September 10th, 2017
Training in Town, Loose Ends, and off to the Cabin Again
From my left:
Chris playing Deckard the 3rd/7th
level human ex-fighter/thief
Mikey playing Ivan the 4th
level Viking dwarven fighter and 3 charisma party spokesdwarf
Zack playing LaVeya the 6th/1st level human druid/magic-user
New Connor playing Iloxiron the
1st level half-elven sacrificial spellsword
and the DM playing Ydee the 6th
level half-elf thief for the absent Catherine
Now back in town and resting and
training after their last adventure, several of the party found
themselves ready to go back adventuring again while others were busy
doing other things. Niall was invited by Bishop Charles to help plan
out the form of the new church in Treefold. Neven accepted a
position as an apprentice so he could study further with Glykras.
Merrick and his new mystic friend went off in pursuit of a skilled
mystic to train the neophyte, and Keeva and Flever attempted to
settle down for a bit to raise their battle-weary and still injured
chicken-child together.
Meanwhile, after training was done,
including the druid gaining her first multi-class level as a
magic-user, Deckard, Ivan, and LaVeya met up with a mercenary
spellsword who had been part of the detail assigned to guard some of
the religious items that were to be used in the consecration of the
new church in Treefold. The High (and really the only) Priest in
Treefold, Father Marley, suggested that Iloxiron adventure with these
local heroes to gain more experience. Foolishly he accepted the idea
and the adventurers accepted him into the group. With Ydee along for
the adventure, they decided to return to the Aerie of the Silver
Griffins and to see if they had returned.
A quick and quiet journey to the north
led to their arrival at the still vacant Aerie. The note that the
party had left for the Griffins the last time through remained
untouched on the shelf around the central fire pit. Deciding that
valor was the better part of discretion, the party cast an identify
spell on the remaining side and passed through.
Appearing in a thirty by thirty foot
room with a door in the center of each of the four walls felt
familiar to the established adventurers, while the whole “there's
no way out but to complete the adventure” bit was somewhat
unnerving to the neophyte. After the standard look-see was done,
which discovered untranslatable glyph-runes around the walls, as
expected, the party opened a door and went to the subjective north.
A short hallway led to a staircase that
descended ten feet before the hallway continued further north.
Listening carefully led to Deckard hearing faint sounds like dripping
water to the north, but following the right hand rule, much to the
consternation of their new companion, the party turned to go
subjectively east.
Entering the next room, which was
basically twenty by twenty feet with a ten foot by five foot alcove
in both the north and south walls, led the adventurers to discover
that there was a dampness everywhere in the room and on the eight
foot tall statues, one in each alcove. These statues appeared to be
similar to previous ones in other tombs with elongated heads with odd
facial features. Each statue was holding an odd spear in one hand
with the other fist on their hip. The spears' blades were somewhat
crescent shaped. The statues, as before, wore what looked like
skirts or kilts and had no other apparel. One door on the wall
opposite where they had entered was the only exit, so the party
prepared to open it to continue onward.
Iloxiron was determined that the party
should have gone through the north door back in the intersection, so
while the party was checking the door for traps he snuck back into
the original hallway and went to examine the northern door. As he
was doing so he cried out in pain as he was attacked from behind and
two clawed hands scored his back. Spinning around he faced the
creature and found himself looking at an age-blackened skeleton that
still had bits and chunks of ancient flesh hanging from its skeletal
form. Trying not to panic, the spellsword attacked it and was taking
the worst of it before he decided to maneuver around it so he could
run back down the eastern hall and hopefully get his new allies to
come to his aid. Luckily the others heard his panicked squeaking and
came to help, quickly destroying the skeletal creature and healing
the spellsword. After some repetition of “This is why we don't
split the party.” they opened the eastern door in the statue room
and continued on.
Beyond the door was a twenty foot long
hallway that opened into a thirty foot diameter circular chamber with
no visible exits. The walls were engraved with a horizontal zig-zag
pattern that started about three feet off of the floor and went to
around three feet from the ceiling. In the center of the floor were
three skeletal forms like the one the party had just destroyed. They
appeared to have been both bashed and hacked to death from unlife,
and somewhat recently. Feeling that perhaps this was work of the
Griffins, the party continued certain that they were on the right
track. Further exploration around the room led to Deckard finding a
chalked symbol on the southern wall of the room. It looked like a
henge: two vertical lines with a horizontal line across the top.
