

Spiritual Alignment Sigma contains only known instances of Arcane potential Alpha

Vela( possible family of Riven clan leader)
Arcane Power: Chaotic
Spiritual alignment: Mutated
Arcane Potential: Alpha, possible Prime
Status: Lookation unknown. Find as soon as possible


The results that Verity acquired from the same database at an earlier date can be found here. I'm assuming Verity took notes and is willing to share them with the rest of you.

The Riven helper speaks.

"Lord Sereth of House Seleucos arranged for an airship to take you away from here. However, since it would be risky to keep it idling below, we've arrange for it to make a pass under when I send the signal. Once it is below us, we jump, and land on it. The path it takes is fixed, so we have to be in the right position, the platform over there, if we are to escape onto it."

Hmm, thought: would it be feasible to contact or find the emerald shardmind that Joshua got the anti-ringing ritual from? Could Masoom give Joshua a Sending scroll to contact her (if she now counts as a person he knows), or do some divination ritual to locate her? If anyone knows what might cause the whole "Screaming Shardmind" vision, it'd be her.

Sending says somone you know, so I guess Josh seeing her in a vision could count. Still the arcana check range limitation to worry about.

Some meta knowledge, the older party did come across her once before, on the western continent. She glowed green, but wasn't made out of crystal. However, no PC's are left from that time. I know Tyg was around, but can't remember if that was before or after Timewarp first left. And back then, I used a less glowly and colorful pic for her.

If some other ritual is phrased in a way that seeing her in a vision is enough, you can give that a shot too.

Hmm... to counter range, we could buy a Far Sending scroll to try and arrange a meeting (25-word sending, 25-word reply). That doesn't require any range check. That would cost 4,200gp out of the party pool, though; do you think that'd be worth the cost, guys?

Here's my list of things we could do while on down time (besides shop & relax):

• Contact Theia's soul inside the crystal & build a shardmind body for her.
• Contact Vela's father.
• Contact Moroi's old comrades, try to persuade them away from House Mycenae's plans & gain their help.
• Contact the emerald shardmind for assistance.
• Help the disappearing riven kids.

Masoom will prioritize Theia & the riven kids, using any spare time to train Rhea & study the Phoenix. What do you guys want to do?

-----

Here's the rituals Masoom's thinking of buying. Since the money would come out of the party pool, gonna need the party's approval on any of them he buys:

• Fantastic Recuperation (9,000gp to learn; 3,600gp to cast): Provides the benefits of an Extended Rest in an hour. The cost increases with our level, but this could be useful if we have to push ourselves for over a day again.
• Safeguard (13,500gp to learn; 3,600gp to cast): Puts several permanent arcane alarms in an area & lets the party teleport back to it if it's breached. If Masoom makes a 40+ Arcana check, he can create 5 wards with darkvision & tremorsense, which should secure it against any intrusion. The downside is, he needs to spend a healing surge each day to keep them up. Is securing the Phoenix worth the cost/surge?
• Follow the Voice (9,000gp to learn; sending stone focus to cast): Lets the party teleport to the other holder of a sending stone pair after the other holder sends them a message through it (takes 10 minutes to cast). Might be useful for returning to Certa.
• Consult Oracle (9,000gp to learn; 3,600gp to cast): Summon an oracular spirit from between the planes to answer 1-5 questions. The oracle knows anything that is/was known by at least one creature, alive or dead. Another potentially useful divination spell, but might not work in this campaign setting.

Which rituals, if any, do you want to buy?

Consult Oracle exists, though with some refluff and possible tweaks. Basic effect is the same. So go ahead and post if you have ideas of things to ask.

I;ll have to check. Also you should know that Once Per Day Josh can perform a Scrying or Divination Ritual at no cost. I'll update you on which of those I have later.

Very nice; I was wondering if he could cast those, and it'd help with finding Emerald. I suspect she'll be useful stopping this crystallization stuff.

Masoom meets with the others in the lounge later that night, wiping the engine grease off his face. (You want a check for his work on the engine, Lethys?)

"The Phoenix will be in top shape for the trip. Something struck me while I was working, though. The rivens' fading seems similar to how Rasha's silver swordsmen vanished at the temple. You think there's a connection?

"There's also been a lot of talk about souls lately, too. First the crystallized monsters, now the black orb poking holes into them. If part of their souls are missing, and souls can be converted into energy, is that energy being lost... or is it being channeled into something?"

Masoom ponders something a moment.

"Verity, how is your yellow orb able to stabilize them anyway? What are its abilities?"

