August 13th, 2017

Exploration Under the Dwarven Quarry

From my left:

Nick playing Merrick the 6^th level human fighter

Matt playing Mirin the 4^th level human spellsword

Connor playing Niall Lightbearer the 4^th level human cleric

Zack playing LaVeya the 6^th level human druid

Michael playing Ivan Lok'tar the 2^nd level (Viking) dwarven fighter

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

Paige playing Keeva the 4^th level halfling infiltrator

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

and the overly generous DM playing Ydee the 6^th level half-elf thief for the absent Catherine

The adventure began in Treefold where our heroes had forced marched themselves into town after being attacked in the night. A couple of days were spent on rest and recovery before the quarry dwarves headed south to try to find new workers for the quarry so Treefold could finish their buildings. The party did the righteous thing and told the dwarves of the quarry about the horde of dwarf-marked coins they had recovered from the giants. The dwarves took a substantial amount of gold (almost ¾ of the coins) as payment to the workers' families and headed south. The dwarves said that the party could keep all the gems that they had taken from the giants and that was substantially more value than the coins. The dwarves said their farewells and left to journey south.

The party began making plans of what to do next. Several of their number needed to train up and develop their new skills in their respective classes. Niall traded two platinum and a potion of avian control for his training, Keeva paid for hers in platinum, and Ivan managed to scrounge enough gold to pay for his too.* Deckard decided to make the trip to the Aerie to see if the other group had returned from the sixth side of the cubic key, and Desorna, LaVeya, and Mirin went with him while Ydee and Merrick stayed in town.

The journey to the Aerie was relatively uneventful, though the group did meet a group of hunters returning from the hunt. The adventurers struck them as being trustworthy and capable types, so they stopped for a brief while to share news. The hunters told of finding a large camping area with an old fire long burned out of humongous bootprints on the ground that spoke of giants in the area. The hunters decided to return to town quickly after this discovery and warned the adventurers to be careful! Then each group continued along their way.

At the Aerie things looked undisturbed and everything was still where it had last been left. The sixth side of the cubic key was still gray and showed that the Silver Eagles had not returned from their journey inside, which concerned the others greatly. The decision was made to finish the business at the quarry first, and then return to the Aerie, hopefully to find the Silver Eagles back in residence. If not, the adventurers were going to follow them and hopefully with their combined abilities solve the sixth side and return intact.

They returned to town and wasted time in a variety of pleasant endeavors while waiting for the trainees to complete their learning.** However some of the communication and contacts that Deckard had made brought him some unsettling news from the southern lands. The rumor he heard was that the Council of Eleven and their allies were apparently dealing with a dragon. The name given was Alcalcyx,which was a blue dragon whose destructive capabilities had severely damaged Rimwatch Vale during the time when the heroes were exploring the Cursed Valley. Concerned with this news, Deckard informed the party that after dealing with the quarry undead, the sixth tomb, and the potential great tomb after it, they were going to go down and take care of this dragon. The others, worrying that Deckard was even more crazy than usual, agreed simply to placate him while thinking that there was no way they were going to attempt that level of madness.

After their friends had finished their training the party spent a couple more days in town waiting for word from Gander about the future plans for the quarry. When Gander returned he informed Deckard that his associate was still down in Calendas recruiting new workers for the quarry and Gander was going to stay in town and wait for the workers to gather until they had at least two good crews before returning to the quarry, and only returning once the heroes guaranteed that the quarry was clear of monsters. Deckard proposed a business proposition for becoming a part owner of the quarry, advancing some badly needed cash to keep the quarry functioning and reaping a cut of the profits as well. While not opposed to the idea, Gander said such thoughts would have to wait until the quarry was ready to resume business again.

Now that J.P. Deckard Morgan was done with his dealing ways, and the three newer adventurers were trained up to their new levels, the party prepared to head back to the quarry. Deckard shared out the vials of holy water that the party had bought earlier, making sure that each adventurer had at least one vial to use on any of the undead that likely inhabited the newly discovered caves under the quarry. The adventurers began their journey back to the quarry and stopped to sleep along the way.

During the second watch LaVeya was keeping watch when she was surprised as two boulders slammed into her, knocking her down and pinning her to the ground. Her scream woke most of the party except for Merrick who continued sleeping. Staggering to their feet they looked at Desorna. The angle of her fall and the boulders pinning her to the ground showed where the attack had come from, even if there were no attackers immediately visible. Deckard quickly lit a torch in the small fire the adventures had kept burning and headed in the direction the attacks must have come from with Ydee and several others while Ivan attempted to move a boulder off of LaVeya with a charging shield smash. He was successful, though he did roll it across LaVeya's face, which was very uncomfortable for her.

Since no one but the watching druid had been wearing armor, the party was wary of directly confronting the boulder-throwers. Another thrown boulder smacked into LaVeya just after she stood up, spinning her around but not knocking her down. Ivan had charged off to attack the giants while some other members of the party just tried to stay out of the firelight to avoid becoming targets. LaVeya made hiding easier by dropping an obscurement spell around the fire giving good concealment to those nearby.

Meanwhile, Deckard, Ydee, Desorna, Mirin, and Ivan were hunting giants. Deckard sighted their heads over the treetops and he and Ydee opened fire with their bows. Ivan charged to attack, roaring his usual dwarven roar, but a thrown boulder knocked him to the ground and pinned him there flat on his back. The battle continued to rage for a bit longer with Ivan trying and failing to move the boulder on his chest. Finally, in an attempt to hinder the giants, LaVeya cast plant growth “out near where the boulders were coming from”. Her aim was off, but she did manage to get the high wall of plants between the giants and the adventurers' camp. Unfortunately she did manage to catch the pinned dwarf in it, leaving him totally surrounded by and stuck in a wall of plant life. The juvenile giants took advantage of this distraction and ran off leaving the party unmolested in their attempts to hack their way into the wall of plant life and free the totally unhappy and swearing dwarf. Once Ivan was freed, they returned to camp and to sleep as best as they could for the rest of the night.