Further exploration of that wall revealed the secret door there, and
the adventurers passed through.
The party found themselves in the
center of an east-west hallway. They went to the west until they
found an ascending flight of stairs. Deckard insisted that they
should remain on their current level instead of taking the stairs, so
they went back past the secret door and down to the other end of the
hallway.
A short distance along the party saw
that the passage came to an end ahead when it intersected with a
north-south hallway. A quick look in either direction showed the
hallway extending into the distance, but a door was visible on the
left hand wall at the edge of their torchlight to the north. Going
north Iloxiron noticed that the torches were burning somewhat smokily
and not giving off as much light as expected. This made him more
nervous, but there was little else that could be done so they
continued on.
The door was neither locked nor trapped
so it was opened to reveal a small and relatively uninteresting room,
ten feet by ten feet. The room was quickly left behind as the party
continued north.
The hallway only went another thirty
feet north before it came to a dead end. A two foot by two foot
crossed grating was set into the floor, and the faint sounds of
running water could be heard through it. Experimentation with a ten
foot pole showed that the trench under the grate was only about four
inches deep and seemed to drain towards the north, where the faint
sound of running was coming from. After some quick searches the
party reversed their course and went back south.
Passing the hallway to the circular
room they went south another thirty feet before finding a door on the
western wall at the forty foot mark. Opening it revealed a hall
going west ten feet before it became an ascending staircase.
Continuing his insistence that they finish with their current level
before they changed elevations, Deckard led the adventurers back into
the hallway and further south.
The hallway continued another thirty
feet south before it turned to the west. At the turn there was a
door in the east wall. With the door right there the decision was
made to explore behind it with Ivan bursting through as was his
tendency.
Opening the door revealed another
hallway stretching to the east. After twenty feet it ended in a
north-south hallway. The party turned north and discovered that this
was not a hallway but was a room, twenty feet north to south by
thirty feet east to west and they were entering it in the southeast
corner. Also in this room were six creatures: five of the previously
seen blackened human-sized skeletons and the sixth was larger and
sturdier. Battle was once again joined and Iloxiron once again got
the worst of it. The druid's minor regeneration spell would fully
heal him once the battle was done, but during the robed spellsword
was forced to try to avoid hand to hand combat as much as possible.
He was brave though, never shying away from combat unless things were
getting dangerously close to death. Once the undead were defeated,
LaVeya healed the spellsword to full and other damaged characters as
needed, then the party turned to the south.
The south hall was no hall but a mirror
image of the north room, including the combatants. Preparing
themselves better meant that the party handled this battle somewhat
better, but there was a rough moment when the spellsword was reduced
to zero hit points. Luckily LaVeya got him up and back into the
action again.
After this action Iloxiron was
rethinking his adventuring plans, but with no easy way out he
continued on with the others. Since there were no other exits to be
found in this cul-de-sac, the party left the area and returned to the
corner of the hallway and headed west.
Thirty feet down the western hallway
the passage ended in a door. A question mark had been chalked onto
the wall next to the door and the party pondered this for a bit.
After searching for secret doors and panels around the question mark
and finding nothing they decided to go through the obvious door. Now
used to the standard doors, Ivan shield-charged through, slamming
open the door and falling into the pit on the far side. Once the
party had helped the dwarf climb out they looked into the room. It
was thirty by thirty feet and there was an open ten foot by ten foot
by ten foot pit in the center of each wall. The only other door was
in the center of the opposing wall, so by carefully stepping his way
across the corners of the pits Deckard planned to reach the far door.
The center section of the room was a worse danger. While it looked
like solid flooring, once Deckard stepped on it the hinged lid of the
pit trap swung open and prepared to drop the fighter-thief into the
depths. Luckily the hinges were slow to open from age so Deckard was
able to leap back to safety on the northeast corner of the room.
Iloxiron found himself happy that he failed to leap across the open
pit trap earlier and instead landed in the pit the dwarf had fallen
in. If he had made the jump it was quite likely that the spellsword
would have died.
