Ultimum Temporum IC

[alanek2002]

Saris regards the titanic claw coming his way, unafraid. He's seen plenty of dragons trying to attack him before, and... this doesn't fit for one of them. Rather she looks... confused? "Ah".

"You are one of the two who were forced to remember, weren't you?" He says, reaching out a hand to put on the claw approaching him. After it connects, he floats back to match it's speed if need be. "If you need somebody to talk to about it, I'll be there to listen." He finishes in a friendly tone, (If somewhat muffled by all that claw) smiling slightly. "Though... what is your name?"

Spoiler: OoC

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Sorry for the short post. Though, the claw reaching out to me is great for a small bit of character development! Emphasis on the small part, but still. Just a bit on how he focuses on helping.

[Emperor Ing]

I think I would like that. The dragon replies, slowly withdrawing her hand. A small smile on her muzzle. My name...it's... She pauses for a moment. It's Sultanaharkaj.

[alanek2002]

"So," Saris says, floating a bit higher and turning to the others in turn. "Sultanaharkaj, Ruja, Zerak and myself. We are all that was sent to find and reverse whatever happened to their brother... And given what they are, it might be a tad difficult. I feel it'd be best if we went to the closest city and asked a few questions, which would take a few minutes at most... but do any of you have any other ideas? The easiest way I have to find a city is locate city, of course, but they might have something set up to detect divinations, so fast alternatives would be great."

[drack]

Ruja looks down at the scattering skeletons and wraiths below as they form an ever larger ring on the ground below. As it returns to the pixi, the glance itself serves as answer.

Spoiler

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Ruja has lots of methods, but this is my simplest so I might as well stick with it.

[BelGareth]

Before the gate that Ruja summons is done spewing forth its torrent of undeath, something grabs a hold of it.

Like a spectral claw, it coalesces around it, jerking the gate, suddenly, the gate warps, as if the hand was tearing at it, it stretches one way, and then another, as if it was anchored to reality in one spot, and a force was trying to wrench it free. And then. Suddenly, as the hand had appeared, it tears the gate from its spot, and crunches it up into a ball of nothingness.

For a moment, all gravity, all force, all direction is pushed towards the ball, as if it were sucking in everything. But then it flickers out for a moment, like the last heartbeat of a dying ghost.

Everything in 100 yards around the gate is gone, including the dirt, stone, trees and undead.

Moments later, you feel something in the earth, it seems to...move. And then, just like Ruja's minions scuttled forth and spread through the jungle, disturbing branches and trees, another force arrives, but this one is harder to see, and less obtrusive.

You hear the clattering of combat, metal upon rock, claws upon clay, Ruja instinctively knows his minions are fighting a horde of elementals of various kinds. Water, Leaf, Air, Earth, Plant, Detritus Elementals, all swarming from the very land itself to do battle with the antithesis, the anti-force.

And while many Elementals are sent back to whence they came, it doesn't take long for the jungles to stop shaking, and the birds to start chirping again.


Off in the distance, you can all see a blackened mountain top, smoke, and ashes swirling about it like a mournful pyre.

[drack]

Ruja cared little for the minions, they were all expendable, and all replaceable. Still, the perpetrator of these unprovoked acts of hostility intrigued him.

"It seems I have a secret admirer hiding in that shrubbery below."

He announces verbosely, then he began to work his magics. Ruja's magic was not filled with flashy signs, nor was it instantaneous, for even as existence was collapsing around them there would be time. Every hundred or thousand years some upstart got it into their head to "end the world", some of them worked, some of them were stopped, but somehow Ruja just didn't get as worked up about these things as he used to. Still, it had made a mistake. He had seen its hand. Now perhaps it was a hand of flesh, one of another dimension, or maybe even a magical construct, but even so it was part of an entity, and that in itself would give him somewhere to start. Magic gathered and swirled about him like waves in the ocean, deep long pulsating waves that weren't channeled to a point, but neither did they stop, instead mounting and swelling, almost indistinguishable at first from the magics around him. Then he thought, carefully considering what this foe may be.

Spoiler

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Metafaculty on the owner of that hand. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/po...etafaculty.htm
Precognition of the fate4 of us, this land, and that creature http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/po...ecognition.htm
Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions on the round http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/po...mpressions.htm
object reading on the land http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/po...ectReading.htm

Well, that's a nice long wait, but might as well put some effort into it and look around in order to get us going ay?

[alanek2002]

Saris tenses when he sees the hand appear; and relaxes once when he sees that only everything within 100 yards is taken in, making no move to deal with the elementals attacking the undead horde.

"Ah, that could have been worse. Not too much worse than combining a few extra-dimensional spaces. I Think it is safe to say that they can track crossplanar travel, and those that come in normally can also be tracked, as those elementals are only attacking the undead so far. Although... it is uncertain if they can track teleportation. Might be best not to test it. "

He pauses, and considers the elementals. "... Sadly, very few places have such an adverse effect on an undead swarm. This was certainly not natural, if that was ever a question. All in favor of leaving this area, before somebody comes to check it out?"

Spoiler: Skill checks!

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Spellcraft: (1d20+133)[141]
Knowledge Arcana (1d20+183)[195]
Knowledge Nature (1d20+183)[194]
Knowledge The Planes (1d20+183)[193]

Any of these tell me more about what happened to the portal, and about the elementals?

Silly undead dragon, Knowledge is magic!

[Emperor Ing]

Sultanaharkaj noted how the world responded to the one called Ruja's presence, as though the entire planet rose up in protest against the veritable legion of undead. Though the dragon felt the elementals and the undead somehow...beneath her notice.

