Sandwiched between two magical big ass dogs, the party set to work clearing a path to Tower Two. The Raggoths howls resonated deeply in the minds of a few party members, leading to at least one ruined pair of underpants. Fortunately those were the only casualties of the battle as the party made quick work of the dogs and moved on.
Reaching the tower, they entered and found a similar layout to the first one, except where there were great detailed carving before now they found the chamber packed with machinery. Great metal boxes, some with lights, some with visible energy being changed and manipulated inside, some just humming, lined the walls. As before a round map table was at the center of this room, this one already powered as the tower seemed to be fully operational. Paz quickly began looking around at this map, finding much more information on the fully operational table. Each tower had a label on this map, Tower One was labelled “Archives”, Tower Two was labelled “Development/Reorganization” and Tower Three was labelled “Portals”. This caught the eye of almost everyone, except Reith who decided to skip the usual arguments and explore below himself.
As the party debated the merits of fighting their way though possible swarms of giant spiders and hive warriors to get to the tower marked “Portals” verses figuring out how to get this tower powered and heading to the central tower to see if they could use the device, a explosion was heard from below. Smoke poured from the entrance to the stairs as they rushed down, only to find Reith standing in the center of another large circular chamber lined with machinery. Smoke poured from the largest piece, a blank box with crystal pipes leading in and out of it. Scattered around the room were large corpses, with spider like lower bodies and humanoid upper bodies, although they were so dessicated that no other details could be gathered from them. Among the bodies were smaller metal creations, similar in shape to the corpses but incomplete and featureless.
Before Reith could speak, dark energy began to coalesce over the largest collection of corpses, bringing a new horror to the party. Ash made use of his Sun Blade to help make the angry shadow helpless in the face of the incoming asskicking. Before long, they had sent it back to where ever it had come from and found that the machines breaking down in this lab had caused the power from below to be sent above, rather than used down there. Heading up, they found another chamber about the main one, this one full of large work tables and ancient tools. They found a few sheets of incredibly old and delicate paper, filled with the writings of some of the survivors of the surface scouring. The writings spoke of changes happening to the survivors, damages done to them on a base level that seemed to be changing them in a negative way. The party theorized that the spiders that infest the third tower might be the remaining Precursors. The writings also spoke of the anchor site, its progress but ended before they knew if it was completed. The papers were beside a box containing a handful of Ioun stones, which the party further argued over.
Reaching the top, the control room mirrored the one in Tower One. Paz and Reith activated this tower as well, which caused the central tower to begin to power up. Tower Three seemed to be active already, which was what the party had guessed the solid square meant back at the start. Checking the map on their way out toward the center, they could see the USS was outside Tower Three but did not appear to be moving. They hoped they could reach the center before Maynard came looking for them.
They travelled to the center without incident, reaching a 100 meter open space that surrounded the tower on all sides. As they emerged from the buildings, they were spotted by a hive warrior, leading to a quick battle. After seeing the party, the warrior raised its head and seemed to signal somehow, bringing a second warrior to its location.
The party was showered in acid a few times but managed to defeat the pair before more arrived. They then hurried across the open space to the doors that directly ahead.
With no idea what to expect, they opened the doors.
Early Frost Warning 