CLOVER'S LOG
Inside the Warforged factory, we quickly find Shadow’s Warforged form and move into the assembly area to talk. To our great relief, we learn we can remake Keys. Shadow #3 also tells us that my actual father—the honest-to-gods tabaxi—went to the city. So our coming out here to find him was the rash, dangerous decision on my part that I feared it to be. The guilt from nearly getting my friends killed multiple times is becoming unbearable. Before continuing on our way to make plans to reforge Keys, Shadow gives us an eighth dragon scale that was sent from beyond the barrier. We only need one more to repair the nexus. We’re so close.
After a long day, we decide to rebuild Keys in the morning and settle in to sleep for the night, but Brendel smells rotting things and sees a brightening light beyond our camp. Something is whispering, “No, it’s not right. We must continue experimenting. They’re coming for us. We need minions.” Meanwhile, Ronan hears, “Check everywhere,” from multiple sources. We ask the elf we rescued from the angel, Renna, what she makes of it all, and she gives us the worst news of the day: She believes a Beholder has made a lair in the upper chambers of this facility.
I don’t sleep at all during the night, too distracted by the whispers and clanging throughout the place. Ronan also seems to have trouble getting rest, and we both find ourselves utterly exhausted in the morning, making everything just a little more difficult. Not the outcome we’d hoped for with the threat of a Beholder looming. Though we’ve never encountered one, the tales of their powerful and lethal magic are prevalent enough. We will try to stick to lower floors to avoid waking the monster.
Renna the ranger scouts a few floors and discovers there are automatons still working here and there. We need to pass by unnoticed, get to the upper floors not occupied by the Beholder, and find blueprints and a new power core to rebuild Keys. Along the way, Nyx finds a computer alcove with a way to reprogram Keys. Within seconds, she’s so enraptured in her work that she doesn’t notice when an automaton attacks our party in the hallway outside the alcove. We kill it, but not before it sends out an alert about intruders.
We rush to the elevator to get to a new floor for more parts and blueprints, but the workers know we’re here now. They pursue. We manage to fight them off while collecting what we need and dash back to the elevator that will take us to the floor where we can finally fix Keys. There we find more workers than we’ve encountered so far, some automatons, others flesh-and-blood and seemingly under the influence of some sort of mind control. We slip by unnoticed while they are absorbed in their work, but it is their work that is most troubling: They are building a massive clockwork dragon. Whether this is for the angels or the Beholder, it cannot be good. While Nyx and Brendel get to work fixing Keys, Oman turns invisible and goes to steal a few of the power cores meant for the dragon. When one of the automaton notices trouble and leaves to alert security, Oman signals Ronan to stop it.
The trigger-happy ranger steps out and shoots the automaton, thereby drawing the attention of every worker in the place, and they make quick work of the man. As a party, we are torn. Do we step out of the shadows to save Ronan, revealing ourselves and risking our chance to save Keys, or do we finish our work and hope we can still save Ronan? For now, we stay silent.
As time ticks by, I get a message from Shadow 3 telling me that my father is searching the Golden Library back in the city. If we are to find him and gain access, we will need resources. We will need the Glasses of True Seeing. Can we have some made? Where could we find them? Shadow left a note for us where we camped last night, a text that will grant us access to the library. We are to keep it hidden. He also says we should ask about the Mechanus, whatever that is. It seems our time in the Rift is almost at an end.