Star, following along with the group as it starts to move, quickly responds to Sable’s announcement that he is going off by himself:
{Star} Sable, if you are going to be by yourself now, it may please you to take this with you, a special type of Staff of Vision, a little different from the one developed in… sorry, I was off into a Story. I was waiting for a good Time to lend it; perhaps that is Now. It will prevent Confusion from an Umber Hulk’s gaze. Shrinking it with you won’t affect its benefit. It activates when you touch it and speak or think this word, just the way I am pronouncing it on the Link: קלוהרבמו
It activates immediately, so to conserve it, you may wish to wait to use it until you feel the Confusion Gaze beginning to take you; the Staff will clear it away. The Staff has other Vision functions that you won’t need, and which cost charges you may not wish to afford. It has twenty-five touches in it in total, which you may use to prevent the Confusion before I have to recharge it.She fetches a long staff out of a small pouch, radiating Divination, moderately strong, and Healing, moderately strong, easily visible to all those Detecting Magic. It is six feet long and two inches in diameter, of clear crystal with a distorted view through it. She offers it to Sable.
{Star} And Vir, if you are strategizing about your parrot deployment… Vir, if it pleases you, this Healing might be useful: I was able to accomplish some interesting Effects with the two extra, extra Ror copies that Janis volunteered to help me. I even had your parrot clouds in mind. A flight of parrots will get quite a bit of Healing if it passes within forty feet of me, a bit of Healing multiplied by each parrot in the cloud, to each parrot in the cloud. And so might we, if within twenty feet of the cloud. But if the parrots have Shroud of Undeath, then the Healing will damage them; I don’t know if you have other ways for them to be effective besides the Vampiric Circle together with the Shroud of Undeath, or if they must be further away than forty feet, so they don’t damage us.
I’ll also have some other information in a moment that the two of you may be pleased to learn. I can pass it to you on the Link.Star then reaches into another small pouch and puts on her right hand a finely crafted open gauntlet, a wire tracery of silvery metal runes, shaped to be worn across the right wrist and back of the hand, with a loop encircling the index finger. She also has a thick, blunt green Rod in her left hand, with a stylized Windblossom on it… the Insignia of the Elven Armada. While moving slowly along, she has been staring intently at various sections of the fog and the Glyphs written on the rock surface, and examining everyones' visuals of it on the Link, as well as the visuals of Ror0 who was staring at the area and putting his flow of Spellcraft information on the Link.
She says on the Link, first absently about the setup, distracted, and then more focused as she warms to her subject, the Forbiddance:
{Star} A setup… of course; the chief officer of the Illithid Empire High Command went to Acheron and then, according to Ror’s Commune with Dumathoin, arranged a surprise for us. His assessment that I would find out he was there, but not what he plans, and yet I would come to his trap anyway, has proved correct; he is a formidable opponent… but then so are we.
…….You all have interesting ideas about the rescue; traveling through the walls without coming out of them certainly seems to be unexpected, else we would have found the walls laced with Forbiddance too and they are not, at least in the locations we have investigated.
I think my own best task at the moment are these Glyphs and especially the Forbiddance, for when we do want to come out.
Ror, you said you can’t see this Spell with Spellcraft and I think that’s exactly right. It has a very curious Casting; it is missing the Spelltag specifiers that normally would be present in a Forbiddance that define the appearance of the fog. Instead, those Spelltag specifiers have been replaced with ones normally associated with Invisibility… tied in with Metamagic as you said so that the Spell’s structure is not disrupted by the change. Very cleverly done, with even more care than the Glyph tied to Explosive Runes. The Spelltag specifiers for area of Effect also have an unusual configuration, but I can’t see into the Spell to find out what they are intended to do inside the area; the fog blocks the view.
At least the damage Spelltags seem to be the usual, rather than enhanced… and the reports from the other groups suggest a confirmation for that observation.
This isn’t the worst Forbiddance version we could have encountered; older passworded versions couldn’t be entered at all except through Magic Resistance, and hurt you just by touching the Spell while attempting to enter even if you failed, though they weren’t as painful. Well. At least the Illithids have hired a contemporary Caster; it could be worse!!
