July 9th, 2017

The Tomb of Stairs and Statues

From my left:

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

Zack playing LaVeya the 5^th level human druid

Nilo playing Kag the 4^th level human magic-user

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

Hunter playing Justina Faith the 1^st level human cleric

Paige playing Keeva the 1^st (2^nd) level halfling infiltrator

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

After being healed and getting a good night's rest in the barracks room of the Silver Eagles Aerie, the party gathered with the Eagles to discuss the next steps. It was decided that each group of adventurers would activate a different and new side of the Cubic Key and see what they could find beyond.

The adventurers were given the choice of whether they wished to be the first or the second through the Key, and the party choose to be first. With that done and everyone ready, Kag cast an identify spell on the cube and the adventurers once again found themselves in an ancient thirty by thirty stone room with a stone door in the center of each wall.

The room was marked only by a repeating pattern from ceiling to floor on each wall of the room. The pattern was grooves about two inches wide and two inches deep that made a repeating squared off 'S' shape from floor to ceiling in the room. The pattern was about eighteen inches wide and each 'S' was about thirty inches high. In the center of each of the squared off 'curves' of the repeating 'S' shape was the outline of a rectangle, and the center horizontal line of the 'S' was a jagged zig-zag line while the top and bottom lines were straight.

After puzzling over the patterns for a while, the party started opening doors, starting with the door they identified as being map-north though actual directions were impossible to determine where they were. The door opened to a ten foot wide hallway that stretched ten feet ahead before it descended in stairs for the next ten feet, then after ten more feet it ended in a 'T' intersection. The pattern from the room continued along the hall and down the stairs, but ended at the intersection. The party returned to the room where they had appeared and opened the other doors to see what was beyond, discovering that there were similar halls beyond each remaining door. Deciding that a symmetrical dungeon meant that whichever way they went was immaterial, they returned to the north hallway and proceeded to the 'T' intersection there.

The party followed the right-hand rule as usual, turning to the east and proceeding twenty feet before the hall ended in another stone door. Checks were made and while no traps were found the door seemed to be bulging slightly outward. Fearing a flooding trap, especially after the silt-filled hallways of the previous tomb, the party turned around and went down the hall in the opposite direction.

This hallway also went twenty feet from the intersection before ending in another stone door. No traps were found, but Deckard found that this door was very warm to the touch. Fearing fire on the other side, the party opened the door and prepared themselves.

The floor of the thirty by thirty room beyond the door was riddled by holes less than an inch in diameter, with jets of flame occasionally firing out from the holes. Since the majority of the room was getting a bit scorched constantly, there seemed to be no safe way to cross. The center of the room had the most active jets with fire almost constantly filling the center space, but after a while spent watching Deckard was able to plot a path around the edges of the room to the door in the far corner with a minimum of scorching involved. Though he did take some fire damage from the transit, Deckard was able to take minimal damage going from the door in the east wall at the northeast corner along the north then the west walls to the door in the south wall at the southwest corner. He quickly tried to open the door, but it seemed to be stuck. When he tried to open it there was a whoosh in the firey center of the room and a salamander stepped out of the flames.

The salamander moved to attack the party members standing in the doorway, giving Desorna the chance to engage it face to face while Deckard could attack it from behind with his bow. The battle was fierce with the fighter taking the brunt of the attacks from the salamander, though Justinia took one blow that dropped her hit points significantly. Desorna's pole axe attacks ended up felling the creature, but not before serious damage had been done. With the salamander dead Deckard could open the far door and step out into the cooler hallway beyond. The remainder of the group decided to take the west hallway from the central room and meet up with Deckard at the 'T' intersection there instead of crossing the fire.

The party gathered together again at the western intersection and continued south from there. They reached another stone door at the south end of this hallway and opened it. The room beyond was filled with choking green mists which burned the eyes, lungs, and skin of the adventurers. Backing away from the door the party decided that they wanted nothing to do with this room, but a large greenish hand grabbed the door from within and a creature stepped out of the room to attack the party. It looked trollish, though unlike the troll's spindly frame this creature was burly and muscular. Moving forward the poison giant attacked Desorna.

