November 13th, 2016
Exploring the Castle in the Sky
The
party continues their exploration of the Castle in the Sky after
defeating the spirit of wrath in the old necromancer's chambers.
Finally noticing the infiltrator who has been with them the entire
time, the party prepares to explore the tower further.
From
my left:
Chris
playing the combat oriented elven spellsword who only takes
non-combat spells, Valandil
Finley
in her first (last?) appearance as the heretofore unnoticed human
infiltrator, Caralisa
Sarai
playing the stronger but underappreciated elven (oh, yeah, that's
why) fighter, Desorna
Nilo
playing the "WTH are there so many elves?" halfling cleric,
Arden
Hunter
playing the perpetually filthy elven magic-user, Strix
Zack
playing the charming elven magic-user, Ahri
Nick
playing the chinchilla loving and fondling (don't ask. Just don't)
human fighter, Merrick
and
Catherine's character, the mercenary half-elven thief Ydee, being
played by the most kindly and beneficent DM
The
party awoke in the old necromancer's chambers on the top floor of the
tower where they had slept through the night, though the sleeping was
of minimal use as the cleric had only regained enough spell points to
cast just one first level spell. Luckily not all the party were just
one hit away from unconsciousness and the slow bleeding out to death,
so it was decided that one healing spell would be more than enough. Logic not being the
strong point of adventurer thinking. With their confidence much
higher than their health, the party began to explore the rest of the
topmost level of the tower.
Proceeding the ten or so feet to the east to the four way intersection the party found that the north hall went ten feet before dead-ending, the south went ten feet before descending into some switch back stairs, and the east went thirty feet before reaching a dead end, though there was a door in each of the north and south walls halfway down the hall. The party went down the east hall and entered the north room. Being in the room itself made a couple of the characters feel extremely uncomfortable upon entrance and began to make the entire party feel edgy and like they were being watched after a short while. Some exploration revealed not much beyond basic furnishings, and as they searched the feelings of discomfort became worse, so the party crossed the hall to the south door.
This room was scorched and sooty with the furnishings being all but destroyed from a great fire which Ahri felt certain was from a powerful fireball spell. Some sifting through the ashes led to a few minor items of treasure, then the party returned to the hallway and down the stairs.
The stairs came out into a lecture hall with several doors around the perimeter and a lectern and tapestry directly across from the stairs. A quick search of the room led Valandil to discover that another door was hidden behind the tapestry on the north wall but, following the right hand rule, the party began with the door in the south wall in the south east corner of the lecture hall.
This door opened into a classroom setting, though the room appeared to have been used as a battleground. There was some damage around and little of value, though Strix did find a nicely carved stick that was mistaken for a wand. Once this room was done, the party moved on to the door in the center of the east wall.
This room had many scroll racks in it, but the racks and the scrolls on them had been badly damaged by whatever invaders had sacked the place, and the scroll remnants on the ground had been nibbled by several lifetimes of rats, though a few remaining fragments were found.
Keeping to the right hand rule, the party next went through the north door and into the study/library beyond. This room also showed signs of pilfering and destruction with many books missing and quite a few piled on the floor in ripped and torn shreds. Two were found that were in decent shape, but one was the front half of a basic book of magical theory and practice and another that had a title that mentioned the Proving Grounds, but within seemed to be mostly dull minutes of long discussions of what might be done, how to do it, and not much information of value. With that they left the room and moved on to the next door.
The next door led into another small library of scroll racks, all of which had been either pilfered or damaged worse than those in the previous room. With time wasted for no reward the party moved on.
The southwest corner room provided more excitement as the opening of the door led to half a dozen stirges flying to the attack! Both Desorna and Caralisa were impaled by the monsters, but quick help from their friends and allies kept them from being killed. A search of this classroom found even less to work with or of interest and so the party returned to the stairwell to continue to follow the stairs downward further.
At this level the stairs led to a 30' long hallway that had three locked doors off of it while the stairs continued further down as always. Ydee was prevailed upon to check for traps and unlock all three doors so the party could explore further. Once she had done so, they continued, starting with the door in the east wall.
