Session 9: Tomb of the Iron God, Part 9

Before heading to sleep for the night, Arik, Zedlyn, and Adokas discuss how they will handle the head merchant, Hassan, in order to convince him to give them another day (Iriellis and Flossaria being at the healer's, and Sharla being nowhere to be found). While he can surely be compensated with gold to convince him to delay, they attempt to find a cheaper solution.

For their first attempt, they try to make a mild poison, just strong enough to make him too sick to travel. Adokas and Zedlyn purchase the needed reagents from the healer, claiming that they need them for an antidote. Unfortunately, Adokas fails to make the poison in the short amount of time they have.

Next, they go speak to Hassan and attempt to convince him to drink with them at the common room, hoping to get him drunk enough to be hung over the next morning. However, Hassan's tastes are too refined and he has no interest in partaking of the local ale.

They then try explaining to him that they've made a bargain with the Iron God to clear out the catacombs, and given that the God has already shown itself to be vengeful against those who betray it, they would be risking disaster by leaving without fulfilling the bargain. Hassan is unhappy to hear that they've entered a bargain that conflicts with their duties as guards, and he is unconvinced by their argument. He reasons that if the Iron God takes any sort of vengeance, it will be against them and not himself.

With all their ideas exhausted, the trio finally fall back on their last option, simply compensating the merchant for any profits lost due to the delay. After a short haggling session, they agree to compensate him 140 gold pieces for each day they delay.

With another day secured before the caravan needs to leave, everyone beds down for the night, with several characters making use of the healer's services once again. Bright and early the next morning, they head out to the monastery and back into the catacombs.

Back in the catacombs, the characters return to the central dial room, and head through the western passage. Beyond are several passages which lead to two rooms full of alcoves, and well as four different dead ends. Three of these dead ends are searched, with no results, but the fourth one is protected by a pit / pressure plate, spotted by Flossaria. They decide to leave this particular dead end alone for now, as it would be very difficult to search it while skirting the pit.

Inside the first alcove room, Flossaria catches a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye as they're inspecting the area, and she moves to investigate, holding out the pole-mounted ceremonial lantern to light up the alcove where she saw it. This turns out to be a good choice, as a giant, foot-long centipede leaps out of the alcove and attacks the lantern. Iriellis hurls a flask of embalming fluid at the lantern, which hits it directly and explodes, charring the creature to a crisp. Searching the rest of the alcoves, the party find nothing more than a smattering of coins, which they take.

The second alcove room contains about 60 alcoves and is uninhabited. Searching all the alcoves, the party find two items of interest: a scroll case and a small book entitled "Hymns to the Iron God". The scroll case contains a single piece of apparently blank parchment; they party try several different ideas intended to reveal hidden writing but are unable to make anything of it. The hymns appear to be mostly prosaic and uninteresting, but as Iriellis is reading it, one particular hymn catches her eye, entitled "The Eater of the Dead", and reading as follows:

"Fear the Eater of the Dead,
Stalker, tomb-walker,
Clothed in stone.
He who find him cannot bind him,
He who leads him soon feeds him,
He who sees him frees him."

The group spend some time discussing the implications of this hymn, ultimately deciding to completely avoid the Eater of the Dead if possible, and to take special care to not look at it.

With this area fully explored, the party head to the northwest from the dial room, heading to the passageway where they heard movement the previous day. As they step forward into a room, they are ambushed by a ghoul, but its clumsy steps mean that nearly everyone hears it coming; only Flossaria is caught by surprise. Iriellis commands the creature back as Arik steps forward and takes a swing at it, but as it retreats, its four zombie allies advance and attack the red-skinned warrior. The party has some difficulty getting everyone into the room to fight, with their bulky statue allies blocking the hallway, but with the aid of Iriellis and Flossaria's holy power, they make short work of the creatures, with only Arik sustaining minor wounds.

With the undead dealt with, they take a closer look at the room, which turns out to be yet another room full of alcoves (about 30 of them). Searching the room, they find two items of interest - a stack of 4 silver plates, and a heavy mace in perfect condition. The party assume that its perfect condition means that it must be magical and take it; they take the plates as well. Finally, each corpse in the room has two silver pieces placed over its eyes, for a total of 60 silver pieces. They discuss taking these as well, but, remembering the cursed bowl of silver pieces from the floor above, they decide not to risk it.

The party return to near the room where Iriellis was poisoned the previous day, taking the western branch instead of the eastern branch. The western passage leads to a long, narrow room containing about 100 alcoves. They again take the time to search through the alcoves, but this time they turn up nothing of interest; the alcoves contain nothing but decomposing bodies.

At this point, they know of only a single passage left unexplored, the eastern passage at the bottom of the long north-south passage near the dial room. Stepping through the passage and peeking around the corner, they look into a room containing dozens (or more) of armed and armored skeletons, standing in orderly ranks. The skeletons either don't notice them or don't react to their presence, but the group is left with the question - how exactly will they handle taking on so many undead creatures at once?

Session 8: Tomb of the Iron God, Part 8

As the session begins, the party are standing to one side of an open pit trap, with Zedlyn and Flossaria just having been rescued from it and healed of their injuries. The statues cannot pass the trap, but Adokas slips by to inspect the room beyond. It turns out to be a mid-sized room with no exits and no occupants, filled with alcoves like so many other rooms in the catacombs. Adokas gives the alcoves a cursory inspection but finds nothing obviously amiss. The group discuss performing a more thorough search of the room, but Arik points out that their time is running short, so they should focus on more important exploration.

