Curious about how this place stays architecturally sound, I use the Disintegrate spell a few times to disconnect a ten foot slab of the stone floor… and the disconnected piece just stays where it is, with no support. I jump on top of it, and yes, it continues to stay in place.  Magic stone, I guess… although it doesn't show as magical: Divine shenanigans, I guess.  Physics? What are those?

But at least it means I don't need to worry about the place collapsing on top of me if there's not a deliberate trap involved.

“It's not like you need to worry about being buried alive. You have Earth Glide up, you can just walk through the walls here,” Patricia points out.

“Yes, I know,” I consider, “but I like to have my ducks in a row.”

Patricia rolls her eyes, and we move on.

The place is big.  And gray. And remarkably empty… but I guess Pharasma's job is to judge souls, not keep them. This is, ultimately, just a waiting area for the dead… which I suppose explains the elevator music.  

But there's going to be some contingency items; it’s not like ALL the dead are well-behaved, and I'm sure demons, daemons, devils, divs, or some other kind of never-do-well beings will occasionally try to raid the place for souls to steal, so defenses will exist. I'm sure the workers took the best they could carry with them, but… there: Detect Secret Doors flags me on a concealed door in the wall.

I walk up to it and… yes, it’s trapped. A soul upload trap, nasty thing, rips a person's soul from their body and stores it in a data module… which I suppose is handy if you want to turn someone into an AI, but it generally causes people to drop dead on the spot, and be hard to revive. It's a hybrid trap, and I'm fully immune to the magical portion, but… yikes.  It's on a one minute timer, which would be enough time for a defender to run in, nab a few things, and run out… but someone wanting to loot the place is going to spend more time there.

Still… I know how to disarm it.  There's actually two basic ways: Disrupt the magic or hack the attached computer. I go ahead and do both, just for safety's sake.  I also take a bit of time and check… yes, three trapped souls.  But… given who runs this place and what it's for, anyone caught in this thing probably does need to stay out of circulation… and they'll be here when this place is fully digested if I do nothing. Hmm… well, I have data space… I transfer all three into my magic comm unit as non-executable archive files; my comm is a VERY good computer at this point, and has the space.  I figure I can see if embodying them is a better idea than purging them later.  For now… soul destruction is bad.

Curiously, what I find here is just a collection of modern weapons, armor, and related accessories.  For weapons, I find a dozen Mark 8 Fragmentation Grenades (they explode in a twenty foot radius, and the little pellets work out to about seventy points of damage to anyone caught in the blast), a brace of High Energy Density Plasma Missiles (they go in a rocket launcher, and average one hundred ten damage when they go boom; pricy ammo), Storm Hammers (they’re giant hammers that release a nasty jolt of electricity on a hit; averages about seventy damage per hit, plus whatever oomph the muscles of the person swinging it add), an Icecap Ice Launcher (it deals ninety-one points of average damage by creating and launching a giant chunk of supercooled moisture at a target at range), a Kin-Killer Paragon Rifle (it’s a sniper rifle; take your time to aim, and you can shoot that sucker for MILES with reasonable accuracy… and it averages some fifty-five points of damage per shot), a Tempest Shock Caster (it’s a battery-powered gun that produces a twenty foot radius explosion of electricity where it hits that deals about forty five points of damage to anyone caught in it), and a Supreme Needler Pistol (it’s a small arm that holds eight darts, and shoots for abut thirty six damage… the main advantage is that it is small).  I also find a few suits of Starguard armor (it’s really nice powered armor; very strong, keeps you alert to what's nearby, and quite durable), as well as some specialist-series hard light armors (what I picked for myself).  Then there's accessories: Weapon fusion seals fit for the weapons they stock, which I take the time to identify: Shock, Frost, Flaming, Corrosive, and Thundering; they have the option of changing half of the damage from the weapon to Electricity, Cold, Fire, Acid, or Sonic (respectively) - which is good for when you're not quite sure what you'll face (they won't all fit on one weapon… but they’re all good to have, and multiple weapons solves that problem nicely) - plus batteries and ammo to supply all of the above.

Yes, I loot it all.  While it's not particularly useful to me, I have basically unlimited carriage, so of course I do.  I move on and find other similar caches, fairly evenly spaced (and yes, I loot those too… only the first had any captives, though).

I don't find what I was hoping to find: Artifacts, Relics, and other things I can't just order up from my crafting team… but oh well: Can't win them all.  I mean, I did win here, just not as much as I would have liked.

“Unless that mask means something,” Patricia pipes in, “we haven't checked that out seriously.”

“Fair,” I consider, pull it out of storage, and look at it closely: No magical aura, no alignment aura, doesn't register to Detect Technology… to all appearances, it's just a plaster mask.

“What about something stronger?”

I shrug, and try Analyze Dweomer, which also yields nothing. “It's just a plain, white plaster mask, as far as I can tell,” I report back to my other half.

“Yes,” Patricia replies, “It's still white.  Completely unchanged.”

Why is that relevant?  Ah, “I’m thick sometimes. It should have turned pink and girly when I did that, shouldn't it?”

“Right,” she spells it out for me, “It's not as malleable as everything else here.”

“Which means it is distinctly not normal,” I toss it back and forth between my hands with the Telekinesis spell, like I did with the data module full of adult videos so long ago… and it stays white.

Hmm. “Maybe Legend Lore, then?” It's a spell for getting information about a person, place, or thing… and doesn't target the subject; it's a personal spell. Which of course also means….

I disconnect from my body, cast the spell, and get my results:

It's a plaster funerary mask, of the sort that Psychopomps wear.  The Psychopomps don't make them: They're made at the same time as the Psychopomp, by Pharasma. That's the real reason they always wear them: The masks are gifts from their creator. A mask taken from a Psychopomp is always just a normal, plaster mask. Nobody knows what they do, if anything, under other circumstances: Psychopomps never part with theirs willingly.

I reconnect to my body, and Patricia nods; she's part of me, and got the same information as I did: There's no need to repeat it.

“It seems intended as a gift or reward,” she volunteers.

“So it should be safe enough for me,” I complete.

I try putting it on… but it doesn't fit. It's a very form-fitting mask, and my head is too wide, my forehead too tall, and my nose too large for it.

“Not on your armor,” my Psycrystal gives me a rather pointed glare, “On our real body.”

I furrow my brow as I frown, “This is my real body,” how can she not see that?

“Because I'm not the one with a poor grip on reality,” Patricia rolls her eyes, “Disconnect, step out of ‘your real body’, dismiss the spell keeping us small, and then try the mask.”

“Really? You think it will fit THAT form?”

Patricia takes a deep breath - and as Psicrystals don't breathe, I know she's being theatrical - and continues, “Just try it, please; you know full well what I mean.”

“Fine, fine…” I do as she says, turning off my body, and step out of myself, dismissing the Minute Form spell that keeps this form three inches tall, putting me… looking just slightly up at at Patricia? Huh.  “I didn't know I made you that tall….”

“You didn't,” my pink partner Patricia lets me know, “I'm five foot one with these heels, four foot ten without. All the buffs have gotten us down to four foot six.”

Meh, whatever. It's not like this is permanent, “Let’s try the mask now, anyway.” I look at it a moment, it's white and smooth… I take it and bring it up to my vision, putting it on….