Kit tries her luck

[Kitsune106d]

There is a dream of the future scanning the room to figure out what the trap is here.

[Aeromage]

The Dream scans the room!
There's no trap that it can determine here. It thinks this is likely a treasure room, and probably one that is important to the tower in some way. Presumably that star-on-a-disc is a clue to some puzzle in the tower.

The chests are scanning as 'Refined Starmetal Chest', and the Key is '*Starmetal Spire Key 1'. The statue is scanning as 'Refined Starmetal Statue of Stellara Astraios, Nascent Goddess'.

[Kitsune106d]

Kit will open the chests as she will take the key. She will go to examine the statue.

[Aeromage]

Kit loots the room! She gets:

*Starmetal Spire Key 1- (Item, Key, Light & Magic & Astral, 100,000,000 Gold)

5 Starmetal- (Item, Material, Light & Magic, 10,000,000 Gold)
1 Refined Starmetal- (Item, Material, Light & Magic & Astral, 60,000,000 Gold)

Starmetal Glimmer- (Weapon, Starlight, Light & Magic, 80,000,000 Gold) +80,000 to all stats, +80,000 to all attack bonus types, attacks made using bonuses from this weapon use (Sum of possessor's stats)/(Number of different stats possessor possesses) instead of the usual stat associated with that attack as the Prime Attribute, pierces 80,000 Defense and treats the Resilience of targets as 40% lower, this weapon may additionally count as being any one other Base Weapon Subtype (determined at the start of each of possessor's actions), actions involving this weapon may not become any element besides a combination of Light, Magic and/or Astral, defaulting to this weapon's elements if it would be otherwise


The statue is of a tall goddess in a flowing toga, stars and glittering astral lines caught within their folds. Her hair is swept into an elaborate updo, pinned in place with constellations. A halo of stars rings her head, and smaller stars encircle her neck and wrists as jewels. Held in her hands is a huge black metal disc, with a single shining star positioned towards its top-left.
She also looks, to Kit's eyes, more than a bit like Selereth Helios. Certainly not as radiant or powerful as the Queen of Suns, but the resemblence is there.

[Kitsune106d]

Kit will see if she can interact or do anything with the statue, making sure to be ready to run if it's like the statue in the angshire dungeon. She will see if she cannot take the disc or if she can draw on it with the paintbrush

[Aeromage]

Kit pokes, prods and pries at the statue, but it remains a resolute, if extremely fancy, fixture of the dungeon.
The disc seems to absorb any starlight painted on it. It would appear its function is to ensure that one bright star on it remains the only point of light on the otherwise-black surface.

Kit can, with some effort, lift the thing out of the statue's hands. Its diameter is twice Kit's height, however, so she won't be able to put it in her Bag of Holding unless she has some unorthodox ideas.
Interestingly, no matter how it's rolled, the single star remains in the top-left of its surface.

[Kitsune106d]

She will roll it out back into the previous room then will enter o e of the unexplored starmetal spire doorway. There should be 2 unexplored ones. She will be leaving the disc in the constellation room for now.

[Aeromage]

Kit rolls the large disc back into the constellation-chamber and takes stock of the situation.

There are four doors leading from it.
One goes to the treasure room.
One goes to the Aetherium Spire.
One goes to an unexplored part of the Starmetal Spire.
One goes back the way she originally came, to the starfall room (which contains another door to the Starmetal Spire she didn't enter on the other side of the starfall, and a door to the [Five|Eight]-Metal Spire).

Which way is she going?

[Kitsune106d]

The one to the other starmetal spire from this room.

[Aeromage]

Kit enters the other Starmetal Spire room from the constellation chamber.

The room beyond is a tall cylinder, a wide flight of railing-less stairs spiralling up and around the inside of its walls. Below, the room continues to plunge down towards the familiar, angry-looking cluster of [nothing] she saw through some of the earlier doors in the Bismuth Spire. Falling into that would likely be very, very bad.

Drifting, spherical shapes of shadow and starlight flit around the stairs and the void in the centre of the room. The Dream reports them as being Cosmos Whispers (Spirit & Astral Being, Level 50), spiritual entities that are capable of manipulating Darkness and Astral energy, afflicting their foes with Voidstruck, Astral Echoes and other similar status effects. They can levy a 'blotting out' debuff that can prevent an ability being used as long as it's on the target, and use odd Fading-Call-Like Astral Magic and Constellation-effects. There's nine of them that Kit can see, and ascending the stairs is likely to aggro them.