The next afternoon the adventurers reached the quarry and examined the area to see what might have changed in the meantime. The cairn over the bodies of the dwarves killed in the battle with the giants was undisturbed, and in the very bottom of the quarry the withered bodies of the dwarves were still there. Since nothing else seemed to have been disturbed either, the adventurers descended to the bottom of the quarry to investigate the tunnels into the darkness.

NOT splitting the party was decided to be a good idea, and the party chose to explore the tunnel that went parallel to the cliff wall instead of angling away from it. The tunnel was a natural cave tunnel with rough surfaces and cracks and crevices aplenty. About forty feel down the twisting, turning passage a small crawlspace, small enough that only a halfling or gnome could easily traverse it, branched away to the right. Keeva and Elvira the chicken and LaVeya in rat form decided to explore it.

With Elvira in a harness on Keeva's back and the rat riding on Keeva's back and shoulder the crawl tunnel was explored. The halfling had reached just past the edge of available light so her low-light vision wasn't much good anymore when the floor of the tunnel vanished and she felt herself falling into darkness.

A short fall led to a splash as the trio landed in water deeper than they could stand in. Keeva, concerned for her 'daughter', held the chicken up out of the water as best as she could while attempting to tread water with her legs. LaVeya ended up changing into the form of a bass and swam around to explore the area where they had fallen. She discovered that the small air pocket they were in was on the roof of an underground river that had a slow but steady current. She returned to the surface as Deckard, who had heard the scream as Keeva fell, tossed a lit torch down the tunnel to see what he could see. The torch came down the tunnel and fell into the hole, giving a brief amount of light to the druid and infiltrator before going out in the water. The torch was followed by a grappling hook with two ropes tied to it. Another excellent throw by Deckard dropped the hook past the adventurers in the hole. LaVeya grabbed the rope and scrambled up it, but at the top she had to change back into rat shape to navigate the passage. She hurried back to the remainder of the party, resumed human shape, explained the situation, and then cast ghostly lantern before resuming rat shape and scrambling back down the tunnel to give the halfling some light.

With the aid of the light Keeva was able to climb back out of the hole and rejoin the party outside. Once everyone was safe and Elvira's broken wing was tended to, Merrick tried to figure out if the small tunnel could be collapsed. The stone was strong enough that Ivan said it could be done, with a team of trained dwarves and a couple of days. LaVeya figured out what they wanted done at this point and said, “Okay, stone shape!” using the spell to seal the hole. With that done, the adventurers continued on.

The party continued on along the tunnel another forty feet before they reached an intersection. Another cave tunnel branched off to the right from the tunnel they had been on, and the original kept going. A faint sound of wind could be heard down the right hand tunnel, and Ivan noticed that the right hand tunnel showed signs of having been worked. This led the party to turn right and follow the new passage.

Forty feet or so down this tunnel the passage ended in an old iron door. The thieves found no traps on it, so with some time spent the adventurers managed to get the door open. Beyond the door was a large room that appeared to have been a natural cave that had been worked at some point. About thirty feet away in the center of the room was an odd triangular stone half-pillar about eight feet tall with writing of an old and unknown type on it. No one could read the writing so Mirin cast read languages on Deckard off of the scroll they had found last adventure. Deckard was able to translate the writing as a warning. The information was quickly read aloud but before the party could discuss it, Merrick, who had been watching for danger, noticed that eight humanoid shapes had coalesced into being around them. He gave his own warning and the battle began.

The shapes were dark and shadowy and seemed insubstantial but they actually had some vague substance to them, much like gelatin though not quite. Their touch did little physical damage but it did create a deepening chill within the body of the individual they hit. The adventurers were concerned since their weapons didn't seem to be doing quite the damage expected, but with a couple of well-placed holy aura spells from Niall they were defeated. They left no remains behind to search for treasure, much to the disappointment of the group,so once the last was dispersed the party explored the rest of the room.

There was a door in the center of each wall, but the other three doors looked like they had been soldered shut. Examining the door the adventurers had entered through showed that it had been shut in the same manner before someone or something had smashed the door open, breaking the seals. As the party searched the rest of the room Merrick noticed another group of the shadowy figures enter through the door the adventurers had come through. Four of these figures were as shadowy and insubstantial-seeming as the previous eight, but the fifth figure was tall and spindly and its body was pitch black. It seemed to whisper something incomprehensible that only Merrick heard then it attacked with its cohort.

This fight was tougher as the spindly creature was possessed with some sort of magical ability. It muttered something in its own language and a blue-white flame spread across its body. Its powerful claws were terrible weapons as one strike against Merrick injured him severely, but with the entire party working together these creatures were destroyed and vanished into nothingness.

At this point it was time for Paige to head home, so we ended for the evening.

Experience points for the party:

Merrick - 588

Mirin – 329, just kidding, 588

Niall Lightbearer - 588

LaVeya - 588

Ivan Lok'tar - 588

Desorna - 588

Keeva - 588

Deckard - 588

Ydee - 294

Footnotes:

* - A player can make a CHA test to see if they can reduce the cost of their training. The amount varies but it can be by up to half if a natural one is rolled. Mikey decided to roll for Ivan (who, again and still has a 3 CHA score). Mikey rolled a natural 1. Good job Mikey!

**- Congrats, the DM in his infinite wisdom forgot to charge you for the stay in the inn. So that is roughly 60-ish gold you should have spent but didn't. Not going to retcon this. You're welcome.