July 23rd, 2017

Training, the Return to the Aerie, and the Final Side of the Cube

From my left:

Zack playing LaVeya the 6^th level human druid

Connor playing -nameless- the 2^nd level human cleric

Matt playing Mirin the 4^th level human spellsword

Paige playing Keeva the 3^rd level halfling infiltrator

Sarai playing Desorna the 6^th level elven axe-maiden

Hunter playing Flever Graveltoes the 1^st level gnome ranger

Chris playing Deckard the 3^rd/6^th level human ex-fighter/thief

and the Kindly DM playing Ydee, Catherine's 6^th level half-elf thief

During their time in Treefold various members of the party decided that they needed, and now could pay for, training. The gold ore was taken to an assayer's office and the party were paid 930 gold pieces for the ore, giving them 103 gold pieces each. Division of the payment for the potion of longevity worked out to 45 platinum pieces each, meaning each member of the party was rewarded with over 500 gold pieces of monetary treasure to use in their training. The party also divided the various magic items they had discovered. Leaving the three healing potions and the three essence potions aside as party treasure, the players each rolled a d20 to see who would claim what item. Flever had the first pick and chose the amulet of survival. Mirin took the ring of protection +1. Merrick took the potion of stone giant strength. Desorna, who fears giant lizard attacks, took the potion of reptile control. Deckard chose the wand of blindness, even though he can't use it (yet), but neither could anyone else who still had a pick. LaVeya claimed the wand of summon insects. Only potions remained, but that didn't seem to bother anyone. Keeva took a potion of levitation, -nameless- the potion of avian control, and Ydee took the last potion of levitation along with the dagger of returning +1 that she had asked for and been given last session. With the treasures divided the party was ready to finish training and return to the Aerie.

While Keeva was doing her two weeks and a few days worth of training for her two levels the party continued to look around and learn about Treefold and the area surrounding it. LaVeya's interest in finding new animals to befriend was a main concern and she was both excited and a bit alarmed when a hunter told her of a huge bear he had seen sleeping in a cave west of town. With an interest in finding this bear LaVeya, Desorna, Mirin, and Flever went in search of its lair.

As they traveled they took watches since they knew never to feel more secure. During one late night watch Desorna, who was on guard, heard rusting in the trees overhead. Nervously she went on alert and kept her eyes focused on the points in the trees where the rustling was coming from. After a few minutes of this she felt a tugging at her belt and she swatted at it, looking around to see what might have been there. Nothing was seen and soon the rustling stopped as the pixies who had been alternating between rustling branches to distract the fighter and sneaking down to pick her pocket left the area after the loser of their game failed and made Desorna aware of their actions. Desorna was down twenty each of platinum and gold pieces, which annoyed her and may have dispelled some of the lingering like she had for the playful variety of fae.

A couple of days west of town the party found the cave where the hunter had said it would be, and a deep breathing/snoring could be heard from the cave. LaVeya cast her ghostly lantern and crept in finding a humongous greybacked grizzly bear asleep against the far wall of the cave. She tried to awaken it so she could cast her animal friendship spell, but it could not be woken. Finally she got close enough to touch it and made her save learning that the bear was simply an illusion. Using the ghostly lantern's radiance to help her find any kind of secrets. She found the secret door in the cave wall and opened it to reveal a regular door set into the wall behind it. Flever opened the door and took enough damage from the spike trap to drop him to below zero hit points. This was when they noted that they did not have a thief with them. Oops? The trap reset and the party tried to figure out how to bypass the trap as LaVeya healed the downed ranger. In the end LaVeya used her stone shape spell to fill in the hole in the stone wall where the spike came from, and the party managed to safely pass through.

The next room was a fairly nice if dusty and cobwebbed sitting room with another door on the far side of the room. A plaque over the door said “The Silver Gryphons” which meant nothing at all to the party. * Deciding that this place might be better explored with a thief at some point in the future, the four returned to Treefold, half carrying Flever most of the way.

Back in town the gnome rested up from his negative hit point ordeal and the rest of the party waited for Keeva to finish training and Deckard to quit making contacts. Once everyone was ready it was time to go back to the Aerie.