[Kitsune106d]

Kit will have the dream summon some more fanastics, hopefully clouds to help out before she will start up the stairs, hopefully with support in tow.

[Aeromage]

The Dream summons a Cloudrider of the Heavens Beyond (Fantasmic, Level 53) and Eternal Suncloud (Fantasmic & Solar Being, Level 55 Elite).
The Cloudrider can summon up clouds! This includes mostly-Light-element AOE effects and attacks, ablative defensive-effects and dodge-increases. It can also create and apply mass-buffs that count as coming from a place 'beyond', getting around general restrictions that might be imposed on buffing. They have fairly high stack limits, and improve pretty much everything.
The Suncloud, on the other hand, is a cloud. Made up of tiny suns. It's very bright. It's chiefly a Time/Stasis/Light/Fire-aspected Fantasmic capable of elementally flipping itself and other things through those elements, while also able to perform powerful targeted and multi-target (and some multi-hit) attacks of the same elements. It can give huge boosts to defense and damage, 'lock in' both positive and negative effects, buffs and debuffs and prevent them from wearing off, can temporarily prevent attacks from landing and has an Eternity-element death-prevention-on-self ability that is fairly effective even against stronger opponents.

Kit begins her ascent! The nine Cosmos Whispers immediately shift direction and home in on her party. She's got the drop on them, though.

[Kitsune106d]

Kit uses a light elemental mass confuse, blasting them with blinding light.

The sun cloud will blast forth light from it's tiny suns.
The cloud riders summons forth defensive clouds to booster the defense of team kit.
The dream will use its gaze at one of the whispers


Kit:
Magical attack light element mass confuse.
Mass Confuse- (Spell, Wizard Spell, Magic, 70 MP, 20,000 Gold) +2 Magic Attack, 15% Confusion, 1 hit against 19
Dream:
Twohundredfold Gaze- 75,000 Damage, Counters to this action cost 200 times their normal listed MP quantitiy, to a max of 2,000,000,000 additional MP, Light or Psychic or Sonic or Glory, 0 MP

sun cloud: blasting forth light.
cloud: defense cloud to protect the team

[Aeromage]

Kit blasts the Whispers with confusing Light, sending a rippling wave of destructive magical force surging forth into the ranks of the Whispers, dealing Heavy damage!

The Eternal Suncloud summons forth an Eternal Stratosolar Front! Blazing, brilliant collections of yet more miniscule suns in the form of great layers of searing clouds wash out from the Fantasmic, blasting the Whispers for Heavy damage and hitting them with both Awestruck and Burning.
The cloud persists. Looks like it's going to keep hitting each round.

The Dream levies its Twohundredfold Gaze upon a Whisper, killing it outright.

The Cloudrider calls upon Enveloping Clouds of the Heavens Beyond! The group's defense increases sharply as an ablative effect.

The Whispers attack with darkness and cosmic echoes. The first four hit the Enveloping Clouds instead of their targets, dealing no damage and burning off the cloud-defenses.
The fifth attacks Kit with motes of silvery light, dealing Light damage.
The sixth and seventh utterly fail to breach Kit's defenses.
The eighth manages to take advantage of the assault, coming in at an odd angle and blasting Kit with a disorienting wave of cosmic background noise and astral radiation, dealing only Light damage thanks to her armour and inflicting Voidstruck: Astral Echoes.

The round ticks.
The Whispers take Heavy damage from the Eternal Stratosolar Front. Six more of them die off, leaving Kit's party with only two to face.
Kit takes damage from Voidstruck: Astral Echoes.

[Kitsune106d]

Kit will attack again, as she attacks with powerful magic, trying to see if she can burn them up , channeling the power of the aeon diadem and the soulstaff into this attack.
The eternal suncloud will focus on one of the whispers, trying to kill it straight out.

The dream leveis the gaze again on one of the remaining.
the cloudrider will do the enveloping clouds again!