The poison giant's attacks with its fists caused damage, but its breath attack, breathing an acidic poison gas into the face of the fighter, was equally dangerous. Desorna managed to avoid much of the breath damage while hacking away with her pole axe while the rest of the party continued to attack from range whenever possible. The giant was finally slain, and the party decided to return to the central room instead of crossing the room of acidic mists.

Deciding to go east from this room, the party turned north at the intersection and came to another slightly swollen stone door. Deciding that facing the water room that they were certain must lie beyond, the party opened this door prepared for a room filled with silty water or whatever else water-related that might lie beyond. Instead they were blasted by airborne debris that blew down the hallway from the wind room, and a storm elemental came out to attack them.

The storm elemental's form resembled that of an air elemental, except with continuous electrical discharges coming from it. The elven fighter's metal clad form meant that she was an effective ground for its discharges, though luckily LaVeya had healed Desorna before this combat started. The flickering electrical aura damaged the elven fighter significantly while the rest of the party tried to stay out of the range of its attacks while contributing their own attacks at range. After a short but difficult battle the storm elemental was dispersed and the party could look into the room.

Swirling debris surrounded the small vortex in the room's center that resembled a dust devil. A quick look in and around through the stinging winds from the doorway made the party decide that there was nothing of interest in this room, so they closed the door and went south down the hallway to the door that by process of elimination must lead to the water room.

The door to this room was slightly cold to the touch, but the party barely noticed as they opened the door to a wintery storm beyond with blowing snow and sleet filling the room. The ice flenser from within moved to attack and Desorna once again unlimbered her axe and prepared to put it to good use. The flenser's attacks were comparatively weaker than the others that had been faced so far, and the party had an easier time killing it, though some damage was still taken. Deckard looked into the room after the flenser had been destroyed and saw that the floor was icy and slick, but an icy hump in the center of the room looked unusual. Carefully the ex-fighter/thief moved in and saw something under the ice. Using an iron spike and mallet to chip through the ice, he extracted what appeared to be one quarter of a metallic white snowflake with two long and jaggedly symmetrical points extending from a triangular wedge. With this in hand, he returned to the other adventurers and the decision was reached that there must be something similar in the other rooms.

Returning north to the air room, Deckard walked through the storm taking some damage and discovered that stepping into the central vortex put him in the eye of the storm. The floor had nothing of interest on it, but a glance up to the arched ceiling fifteen feet over the floor showed that something seemed to be imbedded in the stone overhead. Ydee came and joined Deckard and lifted him up in what looked like a cheerleading routine with him standing on her hands so he could reach the ceiling. He pulled free another quarter of the 'snowflake', this one being of s shimmering sky-blue metal. After exiting the room Deckard held the two pieces together where they melded together to make half of a snowflake-thing. Then the party went to explore the fire room.

In the center of the room where the fire jets were most often flaming Deckard found another red-hot quarter of the metallic design and after burning himself on it he returned to the cooler hallway where he held it to the sky-blue section where it melded to the rest giving the party three-quarters of the design. From there it was on to the acidic room for what one hoped was the final piece.

In the room of poisonously corrosive vapors Deckard discovered the final piece against the ceiling, and with Ydee's assistance once again he managed to gain the fourth section of the snowflake-star. This piece was a sickly green color, but it melded with the remainder of the design to complete the 6 inch diameter star. With this now in hand the party returned to the central room where they figured the key must be used.

No place to use the key was immediately visible in the central chamber, but after some searching was done a central flagstone of the floor was found to have no mortar in its seams, indicating that perhaps it could be removed. Having done so a strange design of raised cylindrical nubs was found underneath, spaced in such a way that the star fitted between them. A faintly visible circular seam in the floor around the nubs seemed to indicate that the device could be turned one direction or the other, so after some discussion and minor dispute the decision was made to try to turn the star clockwise. Doing so led to some faint clicking and clanking noises like those of ancient gears turning, but nothing else seemed to happen. Exploring back down the north hallway revealed that a door was now visible on the north wall of the 'T' intersection where only blank wall had been previously, and examinations down the other hallways from the center room showed that the same thing was true in all the intersections. Returning to the north, the party opened the door and continued onward.

