Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...
Session 79 - 18th of Undecember, 1397
This week's adventurers:
Blossom (Rogue 5)
Mayfly (Magician 5)
Mechtilde (Fighter 5)
Ulf (Magician 4)
Verinka (Changeling 4)
Cherwe (Cleric 3)
Liminal Space (Changeling 3)
Krupe (Cleric 2)
Voorhis (Cleric 2)
Poppy (Fighter 2)
Downtime in the Village
Ulf unfortunately missed last session, but the rest of the party caught him up with tales of a golden calf and silver coins.
In the downtime between delves, we've heard rumors from the other party of a demon on level 4 who appeared out of thin air to kill one of their hirelings. They also allude to a "trick" for finding and opening secret doors, but reveal no more to us.
Mechtilde has researched the
fly-men of level 4 and learns that they are "quasi-demonic" but are not necessarily harmed by things that harm demons.
Into the Abbey
Early in the morning, we leave Nightwick village and make our way into the abbey through the graveyard entrance. As we pass by the crypts of level 3, we see the glow of the disintegrating orb.
We've been yet to be able to harm this thing, but we've had a theory that a spell of Continual Darkness could kill this being of pure light.
And so, Ulf creeps ahead of the party to cast Continual Darkness on the creature. He sees the large glowing ball of a creature hovering in an ossuary and fires off his spell...
A Really Bad Plan
...but nothing apparently happens. The creature is unaffected by Darkness.
The orb takes notice of Ulf and approaches him before exploding in light. A tendril of light lashes out and attaches itself to Ulf for 6 damage!
The squishy magician quickly retreats, the tendril still attached to his chest, and Mechtilde approaches the orb and hits it twice for great damage.
Protect the Magician From His Own Mistakes
Blossom uses her sword, the Shard of God, to sever the tendril attached to Ulf and after another round of combat, the orb, identified to us as a Vault Weaver, falls to the ground, deflated.
Apparently, we've never tried to just hit it with regular weapons, which it is vulnerable to.
Mayfly and Ulf scoop up some orb goop from its corpse and we forget to bind Ulf's wounds before advancing down to level 4.
Level 4
One we reach the entrance landing, we head west, to the room with the pool where the party retrieved the silver coins last delve.
Blossom listens at the north and west doors and hears nothing - mildly concerning as we expected to hear the buzzing of fly-men.
A Suspiciously Empty Room
Mechtilde forces open the north door to reveal a 30' by 20' room, made of monumental sandstone blocks, with a single door opposite us.
After unsuccessfully searching for hidden doors, Mechtilde opens up the next door into a room 30' deep that extends to our right into the darkness, beyond our torchlight. There is also a door 10' to our left.
There is an opening in the wall across from us and two big columns in the room.
Level 5!
Mayfly pulls something out of his pocket, whispers to it in his cupped hand and, a minute later, announces that he's learned the full dimension of the room - 90' by 30', with three total columns, another door on the opposite wall, and, on the same side of the room as us, are a set of stairs going down!
Surely this is the way to level 5!!!
We go to examine the stairs but find purple mists obscuring the passage down, halting our way. (Player's note: this is how the DM signals to us that the area's not ready for play yet).
Examining the columns of the room, they depict bull-headed demons killing little gold guys in black togas. Mayfly recognizes them as Acheronians, an ancient people.
Liminal's Supposed to be the Charismatic One
Liminal listens at the door to the west and hears buzzing. Opening the door, we see a room 20' deep that extends to our left (south) beyond our torchlight.
Seven of the fly-men are also in the room by the door.
Liminal steps forward to greet them, "Hello everyone! It's me."
"It's him - get him!"
A New, Gross Attack
The fly-men are unhappy to see us and six of them move up to us, crowding around the door with their polearms.
The one in front of Mechtilde opens up its proboscis and shoots boiling hot gold at her! She makes her save but still takes 4 damage and gains a new gold facemask.
An Old, Very Effective Attack
Liminal is hit twice by the fly-men polearms for 12 damage! He's alive but barely.
Ulf fails to cast Light and Mayfly casts sleep, but it has no effect - they appear to be greater than 4HD!
This isn't a good sign for us, so Mayfly casts Web on them, capturing four of the flies and blocking the doorway.
Further Chaos
Liminal attempts to parlay with the stuck fly-men, but they are mad at the dignity being trapped in a web.
The remaining unstuck fly-men run south and Mayfly and Blossom rush to block the door south for fear of being surrounded.
Liminal hypnotizes the front two fly-men in the web and orders them to vomit on each other.
They do so and it catches the web on fire - damaging them further, but the web will be burnt up in two rounds.
Ulf casts Phantasmal Force to manifest the image of a bull-headed demon attacking the stuck fly-men from behind.
Mechtilde, empowered by her sword, kills the front two fly-men and the three that had run off return to help deal with the demon illusion.
An Back to the Village
At this, we decide to retreat while the web is still blocking our rear and leave the abbey without incident.
We manage to scrape 10gp worth of gold off of Mechtilde's face and we each gain 81xp.
Certainly a disappointing result, treasure-wise, but no one died and we found the path to level 5! We'll have to devise better methods for dealing with those fly-men and we might want to consier looting more of levels 2 and 3 to level up the party more for future delves.
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Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
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