Terenganu Valley: Tower Ruins (Entr'acte)
General Summary
The story starts with the Deathwish crew venturing into the tower ruins in the north of the Terenganu Valley. Hakam suggested to explore the ruins to see if it could be raided for artifacts that could be sold into the black market. As they enter the tower, they meet Hassan who narrowly escaped the firefight at the outpost spaceport previously. In the confusion, he found himself lost in the Kuan jungles and wandered until he reached the tower ruins. He is accompanied by a person named Iroh, a fugitive from the Hegemony for undisclosed reasons. Iroh met Hassan in the jungles and has since befriended Hassan thinking his crew could get him off planet and away from the authorities.
Finally reunited, the crew ventured into the tower ruins, a large stone slab closed the only entrance and exit into the tower trapping the crew in the tower's atrium. There is nothing but solid wall going straight up into the sky in a large circular atrium. A 20 foot wide hole lies in the centre of the atrium. There is a circular walkway around the hole of about 10 feet wide. The party previously found out that the hole in the centre is about a 10 minute rock drop to the bottom. This doesn’t make any sense at all as that means the hole is 1500km deep. It is physically impossible for an human entity to have dug this far down into a planet’s surface.
The House of Three Siblings
A crew member notices a recessed line that runs along the circumference of atrium. The line starts with a recessed hole and continues around to the centre of the line where another recessed hole is, and then continues on to another recessed hole to end the line. Upon further investigation, another crew member notices a raised stone plaque with some strange symbols on the wall hidden by vines. It seems to be a message of some sort in ancient Kuan. A crewman fluent in Kuan was able to decipher the message:
As the crew ponders this question, Iroh, thinking aloud mentions, "past, present, and future" and suddenly a faint white light is seen down below in the seemingly bottomless pit. The sky darkened to pitch. A bioluminescent light surrounds the upper lip of the sides of the hole revealing another message in ancient Kuan:
The crew members decide to take the leap of faith into the bottomless pit. Jumping into the bottomless pit not knowing they would survive takes its toll on them and they suffer some psychological damage. The Trial of Three
The crew upon their supposed death, suddenly wake up and find themselves in another room as old and as ancient as the tower. The room is unrecognizable to any known human. Time hasn’t been kind as it has degraded the story of how this place came to be on its walls. Mounds of sand have accumulated on the bottoms of the walls; evidence of the murals on the walls fading slowly to the ground over an unknown period of time. They see glimpses of what looks like the story of the Portal Builders, but not enough to give you anything insightful. However, there is a wall that is intact, depicting a mural of three siblings. Closer inspection reveals recesses around the hands of siblings indicating pressure plates. The crew also finds inscriptions around the hands of the siblings:
The Trial of the Past
Izzaldin and Hassan find themselves in the past reliving the escape from the hundreds of Dark Flower infected humans in the biome of the derelict Dabarani Research Station. To escape, they need to find the maintenance hatch again that they escaped out of before, only this time, they have to escape the station using another method. Hassan takes Izzaldin's thermal carbine and shoots above on the weak glass ceiling of the biome. This decompresses the biome and O2 as well as everything in the biome not fixed to the floor starts flying up to the hole and sucking it out into space. In the few seconds that follow, Izzaldin and Hassan start firing their weapons to propel themselves to a girder joint of the biome to hold onto while everything gets sucked up. They both miss the girder and hit the side of the biome. They bounce downwards towards the maintenance hatch. Izzaldin makes it to the hatch, and Hassan narrowly avoids getting hit by a flying infected human and makes it to the hatch as well. They try opening the hatch with brute force only to have its handle break on them propelling them upwards towards the hole again. Observing quickly, they find another entrance/exit across the biome and they start shooting their weapons again propelling them to the other exit. They wrench open the keypad to the exit, which turns out to be a maintenance elevator, and quickly hack into its systems. They do it with ease and manage to open the elevator doors. They maneuver themselves inside and take the elevator down to the hangar. A white light engulfs them again, and they manage to pass the Trial of the Past.