This Spell is very tightly Cast, with barely a thread out of place, so it will be difficult to Dispel. Sheerak, you certainly can attempt it, but Dispel needs loose ends to unravel, and this Casting has precious few. Whoever Cast it has a lot of experience; a high-Level Caster, at least as the University grades them. Ror, you should be able to chop holes in it; you don’t need loose ends for a Dispel, you cut your own. I think this is beyond me to Dispel, but I have other means.
I’ll need to make some room; a Dweomer Vortex won’t pass through a solid. So… first a Passwall to make just enough room in the ceiling for the Dweomer Vortex. I’ll not approach closer than the edge of the Passwall so that I’m not close enough to the Alarm to set it off, according to how Ror saw it is placed in the center of the corridor near to the floor.
Then I’ll check my bypass of the Glyphs… Disabling a Glyph or a Rune is not much different in principle than Disabling any other trap or device, it just takes the right tools, training, patience, and luck. Once I know I can bypass the Glyphs and Explosive Runes whenever we have need… assuming the others Cast in the complex are the same… then I’ll use my Gauntlet of Runes to destroy the ones applied to the ceiling here, and that will expose the surface of the Forbiddance for a Dweomer Vortex… a very old Spell. Even the knowledge of the creatures who designed it, the Phaerimm, has passed from memory into legend, though they still lurk in Shadow; Reverie tells me she has confirmed the reports of them there. But it looks something like their conical shape; I always thought that was no surprise. They didn’t give up the Vortex Spell voluntarily…….Star trails off in thought as a Wand drops out of her sleeve into her hand with the flick of a wrist. It is long and thick for a Wand, fifteen inches, and an inch in diameter; it has a hazy look to it like swirling Dust.
Halfaz recognizes this Effect immediately; the Plane of Dust is along the far southwest coast of the Sea of the Plane of Magma. Few ships sail there due to the inhospitable conditions for most life, and the trading outposts are all at the closest part of the Plane in its northernmost reaches. The dissolution of solid matter by the Plane makes Dust a convenient Component for a Passwall Wand to temporarily obliviate a section of the rock ceiling.
Star positions herself carefully so that the Wand is just ten feet from the ceiling, and a section of ceiling disappears. The fog lies just beyond. She goes down to the Glyphs and Rune, and quickly sketches a deft pattern across them as if she was lightly binding together their Magical strands. Nothing happens. Then she touches them with the index finger in the Gauntlet, each in turn, Explosive Runes, Glyph, and Glyph. Each fades away with the touch, in an entirely unspectacular fashion. At the same time, Star’s flash of pain comes across the Link, along with the soothing Heal from the green Rod which flashes intensely, darkly, as it pulses the Life Energy into her.
On the Link, she says heavily:
{Star} Good… so far.
I tested my Disable procedure for the Explosive Runes and the two Glyphs, and I can take you past them safely without triggering or disrupting them. It’s been a while since I used those… ah… shall I say ‘delicate’ talents; it’s good to keep them sharp. There are many Spells to obtain, whose owners do not want them to be known by others… often the best way to obtain them is by finding a way in, and back out, leaving the SpellBook but carrying the knowledge. The Red Wizards of Thay were none too pleased when I delivered copies of their Spellbooks to the Elves in Aglarond before Thay’s attack…. Oops, sorry, another Story.
Vir, Sable, if you have… similarly delicate talents, perhaps you would like to learn the procedure to Disable these three Spells; I can show it to you, if it pleases you to do so.
Then I used the Gauntlet to Erase them, to get them out of the way and expose the Forbiddance to a clear shot from a Dweomer Vortex.
The Gauntlet always hurts to use, which I can ill afford laced with this much Positive Energy. My natural capacity would have diminished to store the extra Life Energy… a fatal condition under present circumstances.
Now I’ll recharge the Armada Rod from the little Healings flashing all around the group here, from the Circles I set up. It will be full again fairly quickly, I’d guess. I have a standard military issue Rod of Healing, which stores up a variety of Healing spells to discharge from it, if we need some. It’s not a great deal of Healing for a party of this size and Life Energy, but it may help. One hundred charges. One-fourth charge for a Cure Minor Wounds. One full charge for a Cure Light Wounds, two for a Cure Serious Wounds, four for a Cure Critical Wounds, sixteen for a Heal, sixty four for a Raise Dead. Perhaps the most efficient use would be the six Heals it can deliver; I just used one on myself but the Rod will be full again soon; it is designed to absorb Healing from nearly any source, including dipping it into the Positive Plane. These little Healings are probably not putting in more than a one-fourth charge each, but with so many of you around me, the Circle is generating them quickly.