This room had once been an alchemist's dream lab, but it was now a shambles of shattered glass, stains on the floors from spilled liquids, and other broken equipment lying scattered around. The ruination of the area made the spellcasters fairly sad, but there was some relief. Through a door in the south wall of the workshop was a storage area that, while it had suffered greatly, still held an intact potion. The bottle was unlabeled so the potion was kept for later identification.
The north door at the end of the hall opened into another workshop where destruction had also been wreaked. Some searching here revealed a silvery hammer, which was claimed quickly by the cleric for the advantages that silver could offer in combat against some evil creatures.
Following that the party explored the western room and found it to be a scriptorium, where scribes' desks and materials had suffered the same destruction as the rest of the level with little surviving intact except for a silver dagger that Desorna took to use in emergencies. The southern door in this room led to another storage room, this one also with badly damaged scroll racks and ruined scrolls, though a careful search revealed an intact scroll tube to the party with a magic-user scroll inside. Once this room was fully explored, the party descended to the next floor.
At this level the party was greeted by a great hall before them that was the largest room yet, while the stairs continued further down. The great hall had a door in both the east and west wall in the respective southern corners, another door in the center of the west and east walls, and an additional door in the west wall just past the center one. There were also double doors visible in the center of the north wall.
The southeastern door was the first one opened by the party, and it led into an oddly-shaped office space with a secretary's desk just inside the door and another larger desk around the corner. This room had taken quite a bit of damage, and though a few valuables were found, there wasn't much overall.
The other door on the eastern wall opened into a classroom which had been looted at some point in the past. Little of value was found there, so the party returned to the great hall.
The northern doors were locked, triple barred, and barricaded from the inside. Skipping them for the moment the party went to the southwest corner and searched there.
The southwest room was an oddly-shaped office space that had been damaged much worse than the previous one. Little of value remained, so after a brief search the party continued on.
The center door in the western wall led to what seemed to be a waiting room of some sort. Various benches lined the walls, though a few were missing as they had been added to the barricade of the northern doors.
The far northwestern room was simply a cloakroom with pegs on the walls and little else of interest.
Back in the great hall the party was torn between indecision. Should they open the northern doors first, or instead follow the stairs further down. The decision was made to clear the northern doors and see what could be found beyond them. After removing the three very heavy bars that held the door shut, opening the locks, and shifting the barricade, the party discovered that the doors opened inward and the bars were now lying in the way. The door was opened far enough for the party to be able to peek out, and they saw a large courtyard beyond. Moving the obstacles out of the way the party opened the doors wide and moved out into the courtyard.
The center tower had looked odd from the doorway, but the reason for this was not discovered until the party got closer. The strange shadowy marks on the tower were revealed to be deep claw gouges in the stone, gouges that spoke of an attack by a dragon of very large size! Suddenly becoming MUCH more nervous, the party looked around the area but found no real threats nearby, just some fairly expansive rubble beside the corner towers and the usual dry grass and weeds growing high in the yard.
Caralisa decided that climbing the central tower would possibly help the party find a way in as there were no doors or windows visible anywhere on the surface. With full intent to use the claw marks in the surface to help, she began to climb.
The climb up was relatively quickly and easily done, until she reached the top and discovered that it was curved, slick, and all but featureless with barely any seams in the stonework at all. After a couple of near fatal slips as she carefully crawled around the top of the tower, Caralisa decided to jam her grappling hook into one of the dragonclaw scars in the tower top and to begin to descend. This is when things began to take a turn for the worse.
While trying to secure the hook, the infiltrator began to slip and in her rush for self preservation she fumbled the hook which tumbled the hundred or so feet down before embedding one of its tines in the cleric's back for serious damage. The cleric was seriously unamused by this turn of events, and while the rest of the party tried to unhook him, the infiltrator slowly began the dangerous climb back down the tower.
There were several nearly disastrous and fatal incidents as the infiltrator climbed back down, usually avoided by an absolutely lucky fingertip save to prevent death, once after a short fall before the save was made. But finally, very shaken and with a new and strong fear of heights, Caralisa was back on solid ground where she refused to ever try to climb again.
The party next went to explore the northwest tower and discovered that the arch over the door was engraved with "The Tower of Faith". Exploration of the other towers determined that the southwest one they had already explored was "The Tower of Magic". The northeast and southeast were "The Tower of Nature" and "The Tower of Force" respectively. The central tower had no visible legend at all.