The Trial of the Present
Amirah and Wahil find themselves on top of a long set of stairs leading down to the entrance of a long dark hallway. Sensing danger the quickly observe their new surroundings. They see small pressure plates on the staircase's steps, and think its a trap. They test it by throwing the cheap knife they bought on Coriolis Station onto one of the small pressure plates. As soon as it hits the pressure plate, laser beams from holes on the sides of the wall activate and burn the opposite wall of the staircase. The knife is obliterated from the laser beams. The slowly make their way down the steps, but Wahil manages to hit a pressure plate, and it hits him. Luckily for him, his armor prevents the laser from doing lasting damage to his body and he suffers a minor burn. They make it down to the long hallway and see another set of pressure plates on the floor, and long slits at 3 foot intervals along the hallway. Sensing another trapped area, they try to avoid the pressure plates. Wahil uses his strength to clamber up the slits and "boulders" his way to the other end of the hallway completely avoiding the floor. Amirah, instead, tries to tip toe her way past the pressure plates, and successfully avoids the trapped hallway.
They find themselves in another room filled with statues shrouded in white cloth. As soon as they enter, the statues move to face them. As they try walking into the room, the statues move closer and closer, but they move so quickly that their movements don't register by the naked eye so it seems as if they appear instantaneously in their new locations. They quickly find out that the statues move towards sounds. Amirah and Wahil soon find themselves trapped and surrounded by the statues. Wahil manages to quietly sneak past the statues and end up at the room's exit. Amirah throws a book of poems she has been carrying this whole time, and sees the statues rip the book into shreds in a blink of an eye. With the statues away from her, she tries to make a run for it. She trips, falls, and breaks her toes as she ducks down under one of the statue's legs, as she runs towards the exit. She makes it through, and both Wahil and Amirah end up in another room. The room they enter is ethereal in form. It seems to be a room, but not a room at the same time. Two strange figures appear in front of them. Amirah sees three and suffers a brief nervous break. The figures ask Amirah and Wahil why they should let them live. Wahil and Amirah try to lie their way through, saying that they are currently on a quest to save a people from destruction. The figures tell them they are omnipotent and omniscient and see through their lie, and give them one last chance to tell the truth or be trapped in the ethereal realm forever. They tell the truth and say that they're in it for the money and power, but only because they are escaping their pasts and living their present for survival. The figures like this answer and think of it worthy, and let them pass back into the mortal realm.
The Trial of the Future
Hakam and Iroh find themselves flung far into their futures on a snowy circular plain surrounded by gigantic ancient statues holding swords. Two swords are placed in the centre of the arena and before it, lies the inscription saying "one must die for another to live." Trying to avoid its literal meaning of a duel to the death, they try to find another avenue to escape their predicament, but to no avail. They eventually reserve themselves to their grim fate, and start slashing each other with the swords. As they do that, the statues and the arena start glowing red. They feel that the place is demanding a blood sacrifice. They eventually find themselves both bloodied and hurt from cutting each other up with the swords. They decide to kill each other together by stabbing themselves in the hearts at the same time. They die, but in their death, they pass the trial and are transported back alive in the present. Seeing each other die and the resulting sacrifice they made in the future for each other greatly traumatizes them and will haunt them for their entire lives.
