Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...
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Session 95 - 6th of Leftember, 1398
This week's adventurers:
Blossom (Rogue 6)
Mayfly (Magician 5)
Ulf (Magician 4)
Liminal Space (Changeling 4)
Gerung "Floating Disc" (Magician 3)
Poppy (Fighter 4)
Thekla (Magician 3)
Lump (Frogling 2)
Hirelings: Niklaus (Fighter 2), Helusch (Magician 1), Spruce
Downtime in the Village
Ulf spends the week researching. He spends 100sp to gain 100xp and hears of rumors that a portal to the very shores of ruined Acheron lies somewhere on level 5. Acheron was an ancient land that summoned and bound devils to their whim.
Liminal Space instead spent the week gormandizing, and was stricken with illness! He is bedridden for a week and permanently loses 1 strength and constitution!
His former hireling turned adventurer, Gerung the Magician, takes his place in our party roster while Liminal recovers.
Thekla starts learning the spell Web from one of the party's spellbooks.
Into the Abbey
The party ranks are a little low this week, so Mayfly hires a mute forester who we name Spruce. We give him an extra suit of devilman chainmail and stick him in the front ranks of our party.
We return to level three, through the graveyard, to the room with the weird sigils from last week. Luckily our path to it has not changed due to the abbey's shifting nature.
Helusch casts Read Magic on the sigils and we learn they are a part of a spell to align the dungeon to Armadeus.
Mayfly consults some of his notes and believes that the Deermen were trying to align the dungeon to a False Master using a similar spell on a floor above and the blind brudders were trying to counter that with this sigil last week.
We don't yet know what effect that would have on the abbey and our delves into it, but it couldn't be anything good.
The sigils resemble an item known as the Crown Called Deceit, a powerful magical object attributed to Armadeus, who, according to legend, uses the crown to see through the eyes of all her supplicants.
Deeper Into the Depths
We continue west to the room that contained a demon last week.
Mayfly casts ESP while Blossom listens at the door. He senses a presence behind the door - likely the demon again.
He spends a turn concentrating his ESP upon the demon's mind and reads thoughts that are so terrible and debaucherous that he cannot even relay them to the rest of the party.
With so few fighters this week, we decide to pass on dealing with the demon and continue on west.
20' west is a door with the corridor continuing to the north and south. 20' south is a door and to the north is an altar covered in viscera.
Don't Go Poking Viscera
The altar room is 40' wide and 20' deep with the altar in the middle of the room.
We poke at the viscera and clear it off the altar to uncover a hole, like a great wound, in the altar.
We insert the 10' pole into the hole to see if anything is down there and the abbey shudders around us and we hear shifting in the dungeon.
There are two doors north from here, to the left and right of the alter. We go through the left door only to find daylight behind an iron gate - a way out of the abbey!
We return to the right door and go down a hallway. Spruce is checking ahead with a 10' pole and, as he proceeds, he trips something with the pole and a giant stone block shoots up ahead of us to block the hallway.
It shatters the pole but no one is harmed, however, the block does not retract: our way is blocked.
Clanking in the Deep
From behind us, we hear the stepping of humanoids and the jingling of loose chain mail.
We see a large group of armored knights advancing towards us from the hallway we came from.
We notice that the 2nd rank of them are holding lances!
Mayfly casts Web on their front rank, holding them in place for now.
Thekla throws oil on the web and Mayfly follows up with a lit torch to light the skeletons, web, and oil all on fire.
Kill Them With Fire
As the web burns, the front ranks are destroyed and the back ranks mindlessly advance through the flames.
Several succumb to the flames and one makes it way through to spear Spruce though the heart with its lance. Niklaus moves up to take his spot and he and Poppy advance upon the skeleton.
The creature lands two harsh blows on Poppy before Niklaus destroys it with a swing of his mace.
More Exploration
We go back to the door at the T-junction and Gerung, the Magician with 14 strength, forces open the door. In the room is an ossuary with human femurs and a scab on the far wall. We continue down the hallway to the dead end and Gerung forces open another door.
It opens to a 30' by 30' room, charred black. There are doors in every wall of the room - we suspect that this was our doing, a long time ago, but cannot remember which fireball caused this one.
We open the door to our right to reveal a 10' hallway and then a scab.
We open the door across from us to reveal a 30' by 20' ossuary with empty skulls.
We go through the door to our left to reveal an L-shaped hallway, 30' long with another door at the end. Continuing on, we find a 30' by 20' room with an altar stacked high with small skulls.
Gerung picks up a skull to inspect it, but as he does a purple spray falls down from the ceiling, sending many of our party members to sleep.
A Nightwick Trip
Those who fell asleep dream themselves standing before a great throne made of bones. Seated upon it is Armadeus, the Queen of Hell, wearing her crown. Her attendants tear open their chests with billhooks and the Queen approaches and gleefully inspects their innards. Those who resisted the magic slap the others awake.
When Poppy awakens, she discovers that a real scar has appeared on her body where the billhooks tore into her in the dream. The other sleepers discover the same effect upon their bodies.
Past this room is a 20' by 20' room with a sarcophagus on the far wall.
Choke the Magician
Gerung forces open the lid but as he does, a great wind starts sucking air into the sarcophagus, pulling the Magician in and forcing the lid shut behind him.
While we rush to come up with a plan to free him, unbeknownst to the rest of the party, Gerung starts suffocating, the air ripped out of his lung.
Poppy and Lump tie themselves to the altar in the previous room and force open the lid again. As we prepare for this, we start to see Gerung's face appear in the lid, as if frozen in carbonite. The two are able to hold the lid open and resist the winds long enough to pull Gerung out, unharmed but out of breath.
Ulf uses some chalk to write a warning on the lid to the sarcophagus and, as it grows late, we decide to leave the abbey.
Back to the Village
We leave past the first altar room and out of the gate, which takes us to the graveyard entrance to the abbey.
We leave with most of our lives, no treasure, and 131xp each.
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