The ruins to the side of the northwest tower looked like they had been either barracks or some other housing at some point. Investigation of the doors into the tower showed that they were locked, which Ydee took care of, and Merrick discovered in his usual hamfisted way that they were trapped too. Once those obstacles were overcome, the party couldn't open them and decided that they must be barricaded from the inside as well. Cursing their luck, they returned to the southwest tower to explore the stairs down.
Entering the tower they shut the doors to the outside, just in case. Using one bar to keep the door shut and moving the rest out of the way, the party descended the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs there was just an unusual looking metallic door with an odd round indent set into it and, if one looked at the door from the proper angle, a faintly visible phrase: "The Proving Grounds". Nothing that the party had found resembled an amulet, and so the decision was made to return to the top floor and begin searching in the sections where it seemed that something should be but where nothing had yet been found.
In the fearful room where everyone was uncomfortable, a secret door was found on the far side of the bed by Valandil. Caralisa discovered that turning one of the globes on the headboard's bedpost opened the secret door, revealing a secret chamber behind that contained three locked chests.
Ydee made quick work of the locks on the second and third chests, but couldn't pick the lock on the first one. The second and third chests, once opened, revealed some more coins and some other treasures as well! A lucky strike with Valandil's magically enhanced battering ram jarred the lock loose on chest one, and within the party found more items, including a very nice box containing ten amulets that had a tower engraved on them with the legend "The Tower of Magic" around the edges of the amulet. Deciding to rest for the night, the party returned to the necromancer's bedroom to rest and recuperate. Identify spells were cast, spells were scribed into spellbooks with the ink Valandil had, and the party tried to rest and recover spellpoints. Once again, the cleric was not very successful, only regaining enough spell points for two spells. Still, the party decided to descend to explore the door to the Proving Grounds.
The amulet worked like a charm and the party was in the Proving Grounds. A hallway extended north before ending in a door. The room beyond was empty but it had doors exiting north and east. The party went east. The hallway beyond went thirty feet before ending, and there were doors in the north and south walls at the end of the hallway. The party advanced through the south door and were attacked by half a dozen bugbears!
The battle was very difficult, and while Ahri's charm spell on one of the bugbears helped greatly, Desorna was dropped to zero in the battle. Once the battle was done and the bodies were looted, excepting Ahri's new BFF, the party decided to return to town as the cleric needed REAL rest before returning to explore further. The Proving Grounds were vacated and the teleporter was used to return the party to town. Once there they resolved to rest for a day, regain spell points, eat well, and then return before the week of the full moon had passed.
Proceeding the ten or so feet to the east to the four way intersection the party found that the north hall went ten feet before dead-ending, the south went ten feet before descending into some switch back stairs, and the east went thirty feet before reaching a dead end, though there was a door in each of the north and south walls halfway down the hall. The party went down the east hall and entered the north room. Being in the room itself made a couple of the characters feel extremely uncomfortable upon entrance and began to make the entire party feel edgy and like they were being watched after a short while. Some exploration revealed not much beyond basic furnishings, and as they searched the feelings of discomfort became worse, so the party crossed the hall to the south door.
This room was scorched and sooty with the furnishings being all but destroyed from a great fire which Ahri felt certain was from a powerful fireball spell. Some sifting through the ashes led to a few minor items of treasure, then the party returned to the hallway and down the stairs.
The stairs came out into a lecture hall with several doors around the perimeter and a lectern and tapestry directly across from the stairs. A quick search of the room led Valandil to discover that another door was hidden behind the tapestry on the north wall but, following the right hand rule, the party began with the door in the south wall in the south east corner of the lecture hall.
This door opened into a classroom setting, though the room appeared to have been used as a battleground. There was some damage around and little of value, though Strix did find a nicely carved stick that was mistaken for a wand. Once this room was done, the party moved on to the door in the center of the east wall.
This room had many scroll racks in it, but the racks and the scrolls on them had been badly damaged by whatever invaders had sacked the place, and the scroll remnants on the ground had been nibbled by several lifetimes of rats, though a few remaining fragments were found.