With careful use of his grappling hook
and rope, Deckard climbed down into the north pit then up onto the
northwest corner before opening the door in the west wall. The party
followed Deckard's path and all made it safely through the west door
into the short hallway beyond the went twenty feet before ending in
another door. This door was carefully opened and the adventurers
passed through.
A hallway twenty feet long was on the
far side of the western door, and at the far end of that hallway was
another door. Learning little from his previous experiences, Ivan
barreled through into the largest room they had yet encountered.
They entered in the center of the east wall into a room that was
thirty feet across and stretched fifty feet from north to south. The
stone of the floor had been overlaid with tiles, though their colors
and pattern were hidden under the slimy muck that the ever-present
moisture had left on the floors. A single door was in the center of
the northern and western walls, and a set of somewhat ornate double
doors were in the center of the southern wall. Turning to the doors
that were different, the party found the southern doors were the
typical heavy stone but engraved with symbols and with iron banding
and lock plates. Before noticing the locks, Iloxiron tried to pull
the doors open, activating the trap which plunged a telescoping metal
point into the center of his chest, causing him to stagger backwards
and almost collapse as he was, once again, reduced to a single hit
point. LaVeya healed the spellsword again while the rest of the
group examined the locks. The locks had been marked with question
marks in chalk except for the lower left one which had an 'X' next to
it. Pondering this and coming up with nothing, the adventurers
decided to pick the locks, but these locks were some of the most
difficult the party thieves had encountered and they could open none
of them. Disgruntled by this, they decided to leave by the western
door and continue on.
The western door opened on a passageway
that went ten feet forward before turning south. A look around the
corner showed that the passageway turned east for a moment before
turning back to the north. In the center of the floor after this
northern turn was a large chalk 'X'. Searching around to see if it
was marking a pit trap, the party found nothing, so they continued
on. The hallway did a couple more serpentine cutbacks before, after
the turn back to the south, the hallway turned west again. Ten feet
down the west hallway the hall ended in a door. Iloxiron was
impatient and nervous, so he rushed ahead to try to throw the door
open after others had failed and he set off the trap that had
poisoned darts firing down the hall from behind them. Everyone but
the spellsword made their saving throw and dropped to the ground to
avoid the darts while Iloxiron took four in the back and failed his
tenacity saving throw and began screaming in agony as the poison
caused his back to burn like fire as it began spreading through his
veins. Luckily the druid was right there with a remove poison spell
and the pain subsided as the poison was purged. The caustic venom
still left him with burning sensations around the wounds on his back,
but they were manageable.
Deciding that the door was just a trap
trigger and that he had had enough of these bollocks, Deckard took
the most direct route back to the entry room, picking locks along the
way as the door from the entry room to the long southern hall had
been double locked. From the first chamber he went back north, down
the stairs, and back to the first intersection. Eschewing the right
hand passageway, the fighter-thief made Iloxiron crow in triumphant
“I told you north is the way to go!” statements as he opened the
north door and entered the room beyond.
The room beyond resembled the large
hallway they had previously discovered, but instead of doors in each
wall and double doors at the far end in this room there were only
double doors at the far end and a grate in the center of the floor
through which the faint sound of running water could be heard.
Examination showed that this grate, which was slightly larger than
the previously found grate, had an identical four inch deep trench
under it that led north to the distant sound of running water.
Moving to the double doors, investigation showed that there were only
two locks in these doors, one on each side. Though these locks were
difficult, they were not quite as difficult as the other sets and
Ydee was able to open them. Then, encouraged by his allies, Ivan
charged through.
This turned out to be a near fatal
mistake. As the dwarf bashed through the rest of the party heard the
sound of dwarvish anger, followed by the sounds of metal scraping
against stone, and then comparitive silence, broken only by the sound
of water flowing. Then came Ivan's voice through the doors saying
“If you don't get me out of this, I'm going to kill you all.”
Carefully entering the room the party followed the dwarf.
