Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...
Do the horrors of Nightwick Intrigue you? Do you seek adventures on isles distant? Miranda, the Mastermind of Malevolence behind Nightwick Abbey is running another open campaign: set in the last bastion of a famed wizard, Cuccagna awaits you!
Session 84 - 22nd of Duodecember, 1397
This week's adventurers:
Blossom (Rogue 6)
Mechtilde (Fighter 5)
Ulf (Magician 4)
Liminal Space (Changeling 4)
Krupe (Cleric 3)
Voorhis (Cleric 3)
Poppy (Fighter 3)
Thekla (Magician 1)
Hirelings: Niklaus (Fighter 1), Assmann (Fighter 1)
Downtime in the Village
Ulf spends his downtime researching and discovers rumors that within Nightwick Abbey there is a portal to the ruins of Ancient Acheron - the first human civilization.
Liminal Space also trades the demon's smoke we recovered last week to Halfdan the Necromancer for a Potion of Rat Control. He promises us 500sp if we find out whether or not it works on the rat-crow Groans that we've encountered before.
Into The Abbey
This week, we decide to continue our exploration of level 3, still not feeling confident enough to return to level 4.
We enter through the graveyard entrance and travel to the far end of level 3. We loosely have a plan to go to the statue of Valax, Duke of Hell, and steal his crown (again) to sell it.
Outside of his room, first, we decide to explore north. In this next room, the walls are covered in green and purple carvings of hell depicting sinners being tortured. We see Mayfly, Mechtilde, and Liminal Space all carved into the wall for having sold their secrets to demons in the past.
We Immediately Forgot Our Objective and Just Went Exploring
The is a door across the room from us, to the north, and so we continue exploring in that direction.
We come into a 20' by 30' room, with passages to the north, west, and east. The ceiling of the room holds a domed, rusted, pitted sphere depicting a corruption of the God of Law.
From our past mapping, we know the stairs up to level 2 should be just to our east, so we go that way just to double check.
Sure enough, the landing and stairs are in the next room over, along with doors to the north and east.
We remember there being ratmen bowling to the east from here, so we continue onward to see them.
Mechtilde forces the door open to reveal a 30' by 50' room filled with little men who resemble rats.
Nightwick Bowling Minigame
They're playing a game that resembles bowling but the pins are human bones.
The door to the north is a heavy metal door with an open slat in it. Liminal can see that there is someone standing behind the door, looking at us.
The person behind the door speaks to us, "You need to leave so the game may continue."
"Can we play?" - Liminal reponds. Mechtilde insists that she loves bowling and wants to play.
She puts up 300sp as a wager and the being behind the door offers up a black pearl of equal value on their end.
Mechtilde's first roll is a gutterball followed by two more bad rolls, but she manages a strike at the end to cinch the win and the pearl.
After the game, the ratmen firmly insist that we must now leave so that they can continue their game.
Ok, Who Forgot to Clean Up Their Frogling?
And so we return to the landing and Mechtilde forces open the northern door. This reveals a 30' by 20' room with some tables and a dead frogling.
The frogling has apparently been dead for quite some time.
It lies dead on its back, holding its hand out above it. There is a ring on the frogling's hand.
We suspect the ring is magical and likely cursed, so Mechtilde chops off the frog's hand, ring included, and pockets the whole thing.
We've looted this room before but none of us recall leaving this frogling behind and we don't recognize him. It was apparently an adventurer as it has various adventurer's gear, some of which we take off its corpse, along with 9sp.
Continued Exploration
We go back to the domed room and go north down the hallway.
It goes 40' north, then turns to the west, leading to one of the sigil rooms that once kept level 4 sealed away.
We go north from this first sigil room, 30' down a hallway that dead ends.
Liminal and Mechtilde search the walls and discover a small opening on the west wall of the dead end and a button that opens it.
Crawling Through Holes in the Walls
Liminal crawls through the hole and a whirling blade come swinging down over him, but misses his arm narrowly.
Blossom figures out that there's a pressure plate on the floor that's triggered by crawling through.
She takes the time to disarm the trap with an iron spike and the party files through.
In the next room, we see two alcoves in the walls but no treasure.
From here there is another hallway west which we go through, then north to a room with a sarcophagus that hides a secret door.
We're in a hallway that goes east and west. We've basically traversed from the southern edge of the level to the northern edge at this point.
Finally, Some Good Treasure!
We go east past an alcove, empty except for ectoplasm, into a room with a smashed sarcophagus.
Blossom finds a hidden compartment in the sarcophagus containing 150gp.
We continue east out of the room into a 20' by 30' room containing a sarcophagus and old ectoplasm from the vault weaver.
Unwelcome Guests
We find no further secret doors, so we head south back towards Valax, but on the way, we spot a large group of robed figures walking towards us from the west.
Unsure of if they will follow us, we rush forward to the room next to Valax's and form a chokepoint in the doorway.
Before long, a huge group of the blind dead come shuffling towards us. Through the darkness, Blossom counts 15 of them! Mechtilde calls upon the power of her sword, Dhinron, and it magically buffs her strength.
Straight Up Having a Bad Time
On the first round, their front rank reaches our and one of the blind dead grabs Mechtilde by the shield-arm. The next round, another one grabs her other arm and the two undead attempt to rend her in twain, each pulling her in a different direction. She suffers 13 damage from the attack!
She retaliates by slaying one of the undead grabbing her with her enhanced strength and Liminal wounds another.
Clerics to the Rescue!
After Mechtilde took such heavy damage, and with the large number of the blind undead, things are looking bad for us, and we're not sure if we'd be able to run away in time, so Krupe Turns Undead the next round and send the creatures fleeing his holy might. As we win initiative that round, Mechtilde strikes down several of them as they flee and Voorhis casts Cure Light Wounds on Mechtilde to heal her.
The Abbey itself recoils at the two holy spells and we feel it shake and shift, but see nothing different.
Back to the Village
We're deep into level three and doubtful that there's still a straight path back to the entrance, however the stairs up to level 2 are nearby and, luckily, has not shifted away from us. We head up to level 2 and exit the abbey safely through that route and proceed back to the village.
Next week, we'll have to find out how level 3 has changed and remap our progress.
This week, however, we recovered a black pearl (300sp), 150gp, and 9sp!
We each recieve 201sp and 245xp along with the ring which, the next day, Ulf identifies as magical! It'll take more time for him to identify it, however.
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