Trap Testing for the Academy of Magic

Dryali was back to his normal self, and he, Tahu, and Tuala decided to pay Arnari a visit to find out what was available and perhaps challenging to do.  After a quick glance to make sure they were up for it, she listed

• Pollution cleanup for the Wizard Gwydion along the Pirates Dream river.  This will pay 50gp/person plus 1 uncommon potion each.
• Garth Nimblefingers of the Academy of Magic wants us to test his latest trap.  100gp/person if you disarm it successfully, 50gp/person of if you fail.
• Find Ethan of the Daystar cultists for the Church of Storms.  They don't necessarily want to subdue & capture him

Dryali interrupted, "Do we want to put watchers on him?"  Tuala said darkly, "Throw him out the window."  Arnari just continued.

• Hanohano of House Ha'aheo wants to transport a herd of pegasus to Bandolier.

A moment of silence, then Tuala said, "Not us."

Dryali finally asked, "Are they… providing a handler?"  Arnari replied, "No."  Incredulous, he asked, "We can use people from our own stable, then?"  Arnari shook her head, "No; just you."

Dryali, Tuala, and Tahu all laughed.  Arnari said, "This is mostly draft pegasus, they'll be slower and more, want to stay together."  At this statement, they all stopped laughing and looked at her askance.

She sighed.  "Hanohano will figure it out.  Sigurd is the Dockmaster at Bandolier…"

Tahu piped up, "Trap sounds interesting."  Tuala agreed, "That, or Ethan."  Dryali said, "Trap or Ethan.  Pegasus herd will be a comedy of errors.  We'll be chasing them all over Skyway."

Tahu asked, "Any whereabouts known?"  [for Ethan.]  Arnari told him, "Not really; we're pretty sure he's still in Cliffshadow."

Tuala made a cat face.  "Too many detective missions.  Let's trap test."

Dryali asked, "How does that even work?"  The Freelancers fell into some speculation, even Arnari: "I think (not sure) he sends you through a series of rooms."

So the three of them decided to do the trap, if for no other reason than to find out how it worked.

When the Freelancers presented themselves at the Academy of Magic, they were immediately brought to the dean, Garth Nimblefingers, who was very happy to receive them.  The Djogeon halfling was slightly taller than Cathance, with tan skin, brown hair, and brown eyes.  Under his robes of office was obviously fine clothing.

He set aside his work and rubbed his hands.  "Follow me," he said, as the door opened on its own in front of them.  "I will have healers at the ready!"

They followed him back down the three flights of stairs to ground level, and across the quad to a building in the back.  Then they descended more stairs underground.  They went down a long hall.  On the right were small workrooms, obviously intended for students.  On the left were much bigger rooms, obviously some sort of research laboratories.  Dryali looked at those as carefully as he could as they passed.

Once past the labs, they came upon an open space, and the architecture notably changed; double doors were set in a lintel with runes.  Dryali's eyes narrowed, and Garth waved it aside.  "Don't mind the weird decor," he said, "Will transfer it to client, when the trap works to my satisfaction."  Dryali recognized the runes in the doorway as Quinametzin runes, but he could not read them.

Behind them, two medics came in.

"At the far end of this hallway," Garth Nimblefingers said, gesturing to indicate he meant, on the other side of the doors, "is another set of doors.  If you get through the doors at the other end, you've defeated my trap."

Dryali glanced at the medics, and immediately created a protector cannon, setting it on his shoulder.  He put his eyes of the eagle back on, without the darkened lenses, then equipped his shield and arcane firearm.  Tahu and Tuala opened the doors and looked down the hallway, which was 20' wide, and went a ways before turning left around a corner.  It was well-lit by torches in recessed sconces.  The protector pulsed out its first buffer.

Tahu and Tuala didn't see much, but Dryali investigated, and with eyes of the eagle he saw, 10' apart, grooves in the ceiling, and scratches in the floor.  It looked like there was one thing, which travelled down the hallway, and he told the other two this.

Then he put the arcane firearm away, and loaded a physical bolt into his hand crossbow, and fired it into the hallway to see if the thing, whatever it was, would trigger.  Nothing happened.

Tahu then tossed a waterskin down the hallway to see if that would trigger it.  Nothing happened.  He and Tuala looked at each other.  He stepped in about five feet, and set himself to dodge… whatever it was.  Tuala followed suit.

Two giant, whirling blades emerged from the ceiling grooves at the far end of the hall.  They spun to cover the entire width of the hall and rapidly moved forward to the door where Tahu and Tuala were standing, then withdrew back into the ceiling.  Despite their dodging, Tuala and Tahu were both nicked badly.

The medics sucked in their breath.

