Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...
Session 62 - 13th of Quintember, 1392
This week's adventurers:
Blossom (Rogue 5)
Mayfly (Magician 4)
Verinka (Changeling 3)
Ulf (Magician 3)
Franz Croakenbell (Frogling 1)
Hirelings: Menczel, Hanslo, Benisch
Downtime in the Village
Freshly back from Lychgate, the party has money to burn. During downtime, Ulf attempts to make contact with the creature that has been previously detected around the party's house. He goes to bed late one night after a long day of research, only to awaken in his room in the pitch dark. He soon realizes that it is a magical darkness, that a candle is not able to penetrate. He fumbles around in the dark and feels something firm and covered in hair sitting on his bed. Paralyzed by fear, Ulf feels the bed shift as the creature gets up and leaves. After an hour of tense waiting, the magical darkness disipates.
Ulf is determined to make proper contact with the demonic presence and so continues his research into what it could be. He is yet again awoken in the middle of the night, but this time can still see in the dim light - and before him is the face of a shaggy headed beast, with saucer-sized eyes. It seems to resemble the same type of creature as the one in the abbey known as The Manager. Almost before Ulf can process what he sees, the beast disappears.
Mayfly and Blossom spent that time carousing by drinking about town. After a night on the town, Mayfly wakes up to discover that he has acquired a reputation as the "fun time" guy and Blossom wakes up with a (bad) tattoo of her face and her name misspelled.
We realize that, among the party members present, we have only a few hirelings, but the two peasants willing to be hired this week seem pretty worthless, so we pass. (Mechtilde and Liminal Space have most of our hirelings, but they weren't present this week - a lesson in distributing hirelings around the party).
Through the Graveyard - Into the Catacombs
We enter the Abbey through the graveyard entrance straight into the 3rd level. The two angel statues still lay broken into pieces in the entrance chamber.
Stepping over the rubble, we continue on to the eastern hallway. There are four doors here and another passageway in the back. We take the time to listen at the doors, but hear nothing.
The Tombs
We take the first door on the left and force it open. There's a short, 10', hallway opening up into a 20' by 30' room with a sarcophagus centered against the back wall.
The walls and ceiling of the room are intricately carved with depictions of monks and nuns lustily chasing after each other. There is a carving of a monk making a kissy face on the lid of the sarcophagus, covered in abbey slime. We notice that the figure of the carved monk has an especially endowed bulge on his figure...
So we check the room for traps, but find nothing. Suspicious of the slime, Franz gives the lid a good thump with his hand and feels a strange tingling in his fist (after a successful saving throw) - he figures that prolonged touching of the lid would be bad. SURELY WE'LL REMEMBER THIS NEXT WEEK SHOULD WE ENCOUNTER ANOTHER SARCOPHAGUS.
Rather than mess with this CLEARLY DANGEROUS sarcophagus, we double back to the hallway try the door across from this one.
The Second Room
Hearing nothing at the door, Blossom attempts to open it but fails, instead jabbing the crowbar into the flesh of the door and gets slimed in the process.
Mayfly steps up and pries the door open to reveal a room similar to the previous one, but with more of a "nun" theme. We notice that this room's sarcophagus has a slimed carving of a nun on it, similar to the monk earlier.
Rolling in the Dark
We close this door and move on to the next door down.
After checking the door for traps and forcing it open, we find a similar room in size to the previous two, but the sarcophagus has a large dome on the lid instead of a carved person.
Is this possibly a depiction of the God of Law?
As we enter the room to inspect it further, Verinka cries out! The Changeling sees several of the abbey's breaking wheels, with skeletons strapped to them still, barreling down the hallway towards us from the west.
We have enough time to pile into the room and get into formation - armor in front, spears in the 2nd rank, and soft, squishy magicians in the 3rd rank, unfortunately we didn't bring enough spears to arm everyone. Remember, always check you equipment before going into the dungeon!
Pyrotechnics
We hear them wheeling around in the hall and soon they are upon us, pouring into the room!
Menczel braces his spear as the wheels charge us.
