Lost in the Abbey - Nightwick Abbey - Session 39

Illustration by Edward Coley Burne-Jones

 Previously, in the world of Nightwick...

Session 39 - 8th of December 1391

This week's adventurers:

Sotar (Cleric 4)

Blossom (Rogue 4)

Liminal Space (Changeling 2)

Mechtild (Fighter 1)

Yevegniy the Coward (Cleric 1)

Anston (Fighter 2)

Hirelings:

Ticze (Changeling 1), Gerung (Magic-User 1), Heyno, Ditl 

Downtime in the Village

The party returns from Father Winter's tomb and rests. Verinka wakes up from his vision/dream and appears otherwise unharmed. Mayfly identifies the sword Father Winter gave us. It is named Dhinron and it is truely a mighty sword - it is sentient, offers the powers of Detect Magic, Detect Metals, See Invisible Object, and Extra Damage Enhancement. Additionally, it has a special purpose: to slay undead. This would be a truly helpful sword for surviving Nightwick Abbey. Unfortunately, it has a mind of its own (Int 12, Ego 12) and anyone wielding it would be at risk of having the sword take them over to further its own agenda. This level of power discourages any of the eligible party members from picking it up this week. Several adventurers are missing this week, but nonetheless, we decide to return to Level 3 of Nightwick to explore some more.

Misplaced Optimism

We reach level three without incident, coming to a room with three doors. We've always taken the west door to go to the seals and catacombs, but we decide to explore the other two doors today. To the north  is a lone storeroom. It has two metallic tables with dark bloodstains and a tool consisting of a silver hook at the end of a long stick. We take the time to search the crates in the back of the room and discover one of them is full of dried demon's horn, a plant known in the region to be an aphrodisiac. Since it's so close to the stairs, we leave the crate where it is and plan on grabbing it on our way out.

We go east next and find a room full of old rat guys, over 20 of them. They seem to be playing a game involving throwing skulls at femurs - like cornhole meets cricket, but with bones. The whole procedure produces no sound.  Liminal steps forward and states, "we mean you no harm, if you let us pass." The rat-men seem amicable to those arrangements. There's a passage to the south and a door to the north. The door is shaped unlike any other door we've seen in Nightwick. There's a metal slat in the door that opens for a moment and we see 2 yellow eyes and some smoke comes out. The door is behind the bulk of the rat-men, however, and so we opt to go south.

A Dead End

The party goes around a zig-zagged hallway and comes to a dead end with a doorway scabbed over in flesh. As Sotar searches the walls for a hidden passageway, a number of crawling humanoid figures with birdlike heads approach us from behind. Anston hits one and Liminal tries to hypnotize them, but the spell fails and he realizes that they're ghouls! Heyno is hit and is paralyzed. Liminal throws a vial of holy water at them but misses and it hits the back wall. The abbey wall forms dark blisters from where it hits and we feel and hear the abbey shifting around us, changing the layout of the floor. Mechtild kills one and Sotar turns them, causing the abbey to shift and change again as it reacts to the magic. 

Lost in the Dark

The passageway behind us, where we came from, is not blocked off by one of the abbey's large scabs. The door behind us is now open, however. We go the only way we can and come to an ossuary with a 4-way intersection. Stepping into the intersection, we see a doorway with a great monster between us - half beast and half bird. "Begone with ye!" he yells at us, and Liminal negotiates for us to pass by him through the door. Beyond, Blossom hears some chanting in the distance but can't make it out.

Into the Fire

We continue down this new hallway, looking for anything familiar. Shortly, we see, in a passage off of the hallway, the sigils that we have encountered in the past. If they and the stairs haven't moved, then we're around 100' from the stairs. If they have moved, then we're still lost and don't know the way out. We continue down the hallway, in the direction of where the stairs once were, but, as we pass an open doorway, we are swarmed by undead in antiquated chain mail. Sotar fails to turn them and a sense of dread falls over the party and we feel something moving in the dark beyond the undead. We decide to retreat to the north, in the direction we had been heading, using Sotar's Protection from Evil spell to cover the retreat. As Gerung, our torchbearer, passes by the doorway where the undead came from, we catch a glimpse of a tall figure in full plate in the dark. We retreat north into a familiar room! This one depicts a perversion of heaven and its right next to the stairs. Sure enough, the stairs are where we left them, we grab the crate we left bedind, and leave the abbey. Heyno comes to and recounts having had a vision similar to Verinka had last week. In the end, we each gain 160xp for the week and sell the devil's horn for some coin.

Final Thoughts

We definitely got in over our heads this week, with our smaller party. We're lucky that no one died. That fight with the ghouls was especially rough. Paralyzation is especially tough to deal with. The fight also took place in a tight hallway where we were ambushed and some of our best fighters were out of position. I also forgot to heal Heyno's paralyzation after that first encounter which put us down a man.