Friday, October 18, 2024

Nightwick Abbey - Session 99 - "I Touched Bones and Lived!"

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...

Want to learn more about the world of Nightwick from Miranda? You can follow her blog here and the ongoing development of Nightwick Abbey at her Patreon here.

Session 99 - 17th of Shocktober, 1398

This week's adventurers:

Blossom (Rogue 6)

Cherwe (Cleric 5)

Ulf (Magician 5)

Liminal Space (Changeling 4)

Poppy (Fighter 4)

Thekla (Magician 4)

Krupe (Cleric 5) 

Marguerite (Magician 1)

Hirelings: Niklaus (Fighter 2), Helusch (Magician 1)

Awakening in Lychgate

We start off the session in the city of Lychgate - the party had come here last time in an attempt to get Liminal Space installed as the Lord of Nightwick Village.

We're able to secure a meeting with the Bishop but are promptly laughed out of the hall when we only offer up a measly 25,000 silver pieces for the position.

Given that the Bishop is on good terms with Lord Albrecht of Nightwick and Liminal Space isn't even human, we'd need an offer of at least 40,000 silver pieces to even be considered.

Preperations for the Delve

A new magician joins the party, Marguerite, an alchemist from Averois (Fake France), intending to head to Nightwick to study the abbey, meets us and opts to travel with us.

Thekla spent their time in Lychgate searching for rumors about great and powerful magicians who have previously died in Nightwick Abbey. She discovers that somewhere near the Temple of Moloch was lost a spear for summoning the Spirits of the Air.

Ulf and Liminal went carousing during their time in the city. Liminal had a great time and Ulf got blackout drunk, lost all his money, and his Shawl of Protection! - a powerful magical item we took from the Bleeding Baroness.

Poppy finds rumors of a trident with the power to break the wills of men carried by the leaders of they Fly-Lords.

Thekla pays to have a hole drilled into gold coin and buys some flour. Ulf offers to carry the flour in exchange for payment, since he is now poor.

Into the Abbey

We return to Nightwick Village and wake up early in the morning to leave the village and travel to nearby Nightwick Abbey.

We approach the ancient graveyard on the side of the hill and note 10 freshly dug graves, apparently dug for us.

We go into one of the mausoleum entrance and the sunlight behind us disappears as soon as we enter through the door.

Our goal this week is to search level 3 for Great King Death, who is rumored to reside there.

The Delve

From here we go east down an 20' wide hallway carved to resemble a famous monastery.

We go 60' down this hallway to an archway, take a right, then a left.

We eventually come to another hallway, with branches to the left and right (north and south).

Our map from this week.

We take the right to a 30' by 30' room with exits on every side. On the floor is a strange sigil that once glowed but no longer - we've found the four sigil rooms that we used to gain access to level 4.

We go back and the norther branch off the hallway opens up into a 30' by 20' room with a broken sarcophagus.

Blossom check the sarcophagus and finds it has a false bottom - she pries it open to reveal 1500sp!

We take a turn to collect the money and move on to the east. On the left hand wall, there's a 10' alcove with ropy ectoplasm. Marguerite contemplates if ectoplasm has alchemical uses, but comes up with nothing. The hallway snakes left then right up ahead.

Going off a Hunch

Liminal gets a hunch that there's a secret passage here and, after two turns of he and Blossom searching, finds a secret passage going north, exiting in a sarcophagus with a false back.

Exiting the room, we see a 30' by 30' room ahead of us with a domed ceiling and a hallway to our left.

The hallway ends in a sarcophagus room that we've already looted, so we go into the domed ceiling room and take the west doorway. After 30' it ends in a bony alcove and to the north is a short hallway that ends in a scab.

Going east from the domed ceiling room, the hallway runs out of our torchlight. We follow it for 40' and it turns south for 40 more feet, ending in a 20' by 30' room. 

Admiring the Art

This room is similarly domed and the floor is a map of the disk of the world. The walls are decorated with depictions of the saints ascending into heaven, tormenting each other.

To the east is a 10' hallway then a door.

To the south is another 10' hallway then an ossuary, containing arm and leg bones.

Marguerite, feeling brave, digs through the bones looking for something of value - she finds nothing but neither does anything bad happen to her.

On the ceiling is a chandelier made of tiny skulls.

Below is an exchange from our session, presented without further comment:

You want to know 'Is a chandelier of infant skulls valuable?'

Yea!

I’m just going to let that question hang in the air.

Unlike the question, we don't leave the chandelier hanging in the air. With Mayfly's birthday coming up next week, we take the time to collect the chandelier as a present for him, figuring he's into that sort of thing.

More Bones and Art

We go east to a femur ossuary 20' by 30', turn around, go to the discworld room, go east into a 30' by 20' room. From here, there's a door east and north, and stairs up to the south - those should lead to floor 2.

We open the door east to reveal a large room with several creatures resembling an old man mixed with a rat. They're playing a game that resembles bowling but with human bones, however everything they do in completely silent.

They're not hostile to us, but they don't seem in the mood to chat, so we back out and go north.

There's a 30' by 20' room with several boxes stacked against the wall.

Viscera Pools

We've definitely looted this room before, but the boxes seem new. Blossom checks them for traps then tries to open one - she apparently missed the trap and falls 30' into a pool of blood and viscera as a pit trap opens up.

Ulf throws rope down and Blossom is able to pull herself up, looking like a protagonist from The Descent.

Sidestepping the pit, we go back into the room and loot the boxes.

Opening them, Blossom counts 11,250 copper pieces, equally spread between 5 boxes.

Back to the Village

We grab all 5 boxes and go up the nearby stairs to leave the abbey.

We manage to leave without incident, having not encountered a single hostile creature all night.

We each recieve 292xp. We took home 1,500sp and 11,250cp and each get 166sp and 1,250cp.

This is enough for Liminal Space to level up, learning new spells in the process, and Thekla kindly gives her share of loot to Ulf, who is still poor. 

This was a weird (but good) delve for us as we approach session 100. We had fantastic luck on the wandering monster rolls and managed to find a little treasure along the way. Ulf losing his magic item during carousing is a pretty big setback and I'll imagine finding it again will be a priority for him.


Nightwick Abbey - Session 99 - "I Touched Bones and Lived!"

Previously, in Nightwick Abbey... Want to learn more about the world of Nightwick from Miranda? You can follow her blog here and the ongoin...