Previously, in the Dark Country...
Session 74 - 2nd of November, 1392
This week's adventurers:
Blossom (Rogue 5)
Mayfly (Magician 4)
Mechtilde (Fighter 4)
Ulf (Magician 4)
Verinka (Changeling 3)
Liminal Space (Changeling 3)
Krupe (Cleric 1)
Lemony Spice (Changeling 1)
Hirelings: Niklaus (Fighter 1), Helusch (Magician 1)
Downtime in the Village
Ulf has spent the past two weeks scribing a scroll of Continual Darkness. Liminal Space searches for rumors of magic items of fey origin and discovers a record of a Staff of Dispelling used by a demon during the Siege of Nightwick.
Two new hirelings offer up their services to our party. Niklaus is a Man-at-arms from the Realm with a hook for a hand, and Helusch is a Bogdani magician who offers her services as an apprentice, however she only knows the spell Shield. Ulf hires both of them in his service in exchange for a half share of treasure and xp each.
Down to Level 4
This week, after having done battle to the south last week, we decide to return to the newly-opened level 4 of Nightwick Abbey. We plot a route through level three, entering by the graveyard, and make it to the stairs without issue.
We descend down the spiral staircase and come out upon level 4. We are standing on a 30' x 30' landing. A baptismal fountain faces us, filled with foul black water, on the western wall. Hallways branch off to the north and south and there is a door to the west.
Above the found is a painting of the emperor, painted to make him look distressed and ringed in fire, being poked by a demon.
Not sure where to go first, Mechtilde uses her sword, Dhinron, to detect gold around us, and it points us to the west.
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| Our mapping from this session. |
Altars and The Blind
We listen at the door and force it open to reveal a room 20' deep and 30' wide. There's an altar flush against the north wall with 3 dancing skeletons carved on top of it.
Liminal approaches the altar and sees it is set up to resemble a city. Behind the skeletons is a bronze ball inside a bronze wire-frame cube.
Krupe can't quite tell if this sculpture is heresy or not and so we move on.
There's another door to the west and the changelings listen at it and hear an eerie silence
Mechtilde forces open the door and a series of ghastly faces with no eyes are before him - it's a group of the blind undead we've encountered on level 3!
One strikes her with a rusted sword for 5 damage and more of them advance forward. Our second line of spear wielders advance as well.
Melee and Magic
Mayfly casts web in the middle of the group, trapping several of them.
Verinka and Niklaus stab one with their polearm and spear respectively, but Niklaus finds little purchase among the bones of the undead Sword Brother.
Two of the undead grab Mechtilde but she wrenches her arms out of their grasp and strikes back, cleaving one in half and then the other. With that, all of the non-webbed undead are dead and we're able to finish off the rest at our leisure.
Treasure!
This new room is 30' x 30' with doors north and west. In the corner of the room is an altar with a bejeweled chalice and numerous gold coins spread out on a fine purple cloth.
Not trusting the treasure, we use a polearm to knock the items off the altar from a distance. We collect everything up (including 75 gold coins!) safely.
We take the time to pull the altar away from the wall, but find nothing underneath it. We do, however, make a loud ruckus while doing so, but nothing seems to respond to the noise.
Bees?
Mechtilde forces the west door open, revealing a 10' x 10' corridor with another door at its end.
Listening at this next door, we hear buzzing on the other side, as if a great number of insects or a few very large insects were in the next room.
We're not prepared to fight bugs of any size tonight, so we check the northern door and hear sounds like the ocean. We fail to pry open this door and so return to the landing where the stairs are.
Endless Darkness
From the landing, we look at the passageway north. There are two alcoves on either side of the passageway. Each alcove has a crying woman's face carved into the wall. Blossom investigates and a chill runs down her spine - she thinks they're magically trapped and we shouldn't stand between them.
Beyond the alcoves, the passageway ends in complete darkness - seemingly supernatural as not even the torches pierce it.
Ulf throws a piece of chalk into the darkness - he still sees the chalk in his torchlight and watches it dip below the floor level and keeps falling.
With no desire to deal with either the carved faces or the darkness, we are left with no choice but to go south.
Tombs, Traps, and Treasures
The doorway south opens up into an east-west hallway. There are additional doorways across from us, to our left (east) and to the west. The floor here is different - an abstract green, white, and black mosaic.
We peek into the first doorway across from us. It opens into a 30' x 20' room. A sarcophagus is on the opposite wall, it's lid open.
The Changelings note a strong smell of human waste
Verinka distantly hears buzzing down the hallway to our right.
Blossom inspects the sarcophagus and sees that the wall behind it is cracked - she thinks we could break through it.
Liminal listens at the crack and hears mumbling in a language he doesn't understand.
Blossom looks through the crack, sees a short L hallway, opening into a room and sees vaguely humanoid figures moving about, making a buzzing noise as they do so.
We go back to the hallway and go east.
What Lovely Craftsmanship
There's another 20' x 30' room with a sarcophagus across from the doorway.
On the lid of the sarcophagus is a sculpture of a knight riding a horse in the midst of collapsing.
The knight is dressed in the livery of a Sword Brother and the figure is helmeted with two sparkly things for eyes. It's an impressive sculpture for a sarcophagus lid and the Blossom estimates the eyes could be valuable gems.
She doesn't detect any traps and so the party begins to file into the room to retrieve the knight's eyes.
Once we pry the gems out, gas begins to pour out of its eye holes - the humans in the front ranks make their saves and only feel a little drowsy - it's a sleeping gas!
The changelings, seemingly not affected by the gas, search the walls of the room while the gas dissipates but find nothing. The gems are star sapphires - each worth 1,000sp!
Buzzzzzzz
We peek into the next two doorways to the west. The first has a plain sarcophagus and the other one opens up into a 30' x 30' room, dominated by a fountain spewing "human affluence." It's flanked by two large flies, each the size of a human torso. This room has two additional doors.
We still don't feel like dealing with large bugs tonight, and so we decide to leave the dungeon at this point.
Back to the Village?
We return to level 3, and as we approach the entrance to the dungeon, Liminal Space and Verinka are each hit by hunched creatures who snap at them with beaks - Nightwick Ghouls. Luckily, our changelings are not affected by their paralyzing bites.
The six ghouls form a c-shape, blocking our exit in front of us.
Mayfly casts Fireball behind them, killing several ghouls. Blossom kills another with the Shard of God, her magic, blasphemous sword, and Niklaus and Krupe finish off the final one.
At that, we are able to safely leave the abbey and return to Nightwick Village.
In total we recovered 75 gold coins, a chalice and purple cloth each worth 750sp, and two star sapphires each worth 1,000sp. Each party member gains 672xp and 472sp.
This is enough to push Mayfly over to level 5!
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