Ror, your thought to Scry a creature we leave in place, one of Ptolemaeus or another creature… it is worth trying if it pleases you do so, but once they are out of sight, I have not had success with Divination. As Ptolemaeus said, the Link is available, and more certain.
Vir, Sable, anyone else interested: Here is the procedure. I’ll show you on the Link, on this undisturbed section of ceiling. Every Glyph, and these types of Runes, is a form of Possibility Magic… Winston’s Department at the University, so they have made extensive studies of them… Magic Mouth too, even Alarm. Possibility Magic because they all have “If this, Then that” Spelltag specifiers; they are like little Contingency Spells that act on a stored Possibility. The trick to Disable them, but leave them in place, is to temporarily suppress the connection between the trigger condition and the result. There always has to be one, and it’s almost always the easiest point in the Spell structure to attack, because it’s the simplest. The Spelltags for the trigger conditions can be very complex and the result Spelltags can be very difficult to follow if you’re not a Mage, but the connection between them is clean and simple… see it there, in the Explosive Runes? And there, in the Ghoul Glyph and the Glyph of Warding? That’s the connector. Now as the Spell tries to trigger, Magical Energy must flow through that point, so you pass your hand through the trigger Spelltags to activate them and then immediately press on that connector Spelltag to take off the Magic charge… ouch, a little burn… ha! My fingers will tingle for the next five minutes at least and I’d have trouble picking even a simple lock! …but not much burn because the big Magic charge is in the result Spelltags designed to kill you. See, they didn’t activate, so we didn’t die, and now the charge is gone from the trigger conditions. Since the Spell only lost a tiny amount of Energy into my hand, it will restabilize and reset itself soon, but this entire party could walk all over the Spell for the next two minutes or so, and nothing will happen. See here, where I touched the connector… If you look closely you’ll see a trickle of Magical energy flowing back through the connector to the trigger Spelltags, just because there is so much over here in the results, and almost nothing over there in the trigger… that’s what I meant by restabilizing. But there still isn’t enough built up again on the trigger side, yet. You might ask why not permanently Disable it by cutting the connector, which you could do, except if you indiscriminately create a loose end in the Spell, it will start to unravel and Dispel itself, and if you didn’t set that in motion with some Magic that is designed to unravel Spells safely, the results may explode in your face, which is what you’re trying to avoid. So I don’t recommend cutting the connector after you’ve located it unless you have a Dispelling Knife, or even a Subtle Knife will do even though it’s designed to cut through Planes instead, or some similar tool or related Spell.
Or a Dweomer Vortex to drink out the Magic from the loose ends, as I’m about to use on the Forbiddance... unless someone else would like to do the honors on it.If you have Disable Device as a trained Skill, feel free to join in!
Star has shown the Disable procedure on the Link to bypass the Explosive Runes, the Glyph of Warding, and the Ghoul Glyph.
We’ll keep this simple: Make a DC28 check with Disable Device, which is what you would need to Disable it yourself, and you’ve learned the procedure. You have all of the plusses and extra rolls that apply, don’t forget them. You’ll need to make three such checks, one for each of the three Spells separately, since you would be rolling against each Spell separately anyway.
Keep track of which ones you learn. If you make all three, you can bypass the whole mess, in a particular section of it, and lead companions across the section you Disabled for the two minutes it’s deactivated. You won’t have to make the check again, you can pass across them freely by taking a Swift Action to press each one in the right place. If you only make some, but are travelling with someone else who made the ones you’re missing, then the two of you can Disable a section of the whole mess by working together.
Remember that your hand will tingle for about 5 minutes afterward from the slight zap, with possible penalties to other actions... it’s a very cool improvement to your Skill, but it isn’t for free.
Also keep track of N20s for Disable Device specifically for Magical traps! Get enough of them and something cool will happen.