Keeping to the right hand rule, the party next went through the north door and into the study/library beyond. This room also showed signs of pilfering and destruction with many books missing and quite a few piled on the floor in ripped and torn shreds. Two were found that were in decent shape, but one was the front half of a basic book of magical theory and practice and another that had a title that mentioned the Proving Grounds, but within seemed to be mostly dull minutes of long discussions of what might be done, how to do it, and not much information of value. With that they left the room and moved on to the next door.
The next door led into another small library of scroll racks, all of which had been either pilfered or damaged worse than those in the previous room. With time wasted for no reward the party moved on.
The southwest corner room provided more excitement as the opening of the door led to half a dozen stirges flying to the attack! Both Desorna and Caralisa were impaled by the monsters, but quick help from their friends and allies kept them from being killed. A search of this classroom found even less to work with or of interest and so the party returned to the stairwell to continue to follow the stairs downward further.
At this level the stairs led to a 30' long hallway that had three locked doors off of it while the stairs continued further down as always. Ydee was prevailed upon to check for traps and unlock all three doors so the party could explore further. Once she had done so, they continued, starting with the door in the east wall.
This room had once been an alchemist's dream lab, but it was now a shambles of shattered glass, stains on the floors from spilled liquids, and other broken equipment lying scattered around. The ruination of the area made the spellcasters fairly sad, but there was some relief. Through a door in the south wall of the workshop was a storage area that, while it had suffered greatly, still held an intact potion. The bottle was unlabeled so the potion was kept for later identification.
The north door at the end of the hall opened into another workshop where destruction had also been wreaked. Some searching here revealed a silvery hammer, which was claimed quickly by the cleric for the advantages that silver could offer in combat against some evil creatures.
Following that the party explored the western room and found it to be a scriptorium, where scribes' desks and materials had suffered the same destruction as the rest of the level with little surviving intact except for a silver dagger that Desorna took to use in emergencies. The southern door in this room led to another storage room, this one also with badly damaged scroll racks and ruined scrolls, though a careful search revealed an intact scroll tube to the party with a magic-user scroll inside. Once this room was fully explored, the party descended to the next floor.
At this level the party was greeted by a great hall before them that was the largest room yet, while the stairs continued further down. The great hall had a door in both the east and west wall in the respective southern corners, another door in the center of the west and east walls, and an additional door in the west wall just past the center one. There were also double doors visible in the center of the north wall.
The southeastern door was the first one opened by the party, and it led into an oddly-shaped office space with a secretary's desk just inside the door and another larger desk around the corner. This room had taken quite a bit of damage, and though a few valuables were found, there wasn't much overall.
The other door on the eastern wall opened into a classroom which had been looted at some point in the past. Little of value was found there, so the party returned to the great hall.
The northern doors were locked, triple barred, and barricaded from the inside. Skipping them for the moment the party went to the southwest corner and searched there.
The southwest room was an oddly-shaped office space that had been damaged much worse than the previous one. Little of value remained, so after a brief search the party continued on.
The center door in the western wall led to what seemed to be a waiting room of some sort. Various benches lined the walls, though a few were missing as they had been added to the barricade of the northern doors.
The far northwestern room was simply a cloakroom with pegs on the walls and little else of interest.
Back in the great hall the party was torn between indecision. Should they open the northern doors first, or instead follow the stairs further down. The decision was made to clear the northern doors and see what could be found beyond them. After removing the three very heavy bars that held the door shut, opening the locks, and shifting the barricade, the party discovered that the doors opened inward and the bars were now lying in the way. The door was opened far enough for the party to be able to peek out, and they saw a large courtyard beyond. Moving the obstacles out of the way the party opened the doors wide and moved out into the courtyard.
The center tower had looked odd from the doorway, but the reason for this was not discovered until the party got closer. The strange shadowy marks on the tower were revealed to be deep claw gouges in the stone, gouges that spoke of an attack by a dragon of very large size! Suddenly becoming MUCH more nervous, the party looked around the area but found no real threats nearby, just some fairly expansive rubble beside the corner towers and the usual dry grass and weeds growing high in the yard.
Caralisa decided that climbing the central tower would possibly help the party find a way in as there were no doors or windows visible anywhere on the surface. With full intent to use the claw marks in the surface to help, she began to climb.