Five of them come into the room, but our front line holds steady and they don't run us over.
Menczel and Verinka kill one with their attacks.
Mayfly casts Fireball, and the remaining four wheels explode in a mass of wood, bone, and steel!
Saint Who???
Now that we have a chance to inspect the room, the carvings on the walls seem to depict "The Life of St. God," who is a person with a metal sphere for a head. The carvings depict his birth underneath a rainbow, a baby St. God held by a mother and father, and his childhood, where he is chastising another child, among other things.
This is all incredibly blasphemous, by the way, for the religiously devout of Nightwick.
Gold!
Franz pries open the lid of the sarcophagus (which has not signs of that abbey slime) with our trusty crowbar and inside is a statue of a golden calf, about 3' tall.
Blossom estimates its value at 1500sp, but first she checks it for "Indiana Jones traps."
No traps are found, but she notices a panel behind the golden calf, in the wall of the sarcophagus.
We tie a rope around the neck of the calf and, with a mighty effort, pull it out of the sarcophagus from outside of the room.
It lands on the ground with a mighty clang - the statue appears to be solid gold and quite heavy - but nothing happens with the sarcophagus.
We reenter the room and examine the panel in the back of the sarcophagus.
A Secret Passageway
Franz pokes the panel with a spear and it waves back and forth - it appears to be a flap, like a doggie door?, leading into darkness.
Mayfly, with a sigh, casts Protection from Evil and crawls through as our advance scout.
He's immediately in a small room, an ossuary, full of hip bones.
Mayfly reports back, and we leave to check out the 4th room, which we suspect contains another sarcophagus, before exploring the ossuary, with Benish carrying the golden calf.
A Strange Knight
Inside the 4th room (check for traps, crowbar it open, etc.) is another tomb, with a sarcophagus of a knight.
No coat of arms is carved into it, strangely, and the carved knight has a very abstract face, moreso than the monk or nun.
Mayfly realizes that the knight depicted is dressed in contemporary fashion, rather than the armor at the time of the Abbey's construction (200 years ago) - he's wearing plate, not chainmail.
The walls here are not painted, unlike the other rooms and Blossom doesn't find any traps in the room or around the sarcophagus.
Franz cracks it open with his crowbar to reveal the body of a knight missing his head (it appears to have crumbled into dust), wearing modern armor that appears to be ~200 years old. On his neck is a golden necklace with a blue amulet with a depiction of an eye.
Mayfly thinks it could be a ward, but none of us have Detect Magic or Read Magic prepared, so Franz holds onto it for now.
Collecting More Treasure
We return to the 1st room (with the monk) and Mayfly attempts to burn off the slime, but it merely blackens. Mayfly opens the sarcophagus, careful not to touch the slime or the lid, revealing the body of a monk.
Despite the degradation of the corpse, he is wearing a silk robe with 2 amethysts placed over his eyes (each item is worth 500sp, for 1500sp total). The robe looks as if it were just made. Is the robe possibly magical (no, we later determine)?
We collect the items, the body disintegrating as we remove the robe. Mayfly collects some mummia from the corpse for later research.
We then go the the 2nd room (with the nun) and Mayfly again opens the sarcophagus to reveal a nun's corpse, covered in silk, with amethysts in her eyes, like the monk (it's also all worth another 1500sp).
Back in the Village
Happy with our finds, we leave Nightwick after that without incident.
We each recieve 920xp and come home with a total haul of 4500sp! Mayfly wants to give the golden calf to the Lord of Nightwick to curry favor with him, but Ulf thinks the guy's a dick and has a long-term goal of replacing him with Liminal Space.
The party magicians also determine that then amulet is definitely magical!!! Though identifying it will take more time.
Finally, Franz levels up!
Final Notes: This was a very successful delve. Destroying those angel statues took a lot of work (and oil) for little immediate payoff, but now we have a quick entrance to level 3 that is relatively safe. That's how we were able to march right in this week and loot everything without worry - though we definitely got lucky with the random encounter rolls as well.
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