Kit:
magical attack: Flare- (Spell, Wizard Magic, Fire, 120,000 MP, 60,000,000 Gold) +60,000 Magical Attack, 60% inflicts Burning, 1 hit against 600,000, deals 3/4 Damage, Caster must be Level 20 or greater
Great Soulcrystal Staff Which Bears the Soul of the World's Hero- (Weapon, Staff, Light & Glory & Magic, 65,000,000 Gold) +65,680 Magical Attack, +65,000 to all stats, +100,000 MP, 15% Base Element Resistance, 15% Glory Resistance, 80% Critical, 80% Dodge, 80% Resilience, 180% To Hit, Wielder counts as wielding an additional Souls
Aeon Diadem- (Accessory Aspect- Aeon Diadem, Crown, Time, X Gold) +7,600 Magical Attack, Wearer may choose to have any stat be the stat that determines wearer's turn order, Wearer may, once per thread, assuming that no foes are level 80 or higher, undo a round of battle and go through it again, with both sides being able to choose new actions and new random numbers being generated, May open gates to alternate iterations of time (with positive and negative outcomes both possible) as an RP action, 15% Time Resistance, +1,900 Defense against Time, +2,450 AGI, Wielder may spend an action that allows wielder and wielder's allies to escape from random quests at the start of the round after said action is performed, Wearer has a 6% chance of being able to Suspend an offensive action targeting wearer made by an individual 10 or more levels lower that is under level 50 for 3 rounds, this final effect does not stack with itself or with identically worded effects from other items or abilities, Wielder's Time-element spells cost 5,000 less MP, Wielder's Chronomancy summons gain +1,000 to all stats as a non-stacking effect, Wielder's Chronomancy spells cost 15,500 less MP, Wearer gains Fatigued: Elderly Immunity, Wearer's corpse constantly counts each round as being the round of its death and treats the number of rounds since its death as though said value were always 0, as well as causing effects and checks of said value to treat said value as though it were 0, Offensive actions from sources below Level 40 that are below wearer's Level and this artifact's Level that target wearer that are not delayed are delayed for 1 round

suncloud: single attack on one of hte damaged ones.

cloudrider: Enveloping Clouds of the Heavens Beyond!
dream: Twohundredfold Gaze- 75,000 Damage, Counters to this action cost 200 times their normal listed MP quantitiy, to a max of 2,000,000,000 additional MP, Light or Psychic or Sonic or Glory, 0 MP

[Aeromage]

Kit calls upon the most powerful spell in her possession, unleashing a titanic blast of Fire and Time to obliterate her foes!
And obliterate them it does, each collection of star-motes and darkness blowing apart and away from the sheer force of the spell.

Kit and the Dream get:

9* XP for a Level 50 entity

6 Echo of a Cosmic Whisper- (Item, Material, Astral, 250,000 Gold)

Astral Whispers- (Spell, Astral Magic, Astral, 30,000 MP, 30,000,000 Gold) +30,000 Magical Attack, 60% Inflicts Voidstruck: Astral Echoes, 60% Inflicts Awestruck: Stellar Sonance, 1 hit against 30

Constellation Echo- (Spell, Astral Magic, Astral, 30,000 MP, 30,000,000 Gold) Caster gains a non-stacking buff that may replicate the effect of any single Empowered Constellation possessor had previously set in battle that is no longer present or active; said buff counts as the presence of an additional Empowered Constellation for the purpose of items, abilities and effects that check for such, but does not count towards possessor's limit of set Empowered Constellations.


Awestruck: Stellar Sonance- (Possessor takes an amount of Astral element damage equal to 5% of possessor's Max HP at the start of every round that cannot be defended against by Defense that is not either coming from Universe-element sources or Defense that is specifically Defense against the element Astral)

[Kitsune106d]

Kit and her company start up the stairs.... Curious what's at the top.

[Aeromage]

Kit and her group of Fantasmics scale the wide-yet-perilous stairs, soon reaching a higher floor of the Starmetal Spire, the Cloudrider setting up its clouds once again as they rise.

The room beyond is tall and cylindrical, with no other obvious doors in it. Glittering star-motes gently cascade within the metal, radiating from the ceiling, down the walls, and pooling in the floor around a large central disc with symbols on it.

Kit finds a rather more pressing matter to deal with before she takes a closer look, however. A brilliant circlet of stars flashes into being at the ceiling at the same time a surging rush of star-motes wash out of the wall, rapidly increasing in both power and radiance.

The Dream identifies them as a Stellar Circle (Astral Being & Magic Being, Level 64) and River of Stars (Astral Being & Elemental, Level 62).