The trip up was relatively uneventful, though they were somewhat alarmed to find blood, broken bones, and some torn meat from an animal that had been killed by the river. Examination led them to believe that it was an animal that was killed, and that it had been killed by something with large jaws, sharp teeth, and a lot of strength. Discussion of the rumored drake in the area was made, but in the end the party decided to be careful and made their way forward.

Without any further incident the party made it to the Aerie. A note to the adventurers was found by the door that said that the party should come in if they could. The door was locked but Ydee was able to pick the lock so the party could enter. In the main room the party found another note that said that the Silver Eagles had gone through the fifth side and wished the party luck with the last side. After a night's rest the party prepared themselves and Mirin cast identify on the last side of the cube. There was the sensation of transition and the party found themselves standing on a landing with a twenty foot wide stairway descending into darkness before them. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the landing were carved with lines radiating out from the center of each plane and growing wider as they reached the edges, giving a forced perspective view that was slightly disorienting. After investigating the carvings for a brief while, the party descended the stairs, staying against the edge of the walls as Deckard detected some sort of trap or another in the center of the stairs, into a forty by forty foot room with a door in the far center area of each side wall. The walls of this room were twenty feet tall before the arch to the center of the ceiling. The far wall was covered with engravings showing a view of a city (think of the artist's depictions of what ancient Aztec or Inca or Maya cities may have looked like). A tall step-pyramid was the central part of the image, with various roads and buildings surrounding it. While it was a very detailed carving that Deckard did his best to sketch, nothing could capture the many details on the image in a short period of time. Following the standard right hand rule, the party went through the right hand door.

The passageway beyond went straight for twenty feet before angling to the left, and then angling to the left again and ending at a door. The door opened into a thirty by thirty foot room with no visible exits and a narrow zig-zagging horizontal pattern engraved in all the walls of the room. A search revealed a pair of secret doors in the far wall, one in each corner. Opening the right hand secret door revealed a ten by ten foot room with many one inch diameter holes in each side wall and the imprint of an open right hand on the far wall. Deckard determined that the floor appeared to be a pressure plate and he tried to jam it so that the room would be safe to enter. Having done so the party debated what to do next. They decided to open the other secret door and doing so revealed an identical room, this time with the imprint of an open left hand on the far wall. Deciding that the party could easily decide to sacrifice the short people, Flever and Keeva each entered one of the secret rooms, after convincing Ydee to hold their 'daughter', the chicken named Elvira. ** The two entered the rooms and counting to three out loud, put their respective hands against the imprint at the same time. Both secret doors slammed closed and a grinding, grating noise was heard from inside each room. The sounds lasted a couple of minutes, during which the secret doors could not be reopened. Once the doors could be reopened there was nothing in the room except for reddish smears across the floors. There was some concern but after investigation the smears were discovered to be too thin and not viscous enough to be blood. In fact it smelled more like grease or oil than anything else. Believing that the rooms were a transportation device instead of a death trap, the remaining party members entered two by two until all eight had been sent down chutes and deposited in the same ten foot by twenty foot room without any exits. Some searching revealed a secret door at the far end of the hall, and after Deckard located it Flever rushed to it and opened it setting off the fireball trap. Luckily most of the party survived and Flever was once again returned to a positive hit point number. Once the healing had been done, the party passed through the door into another thirty by thirty foot room with a door in the center of each other wall.

Forgoing the usual rule for the moment, the party followed Deckard straight across the room and through the door on the other side. A thirty foot long hallway stretched out ahead of them, but a suspicious Deckard determined that the floor was a pit trap waiting to be sprung and not to be trusted. Returning to the room the party opened the door in the original right hand wall and found another thirty foot long hallway, this one with a door in the right hand wall at the far end of the hallway. The floor appeared safe, so the party continued. The door was opened to reveal another hallway that went ten feet forward before making a right hand turn. Reaching the corner the party saw that there were stairs descending down into darkness. Having come this far, the party descended further.

