Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...
Session 65 - 10th of Sextember, 1392
This week's adventurers:
Blossom (Rogue 5)
Mayfly (Magician 4)
Cherwe (Cleric 4)
Mechtilde (Fighter 4)
Yevegniy the Coward (Cleric 4)
Ulf (Magician 3)
Gerung (Magician 2)
Franz Croakenbell (Frogling 2)
Herk (Fighter 1)
Hirelings: Ditl (Cleric 2)
Downtime in the Village
During the week, Ulf secretly approaches the Bogdani woodsmen of the lodge, seeking if they know of a being who could be his magical mentor. He's not much interested in studying under Halfdan, as Mayfly and Gerung do, and wonder if they, perhaps, know of someone, or something, connected to the Old Gods of the Fog-Bound Forest who could teach him.
The woodsmen give Ulf a strange look but agree to help him in this pursuit. They can get him in touch with the right people, but it will take 100gp in donations, bribes, and the purchasing of magical accoutrements (including a traditional bogdani woman's dress and a wig, which Ulf assumes will be his new Magician's uniform).
Luckily, after a few lucrative delves into Nightwick Abbey, Ulf has the cash on hand - barely (Nightwick uses the silver standard rather than gold, so 100gp is a decent sum) and gladly pays the woodsmen. They tell him to return next week when the arrangements are complete.
Mayfly has spent the past 3 weeks studying Lightning Bolt (and paying out the butt to do so), but fails in his studies, wasting three weeks of work!
Business With the Toads
Last week, we left the abbey with some cultists robes and masks, which we knew would be difficult to sell. Not wanting to spend the time to travel to a city (and not feeling up to returning to Lychgate just yet, after having defrauded the Brotherhood there), we sell the items through the van Toad trading company, who takes a 25% cut for the work. Everyone from the last delve recieves 375sp from the sales.
Plans and Preperations
This week, we're returning to level 3 to defeat the bat-helmed Meister and reclaim the fourth seal we need on level 2 to figure out whatever's going on in the Light room.
Gerung laments that his spell selection doesn't equip him well for battle - Floating Disk and Hold Portal don't have much use in combat and Invisibility is fairly useless against blind opponents, such as the Meister its undead henchmen. To help out, Mayfly gives him scrolls of Web and Light to use in the delve.
We finally get around to hiring Assman, the cultist we forcibly removed rescued from the Abbey almost 20 sessions ago.
Gerung searches for rumors about the Bleeding Baroness (Halfdan tasked Gerung to bring him back blood from the Bleeding Baroness in order to become his apprentice), asking Assman about her. He tells him that She is an undead monster of great puissance and can be found in the same section of level 2 where we found him. He promises to rack his brain and give Gerung more info if he can remember anything.
Down Into The Abbey
We return to level 3 through the graveyard entrance, and return to where we saw the Meister last week, but take a route to avoid the gas room that incapacitated Ditl previously.
We pass through an ossuary filled with rat skulls the size of human skulls (we haven't encountered such creatures in Nightwick yet, and I pray we never do) and go through one of the rooms with the strange glowing sigils on the floor before returning to the room before the Meister's room.
This room has decorated walls depicting the Sword Brothers (who build the abbey hundreds of years ago) and their conquests in the Desert Lands. The carvings also depict the sun as a rusted, pitted metal sphere - a corrupt portrayl of the God of Law.
A Little Misdirected
As we move into the next room, ready to fight the Meister, we realize that this is the room where we fought a Meister last week. (This is why you label your maps, folks) But, there is a single sarcophagus here that we didn't loot last time, in our hurry to leave the abbey.
The sarcophagus's lid is mostly flat, unlike the other we've found that typically have a carving of the occupant on the lid. Instead, there's only the symbol of a sun carved into the lid.
The room containing the sarcophagus is plain, with whitewashed walls and no decorations.
As we approach the sarcophagus, we see that the sun on its lid is pitted with numerous eyes, like the sun in the previous room.
Mayfly convinces Ditl to open the sarcophagus, handing him our trusty crowbar, which he does with no trouble.
A New Route?
Inside the sarcophagus is the corpse of a creature that combines aspects of both a jackal and a goat - the body and head of a jackal, and the legs and horns of a goat. We've also never encountered such a creature in Nightwick, and hope to never do so.
Mayfly prods around the body with the crowbar - and finds a hinged flap, like the one we found in the tomb of St. God.
He cuts off the head and hands of the skeleton with the end of the crowbar - just to be safe - and pays Ditl 5sp to go through the doggy door first and tell us what he sees.
Ditl accepts the offer and crawls through. He reports back seeing nothing but darkness - until Mayfly hands him a torch, when he then reports being in a twisting corridor.
Back on Track
We decide to deal with the Sword Meister first and come back to this passageway on a later date.
