October 9th, 2016

Return (Again) to the Citadel

Back to the Adventure

Line up from left to right:

Chris playing Valandil the REAL elven spellsword

Zack playing Ahri the madcap elven mage

Nilo playing Arden the “There's no proof I lied” halfling cleric

Nick playing Merrick the not-really-here bitterball human fighter

Matt playing the amused human spellsword

Sarai playing the half-elven witch for a bit then reintroducing the human cleric for a bit

Hunter playing Dorni the gnome thief who leveled for one brief moment before . . .

The still somewhat battered party started in the room with the hole that led downward to the middle level and the sublevel. They tried to open the door to the south and found that it was still locked. Dorni the gnome thief picked the lock and opened the door revealing a hallway that led to the south. As the party advanced the gnome thief on point triggered the pit trap and fell into the pit, but her screams died out quickly. The rest of the party edged up to the pit and looked in to find a 10 foot deep pit with slightly sloping slides and no gnome. Perplexed by this, the human spellsword was lowered down to investigate. Upon landing she discovered that the bottom of the pit opened into a slide when weight was put on it. After a brief discussion the human spellsword was lowered further down until the rope reached its end. The human spellsword then pulled her way back up to tell the party that the slide kept going and its surfaces seemed magically slick. The elven spellsword had the magic-user take his rope out of his pack and instructed her to tie the two ropes together so the human spellsword could explore further. The spellsword continued her descent, but the knot did not hold, sending her spiraling away from the rest of the group while the elven spellsword was left to glumly look at the end of the rope he was holding. The elven magic-user jumped in to join the rest of the sliders and, while attempting the crossing like spider-man, the elven spellsword slipped and joined them, leaving the halfling cleric and the half-elven witch at the top of the pit by themselves. The halfling cleric tried to push the resisting witch into the pit but failed. After another minute or so, the pit lid closed. The witch told the plate mail-clad cleric that he was light enough to run across the pit without setting it off, so the cleric decided to give it a try in spite of his astronomical wisdom score. Soon the halfling cleric was speeding down the chute after his other allies leaving the witch at the top by herself. Unwilling to follow the others to certain doom, the witch decided to crawl back into the room with the hole in the floor in pitch darkness and wait for the party to return. After a while she heard the sound of a slamming door and a heavy stumbling gait nearby her. She tried to make herself small and invisible so as not to be seen, but a huge fist hit her, knocking her to -1 hit point.

The first foursome of the party ended up in a rectangular room that had several moldering and maggot infested gnoll corpses in it. This seemed really familiar to them, but none of them could quite figure out why (see the August 28^th entry in this series). Only one door in the south wall led out of the room, and once they were all gathered and the magic-user had lit her lantern they went through the door. The left hand rule entered play and the party, without the map that the witch still had, tried to remember what was where as they explored the area they were in. They had found a dead-end hallway behind the first door and were finishing exploring it when someone else joined them. The cleric, a latecomer, had crawled through the darkness staying against the left wall until he caught up to the party. When asked where the witch was, the cleric, in spite of being the one who had actually tried to push the witch into the pit and failed, told the party that the witch had pushed him in. Since the witch wasn't there to argue, the cleric's story was accepted as the truth because, dude, he's the cleric. Why would he lie? The party continued to explore the area finding a trap that they had forgotten about and a trap room that they remembered and did not go past. They found one more trapped hallway that they avoided, and then they returned to the room where they had entered from. The magic-user made a successful Int check and remembered that there was a secret door that led to the rest of the complex in the first dead end hallway, but not at the dead end. After returning to the hallway they made it through the secret door and began to pick their way back to the northeast corner where the room with the holes was so they could climb back up and find the witch. The DM had gotten tired of rolling for wandering monsters so he had the players roll 2d6 for themselves, but in a total of 14d6 no ones were rolled meaning there were no encounters before they reached the room.

The elven spellsword made a successful toss with his grappling hook and scrambled up the rope to the floor above, discovering one of the putrid ogres waiting for him. He quickly slid back down the rope while the ogre came and stood at the edge of the hole to wait for him. Borrowing the human spellsword's grappling hook and rope, the elven spellsword climbed partway back up the rope, made a great throw and hooked the ogre. Then, by dropping down to the middle level again, he overbalanced the ogre to cause it to come tumbling down after him. The spellsword landed on the middle floor but the ogre fell all the way down to the subterranean levels where it went splat in a most grotesque way. The elven magic-user made a firebomb out of a flask of oil and a length of material torn from her robe, then dropped the flask down to incinerate the putrid remains. Once that was done, the elven magic-user seized the initiative and the rope and began to climb back up to the top level.