The Stellar Circle specialises in mass-summoning Astral Beings and related entities, buffing them, and setting up ongoing effects both positive for its side and detrimental to its opponents. It can hook up with Empowered Constellations, regardless of their source, and use them to power itself and its allies up further, too.
The River of Stars is a rather-more-straightforward Elemental-type entity, which is to say it boasts decent power for its level, counts as and is empowered by being in Zones of Astral, Light and Darkness, has potent mass-hit attacks that can inflict Moderates, and can set up repeating attacks that hit every round. It can also generate a buff that pulls all attacks (even multi-target ones) to hit it instead of its allies.

Both have a notable Resistance to Light, the River also has a Resistance to Magic and Absorbs Astral, while the Stellar Circle also has a Resistance to Darkness and Absorbs Astral.
The River looks like it has a Darkness and Spatial weakness, while the Stellar Circle has a Void and Spatial weakness.

Kit and the Dream are faster than the enemy.

[Kitsune106d]

Kit will strike iwth a time and fire infused flare, trying to overdrive it as she attacks quickly and powerfully!
The dream will attempt to glare at the river!

Kit:
overdrive flare. time and fire.
magical attack: Flare- (Spell, Wizard Magic, Fire, 120,000 MP, 60,000,000 Gold) +60,000 Magical Attack, 60% inflicts Burning, 1 hit against 600,000, deals 3/4 Damage, Caster must be Level 20 or greater
Great Soulcrystal Staff Which Bears the Soul of the World's Hero- (Weapon, Staff, Light & Glory & Magic, 65,000,000 Gold) +65,680 Magical Attack, +65,000 to all stats, +100,000 MP, 15% Base Element Resistance, 15% Glory Resistance, 80% Critical, 80% Dodge, 80% Resilience, 180% To Hit, Wielder counts as wielding an additional Souls
Aeon Diadem- (Accessory Aspect- Aeon Diadem, Crown, Time, X Gold) +7,600 Magical Attack, Wearer may choose to have any stat be the stat that determines wearer's turn order, Wearer may, once per thread, assuming that no foes are level 80 or higher, undo a round of battle and go through it again, with both sides being able to choose new actions and new random numbers being generated, May open gates to alternate iterations of time (with positive and negative outcomes both possible) as an RP action, 15% Time Resistance, +1,900 Defense against Time, +2,450 AGI, Wielder may spend an action that allows wielder and wielder's allies to escape from random quests at the start of the round after said action is performed, Wearer has a 6% chance of being able to Suspend an offensive action targeting wearer made by an individual 10 or more levels lower that is under level 50 for 3 rounds, this final effect does not stack with itself or with identically worded effects from other items or abilities, Wielder's Time-element spells cost 5,000 less MP, Wielder's Chronomancy summons gain +1,000 to all stats as a non-stacking effect, Wielder's Chronomancy spells cost 15,500 less MP, Wearer gains Fatigued: Elderly Immunity, Wearer's corpse constantly counts each round as being the round of its death and treats the number of rounds since its death as though said value were always 0, as well as causing effects and checks of said value to treat said value as though it were 0, Offensive actions from sources below Level 40 that are below wearer's Level and this artifact's Level that target wearer that are not delayed are delayed for 1 round


Twohundredfold Gaze- 75,000 Damage, Counters to this action cost 200 times their normal listed MP quantitiy, to a max of 2,000,000,000 additional MP, Light or Psychic or Sonic or Glory, 0 MP Sonic element.

[Aeromage]

Kit taxes her mana reserves, unleashing her most powerful spell in a time-ripping riotous explosion!

In response, the Stellar Circle pre-emptively counter-mass-summons in a flood of Astral Beings, attempting to overwhelm Kit's party before she has a chance to deal too much damage!
The temporal blast rips through the summons, but there are enough in the way to prevent the worst of the assault reaching the Circle and the River, dealing only Moderate damage to both.

The Dream glares twohundredfold at the River, battering it with a gaze that sends audible tremors tearing through the fabric of reality! The River curves and curls itself into a defensive formation, sending out ripples and waves of stars in its wake to block the assault. It takes Minor damage from the attack!

The River of Stars continues to dance and whirl, intertwining its sinuous form into itself and setting up the Celestial Flow Eternal. Waves of star-stuff wash out from it, aiming at Kit's entire party!
The Cloudrider is able to whip up a barrier of heavenly clouds to whisk the assault to a place Beyond before it hits, preventing any damage from being taken! It looks like that attack is going to repeat every round, however. That's potentially a problem.

The Eternal Suncloud and Cloudrider are up!