Thirty feet down the stairs they entered one end of a hallway that stretched off to the left while ahead of them stairs climbed backup into the darkness. In spite of Desorna's insistence that the right hand rule meant that they should climb the stairs, Deckard convinced the party to go down the hallway to the left. The hallway went twenty feet before ending. There was a door on each side wall here, and the party took the right hand door. Beyond this door was another twenty foot long hallway that ended in a door. Opening this door led into a room that stretched into the darkness ahead, so far that even Desorna and Mirin's darkvision (Mirin's from her magical ring) couldn't see the far end. In the flickering torchlight the adventurers could see that all the room's surfaces were covered with carvings: the walls with trees, bushes, and statues of individuals with the oddly elongated and cylindrical heads of the previous tomb. The floor looked like it was carved to resemble a garden path and had other carvings along it. As the party stepped further into the room their views changed for a moment as they saw themselves as being in an oddly hyper-realistic and at the same time unrealistic 3d garden (like the old Viewmaster images. And if you don't know what that means shut the hell up about how old I am and go find out). Half the party (Deckard, Ydee, Mirin, and Keeva) made their discipline saving throws and the images faded again leaving the room looking as it had before. For the others (Desorna, -nameless-, Flever, and LaVeya) there was a feeling of calmness and peace as they began strolling down the sunlit garden paths between tightly bunched border bushes that looked like flowering holly bushes. Deprived of this peaceful vision, Deckard cut straight across the room toward the far wall with the others who had made their saving throws behind him. As they left the paths behind an earth elemental flowed up out of the floor and attacked. Those in the garden just saw their friends attacking an ornamental fountain and while despairing of their vandalism ignored their actions. The battle was not too bad, though there was some damage dealt to the adventurers fighting the elemental while the rest of the party followed the path and delighted in the beauty of the garden. Once the earth elemental was defeated the somewhat battered party members found their way to the carved path and stayed on it until they reached the far wall and the door there.

Once through the door the party found themselves back in another twenty foot long hallway with another door at the far end. The garden had been a lovely diversion for some, but now it was back to work! Beyond this door was another thirty by thirty foot room with a repeating pattern of wavy horizontal lines on the walls that started around two and a half feet off of the floor and went up to the edge of the ceiling. These carved lines were roughly two inches high and deep. On the far wall of the room was a large valve wheel on the wall. Going over to it Deckard turned it clockwise. Doing so opened a lot of holes in the walls right at floor level and water began to flow into the room. Rapidly turning the wheel back to the left decreased the speed of the flow but did not stop it and Desorna discovered that the door from the room was now solidly shut. As the water continued to rapidly rise, LaVeya cast a water breathing spell on the entire party giving them each about 40 minutes of water breathing and then cast a ghostly lantern spell for when the torch would inevitably go out. The other use of the ghostly lantern spell was to hopefully help them find an escape from the room before they drowned. As the water rose further Ydee used the curvy wave lines as a ladder of sorts to climb higher. LaVeya shapeshifted into a fish and swam around with the ghostly lantern making her look vaguely like one of those deep-deep-sea fishes with its phosphorescent lights. As the water reached the start of the ceiling. . . . . we ended for the night.

Experience points for the party:

LaVeya: 250 (adventure to bear cave plus smart spellcasting in the last room)

-nameless-: 100 (it's not a pity award, but its a pity award)

Mirin: 935 (bear cave adventure and earth elemental)

Keeva: 810 (earth elemental and a bit more for chicken madness)

Desorna: 194 (bear cave and a one-time 20% “you done got robbed!” award)

Flever Graveltoes: 250 (bear cave adventure, chicken madness, and a learn-by-PAINFUL-flaming-experience award)

Deckard: 785 (earth elemental)

Ydee: 393 (earth elemental)

Footnotes:

*- Though the previous party including two of these players had heard the Silver Gryphons name and one of the players had actually been to this cave in the early days of the previous party, that player remembered the name but not the previous adventure.

**- Due to failed cluelessness checks indicating actual cluelessness, the 'parents' of this child have not realized that their rare Black Okerney's blackness has faded over time as the soot that the salesman dipped her in to give her her distinctive and rare coloring has gradually worn off. Luckily, the parents of this ambulatory vegetable love her just the same as a still filthy white chicken as they did when she was a rare Black Okerney chicken.

P.S. The chicken survived the fireball trap. Yes, the DM can be kindly. And watching the two players discuss and interact with their child amuses me, so it may be a magic chicken that can survive ridicuous stuff and remain a normal chicken. With the rare chicken baldness disease that makes her butt go bald like it has been plucked. Which had nothing at all to do with Deckard making successful pick pockets rolls to pluck the chicken's feathers without either parent noticing as they took turns carrying her around.