Having watched this, Dryali had the protector pulse out another buffer, then he ran halfway down the hall, next to one of the torches.  He crouched down, and made sure to put the protector fully behind the shield.  This was far enough to see a little bit around that corner, and the floor looked… smashed.

"It looks like really tough going," he called back to the others.  As soon as he said that, pillars fell out of the ceiling, like 2' wide pistons of stone, smashing the floor repeatedly for 6 seconds.  Dryali's eyes widened a little.

Tahu dashed up to Dryali, paused a second, then dashed up to where the blades had emerged.  Tuala moved up towards Dryali by about 30', and prepared to cast web on the blades, which he assumed would emerge from the doorway where they had been withdrawn back into the ceiling.

Instead, they emerged where Tahu was, and made their way back down the hall.  Somehow they failed to slice Tahu, but they still caught Dryali some, and Tuala even more.  The medics started forward, but Garth held them back.  "No, no, not yet, let them act."  Undeterred by his injuries, Tuala still cast web at his planned time and place, the sticky substance anchoring to the walls and gumming up the blades.

WIth a grinding wrench of machinery, the blades sliced through the web and went back into the ceiling at the end of the hallway.

Dryali, watching, had seen how they were attached.  He moved towards Tuala, but did not heal him.  Instead he had the protector pulse out yet another buffer, and prepared shatter.

Next to Tahu, the pillars came down from the ceiling again, pulverizing the floor.   Tahu investigated the end of the hallway, to see what he could find out about the blades, or these pillers, but found nothing of use.

Tuala moved 15' forward, and set himself to dodge the blades.  They came back out of the ceiling and hit Tahu, who used some roguish ability to dodge most of the damage.  It looked uncanny.  But then the blades were in between Tahu and Tuala, and Dryali let loose his shatter, centered on the ceiling between them.

Bricks, dirt, rubble, and shards of metal rained down on the floor.  Garth muttered unhappily, but the medics audibly sighed in relief.  Dryali moved up the left wall of the hallway and examined the rubble, curious how the blades worked.  It looked like he could walk through it if he watched his step.

The pillars smashed the floor again, and Tahu walked back to the rubble, and started clearing it so Dryali and Tuala could get past.  Tuala jumped past Dryali into the cleared space and also started clearing.  Above them, they heard some pathetic clicks as the broken mechanism tried to activate the blades again.

Dryali moved past Tahu to examine the next hallway.  He turned to Tahu, and speculated, "I wonder if levitate would be of any use against these pillars."  Tahu said, "I dunno, it can only hold up 500 lbs, and those pillars look like a lot more than that."  Tahu looked where the shatter went off, trying to see if there was a crawl space that got him above the pillars, but there wasn't any.

Tuala moved up and peered around the corner.  The hallway really wasn't that long.  Dryali put the protector cannon on Tuala's shoulder, and then made his way halfway down the hall.  He set himself to dodge under his shield.

The pillars smashed down, crushing Dryali flat.  So, this is what a meat tenderizer feels like.  Tahu moved up to Dryali, cast levitate on him, and pulled him back with him as he returned to where they had been standing.  That left floating Dryali still under the pillars, and Tuala pulled him all the way out.

"What are you doing?!" Dryali cried, unhappy he'd been meat-tenderized just to end up back where he started.  Tuala ignored him, trying to deduce the pattern of the pillars.  He critfailed at this deduction however.

After the protector pulsed out its protective buffer again, Dryali took a potion of climbing, and easily traversed the left hand wall to end up in the next hallway.  It had a pristine floor, and ended in a pair of doors with a giant symbol on them.  Dryali thought back to his training at the College of Wizardry, before he left in pursuit of a more interesting life of artificery, but critfailed at recalling the symbol and concluded it meant health and good fortune.  Of course!  Because the doors represented beating the trap!

He dropped off the wall onto the floor of the hallway, beyond the end of the smashed floor.  Behind him the pillars slammed into the floor, and in front of him, the rune glowed.  Suddenly, Dryali was afraid of the doors!  He ran back into the hallway as the pillars came down.

Tahu should, "Dryali!  What are you doing?!"  Dryali replied earnestly, "There's a scary rune on the doors!!!"  Tahu dashed through the smashied floor, to see this rune for himself.  The rune was a 5' square in the center of the doorway.  

Tuala then also dashed through the smashied hallway, to catch up to Tahu.  He also thought back through his magical training, and realized it was a Rune of Fear.

Tuala was pretty sure the Rune of Fear could be disrupted, if it was damaged just so, in 3 places.

Meanwhile, the fear had worn off Dryali, who was deeply embarrassed at having run away.  His embarrassment translated into immediate action and he cast shatter on the doors, centered on the glyph.  It didn't seem to do a whole hell of a lot.  Then he remembered where he was, and moved back out of the pillars and into the undamaged hallway.

