Nightwick Abbey - Session 57

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...

Session 57 - 25th of Youngers, 1392

This week's adventurers:

Blossom (Rogue 4)

Mayfly (Magician 4)

Cherwe (Cleric 4)

Liminal Space (Changeling 3)

Verinka (Changeling 2)

Ulf (Magician 1)

Franz Croakenbell (Frogling 1)

Hirelings: Gerung Floating Disk (MU 1), Mikusch, Bero

Downtime in the Village

Ulf researches the strange happenings around the party's house and comes to the conclusion that they are the result of a demonic, rather than ghostly presence - there must be an invisible creature around. Mayfly studies a captured spellbook to learn Mirror Image and he buys 3 maces and 3 spears for the party to use. 

Today, we plan to return to level three and fight the undead there, who seem to be resistant to blades, so the maces might come in use. We know there's treasure in the room with the bat-helmed Meister, but we have to defeat it first.

Into the Abbey

As we descend into the abbey, Cherwe discovers that the door into the 1st floor landing is stuck. Mikusch and Cherwe force it open and find two goatman on the other side of the door, hiding behind the pillars. Several more come out from the shadows. We filter down the ladder as Franz and Cherwe enter melee. They are both hit badly as they try to make space in the melee for the rest of us to come down.

Mikusch and Liminal are both wounded as well. Cherwe is hit again. We've taken some bad hits for the first room of the dungeon and this isn't boding well for the rest of the delve, especially without our best fighter, Mechtilde.

Liminal, Bero, and Franz each kill a goatman on their turns. The next round, Liminal casts Hypnotism on the final goatman with the command, "kneel and submit."

The goatman bows to Liminal with great reverence and Mayfly attempts to speak to it in the ancient language of Acherontic. It seems to understand him but does not respond.

Cherwe puts down the foul beast before the spell ends.

We debate whether or not we should go on with how wounded we are, but decide to continue on our path.

Down to Level Three

We make it to the altar room unchallenged and drop two ropes down the hole. Cherwe and Miskuch are the first ones down.

Partway down the hole, Cherwe hears a "whooshing" through the air, a mechanical sound.

She sees a spiked portcullis come across the opening, missing her but striking Mikusch. He survives the hit, but lets go of the rope and falls to the floor. The two of them are now trapped on level 3, separated from the rest of the party.

We tie a rope to Blossom as a harness and lower her down the hole where she disarms the trap and uses some spikes to jam the mechanism and disable the trap.

Cherwe heals Mikusch and the Abbey reacts to the holy magic, rearranging itself.

The rest of the party safely makes it to level 3, to the room with the demon statue, after this.

We decide to inspect the adjacent rooms before going into the one we know has monsters.

Room east is 30' x 30' and empty, save for a single statue, like in the previous room, with blue points of lights for eyes. Ulf recognizes it as Orobas, a demon prince of Hell.

We think we've been here before, and if the abbey hasn't shifted too much, we can reach the other entrance to level three form this room.

We listen at the door across from the one with the bat-helmed Sword Brother meister and hear nothing.

Into the Fray

After three tries, we open the door and several undead are waiting for us on the other side.

We land some good hits and Mayfly casts Fireball upon the Meister's throne

Several of the creatures make their saves and the fireball kills none of them.

One of them grabs Cherwe, but it is killed by Verinka before it can do damage.

Mayfly casts Fireball again, killing at least one undead, but the the Meister (un)lives still.

Mikusch is hit twice and killed!

Ulf casts Magic Missile on the Meister, wounding it and Cherwe is badly hit again, left at 3hp.

Mayfly desperately throws a silver dagger at the Meister, which finally kills it.

Mayfly casts Protection from Evil and moves to the front line along with Franz.

Ulf throws oil, but overshoot the last remaining undead. Franz strikes it, killing it.

A Great Reward

We enter into the tiny throne room that held the undead.

We notice that the dais of the Meister's "throne" is actually the lid of a sarcophagus

We search the bodies - the Meister was wearing more contemporary plate armor and it is engraved depicting demons torturing people. He is wearing a necklace with a Sword Brother's seal.

We cautiously enter the room and approach the sarcophagus. Mayfly proposes that the granite throne possesses whoever sits on it, but none of us desire to test this hypothesis.

Blossom and Verinka listen at the sarcophagus and hear nothing. We position ourselves around the sarcophagus - Gerung with a torch, Verinka and Ulf with oil flasks, Franz, Liminal, and Bero lift the lid off, ready to fight anything that lays withing.

As we lift the lid, darts fly out of the wall. One goes whizzing over Ulf's head and the other plinks off of Verinka's armor.

Inside the sarcophagus are a large number of silver pieces, Blossom estimates 2000 silver pieces.

Happy with our haul, we leave the abbey and return to the village without further incident.

Back in the Village

We recover 2000sp from the sarcophagus. The plate armor is worth another 2000sp as is the amulet (though we don't sell that). In the end, we each receive 533sp and 862xp.

This is enough for Ulf to level up! He learns Detect Magic as well. Gerung, our longtime hireling who has been getting a 1/2 share of xp and money also levels up! He learns the spell hold portal. Blossom levels up to level 5 as well!

This was an excellent session for us. I've previously commented on this, but we seem to have three types of delves - ones where we explore the abbey with no goal in mind, ones where we look for somthing but don't know where it is, and ones where we have a firm goal and a plan and set out to execute it. The first type of delve often results in the most danger and least treasure, where the ones like this week result in a significant haul. However, we need the delves like last week's to gather the information we need to reach our goal. This make for an interesting ebb and flow to the sessions, where a treasure drought is followed by a deluge.