The Key Bearers
As the crew get teleported back, a pedestal appears behind them with two portal builder artifacts. A mind helmet and a field sphere. On the pedestal is inscribed the real story of how the tower ruins came to be in modern Kuan. According to the inscription, a mysterious religious group called the Key Bearers built the tower ruins as an abandoned icon temple to mask the fact that underneath the ruins is a transport hub for the Portal Builders. The transport hub allowed the Builders to travel across time, space, and parallel universes. The Key Builders believe that humanity is not ready for Portal Builder knowledge due to the fact that many people across the Horizons still believe in icon worship. Knowing something that is counter to what they believe in would destroy the delicate balance that the Horizon worked so hard to achieve after the Portal Wars. The Key Bearers sole purpose is to protect Portal Builder sites, and in doing so, have taken on the burden to be shunned and deemed as heretics among many factions across the Horizon. For them, this is a small price to pay considering what advanced knowledge beyond the current technological and social capability of humanity would make factions do to each other if they had such power. Out of the Maw
As the crew pick up the artifacts, the ground begins to shake. The whole tower is collapsing. They become engulfed again in a white light and find themselves back where they started in the open atrium of the tower. The stone slab that blocked their path earlier is gone and they are now able to exit the tower. As the tower collapses, the crew make a run for it down the open hallway. Heavy stone slabs come falling down and some crewmen make it out of the tower. However, Izzaldin trips and his leg gets caught under a stone slab and he breaks his leg. Wahil picks him up and fireman carries him out of the tower.
Meanwhile, as the crew of the Deathwish were running out of the tower, Iroh was using his mystic powers to move sand from the ground to block the falling stone slabs as the crew escapes. At the same time, Hassan uses Izzaldin's thermal carbine to shoot the falling stone slabs and disintegrate them into hundreds of harmless pieces. Unfortunately, he misses and accidentally hits Wahil and Wahil suffers a nasty laser burn on his arm. Iroh, the last person in the tower, uses his powers to protect himself from the falling slabs as he walks out. However, the Dark Between the Stars manages to block his path once more, but it fails to stop Iroh's will. He makes it out just as the entire tower finally collapses into a heap of stone and rubble.
The crew suffered much and gained little in return. The psychological and physical effects of venturing into the tower will haunt them for some time to come.
Finally reunited, the crew ventured into the tower ruins, a large stone slab closed the only entrance and exit into the tower trapping the crew in the tower's atrium. There is nothing but solid wall going straight up into the sky in a large circular atrium. A 20 foot wide hole lies in the centre of the atrium. There is a circular walkway around the hole of about 10 feet wide. The party previously found out that the hole in the centre is about a 10 minute rock drop to the bottom. This doesn’t make any sense at all as that means the hole is 1500km deep. It is physically impossible for an human entity to have dug this far down into a planet’s surface.
The House of Three Siblings
A crew member notices a recessed line that runs along the circumference of atrium. The line starts with a recessed hole and continues around to the centre of the line where another recessed hole is, and then continues on to another recessed hole to end the line. Upon further investigation, another crew member notices a raised stone plaque with some strange symbols on the wall hidden by vines. It seems to be a message of some sort in ancient Kuan. A crewman fluent in Kuan was able to decipher the message:
In a house of three siblings, if you arrive before dawn
You'll still miss the first, for he's already gone!
And of the third, you'll see not hide nor hair;
His reason for absence: he isn't yet there.
But the second by far is the trickiest brother,
For he's always disguised as the one or the other.
So if you have wisdom, tell me, I pray,
Who are the siblings who lives in this house that you've visited today?
As the crew ponders this question, Iroh, thinking aloud mentions, "past, present, and future" and suddenly a faint white light is seen down below in the seemingly bottomless pit. The sky darkened to pitch. A bioluminescent light surrounds the upper lip of the sides of the hole revealing another message in ancient Kuan:
Greetings for those who have come afar,
To the house of those who keep the doors ajar,
A trial of three awaits the bravest and wisest of thee,
For those worthy to meet the siblings three,
As in a stone circle, lies trapped a restless wraith,
Yet, the truth may take a leap of faith.
