March 5th, 2017

The Hidden Treasure Chambers

Further Explorations of the Hidden Citadel

The adventurers of the day:

Matt playing Nova Halfnote III, halfling cleric and short term healer

Nick playing Merrick, human fighter and boundless fountain o' rage
Evan playing Bard Ike, human bard and practitioner of random songs and mule-friend

Chris playing Deckard Stormfallow, human fighter and ranged golem slayer

Sarai playing Desorna, elven fighter and occasional problem child

Zack playing Ahri, elven magic-user who is knock, knock, knocking your door

And, by divine fiat once again, the DM playing Ydee, Catherine's half-elven thief and “You owe me more for all I have to do.”

The party began in town after slowly half-dragging Desorna back from the citadel after her reduction to -1 hit point. After slightly more than two weeks spent resting up and training for her fifth level, the party was champing at the bit and ready to go again. But a lot had happened in the meantime, much of it confusing and just bizarre.

Deckard, using his superior intelligence, decided that finding a way to ground the statues so that they would be unable to electrocute the party would be of great assistance for the next go round. Thus he went to the metal smith and commissioned a 25' length of braided copper wire as big around as his wrist. The metal smith was curious what such extravagance would be used for, and he understood enough of the concept to grasp the use. He collected a good sum and began crafting. Once the very heavy cable was complete, the party bought a mule to carry it, since it was significantly heavy, and prepared to return.

The group had lost a few of its previous members upon their return to town. Rowena decided to go and stay in studious contemplation after her experience in the dungeon with those whackjobs. The party decided to look for replacements. Merrick was found sitting in the tavern moodily sipping bad ale and talking with a young human bard that he had met upon his return, so Merrick rejoined and brought his new friend Ike with him. On one of his journeys to discuss the principle of shorting out the electrical trap with the clerics of the church, Deckard was told that there was a young halfling cleric that was looking for a bit of adventure so he could better understand the adventuring life. As they were a cleric short, Deckard brought Nova back to meet the group. With Strix determined to stay in town to find a way to remove the curse of cleanliness from herself, the remainder of the party returned to the citadel with their heavily laden mule.

Once they were back to the edge of the cliff at the citadel, they realized a minor flaw in their plan, namely that the heavily laden mule couldn't climb the very steep cliff. They searched around until they found the old and overgrown switchback trail that led up to the clifftop and took the mule carefully up that way. Once they found the cave to the easy entryway they were stymied by how to get the mule into the dungeon, as the heavily-loaded mule was not about to try to descend the stairs. The fighters unloaded the cable and planned to carry it down and through the dungeon while Ike cast animal friendship on the mule and told it to stay close so they could find it when they came back out.

Down into the dungeon they descended with Merrick struggling along under a couple of hundred pounds of copper cable. At the bottom of the stairs they went south into the octagonal entry room. Deckard went into the brazier room and wrote his name in blood on a piece of paper, then tossed it into the brazier where a hand of coal and fire grabbed it, burned it to ash, and then sank out of sight in the coals again. With this oddity done they slowly and carefully weaved their way through the dungeon. A couple of times Ike was certain he heard footsteps, and the second time he saw a flash of movement by Desorna. Upon being told of this, Desorna noticed that her silvered battleaxe was missing, and Merrick noticed that he had lost his silver dagger. Frustrated by the thieving whatever-it-was that was stalking them through the halls, the highly watchful party continued on.

When they reached the room of lightning statues, Deckard entered first and alone. The arcs of sparks and lightning flashed from statue to statue but did nothing more. After some basic experimentation, Deckard wrapped the cable around one of the statues that blocked the far door of the room. Then Merrick and Desorna went in to try to encourage the statues to fire of their lightning storm. They were successful, and the arc flared brightly, blinding Merrick and Deckard. The cable had the desired result as it grounded the blast and the electromagnet effect on the heavy iron-bound door caused it to swing open. Beyond another room could be seen. The cable had melted to slag and was unrecoverable.