This room had been thirty by thirty
feet before a deep-flowing river had undercut the floor to the point
of collapse. The sevenish feet of floor on the party's side was
sloped down to the open chasm which filled the central section of the
room from wall to wall. Two sets of very hairy knuckles were holding
on to the edge of the chasm and Ydee went over and hauled the dwarf
back up and onto his feet, noticing as she did that it was likely at
least fifty or sixty feet down to the rushing waters below. LaVeya
transformed into a bird again and fluttered across with a wooden
mallet, then an iron spike, then one end of Deckard's rope. Changing
back into her human form she carefully hammered the spike into the
floor before tying the rope to it. Meanwhile Deckard was tying the
other end of the rope off to the spike he had already hammered into
the floor on his side. After ensuring that the knots were good and
with the statement “Make the dwarf go last.” from Iloxiron, the
party carefully crossed the tightrope to join LaVeya.
There were another set of double-locked
double doors there which Ydee opened before the dwarf burst through.
Beyond these doors was a ten foot long hallway that ended in another
set of double doors. Sighing, the two thieves got to work on these
locks and soon the doors were opened to reveal the room beyond.
This room was a thirty foot by thirty
foot room with a throne across the room flanked by two statues in the
corners. The throne was stone, though it was carved to resemble
bones, and it was empty. The statues in the corners were at least
ten feet tall and each held a long and broad bladed spear that the
spellsword called a sword-spear. As the party took their first look
around they noticed that the walls were engraved with a stylized
representation of a landscape that seemed to be of heavily forested
mountains, though LaVeya just saw marks on the walls. Deckard
noticed that between the space of two seconds a ghostly figure had
phased into view on the throne, and it was watching them intently.
As the rest of the party became aware of the figure it raised one
hand and acted as it if snapped its ghostly fingers. A loud snapping
sound seemed to echo at the adventurers from all directions, and then
there were six phantasmal forms that looked like the statues in the
corners and wielding similar insubstantial broadspears. Then the
king seemed to dissolve and the phantasms attacked.
Though the phantasms and their weapons
seemed insubstantial the damage they could do was very real, and they
hit very hard. The dwarf and the druid took quite a bit of damage
from their slashing and stabbing attacks and the spellsword was also
badly wounded in the battle, but the phantasms were defeated leaving
the party alone again. After a few moments the king phased back in
again, still sitting in his watchful position. This time he raised
both hands and clapped once, and the echo of a loud clap bounced
around the room. From behind the party came a rough rumbling noise
and they turned to face two animated statues who moved forward to
punch with their sturdy fists while the king watched.
Deciding he had had enough of this
monkeyspit, Deckard launched an arrow directly at the source. It
passed harmlessly through the king to shatter against the back of the
throne. Deckard had the king's full attention after that, and the
king locked eyes with the fighter-thief, but Deckard made his
discipline saving throw and was unaffected, drawing back another
arrow to fire.
The dwarf, druid, and thief were doing
fairly well in the toe to toe battle with the animated statues and so
the relatively fragile spellsword rushed at the king meaning to do
him grievous bodily harm with the magical short sword Deckard had
loaned him for the previous battle. He missed. Not just missed, but
missed badly, sending the short sword flying away to clatter against
the floor at the back wall. Deckard shot another arrow through the
king's torso to shatter against the throne. The king turned to make
eye contact with the spellsword and the spellsword failed his save.
The king vanished again and Deckard turned to attack the badly
battered statues while unaware that Iloxiron was not alone in his own
mind. Iloxiron went over to sit on the throne for a moment while the
battle raged, but stood and moved forward toward the group as the
battle ended with the statues shattering and crumbling into dust.
Most of the party moved forward with
Iloxiron to examine the throne while LaVeya hung back slightly. As
they gathered together Iloxiron/not-Iloxiron muttered a few sibilant
sentences and the party was teleported away to find themselves...
...waiting for the next session to find
out what the heck just happened.*
Experience points for the adventure
Deckard – 1738
Ivan - 1738
LaVeya - 1738
Iloxiron - 1738
Ydee - 869+
Footnote:
* Yes, the party has been transported
somewhere. If other players show back up, they will have been hidden
with the party all the time and transported too. Shut up, it doesn't
have to make any sense, but deus ex machina has been an accepted
solution since the Greek civilization, so shut up.
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