The crew members decide to take the leap of faith into the bottomless pit. Jumping into the bottomless pit not knowing they would survive takes its toll on them and they suffer some psychological damage. The Trial of Three
The crew upon their supposed death, suddenly wake up and find themselves in another room as old and as ancient as the tower. The room is unrecognizable to any known human. Time hasn’t been kind as it has degraded the story of how this place came to be on its walls. Mounds of sand have accumulated on the bottoms of the walls; evidence of the murals on the walls fading slowly to the ground over an unknown period of time. They see glimpses of what looks like the story of the Portal Builders, but not enough to give you anything insightful. However, there is a wall that is intact, depicting a mural of three siblings. Closer inspection reveals recesses around the hands of siblings indicating pressure plates. The crew also finds inscriptions around the hands of the siblings:
Inscription of the PastThe crew decide to place their hands on the pressure plates and splitting themselves into groups of two. Izzaldin and Hassan decide to place their hands onto the hands of the past. Amirah and Wahil decide to place their hands on the present, and Hakam and Iroh decide to take the future. As soon as the crew simultaneously placed their hands onto the plates, a bright white light engulfs the crew and are transported elsewhere.
Take the hand for those who came before
And make your way to past’s open door
Inscription of the Present
Take the hand of those who are
Who wish to travel to this moment’s scar
Inscription of the Future
Those who wish to see tomorrow’s revelation
Beware beware the attestation
For what that will be done
Cannot be said if it shall be in future’s run.
The Trial of the Past
Izzaldin and Hassan find themselves in the past reliving the escape from the hundreds of Dark Flower infected humans in the biome of the derelict Dabarani Research Station. To escape, they need to find the maintenance hatch again that they escaped out of before, only this time, they have to escape the station using another method. Hassan takes Izzaldin's thermal carbine and shoots above on the weak glass ceiling of the biome. This decompresses the biome and O2 as well as everything in the biome not fixed to the floor starts flying up to the hole and sucking it out into space. In the few seconds that follow, Izzaldin and Hassan start firing their weapons to propel themselves to a girder joint of the biome to hold onto while everything gets sucked up. They both miss the girder and hit the side of the biome. They bounce downwards towards the maintenance hatch. Izzaldin makes it to the hatch, and Hassan narrowly avoids getting hit by a flying infected human and makes it to the hatch as well. They try opening the hatch with brute force only to have its handle break on them propelling them upwards towards the hole again. Observing quickly, they find another entrance/exit across the biome and they start shooting their weapons again propelling them to the other exit. They wrench open the keypad to the exit, which turns out to be a maintenance elevator, and quickly hack into its systems. They do it with ease and manage to open the elevator doors. They maneuver themselves inside and take the elevator down to the hangar. A white light engulfs them again, and they manage to pass the Trial of the Past.
The Trial of the Present
Amirah and Wahil find themselves on top of a long set of stairs leading down to the entrance of a long dark hallway. Sensing danger the quickly observe their new surroundings. They see small pressure plates on the staircase's steps, and think its a trap. They test it by throwing the cheap knife they bought on Coriolis Station onto one of the small pressure plates. As soon as it hits the pressure plate, laser beams from holes on the sides of the wall activate and burn the opposite wall of the staircase. The knife is obliterated from the laser beams. The slowly make their way down the steps, but Wahil manages to hit a pressure plate, and it hits him. Luckily for him, his armor prevents the laser from doing lasting damage to his body and he suffers a minor burn. They make it down to the long hallway and see another set of pressure plates on the floor, and long slits at 3 foot intervals along the hallway. Sensing another trapped area, they try to avoid the pressure plates. Wahil uses his strength to clamber up the slits and "boulders" his way to the other end of the hallway completely avoiding the floor. Amirah, instead, tries to tip toe her way past the pressure plates, and successfully avoids the trapped hallway.