The smoldering mountain to the distance, however, seemed to catch the blackened dragon's interest, if only because the effects of fire spoke to her on the unconscious level. There, that mountain. She points, veins of white-hot fire begin to form on her body, growing.

[BelGareth]

Spoiler: Drack

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Metafaculty
Its name, race, alignment, and character class: n/a
A general estimate of its level or Hit Dice: deific (41 HD or higher).
Its location: n/a
Significant items currently in its possession: None
Any significant activities: crush your portal and destroy your undead
A current mental view of the creature: you are looking at it

Precognition
Your vision fades from view as if reality were dripping away after a bad storm

Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions/Object Reading
You see a gigantic battle took place, even by your standards. Giant elves fought over the blackened mountain top in the distance, flinging eldritch power at each other in its rawest of forms, with blades of pure light and darkness, one fo them fell, slain, to slowly disintegrate as the others stopped to revere him, and then another left, fleeing and weeping as the others hurried to catch up.

In the distance, a mountain slowly gets up and moves off into the horizon.


Last owner’s race:
Last owner’s gender: None
Last owner’s age: None
Last owner’s alignment: Neutral

Spoiler: Alanek2002

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Spellcraft: (1d20+133)[141]
Knowledge Arcana (1d20+183)[195]
Knowledge Nature (1d20+183)[194]
Knowledge The Planes (1d20+183)[193]

The owner of the hand is very similar to a Genius Loci, like an human is a deity. The elementals were probably a part of the greater Loci, similar to an immune system eradicating a virus.

[drack]

Whispered murmurings surround the great undead dragon, but its jaw does not move.

Blank, black, black all black!
Howling winds and scorching rains to stillness eternal!
Settling, calm, empty!
Rising steam...
...and billowing dreams!
The end is here!
The End!
The END!
THE END!
Then Ruja's eyes snap open and the voices fall silent.

I'm sure you guessed, but it's still here.

Again Ruja opened a gateway, but this time he called only those that fly, amassing them in the skies overhead, then to the creature he called out

Hello!

Certainly he understood had someone else summoned creatures there, he might have slain them in an instant too, it was even quite conceivable that the creature hadn't even noticed it was killing them, after all, he didn't count every bug or humanoid that died when he rolled over or took a step.

[alanek2002]

Now Saris pales, shuddering slightly as he realizes what, exactly, lives here. It is that powerful? Fighting anything of that level is rarely fun, and often deadly.


"Not good. Really not good. It is... some sort of genius loci, except far larger, and significantly more powerful." He pauses to take a breath, floating a bit further away from the ground. "I don't know if it is merely this forest, or this entire plane. But we should not touch the ground again, whatever we do. The Elementals were basically the immune system for this thing... and we just told it something is off, over here."

...And then the undead dragon started summoning more undead to join it. Saris gapes for a second, then turns to the mountain and begins flying towards it at his full speed. (390 ft/action) Stopping only if he reaches a mile before something else happens. "Yes! The mountain! Very interesting! Lets go have a closer look!"

[drack]

At this point Ruja clarifies with the intent of keeping his comrades, unwillingly aligned as they may be, from making the same mistake as his first wave of undeads.

It is the mountain. Not the forest, not the plane, and not the sky. It was made in a war between...

Ruja quickly looses interest in sharing the story, instead reminding them

Come now, we're above all this clambering. It's an entity of dedific power much like ourselves, certainly we can afford it the respect to speak to it rather than as if it weren't here. Living lands, sometimes they have a mouthpiece right?

OOC

Spoiler

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defidic power: equivalent character level of 41+

[Emperor Ing]

Sultanaharkaj hovers over the land, her massive wingspan redundant beneath the nimbus of heat and pressure at her feet, incinerating foliage on the spot, and what undead were unfortunate to wander too close were blasted with heat, dead flesh burning and melting off of overcooked bone. Let us... the ashen dragon mutters as the incandescent veins spread all across her body, slowly building in brightness and intensity before suddenly, the dragon rockets into the air, the force and violence of her sudden movement echoing across the land. The distance between her and the mountain closing near instantaneously as she makes her fiery approach at impossible speeds.

Spoiler

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Flying towards the mountain at normal fly speed
(256,520 ft per round)

[Jojomo]

While the others discuss their situation and Ruja summons his minions, Zerak takes a moment to contemplate. The destruction of the dragon’s portal is perhaps the most interesting aspect: the undead and the elementals are all but meaningless, even the destruction wrought by Sultanaharkaj’s passing is but transitory; in time the ash will serve to nourish the jungle’s new growth. The faintest of smiles crosses his face at the thought.

The mountain then... that was the source? Arms folded across his chest he floats through the air alongside Saris, not seeing any point in joining the impetuous dragon’s headlong rush to their destination.

“I shall attempt to communicate with the entity telepathically,“ he says aloud, “That may be swifter than trying to find whatever passes for its mouth, if indeed there is such a thing.” He reaches out with his mind, beginning with simple thought-forms and working through the various elemental tongues as the sendings become more complex.

<Calmness>

<Curiosity/Eagerness>

<Contrition at damage from large fire lizard’s presence/passage.>

<Regret for any disturbance from presence of negative energy beings.>

Can you understand me? We would like to speak with you. We do not desire violence.

Spoiler: Bel

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Should be able to talk to anything with an intelligence score if it's in range (150 ft.).

Also, got over 200 in the various Knowledge skills and over 100 in a Bardic Lore-like ability if that would shed any light on the entity/planet/it's history.