Nightwick Abbey - Session 55 - Don't Go In Without a Plan

Previously in Nightwick Abbey...

Session 55 - 11th of Youngers, 1392

This week's adventurers:

Blossom (Rogue 4)

Mayfly (Magician 4)

Liminal Space (Changeling 3)

Yevegniy the Coward (Cleric 3)

Mechtilde (Fighter 3)

Ulf (Magician 1)

Duka (Fighter 1)

Hirelings: Gerung Floating Disk (MU 1), Elger, Fredman (Fighter 1), Guttural Noises

Downtime in the Village

Over the week, we've had a new player join the ranks of Nightwick! He rolled up Duka, a fighter from the island kingdom of Kars, a distant land where everybody has dumb names. While he was rolling up Duka, the rest of us discussed whether or not Froglings have souls and why would a chamber of commerce use a Dave & Busters business model. This week, we decide to forgo a trip to Lichgate to show Duka a proper Nightwick dungeon delve - we're going to level 2 to find our lost magic sword, Dhinron, and a giant ruby if we have time to spare.

Down Into The Abbey

Leaving the village, we take our well-worn path through the woods to the remains of the abbey, where two old towers still stick out above the ground. We descend through the western tower into level 1 and begin to make our way to the stairs down. Not far into level 1, we cross a room to find a previously open door stuck closed.

Mites and Mermaids

Blossom hears nothing at the door and Mechtilde pries it open, revealing a number of pale white squat creatures - a cross between an old man and a rat.

Mechtilde tries to intimidate them, "I have a magic sword and I'm a mrymidon, you should run away"

"Wait, you're a mermaid?" Ulf pipes up.

"It's a funny word, we can figure out where it comes from later. Right now, I'm intimidating the rats."

Her intimidation tactics somehow don't work and the Mites throw spears at us. We return fire and Liminal Space casts Hypnotism on a large number of them. This breaks their morale and the non-hypnotized ones flee and the hypnotized Mites chase after them, trying to hug them.

This room contains nothing but the splinters of a large table, leftover from Mayfly's first time casting Fireball. Mechtilde pokes through the splinters and finds a single emerald. Blossom values it at 1300sp.

Slime Time

We make to proceed along our path but when Mechtilde tries to open the next door, the pull ring rips off like a piece of broken skin, spraying slime on the front two ranks of the party.

We hear something moving on the other side of the door and Liminal calls out through the door, "We've had a bad day, let us through."

The door swings open, beyond it are 8 robed cultists.

Spotting the slimed members of the party, one of them states, "Ah, you have been blessed."

He reaches a hand out to Mechtilde and she slaps it away. They express a desire to eat the slime on us.

Mayfly offers up his cloak and they lick the slime off of it. We leave them to bask in their foul euphoria and visions that come from imbibing the slime and move on.

Down to Level 2

In the next room, we see a devilman and a beastman (a goatman) strung up over silver bowls. South is a manimal and someone wearing a different type of robe from the cultists, also strung up. Between the two groups are the stairs down to level 2.

We grab the 4 silver bowls and take the winding, twisting stairs through the earth, arriving at level 2. We proceed forward past the orange juicer room and the room with the strange doors. Blossom listens at the secret door to the Phoenix Wright trial room and doesn't hear anything, but feels a vibration in her gut instead. The party hides behind where the door will open while Mechtilde pries open the door.

The Sound of Polycythemia Vera

That done, we peek over and see several giant vampire bats in the room. Liminal Space casts Auditory Illusion in the room to the east, where we came from. He creates the sound of 12 men walking around, "sloshing their feet because they're so full of blood."

The bats rush past our hiding spot into the next room and we quickly enter the courtroom, closing the door behind us. As we do, we briefly hear disappointed bat squeaks before the door shuts.

We Exhibit Good Teamwork and Come Up With a Plan Together

In the next room, Blossom hears metal scraping against stone and the sound of chains - it's the gibbet monster that killed Grolmes.

After much deliberation and disagreement, we form a plan to cast Web in front of the door, use Auditory Illusion to draw the monster to the hallway across from us, and then blast it with Fireball.

Mechtilde hears the gibbet monster coming down the hall and we set the plan into action. The creature, a mass of corpses stuffed into a gibbet cage and fused together, tears though the web and stuffs itself through the door, ignoring the auditory illusion.

Ulf throws a dagger at it with no effect. Elger hits is poorly and the creature reaches out to him but doesn't land a hit. Duka hits it with a spear (his first hit!)

Mayfly casts Fireball behind the monster so as not to hit the party and lands 16 damage on the gibbet monster. The web behind it explodes into fire as well. 

The back of the gibbet cage blasts open and rockets it across the room, where it crashes into the wall, inert.

If We Had a Nickel For Every Time We Found a Magic Sword And Then Lost It In Nightwick Abbey When Its Wielder Was Killed And We Ran Away, Only To Recover It Months Later, We'd Have Two Nickels...

We go north to the room the gibbet monster came from and find Grolmes, with grey, blistered flesh and pale pink eyes. The abbey has a habit of reclaiming those we leave behind - Grolmes has been turned into a wight! Dhinron lies on the ground at his feet, smoke rising around it from being in contact with the Abbey itself.

Grolmes cackles and runs up to Mechtilde. She feels the cold of the grave as he tries to claw at her, but misses. Elger pins him, Ulf blinds him with Light, and Mechtilde claims Dhinron. The wight is killed quickly after that, Grolmes's spirit finally put at rest.

Let's Get Behind While We're Ahead

There are three unexplored doors in the room (N, W, E). We don't think we have enough time in the evening to look for the ruby, so we decide to explore a little bit more of level 2. To the North is 10' of hallway until a scab of purple flesh and goo - we can't go any further that way.

We go West and find a room with three more hallways or doors jutting out in different directions. Stepping inside, Elger is git by a solid metal pole that comes swinging from the ceiling. The tip of his nose is shorn off, but her barely survives (1hp!!!).

We take this as a sign that we should probably stop dicking around and leave the abbey. We go south to the cubular, sanctified room in the hope that it lets us bypass the bats blocking our original route in.

Searching For a Way Out

We search the rooms and examine the magical seals that are there but don't find a path to the stairwell.

We go back to the blood room pool and fill up Gerung's Floating Disk will blood to take back to the bats.

While he does that, Mechtilde experiments with Dhinron. It has the ability to sense metal 3 times per day, and she uses it to sense a significant amount of silver at the bottom of the blood pool. We decide to return later to fetch the silver.

Going back to the bats, they happily lap up the blood in the Floating Disk until sated and we depart level 2 safely.

Return To Level 1

Back at the top of the stairs, the door to the room with the cultists door is stuck and we hear strange talking on other side - probably those cultists again.

We open the door they have turned hostile. We fire a volley of arrows and Liminal casts Hypnotism, but all miss or fail. The cultists rush forward and slay Elger.

In the next round, Liminal and our fighters drop three cultists with their attacks but four more rush up to take their place.

Back In The Village

We eventually slay and blind them and find 200cp among them. After that, we're able to safely leave the abbey and return to the village.

We get 400sp for the four bowls, for a total take of 1700sp and 200cp. We each receive 238xp for the delve. Mechtilde gives each of our hirelings (sans Elger - RIP) a generous bonus for their heroic efforts today.