They find themselves in another room filled with statues shrouded in white cloth. As soon as they enter, the statues move to face them. As they try walking into the room, the statues move closer and closer, but they move so quickly that their movements don't register by the naked eye so it seems as if they appear instantaneously in their new locations. They quickly find out that the statues move towards sounds. Amirah and Wahil soon find themselves trapped and surrounded by the statues. Wahil manages to quietly sneak past the statues and end up at the room's exit. Amirah throws a book of poems she has been carrying this whole time, and sees the statues rip the book into shreds in a blink of an eye. With the statues away from her, she tries to make a run for it. She trips, falls, and breaks her toes as she ducks down under one of the statue's legs, as she runs towards the exit. She makes it through, and both Wahil and Amirah end up in another room. The room they enter is ethereal in form. It seems to be a room, but not a room at the same time. Two strange figures appear in front of them. Amirah sees three and suffers a brief nervous break. The figures ask Amirah and Wahil why they should let them live. Wahil and Amirah try to lie their way through, saying that they are currently on a quest to save a people from destruction. The figures tell them they are omnipotent and omniscient and see through their lie, and give them one last chance to tell the truth or be trapped in the ethereal realm forever. They tell the truth and say that they're in it for the money and power, but only because they are escaping their pasts and living their present for survival. The figures like this answer and think of it worthy, and let them pass back into the mortal realm.
The Trial of the Future
Hakam and Iroh find themselves flung far into their futures on a snowy circular plain surrounded by gigantic ancient statues holding swords. Two swords are placed in the centre of the arena and before it, lies the inscription saying "one must die for another to live." Trying to avoid its literal meaning of a duel to the death, they try to find another avenue to escape their predicament, but to no avail. They eventually reserve themselves to their grim fate, and start slashing each other with the swords. As they do that, the statues and the arena start glowing red. They feel that the place is demanding a blood sacrifice. They eventually find themselves both bloodied and hurt from cutting each other up with the swords. They decide to kill each other together by stabbing themselves in the hearts at the same time. They die, but in their death, they pass the trial and are transported back alive in the present. Seeing each other die and the resulting sacrifice they made in the future for each other greatly traumatizes them and will haunt them for their entire lives.
The Key Bearers
As the crew get teleported back, a pedestal appears behind them with two portal builder artifacts. A mind helmet and a field sphere. On the pedestal is inscribed the real story of how the tower ruins came to be in modern Kuan. According to the inscription, a mysterious religious group called the Key Bearers built the tower ruins as an abandoned icon temple to mask the fact that underneath the ruins is a transport hub for the Portal Builders. The transport hub allowed the Builders to travel across time, space, and parallel universes. The Key Builders believe that humanity is not ready for Portal Builder knowledge due to the fact that many people across the Horizons still believe in icon worship. Knowing something that is counter to what they believe in would destroy the delicate balance that the Horizon worked so hard to achieve after the Portal Wars. The Key Bearers sole purpose is to protect Portal Builder sites, and in doing so, have taken on the burden to be shunned and deemed as heretics among many factions across the Horizon. For them, this is a small price to pay considering what advanced knowledge beyond the current technological and social capability of humanity would make factions do to each other if they had such power. Out of the Maw
As the crew pick up the artifacts, the ground begins to shake. The whole tower is collapsing. They become engulfed again in a white light and find themselves back where they started in the open atrium of the tower. The stone slab that blocked their path earlier is gone and they are now able to exit the tower. As the tower collapses, the crew make a run for it down the open hallway. Heavy stone slabs come falling down and some crewmen make it out of the tower. However, Izzaldin trips and his leg gets caught under a stone slab and he breaks his leg. Wahil picks him up and fireman carries him out of the tower.
Meanwhile, as the crew of the Deathwish were running out of the tower, Iroh was using his mystic powers to move sand from the ground to block the falling stone slabs as the crew escapes. At the same time, Hassan uses Izzaldin's thermal carbine to shoot the falling stone slabs and disintegrate them into hundreds of harmless pieces. Unfortunately, he misses and accidentally hits Wahil and Wahil suffers a nasty laser burn on his arm. Iroh, the last person in the tower, uses his powers to protect himself from the falling slabs as he walks out. However, the Dark Between the Stars manages to block his path once more, but it fails to stop Iroh's will. He makes it out just as the entire tower finally collapses into a heap of stone and rubble.
The crew suffered much and gained little in return. The psychological and physical effects of venturing into the tower will haunt them for some time to come.
Rewards Granted
- Mind Helmet
- Field Sphere
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