January 15th, 2017

New Group: Back to the Castle in the Sky

Back again to the low level party and the adventures thereof. A busy few weeks have passed and soon it will be time to return to the Castle in the Sky...

From my left:
Nick playing the perfectly calm and reasonable at the top of his lungs human fighter Merrick,
Catherine (finally at long last!!!) playing the pay for play mercenary half-elven thief Ydee,
Nilo playing the "what book?" halfling cleric Arden,
Sarai playing the always ready to hack someone elven fighter Desorna,
Hunter playing the amusingly odd elven magic-user Strix, and
Zack playing the ever charming magic-user Ahri.
PLUS, appearing briefly by divine fiat, Chris' elven spellsword Valandil, because no one else remembered the activation word for the teleporter to the Castle.

We started in town with the party having freshly returned from the castle and with three weeks to spend before the teleporter would be active again, the party decided to waste their time doing foolish stuff like training up to new levels and such. The hit point audit was entertaining too, but all that got settled, Arden's clipboard was updated, and the party spent their last week randomly wasting time before heading back to the Castle.
As part of this time wasting, Merrick decided that a perfectly reasonable thing to do was to pay the 150 gold to get a water breathing spell cast on himself so he could explore the depths of the lake in search of the wyvern's remains so he could eat some of it to gain the wyvern's powers and strength or something like that. He did find the glowing giant's fibula with continual light cast on it to return to Desorna, but had no luck with the wyvern's corpse.
Soon after this the group declared themselves ready to return to the Castle and they journeyed up to the standing stones where Valandil says what needed to be said to whisk them away to the Castle in the Sky. The party enters the tower, fetches the amulets that they need, and then descends the stairs stopping to weather an attack from a giant lizard in the main hall. The danger noodle with legs is quickly hacked to pieces after taking a chunk out of Merrick's leg, and the party descends to the door to the Proving Grounds.
Inside the Proving Grounds the party decides to head north, where they have not yet been, and they find a short hallway, a room with stirges that are fairly quickly vanquished though they seriously damage the elven fighter, and then the hallway connects up to another previously explored hallway. The thief notes something odd about the last corner, and though a search and a detect invisibility spell indicate that part of the wall seems to move, they find no way to open it. Frustrated with this, they decide to go and revisit a couple of previously explored rooms, including the dry fountain room. But this time the fountain is flowing with nice clean water,which surprises the party. The cleric drinks from the fountain and says the water tastes pure and fresh and is somewhat invigorating. Injured party members who drink from the fountain find their woulds healing magically. Ahri casts an identify spell and learns that it is a fountain of extra healing, but sometimes the fountain is working and sometimes it is dry. Feeling fairly happy with this discovery the party continues on to explore the previously unexplored north hallway outside these rooms.
This short hallway leads into a chamber where a group of four bugbears is staying. Battle is joined and Ahri quickly charms one of the bugbears, keeping it out of the battle. The remainder are quickly defeated and then the question arises of what to do with the charmed bugbear. Merrick attacks it and pretty much draws that debate to a close.
The room is searched and a small panel is found in the northern wall. After certain precautions are taken, it is opened and behind it is found a mallet and eight weird metal bars that Strix identifies as tuning forks. Merrick decides to randomly tap on the bars and after a few notes the party finds that the panel and all its components have vanished and there is now a door in the center of the southern wall.

 

Cue player rant (guess who from?) about teleporter rooms.

Through the door the party finds an east-west hall. Using right-hand rule, the party goes west and discovers that the hall ends in a door. Routine checking leads to opening, and beyond the door is a short north-south hallway extending ten feet in each direction, with a grand total of three doors in the east wall, the center of which leads to the hall the party entered through. Right hand rule comes into play again and the northernmost of the doors is opened, triggering a trap which has Desorna stuck with a poison dart and paralyzed, collapsing to the floor. As the party gathers around her to examine her and see what belongings she may have that are worth taking. Or was that just Ydee?
While the party was checking on Desorna, Arden cried out in pain as he was stabbed in the back. A quick look saw nothing and no one, so Ahri cast a detect invisibility and saw a humanoid form. As Ahri pointed to it, it ran through the other door in the west room and kept running. Leaving Ydee to guard Desorna, the others ran off in pursuit through winding halls.
While the rest of the group was running around after the invisible thing Ydee amused herself by pulling some of Desorna's 17 days of rations out of her pack and stacking them on the elf's face. This fun and games ended when Ydee was stabbed in the back. Spinning around, she saw nothing at first, but then saw a bit of movement that looked almost like a heat mirage. She attacked it with her magical dagger and managed to kill it soon before the rest of the party returned after back tracking through the halls and rooms they had run through. Ydee took the thing's very nice shortsword for her own.
Once the elf's paralysis had worn off, the party prepared to continue their explorations of the area. Some random searches, a couple of traps, and an encounter with nearly a dozen stirges later, they found a pair of rooms, each with a pedestal in them, one with a granite orb on it, the other with a stone shaped like a granite prism. Merrick was all alone in the prism room and started to touch the prism while Arden was touching the orb in the other room with the rest of the party. Arden touched the orb first and suddenly an eight to nine foot tall humanoid that appeared to be made of black mist appeared in each doorway, trapping the occupants in the rooms they were in and initiating combat with them.
Merrick did fairly well as a solo act, battling the shadowy form though he took some serious damage in the process from the thing touching him and hurting him with the deep chill of its touch. The remainder of the party in the other room ganged up on the monster, dealing slightly more damage to it than Merrick was doing, but the monster was hitting Desorna harder and more often. A final blow from the cleric slew both monsters at once oddly enough, but it spared the party from further damage. As the monsters vanished, Arden heard a voice in his mind saying, "For you." Ydee noticed that Arden was suddenly wearing an inch wide seamless red ribbon around his neck with no way of removing it other than cutting it. Arden decided that he liked it and he kept it on.
Arden pumped the last of his spell points through the magical Tome of Healing and healed everyone some. Then the decision was made to go through the remaining door from this room. But when it was opened a blackish misty gas poured out and knocked out the majority of the party, except for Arden and Ydee who made their saves. With most of the party unconscious and everyone hurt, Ydee and Arden decided to move the sleeping forms into the orb room and allow them to sleep off the effects of the gas. Ydee used one of the iron spikes Merrick had to seal the door shut, then they manacled Desorna so she couldn't fiddle with anything, and the party rested for the evening.

And there the adventure ended for the night. Experience points for the party are 1,954 and 977 for Valandil.