Behind him, the pillars smashed the floor again, but the rune glowed again!  All of the Freelancers ran back under the pounding pillars.  Tahu was knocked prone, and while neither Tuala nor Dryali were, the protector was worse for wear after that.

Tahu crawled out of the smashed floor, and pulled out his manacles.  "Maybe we should manacle each other together…" he said dubiously.  Dryali said, "Maybe stay prone; we can't run back then."  Tahu stayed prone.

Tuala army-crawled out of the pillars, and pointed out the three places where, if damaged there, the Rune of Fear could be disrupted.  The shatter had already damaged one of them.  Then he followed his own advice and sent magic missile at one of the remaining places.  It didn't seem to do much, so he used metamagic to quicken a spell and do it again, messing up a second section of the rune.

Dryali moved forward, and took his protector back from Tuala.  It pulsed out another protective buffer, which was really beginning to turn out handy.  He dropped to the ground prone, and took out his arcane firearm.

Then the pillars smashed, and the rune glowed, and they all fled in fear.  Tahu, while prone, had not moved far enough away, and ended up back in the pillars, ouch.  Tuala also ended up back in the pillars.  Dryali was far enough away that dropping prone had saved him from going back into the pillars.

Tahu moved up to one of the torch sconces and manacled himself to it, unwilling to deal with the pillars another time.  "Are we just, attacking the rune?" he asked Tuala, frustrated.

"If we got closer, we could be more creative," Tuala replied, also frustrated, "But, as you see," and he cast a 2nd-level magic missile at the third spot on the rune, and then followed up with a normal magic missile.  The slight afterglow on the rune faded out, and all the Freelancers relaxed slightly.

Then the glow swirled in front of the rune, and coalesced, then swirled together, and… in its place was a small stone golem.  It looked… super mad at Tuala.

The golem swung at Tuala with its stone fists.  The left one critfailed.  The right one smashed into the nekomata with a crunch, sending his breath whooshing out.

• Dryali stood up and sank a firebolt into the golem, leaving the stone glowing where it had hit.  The protector pulsed out a badly needed buffer.
• The pillars smashed into the floor behind them, ignored.
• Tahu, regretting his manacles, undid his wrist from them, leaving the other end dangling from the torch.  Then he moved into the melee and struck the golem with his +1 shortsword.
• Tuala wanted none of golem melee.  He disengaged and put as much distance as he could between himself and the golem without running into the hall with the pillars.

The golem turned on Tahu, and again whiffed with its left stone fist, but the right one connected.  Tahu used that uncanny rogue dodge he'd picked up to not be entirely clobbered by it.

• Dryali crit with his firebolt this time.  Some of the stone was actually melting from where it had hit.
• The pillars smashed into the floor next to Tuala, who was glad he got his placement right.
• Tahu danced away from the golem, drawing his other shortsword.  It turned out he did not need it, however, as he ran the golem through with the +1 shortsword, and it crumbled into a pile of… well, crumbly rock.

The door "clicked" behind him.

The Freelancers paused, waiting, for any more bad things.  The pillars smashed again.  Then Tahu pulled out his healer's kit and went to work on the badly injured Tuala, healing him up from the golem beatdown.

Dryali watched the pillars come down, trying to figure out the mechanism, but he failed miserably.

Tuala, once healed, investigated the door.  The Rune of Fear was entirely gone.  "So, stone golems are 10' tall," he said.  "This one was only 6' tall.  I'm figuring it's because Garth is a halfling."

Tahu said, "I'm going to try the door," and the others stood back, ready to firebolt.  But it just opened into Dean Nimblefingers' workroom, and there was Garth himself, with the two medics.  "Good job!   Good job," he exclaimed.

The pillars stopped smashing.

"Was the golem a surprise?" the diminutive wizard asked.  "Not so much," Dryali told him, "Because already there were the stone pillars."

Tahu asked, "Why not have it out?"  Garth told him, "I don't want it lured into the pillars."  Tuala replied, "Given the challenge of the pillars, I don't think that's likely."

"Hmm," Garth hmm'd, considering.  Tuala added, "Could have two golems," and Garth declared, "Will consult with clients!"

Garth waved off the medics, who after all were just equipped with healer's kits like Tahu.  He had prepared the payment in advance, and now handed them each a pouch with 100gp.

Dryali suggested, "Possibly Tenser's floating disk would defeat the pillars."  The dean responded, "The pillars are well over 500 lbs, so not as much as you think."

They started to head out and Dryali realized if he could use magical tinkering on one of the wizard's quills, that would be an excellent prank struck in the name of the College of Wizardry.  But Garth noticed, and said "Ah! Ah! Ah!  Don't touch please!" and ushered them all out forthwith.