The next room was 30' wide and 40' long with chests along each side wall, eleven on each side. All of these chests were locked but not trapped and after a long while spent working, Ydee had managed to open 16 of the 22. Each of these chests were empty when opened, though the third and the ninth were each discovered to have secret compartments in the lid which contained a clerical scroll of three spells and a necklace respectively. Trying to continue the numbering plan the party planned on searching the interior lids of numbers fifteen and twenty-one, but these were two that Ydee hadn't been able to open. Merrick, always a straight-forward thinking man, attempted to bash in the lid of number fifteen, but only set off an explosive trap and didn't even dent the chest. Ahri was convinced to cast knock spells on these two and she did so, revealing empty chests with secret compartments in the lid. These two contained a druid scroll of three spells and a lovely ring which Merrick (who never learns lessons) immediately put on. It was a cursed ring of strength +1 with a curse of delusion. This curse would result in several odd and uncomfortable experiences for the long-suffering fighter, but they did make his life more interesting.
At the far end of the room the party located a secret door in the south wall. It was not openable, even with a knock spell. Frustrated by this, the party figured that there must be a solution in one of the four still locked chests. Ahri cast four more knock spells and the chests were opened. All the chests were originally empty, but as the last was opened there came the sound of coins being poured out as hundreds of copper coins cascaded into each chest from nowhere, starting at a height of about three inches above the top of each chest. It took some time and some fiddling before the party realized that having these coins in the chests opened the secret door in the room. Sure enough, a gentle push on the door and it swung open revealing another smaller room with six footlocker-sized chests against the far south wall.

Exploration showed that each of these was triple locked and, after an inspection by Ydee, they were discovered to each be trapped in triplicate. Ydee was able to disable the traps on five out of the six chests and open the locks on three of the four chests, failing only on the still trapped chest and one other. The open and cleared chests were searched and a variety of bounty was added to the party's treasury of items. Then it was decided that Ahri would cast knock to open the locks on the trapped chest, and then Deckard stood behind the trapped chest and opened it so he was hopefully out of range of the trap.

The first trap was a toxic knock-out gas trap with a very difficult save. Only Deckard made his save and the others fell into a deep dreamless sleep. Almost immediately after this, the second trap, a summoning trap, brought an angry gallium golem to fight. The golem quickly descended on Deckard, moving at an unnaturally fast speed for a humanoid that seemed to be made purely of molten metal. It chased Deckard from the room before returning its attention to the collapsed form of Desorna. Deckard attacked it at range with his long bow before it could completely destroy Desorna's armor. The golem destroyed Deckard's +1 shield and badly damaged the fighter before Deckard finally killed it.

As Deckard reentered the room where the rest of the party lay sleeping he saw a smallish figure poking around the bodies of his companions. As Deckard watched, the impish creature took Desorna's battle axe and seemed to easily put it into something the size of a coin purse. Deckard charged it, but with a bamf it vanished. No one had been hurt, but when the party members reawakened they realized that more than the elven fighter's axe was gone. Ahri had lost two of her spellbooks to the thieving brat. A solemn vow was made on the spot to find this little bastage and kill it, but where to look?

The little thief had confiscated several of the items that the party had reclaimed earlier from the chests which was frustrating, but after Ahri used knock to open the fifth chest some more loot was acquired by the party.

After the events of the treasure hunt, the party decided to drag themselves back to Zelligar's bedroom and sleep for the night. Ahri's last knock of the day jimmied the one-way secret door that led directly to Zelligar's lab, and the party passed through quickly and made their camp of sorts and slept. Waking the next day the party thought through what to do and where else to go, if there was anyplace else remaining. After some thinking it dawned on Desorna and Ahri that the perfect place for a teleporting imp to hide his treasures was in the room of money under the well where Merrick's sword of cursed berserking had been safely(?) disposed of. A journey to the top of the downward spiral and a couple of locate object spells later it was determined that something much like the party's lost loot was under the well and grate and in that room. With no way to get there, the party was left with nothing to do other than return to town and to try to learn more about how such a room could have been created.

The trip back to town was fairly pleasant and there was a lot to do. Deckard went and leveled up and many questions were asked of the mage in town. And, for the moment, there we stopped.

Experience points for the party members who are not Decker or Ydee: 450. XP for Ydee: 225. XP for Deckard: 1,450 because a one-on-one fight with a gallium golem is no easy task.