Verity: "Hard to say really. It's like an amnesiac. It know s what it know, but doesn't know how it knows. and it's knowing might not show up until presented with a situation."

The following is from the church records you uncovered.

Reference for spiritual terminology.

Arcane Power: Flow of arcane energy from the soul and usable to the subject. Believed to extend beyond normal arcane casting to include greatly enhanced reflexes, reaction time, and ability to withstand damage. Extremely skilled non magical warriors are believed to have high arcane power, just as a strong mage. Children and young teens are placed in the category, undeveloped, as their arcane abilities are still maturing and often make it difficult to compare with those of adults. An undeveloped may still be more powerful and dangerous then an adult with a given arcane power.

Arcane Potential: Theoretical capability of the souls energy output. Ranges from lowest to highest: Kappa, Iota, Theta, Eta, Zeta, Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Beta, Alpha, and Prime. Prime is believed to represent the power of Karellen, and Kappa is minimal. Epsilon is the measured arcane potential for the templar, although this being a measure of potential, not all Epsilons live up to an ability anywhere close to the templar. A few Epsilons we have found have never recieved any magical training in their life, and could easily loose a fight with a human thug. Each ranking is orders of magnitude more powerful then the previous.

Our sampling has uncovered some unusual patterns. Distribution among potentials Epsilon and lower follows the power law, with with most people at the lower end, but the transition up to Epsilon is smooth. Beyond Epsilon, the rate drops suddenly, and beings with higher potentials are almost non existent up until Alpha, where the spiritual Sigma's appears.(see below)

From our studies, it appears beings never live up to their arcane potential, and even at the Lemurian peak of the templars, they are still an order of magnitude below Epsilon potential. This is seen as evidence for spiritual decline of Lemurians, and with the right actions, a Lemurian may be able to increase their arcane power, to reach their true arcane potential. Project netherworld seeks to force such an increase, and with the right power source, push beyond arcane potential.


Spiritual alignment: The primary division in spiritual alignment is between Plus Souls, and Minus Souls. Plus souls have greater, and more organized spiritual structure, and represent the higher range of Arcane Potentials. Plus souls are the minority by an overwhelming margin, even among pure blooded Lemurians. Minus souls are insignificant, and may be ignored, used up, cast aside, and/or destroyed for the sake of the plus souls.

Plus souls may be subdivided into additional categories

Meta: A plus soul residing in a non Eladrin body. A meta may also qualify for an additional subcategory, but due to greater interference, detecting it is far more difficult. All humans who show any magical ability are believed to be Meta's. This is in contrast to the Eladrin, where even Minus souls are capable of using magic, although not as well.

Sigma: First discovered 10 years ago. The church hired members of the Helios familiy to aid in the development of arcane devices to measure spiritual traits. As a demonstration of the device, they sent the raw data of each of their family members to us. Upon analyzing, we discovered an unusual spiritual structure within the child "Rhea Helios". To hide our findings, we sent back fake data to the Helios familiy, changing Rheas spiritual alignment to Plus, and her arcane potential from Alpha to Theta. After this discovery, we began searching for additional Sigma's finding one additional confirmed, and one unconfirmed.

Heta: Originally believed to be the peak spiritual alignment, but recently shown inferior to Sigma's. A portion of the templar fall under spiritual Alignment Heta. A Heta may also be a Meta, although detecting it is extremely difficult.

Omega: A theoretical spiritual alignment, based on our current theories of spiritual structure. No Omegas have been identified. Project Netheroworld seeks to forcibly changed the spiritual alignment of the research subject known by the name Vela, to an Omega.

Notes: Over time, an unusual trend of plus soul distribution has been found. In the distant past, we believe plus souls were located entirely within the Lemurian population, but some slowly drifted into humans over time. At this time, our studies have determined that half of Plus souls are within Lemurians, a quarter within humans, and a quarter within the Riven. Given the smaller size of Riven population compared to that of Humans and Lemurians, this trend is highly unusual and shows a strong attraction of plus souls to the riven.

Masoom frowns a moment. "We might not know more until we have the Black Orb... how are we going to get in anyway? Are we gonna fight our way through? Sneak in? Take him up on his offer to talk? If we do, go sincerely or plan to double-cross him?

"I can break out the Seeming ritual to disguise ourselves again, if we decide to sneak, and Passwall might also come in handy to travel through a wall or two. Those will cost about a thousand gold apiece to cast, though."

(Also, any idea what we should ask the Oracle summoned tomorrow?)