# [[The Castle Never Control Room]] This room is in [[Castle Never]]. We got here through [[The Ioxian League Obelisk in Castle Never]]. This room is like a control room for those who would access this control room. This room seems to be filled of gears and levers and mechanical as well as magical things. ## The Room In this room, there is a circular dais in the centre of the room with runes on it. The dais houses six concentric circles that are spinning slowly. Each ring represents some sort of trial for would-be guardians. There are also chairs around the sphere, each of which seems to be destined for a certain type of person. ![[castle-never-control-room.excalidraw.png]] %%[[castle-never-control-room.excalidraw|🖋 Edit in Excalidraw]]%% When activated, there is a bubble that shows what's happening in the Arena. One can push past the bubble and into the arena itself. ### Chairs There are six of them that are plain chairs and three that are more throne-like. The three have orbs in front of them. #### Normal chairs - 1: I touch it. It seems to try to form a connection with me, but it rejects me. This chair looks expensive and grand. It's made of platinum and plated gold. 2-4 look cheaper although still intricate. This is Golden - of human make. It rejects Keren too. Eraithe tries it and it rejects him too. - 2: Can't tell which race made it. - 3: Elven make. I sit here and touch the orb. It accepts me. I attune to the orb. This chair is for The Watcher. I activate this orb and my sight appears a few hundred feet above the castle, a very high perspective. - 4: Smaller than the others - halfling/gnome. I touched it and it rejects me. - 5: Keren - he has levers near him that have some handwritten notes. The lever says _Embiggen_ (Keren found it). Similar to the Watcher one, but I can't move it. It's a fixed view from the castle looking out, on the ground by one of the spires. This was the one with the orb that was flashing red. I find a label with the word "*Achoo*" on it. - 6: Eraithe can't move it. Orb responds to me. Ground level watching, from a different area. #### Throne chairs - 1: Expensive, grand, made of platinum and plated gold. It is golden and of human make. It rejected me, Keren, and Eraithe. Maestro gets an orb to come out of it and from the six chairs. They lit up one at a time. He hears the words: "Psion accepted" in his mind. Ka'ira can also access it! - 2: "Channeler invalid" when Ka'ira sat on it. When I sit on it: "Connecting The Channeler to the Mithalar"!! A faint ray of white light goes from the Mithalar to me, and it slowly increases. I instinctively know that I can channel the energy towards everything around us. It's like activating the obelisk, but this time, I'm connected more directly to the power. The room starts to hum, then vibrate. - 3: The Watcher chair. "Watcher accepted" for Keren. When all three chairs are sat on, we can: - control the ballistas of [[Castle Never]]. - divert magic from [[Mount Hotenow]]. ### Levers - _Achoo_: d8: I rolled a 4. A wind blows in the desert and pushes everyone and everything 4 squares away. - _Floaty_ - _Tick Tock_: Some things that are tiny and mechanical go underneath the feet of people in the desert and explode, dealing 4 damage. - _Barbecue_ - _Embiggen_: Random creature in arena increases in size. ## The Sphere The sphere is some sort of automated and magical defense mechanism for the room. It is powered by a [[Mithalar]]. The rings in the sphere corresponded to certain challenges: ### Ring 1: Goblins and wolfriders in a desert ![[fr-desert.png]] ### Ring 2: Underground with undead - Moldy, earthy room - Roots on the ceiling - Undead creatures, smelling of mold and sweat, have bony hands and mushrooms growing out of their bodies. - Undead zombies were climbing out of coffins, and there was a chest that contained severed hands! - Corpse of [[Phase spider]] that we fought! - The zombies were raised by some paladin or cleric. ### Ring 3: Gnoll camp ![[gnoll-camp-map.png]] - Gnolls are speaking Abyssal. They seem to have taken over an old temple and have misappropriated it for their corrupted needs. - There are two massive columns, stairs of stone, and a statue of a dog-headed thing that Ka'ira has seen in her dream, a gnoll, that has a green gem in one eye. - This used to be a dwarven settlement, but the war band of gnolls have taken it over. - Human prisoners are here as well, being slowly turned into hyenas by a chanting gnoll. - This used to be a great gathering hall in the past and a statue of [[Tyr]], the blind god, but made of flesh and bones. ### Ring 4: Underground cavern with dwarves ![[fr-ring4-underground-dwarves.png]] The cavern had four holes on the floor and on the ceiling with metal cages over them. Out of one of these four holes would randomly spout a stream of fire, connecting from top to bottom. ### Ring 5: Barren wasteland of demons This is [[The Abyss]]. This is a desert-like area, where the ground is brown and red, the water is a tar-like sludge, and the whole place is a warzone from a long time ago and the earth has bones of humanoids. We smell something in the air, full and overwhelming. There are strange, pale, yellow clouds ahead that are moving around on the wind. They move sluggishly. We see the sunlight filter through the yellow clouds. Occasionally, we see a gush of gas. The soil is like rock - it's unsteady. There's something strange about the composition of the rocks or soil here. We also stumbled across a tower here that was the site of a battle. We saw dead people with the symbol of [[Helm (god)]] on them. This is where we saw [[Vierlene]] as a [[Vrock]]. ### Ring 6: [[Monastery of the Open Hand]]