The characters head back to the wide north-south passage that they passed by shortly before, and head to the south. The bottom of the passage has openings leading to the east and west, along with another pit trap that is spotted by Iriellis (which fortunately doesn't block either of the openings). The group pick the western opening, which leads to a passage the turns south then opens into another room full of alcoves.

A small side area of this room leads to a single, slightly larger alcove, which Iriellis steps forward to investigate. A clicking noise sounds out, and a dart shoots out of the wall at her, penetrating her armour and striking her shoulder. Iriellis collapses and the rest of the party rush forward to help her. Flossaria is unable to determine what's wrong with her, but Adokas takes a look at the dart and recognizes the substance that it's coated it. It's a poison distilled from a type of local spider, slow acting and not particularly powerful, but in rare cases, potentially fatal. Since Iriellis has a fairly weak constitution, everyone agrees that she needs immediate attention.

Unable to care for Iriellis here, the party decide to take her back to Asuna to get help from the healer. Arik points out that they don't all need to go; half of the party can stay behind to investigate areas that they skimmed over earlier. Flossaria lifts Iriellis's unconscious body to go and Zedlyn joins her, leaving Arik, Adokas, and Sharla behind.

As Flossaria and Zedlyn head out, the remaining group decides to head to the room full of inscriptions in the upper catacombs, so that Sharla can attempt to translate them. Arik and Adokas stand guard while Sharla works, a process that takes about an hour and a half. She identifies the runes as an archaic script used to write the Common tongue; the inscriptions themselves seem to be nothing more than a list of names. Sharla notes a few of the most recent names, to ask about back in town.

Meanwhile, Flossaria and Zedlyn have made it to the healer with Iriellis. He gets to work immediately, with Flossaria aiding him. After an hour or so of applying poultices, tonics, and remedies, he announces that the poison seems to be defeated and Iriellis should be fine, although she will not awaken for another few hours and definitely shouldn't adventure for the rest of the day.

Back at the monastary, the remaining trio head nearby to loot the chest of coins near the Eater of the Dead's apparent prison. While they're there, Sharla takes the opportunity to investigate the area of magical darkness some more. As she steps in, she hears something new: the faint, clicking sound of metal footsteps pacing. As she steps towards them, they stop, but she doesn't venture the courage to reach out and touch the source of the noise; instead, she attempts to address it.

At first, Sharla's attempts are completely unanswered, but after a dozen or so questions, the thing finally responds, telling her that she's wasting her time, and that it is merely a guardian against the Eater of the Dead. Questioning it along this line of inquiry finally gets it to respond more freely. When Sharla points out that there's actually a room between the darkness and the prison, where the Eater of the Dead could easily escape to the rest of the temple, the guardian responds that it knows the creature will come this way, because the Iron God lies beyond the darkness.

Sharla asks how they can pass through the darkness, and the guardian responds that they must merely "step forward with faith". She steps back and relays this information to Arik and Adokas, and they decide to try the guardian's suggestion. Stepping boldly forward into the darkness, the quickly pass through to the other side into a passage they've never seen before. There are a few short branches, but the main passageway leads forward to a smooth, solid iron wall, containing a featureless iron door with no obvious handle or other means of opening.

Sharla steps forward and announces that they wish to speak with the Iron God. This causes the door to smoothly slide upwards into the ceiling, and they step into the room beyond. It is a massive, circular iron chamber, lit by the glow of machinery placed all along the perimeter of the room. The chamber is dominated by a massive iron pedestal topped by a huge glass cylinder containing a near-opaque, greyish fluid. Tubes and wires run everywhere, connecting everything together.

The voice of the Iron God rings out from all around, questioning the characters as to why they have come. Sharla and Adokas question the Iron God, trying to get any information they can out of it, but it is reluctant to speak on most topics. It tells them that it can still sense the presence of many undead creatures in the catacombs, although not their exact locations. They request that it reverse the curse that turned the books in the library and the hidden chests to iron, but it refuses.

The Iron God rapidly grows tired of the conversation, requesting that the characters leave and continue their appointed task. Before they go, Arik steps forward and explains his predicament, asking if the Iron God would be willing to leave and accompany him to his homeland. The Iron God refuses, saying that it is bound to this place, and despite the trio's efforts, it apparently cannot be dissuaded. Arik dejectedly leaves the chamber, with Sharla and Adokas following.

Arik is upset that all of this effort is apparently wasted, since the Iron God will not leave this place, but Sharla points out that they have at least made some progress - at least Arik knows now that there are gods out there that can be directly met and spoken to. This one was unwilling to join him, but perhaps others in the future will be different. Furthermore, they have not yet accomplished the Iron God's task, so perhaps it will be more amenable to suggestions once they have finished clearing out the catacombs.

It is now evening, so the three adventurers decide to return to Asuna to rest up. When the rejoin the rest of the group, they divvy up the treasure and head to the inn to rest. The next morning, they'll need to meet with the merchant in charge of the caravan and convince him to stay in Asuna for another day.