A thirty foot long hallway with stairs up in the central section of it ended in a door, and the party opened it, revealing a room filled with spiderwebs. Nothing could be seen within, but a faint chittering sound could be heard and the webs seemed to move in a non-existent web. Worried by this, LaVeya cast faerie fire in the room, and four large spider-shaped figures were revealed. The battle began and started poorly for the adventurers as Keeva and Justinia were both paralyzed by spider's venom and collapsed to the floor in a heap. The remaining other spiders attacked Desorna and bit her, but she made her tenacity saving throws and was not paralyzed. The other two spiders paused in their attacks and injected eggs into the abdomens of the paralyzed adventurers which increased the fear factor in the party. But soon the spiders were dead and LaVeya drank her only potion of essence to regain enough spell points to cast remove poison on both Keeva and Justinia removing their paralysis and killing the spider eggs.

Deckard started the webs burning and the party retreated down the hallway and waited for the smoke to clear before entering to explore the room. A search revealed another loose flagstone in the floor along the north wall, and in the cavity underneath lay a large bag. Pulling the bag out of the space revealed that it was heavy, and emptying it revealed around fifty fist-sized rocks that were discovered to be gold ore still in its natural form in the rocks. There was also a carved wooden box inside that when opened revealed a wand of cut obsidian and a small clay bottle. These were kept for later identification and the party turned to consider the two doors, one in each side of the room, that the burning of the webs had cleared.

Returning to the right hand rule, the party took the right hand door out of the room, went down a twenty foot long hallway and stopped to search for traps at the door at the end of the hall. Finding no traps the party opened the door and entered in the center of the long wall of a twenty by thirty foot room with another door on the far side of the room from where they entered. The main point of interest in this room was a fissure that was between six and eight feet across that ran down the center of the room from north to south. Keeva the Curious ran up to peek into the fissure and when she did so the rest of the party saw a couple of tentacles reach out of the fissure and tag her, causing her to collapse to the floor, paralyzed.* Three corpsegrinders scrambled out of the fissure to move toward the party. Desorna ran up to attack the one by Keeva and hacked mightily into it, while Ydee and Deckard fired an arrow into each of the side ones. Kag, having had enough of the foolishness, webbed the corpsegrinders and Desorna. The 'grinder in front of Desorna managed to paralyze her, but LaVeya ran up and dragged Desorna away from the 'grinder. The 'grinder on the right managed to pull free and retreat back to the fissure and the party managed to kill the others and save Keeva. Desorna's poleaxe, which had slipped from her numbed hands as the druid dragged her to safety, was saved from the webs before they were set on fire. After the webs burned out the party turned to figure how to cross the fissure. The gap was the narrowest against the north wall, so some of the party jumped across, with Justinia misjudging the start of her leap and barely getting her arms over the far edge of the chasm where Keeva grabbed her and prevented her from falling the rest of the way in. Deckard used rope and iron spikes to create a safety line just in case it was needed, and everyone was able to get across. Kag, who had been among the first to have taken the leap across, decided to search in the rubbish around the walls on the far side of the room where he found a small gem. He may or may not have pocketed this without mentioning it to anyone else. The door was searched for traps and none were found so the party battering ram, Keeva, opened it and the party continued on.

Beyond this door was another twenty foot long hallway ending in another door. Proper precautions taken, it was opened to reveal a huge fifty by fifty room with a high arched ceiling that vanished into the darkness overhead. A door in the center of the south wall was the only other exit from the room. There was a ten foot high terrace in the center of the room. The terrace had sloping sides so though the base of it was thirty by thirty the top of it was twenty-five by twenty-five. A narrow set of stairs in the center of each side of the terrace led to its top. On the top of the terrace in the center of the room was a ten foot on each side cube engrave with patterns of glyphs, and standing on it facing the southwest corner of the room was a tall statue of a man.