The climb up was relatively quickly and easily done, until she reached the top and discovered that it was curved, slick, and all but featureless with barely any seams in the stonework at all. After a couple of near fatal slips as she carefully crawled around the top of the tower, Caralisa decided to jam her grappling hook into one of the dragonclaw scars in the tower top and to begin to descend. This is when things began to take a turn for the worse.
While trying to secure the hook, the infiltrator began to slip and in her rush for self preservation she fumbled the hook which tumbled the hundred or so feet down before embedding one of its tines in the cleric's back for serious damage. The cleric was seriously unamused by this turn of events, and while the rest of the party tried to unhook him, the infiltrator slowly began the dangerous climb back down the tower.
There were several nearly disastrous and fatal incidents as the infiltrator climbed back down, usually avoided by an absolutely lucky fingertip save to prevent death, once after a short fall before the save was made. But finally, very shaken and with a new and strong fear of heights, Caralisa was back on solid ground where she refused to ever try to climb again.
The party next went to explore the northwest tower and discovered that the arch over the door was engraved with "The Tower of Faith". Exploration of the other towers determined that the southwest one they had already explored was "The Tower of Magic". The northeast and southeast were "The Tower of Nature" and "The Tower of Force" respectively. The central tower had no visible legend at all.
The ruins to the side of the northwest tower looked like they had been either barracks or some other housing at some point. Investigation of the doors into the tower showed that they were locked, which Ydee took care of, and Merrick discovered in his usual hamfisted way that they were trapped too. Once those obstacles were overcome, the party couldn't open them and decided that they must be barricaded from the inside as well. Cursing their luck, they returned to the southwest tower to explore the stairs down.
Entering the tower they shut the doors to the outside, just in case. Using one bar to keep the door shut and moving the rest out of the way, the party descended the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs there was just an unusual looking metallic door with an odd round indent set into it and, if one looked at the door from the proper angle, a faintly visible phrase: "The Proving Grounds". Nothing that the party had found resembled an amulet, and so the decision was made to return to the top floor and begin searching in the sections where it seemed that something should be but where nothing had yet been found.
In the fearful room where everyone was uncomfortable, a secret door was found on the far side of the bed by Valandil. Caralisa discovered that turning one of the globes on the headboard's bedpost opened the secret door, revealing a secret chamber behind that contained three locked chests.
Ydee made quick work of the locks on the second and third chests, but couldn't pick the lock on the first one. The second and third chests, once opened, revealed some more coins and some other treasures as well! A lucky strike with Valandil's magically enhanced battering ram jarred the lock loose on chest one, and within the party found more items, including a very nice box containing ten amulets that had a tower engraved on them with the legend "The Tower of Magic" around the edges of the amulet. Deciding to rest for the night, the party returned to the necromancer's bedroom to rest and recuperate. Identify spells were cast, spells were scribed into spellbooks with the ink Valandil had, and the party tried to rest and recover spellpoints. Once again, the cleric was not very successful, only regaining enough spell points for two spells. Still, the party decided to descend to explore the door to the Proving Grounds.
The amulet worked like a charm and the party was in the Proving Grounds. A hallway extended north before ending in a door. The room beyond was empty but it had doors exiting north and east. The party went east. The hallway beyond went thirty feet before ending, and there were doors in the north and south walls at the end of the hallway. The party advanced through the south door and were attacked by half a dozen bugbears!
The battle was very difficult, and while Ahri's charm spell on one of the bugbears helped greatly, Desorna was dropped to zero in the battle. Once the battle was done and the bodies were looted, excepting Ahri's new BFF, the party decided to return to town as the cleric needed REAL rest before returning to explore further. The Proving Grounds were vacated and the teleporter was used to return the party to town. Once there they resolved to rest for a day, regain spell points, eat well, and then return before the week of the full moon had passed.
And
because someone will ask, the experience totals for the night are 300
each and 150 for Ydee.
Yes, just like the previous mention of the characters Roghan and Zelligar, the Proving Grounds under the Castle in the Sky are referring to another classic dungeon crawl that I spent an inordinate amount of time on as a kid. And though it isn't mentioned, Trebor and Werdna do make appearances in the canon of this adventure.
ReplyDelete