Once she reached the top initiative was rolled as she was attacked by another putrid creature, but this one was a half-elf who, in spite of her sickly green color and her unhealthy looking bloat, was recognizable as the late witch who had been infected by the ogre before she had died. After a couple of rounds of combat both the magic-user and the witch-thing were wounded, but a massive overhand swing from the magic-user popped the witch in a grotesque explosion of gore that defies adequate description. After looting the splattered corpse of the witch for valuables, including the spellbook which the magic-user took and the only copy of the map of the stronghold that they had, the party used another flask of oil to incinerate her disgusting remains. In her deep sorrow, Dorni the gnome thief took a piece of the witch's robe to wear as a headband in memory of her dead fellow urchin.

With that taken care of the party headed east and south to a room with a total of five doors that they had not fully explored before. The western door in the north wall was the next to explore as the party continued using the right hand rule as always. This opened into a rectangular room with a tapestry that took up the center of the north wall. The scene on the tapestry depicted a large cavern with many natural formations, but as one looked closer one could see tentacles wrapped around some of the various columns and other bits. Behind this the halfling cleric discovered a secret panel which, when opened, set off a fire trap that scorched his face. Somewhere, for no reason that he could determine, Merrick suddenly felt like celebrating because someone other than him hit the fire trap. With the trap taken care of, a rotating switch was visible. It was perfectly horizontal, but it could be fairly easily clicked around in either direction from horizontal to perfectly diagonal to vertical to perfectly diagonal in the opposite angle and back to horizontal again. By setting up a relay, the party had a watcher in the room with the hole in the floor who could shout for the handle to be turned one click at a time and to see if anything happened. After six clockwise clicks, when it was pointing vertical for the second time, the elven spellsword in the hole room heard a click from the center of the west wall. Further investigation revealed that a secret door had been released. Upon opening the door a small room was discovered whose only feature was a spiral staircase that headed up into darkness. Leaving that for later until they had explored the rest of the current level, the party headed back to the room with five doors again where they found their human cleric Mordecai waiting for them, and soon after Merrick appeared as if by magic.

The party, continuing the eternal right hand rule, next opened the western door which led to a 20 foot long hallway with a door at the far end. As the party advanced the floor opened beneath them dropping them into another pit trap and chute combo that returned them to the room of rotting gnolls. Wearily the party picked themselves up and went back upstairs again.

Following the eternal left hand rule (hashtag sarcastic irony), the party went through the east door and found themselves immediately in a southbound hallway. With few other options to take they went south. There was a door on each side forty feet down the hallway and the party followed their usual right hand rule and opened the right hand door. This led into a rectangular storage room with boxes, crates, and barrels. The human cleric smashed one barrel with his war hammer leading to the oil inside spilling and flowing all over the floor. The magic-user slipped slightly on the now unsafe surface but did not drop the lantern incinerating all within. Merrick and Dorni carefully opened another barrel to discover that it was also filled with lamp oil, and Ahri the elven magic-user refilled two of her oil flasks with the oil. Searching around further the party found a couple of items including a nicely carved wooden box that was locked. Dorni made short work of the lock and the contents were determined to be incense. The box was carefully tucked away for safekeeping. In another small box a stash of silver and copper coins was found and those were taken by the party too. There were no other exits from the room, so the party departed. A couple of relatively feeble attempts were made to set the contents on fire, but after two failures the party gave up and moved along to the south door in the hallway.

This door opened into a square room with writing on the walls from near ground level up to about three feet off of the floor. It was in the gnome language and consisted of “Oh my God” written over and over and over until further down it devolved into gibberish. Another door was in the opposite corner of the room in the south wall, so the party moved on.

The door opened into a hallway going west for about thirty feet before it split with one branch leading south and the other continuing west to end in a door about twenty feet away. They proceeded west to the door and opened it to reveal an octagonal room that was about thirty feet across. In each of the cardinal directions a door was set into the wall and in between the doors a roughly life-sized engraving of a person was on each wall. To the northwest was a magic-user, to the northeast was an armored warrior with his sword in his hand, to the southeast was a dwarf holding a mighty war hammer and to the southwest was a woman in what looked like riding leathers though on closer inspection the hilts of a few daggers could be seen here and there. Though the engravings seemed to be well done, there was nothing special about them, so the party moved on using the right hand rule to open the north door.