We depart for where we now remember the Meister actually is, but on the way, Blossom stops us. Our scout spies a "fuck-ton" of robed figures up ahead, to the west of us.
A Slight Detour
While we could likely take them in a fight, doing so would likely use up our limited resources (i.e. Fireballs and hit points), leaving us with a harder fight against the Meister.
And so, we decide to attempt to avoid this fight. The area we are in is a series of 3 ossuaries in a row connected by short (10'x10') hallways, which form a sort of chokepoint.
Gerung casts Web to block the hallway and we run south down a different hallway. The robed figures seem to be chasing after us, but get stopped in the web (though they won't be forever).
We enter into another ossuary and head west, towards the four tombs we've previously explored.
From our maps, we know we can head north from there to loop around our pursuers back to the Meister room, which we do, with Blossom scouting ahead, as always.
The Blind and The Dead
She spies our pursuers mindlessly shuffling into the web we left for them, which makes her think they're undead and not human clutists.
The rest of the party creeps up to her and it seems as if they don't notice our torchlight - more of the blind dead.
We decide to wait them out, and they eventually bust through the web and chase after where we went earlier - leaving the path to the Meister clear.
Mayfly The Artillery
We go through the next ossuary and turn north. Blossom peeks ahead and, through the darkness, spies a number of figures, including one with a bat-winged helm - the Meister!
She counts about a dozen undead serving the Meister. Mayfly creeps ahead to join Blossom - intending to sneak attack Fireball the group, but he can't see where any of the undead are (in retrospect, Blossom could have let him borrow her magical blindfold, but either she didn't think of that or just didn't want it to pick up Mayfly's musk).
The rest of the party, feeling FOMO, creeps up to Blossom and Mayfly too, and shed torchlight on the foes. We finally remembered that these undead are also blind, an so our torchlight won't give us away as long as we are quiet.
Mayfly lights a torch and carefully advances until he can see the Meister. He then casts Fireball right in their midst. One excellent damage roll later, several of the undead are...well, dead, and the rest charge at us, their bony hands sharp as knives, reaching for our throats.
Boss Fight!!!
We back up into the previous room and form a chokepoint at the entrance to recieve our foes.
Five robed figures spill out of the darkness, with the 6th in a suit of gilded mail and a bat-winged helmet behind them.
Cherwe destroys one of the undead with her weapons and Mechtilde another two with Dhinron.
Ulf casts Magic Missile on the Meister and Mayfly casts another Fireball, killing all the remaining undead.
We collect the seal of the sword brothers and the gilded mail from the Meister and load them onto Gerung's floating disk.
A New Room
We step into the Meister's room, which has jauntily dancing skeletons carved into the walls and a pile of corpses in the center of the room.
There are two doorways to the north beyond this room. Blossom peers into the one on the right and sees a room so large that she can't see the far wall.
The room beyond this one is so large that Blossom can't see the far wall
Stepping through the doorway, we see a large room with an alcove holding catacomb shelves across from us.
As we step fully into the room with our torches, we see it is roughly rectangular shaped with 5 alcoves and a door out of the room to the east.
Mechtilde uses Dhinron to detect silver and senses some to the east, beyond this room.
More Sarcophagi
Ditl forces open the door to reveal a small room (30'x20') with sarcophagus against the south wall.
Blossom detects a secret door on the north wall, but can't figure out how to open it.
After Blossom doesn't detect traps in the sarcophagus, Ditl again forces the lid off with the crowbar.
As the lid come off, it is ripped from a metal pole running from the inside of the lid down into the bottom of the sarcophagus.
We assume that it is the mechanism to open the secret door - and it is now broken. We can't move the pole up or down, and so we rig a mechanism to use the crowbar to rotate the metal pole, which opens the secret door, revealing another tomb.
The sarcophagus inside the secret tomb has the figure of a knight carved on its lid, in the design of the sword brothers, but his head is smashed and blood covers the sarcophagus.
Gerung's Bad Day
Gerung tries to collect some blood, thinking it might be related to the Bloody Baroness, but as soon as he touches it with a flask, he flies into a murderous rage and stabs Mechtilde with a dagger!
Yevegniy casts Hold Person on Gerung and he drops to the floor.
Cherwe manages to open the lid without touching the blood, to reveal no corpse and 1,500sp!
Back To The Village
There we call it a night and manage to depart the abbey without incident, carrying Gerung out with his floating disk loaded down with treasure following along. He soon recovers from both the hold spell and the cursed blood without incident.
Treasure: amulet, gilded mail (2,000sp), 1,500sp
We each receive 655xp!
388sp each!
We now possess four amulets of the Sword Meisters of the Abbey. With them, we will go to the Light Room and discover what secrets of the abbey they will unlock!
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