The statue was of a normal appearing man whose head nearly reached the arched center of the ceiling. Its only clothing was what looked like a skirt with geometric patterns on it. The statue's left arm with its disproportionately large hand was by its side while its right upper arm was by its body with the lower arm parallel to the floor and the equally disproportionately large hand was palm up with the index finger pointing toward the southwest corner. The head of the statue was disproportionately big, taller than a head usually was, cylindrical, and with odd and ugly facial features on it. LaVeya, in bird form, flew up to perch on the statue's shoulder and to look around. As she did she noticed that the right palm of the statue looked odd. Hopping down to it she found that there was a square hole carved into the palm. The hole was roughly four inches deep and ten inches on each side. LeVeya tried to examine the corner where the statue was pointing but, since she wasn't a hummingbird, she was unable to investigate it easily. Changing back into human form she told the others what she had discovered, but they couldn't find anything in that corner. Of course, they also couldn't examine the corner where the statue was pointing as it was far overhead. Perplexed, they had a discussion and decide to try to find some defensible place where they could rest for the night.

Crossing the fissure and returning to the room where the glass spiders had been was easy enough, and from there they returned to the central room for some rest and hopefully some spell points.
During the first watch Deckard happened to be looking at the south door when a figure seemed to just shift through it.  He identified it as a spectre and fired a shot at it from his magic bow before kicking Desorna awake and shouting "Contact!"  He then backed away for another arrow shot as Desorna stood, grabbed her poleaxe, and began attacking.  The initial attacks were successful on all sides leaving Desorna feeling somewhat lessened by the spectre.  Deckard nudged Ydee awake and gave her the same "Contact!" information.  She leapt to her feet and considered the undead thing that was attacking Desorna before hurling her magical dagger at and through it, doing enough damage to dissipate it.  With that over with, Ydee reclaimed her dagger and then returned to her bedroll.
The next morning the adventurers awoke, heard the night's news, and then decided on their next actions.  Returning to the spider room they opened the western door and proceeded down the twenty foot hallway, and opened the door into another twenty by thirty foot room.

This room was the mirror image of the fissure room, but without the fissure. Instead there was a three foot high stone half circle against the north wall that contained water up near to its rim. LaVeya determined at a glance that the water was not fresh but that it was probably still potable. Deckard looked within the water and saw a stone box on the bottom of the pool. Reaching into the water activated the water weird who pummeled Deckard in the face half drowning him. He staggered backward to get away from the thing, hacking and coughing up water, while other members of the party began attacking the water wildly. Deckard waited until the weird reappeared and attacked it directly as did Kag with his magic missile spell. The most damage was done by Justinia who used the reverse of her create water spell to destroy water and directly harm the weird. After it was killed by Justinia, Deckard was able to remove the stone lid of the box and find a roughly ten inch by ten inch by four inch stone in it. This was tucked into the bag of holding after some debate, with the intent that it was to be used later. Then the party opened the western door in this room and continued further.

Down the expected twenty foot long hall was another door, and through this one was another fifty by fifty room like the previous one, except that this statue faced the southeast. A cursory examination was given of this room to check that it matched the previous one in all salient points, which it did with a couple of exceptions. First, the features on the head of this statue, while equally ugly, were different than the previous one, and the skirt-thing this statue wore seemed to have a faint reddish hue. No one in the party could remember the previous statue's skirt having any particular coloration, but this one's was just different enough that it was notable. With this curiosity filed away in their memories, the party continued south through the door there.

The party traversed the expected twenty foot long hall to end at another door, and when this door was opened we ended for the night.

Experience points for the party:

Deckard: 2132 + 100 for planning ahead

LaVeya: 1938 + 50 for showing up just in time to keep the party from dying

Kag: 1938

Desorna: -3000 for spectre, + 1938

Justinia: 2132

Keeva: 1938 + 50 for rescuing the cleric from the dropsies.

Ydee: 1066

*- What is it in this group with halflings and paralysis anyway? Sheesh...