The north door led to a short hallway that ended in a flight of stairs going up. The party chose to ignore them and continue exploring the level they were on.

The west door was next, and inside the rectangular room beyond the door was a two and a half foot tall and almost two foot in diameter stone pillar with a brazier set into the top of it with leaping flames and smoke coming from it. The human spellsword investigated where the smoke went and discovered a network of cracks in the ceiling and a updraft that took the smoke up and out of the room. Some basic experiments were performed with the fire and the brazier that showed that the fire was real and would burn items. The halfling cleric decided to play the fool and pricked his finger and used the blood to write his name on a scrap of paper which he threw into the fire. It burned as the other pieces had, but there was an odd effect that looked like a hand of flame grasping the paper and burning it that was faintly visible. This elicited a small amount of concern, but not much.

After tiring of playing with fire, the party went south from the octagonal room and down a 20 foot long hall that opened up into a moderate 30' by 30' square room. In each corner an 8'x8'x8' block of stone sat. As the elven spellsword moved to the northeast slab to examine it, there was a clang from the northern hallway and an arm of stone came out of the slab, tore off a piece of itself, and threw it at party members. Initiative was rolled and the battle began.

While the spellswords and the magic-user closed to fight the NE slab and the halfling cleric attacked the NW slab, the gnome fired an arrow at the SW slab and the human cleric moved north and tried to force open the portcullis that was blocking access to the door. The elven spellsword used his magical dagger to attack the slab and had better luck than the others did with their normal weapons, but with so few magical weapons available they did the best they could. Several rounds passed and some damage was dealt and taken. The magic-user broke her staff on a slab and after casting a magic missile at another one and being reduced to one hit point she retreated to try to help the human cleric lift the portcullis. Working together they began to make progress. The NE slab was killed and the group that had been fighting it moved to the SE slab and began hacking at it. The two gate-lifters made some more progress in raising the portcullis and continued to work. The SE slab was killed and the battered heroes moved on to the SW slab while the halfling cleric had broken his flail and the head of the weapon was absorbed into the slab. The two in the hallway had raised the portcullis fairly high and the cleric tried to yank open the door while the elf magic-user held the portcullis. Unfortunately the portcullis was not raised high enough to clear the door and the door slammed into the magic-user's fingers causing her to drop the portcullis. Unfortunately she failed her agility save and one of the points of the portcullis tore open her thigh doing enough damage to drop her into negative hit points. As she collapsed the human cleric dodged out of the way and then cast a healing spell on the downed magic-user to keep her alive. As this went on the rest of the party managed to kill the last slabs. Exploration of the chamber after the combat was over revealed a secret panel to the right of the door that exited south out of the room. Pulling the lever behind the panel raised the portcullis in the north hallway. With the magic-user out of commission and the party injured they decided to return to town to give the magic-user a chance to recover.

When the party returned to town several of the party had earned enough experience to level. The elven spellsword, the halfling cleric, the vanished-again human fighter and the gnome thief had made 2^nd level and the elven magic-user had made third level! Unfortunately, the party's reputation was not the best in town, and all the party members were judged on the company they kept. Luckily, Officer Carrick's position allowed him to reduce the costs for the fighter class members in the group to ¼ normal, or 25 g.p. to train to 2^nd level. Vanessa Barskin donated some of her remaining cash to reduce the training costs for the rest of the party to half; 50 g.p. for those training for 2^nd level and 100 g.p. for the magic-user. Dorni used gem from party funds to pay for her training, and she tried to use her skills to break into the shop of the merchant who had kicked her out and threatened to use a wand on her after her previous visits. She was unsuccessful in her attempt to pick the lock and was spotted by a magical watcher (a softball-sized eyeball with bat wings growing out of its sides). She ended up being arrested and set to be sentenced before the judge. Her combination of mad ravings and significantly lewd come-ons was enough to get the judge to say “Get this nutjob out of here.” After being put in a standard cell with four others who she managed to freak out, she found herself confined to a tiny cell all alone before being slept by a guard spellsword. She came to and found herself locked in a chest with holes drilled in it and apparently being rowed out onto the lake. The chest was thrown overboard and began to sink. Dorni managed to bust her way out of the chest, but her luck ran out there. Her naked and drowned body was found washed up on shore the next day. (sad trombone) Her body was collected and taken to be buried in a pauper's grave.

The party, having had yet another member of their group tried for crimes, though not in absentia as was the case with the elven fighter, decided that it was certainly time to get the hell out of town and back to the stronghold sooner rather than later. The next adventure will pick up from there.