- We enter The Illuminating Sanctum
- Astris knows a few things about it
- The lobby is clean and white (there is no line to the elevator)
- The fancy elevator leads to the surface, gold, pretty, etc
- In front of the elevator are guards
- Floating magic lights
- There are disheveled people camping on the side that want to go to the surface (and will beg for it)
- The Illuminating Sanctum is where the is Mindscape hosted and has the path to The Surface
- We pretend to be hobos while casting Detect Magic
- Nes introduces homeless people to the allmighty ones
- The two far walls are magical (there are doors somewhere)
- We talk to a homeless guy who wants us to find his son Shawn who was lost on the surface
- He confirms that some people have gone through the walls
- Cairn tries really hard to believe they can walk through the walls (30 in Self-Persuassion)
- We decide to stop dawdling
- We talk to the guards for information
- Cairn tries talking to them as a robot, it doesnt work
- Nes presents the Administrator Key Card, the guards scan it and summons two specialized robots (the ones to kill us)
- The guard who scanned our ID gets a halo over its head (The Cognitia embodies them) and negotiates with us
- It wants us to deal with a “disturbance in the Mindscape”
- We agree
- It presses a hand against the wall we couldn’t get through and it opens up
- A guard takes us beyond the lobby to a room with walls of servers and brains
- Theres an old man in a capsule sitting in a meditation pose
- Oryndrus is sitting in the room drinking coffee
- We ragebait him and we learn that we’re working with Oryndrus
- A bunch of people became comotose inside the Mindscape
- One of them was the administrator of The Illuminating Sanctum (Evobahn was left unconcious inside)
- They’re still concious inside the Mindscape
- Theres magic in their private rooms that are keeping them drunk
- They all have weird random obsessions
- They act like undead and fight back when antagonized
- Evobahn was not found in his prrivate room
- We enter the Mindscape (“LINK START” (this is an SAO ripoff))
- We know where the victims private rooms are
- We head to the first room, and knock; nobody answers
- we enter and it turns into a massive dollhouse
- We smell sickly sweet apple
- Theres a lifesized massive doll (its very human, looks made of marble)
- There’s someone in a corner painting the doll
- The doll smells like the apple
- Eli compliments the work and he smiles
- Cairn tries to enter and gets stunned by the smell of apples
- They mention “The Lord”
- We leave the dollhouse and enter a cereal house
- two parents and a kid are eating cereal
- The father nags the kid every so often and the kid just goes “yes, father”
- the clock smells like apples (the same as the previous room)
- We ask about the clock and “The Lord”
- Cairn tries to take apart the clock, cannot.
- Smashes the clock, it respawns, etc etc
- Eli tries the cereal and gets pierced by a steel nail (and takes damage)
- We head to the third room
- Battlefield with lots of soldiers, lots of soldiers, arrows flying, blood spilling
- There’s one warrior who seems to be popping the fuck off
- Cairn and Jaemera head into the battlefield
- She recognizes us as unfamiliar and tries talking to us (she threatens us)
- Her armor smells like apples
- We ask about “The Lord”
- The Lord came to her, asked her what she desired (she desired the ability to prove her strength) and provided this battlefield
- “The Lord” was a voice in her head that she cannot remember
- We head to the foruth room
- Cairn fails their save on the apple smell and hears a voice from “The Lord”: “What do you desire”
- Theres a garden with a marden gazebo
- Theres a spread of confectionaries and tea
- There are three beautiful people sitting in the gazebo
- They are making small talk
- The confectionaries (and people) smell of apples
- The Butler doesnt smell of apples
- Cairn tries kicking the table, cannot so sweeps the confectionaries off the table
- In the moment of disturbance, Astris asks the ladies about “The Lord”
- The Lord answered their prayers
- We head to the fifth rooom
- Its a lab, we head inside
- Astris fails their save and hears the question from “The Lord”: “What do you desire”
- There are 4 identical copies of the same guy doing experiments
- Everything smells like apples; its everywhere in the air
- It mostly seems to be from the lab equipment
- One of them asks us what we need, we ask about “The Lord”
- He launches into a tirade of complicated sounding words that arent real words
- We ask him math, he doesnt get it right
- We think he asked to be smart (he’s secretly stupid)
- We head to the 6th room
- Astris purposely fails the save and hears “The Lord“‘s question
- They desire to find what makes Astris happy (to be with parents)
- Its a deep raspy voice
- The room is just an open void with a giant bird flying around
- The wish was probably “to be free”
- We head to cereal house
- We cast Dispel Magic on the apple smelling clock (it takes 3 tries)
- Suddenly, the father lunches up and cradles the clock
- After a bit, the charm thing comes back
- We try to question him after the charm comes back, we do this aggressively
- He attacks us 😔 (along with the child and mother)
- The cereal comes to life and attacks us too 😔
- We realize that we’re not on the ‘right plane’ and have to head a level deeper
- Cairn heads a level deeper to the real private room
- There are broken blocks swirling around, there’s a giant amalgamation of metal bits looming over astris
- The cereal bowls are made of metal
- The family’s faces are very distorted, their mouths are disfigured by bits of metal, only the father seems bleeding by the metal bits
- We take down the father (non-lethally) and everyone else gets frenzied