Monday, December 9, 2013

Session 18: The Fist of Kord, Part 6

August 17, Year 3488 (SE 118)

The party pick the easternmost ledge, closest to their current position, and send Adokas down first. They anchor a rope to the rock nearby using a grappling hook and he climbs down. At the bottom of the ledge is a short passage that leads to a four-way intersection, with a sinkhole directly in the center of the intersection, preventing easy navigation. The rest of the party climb down, and Adokas ties a rope around himself, giving the other end for the party to hold in case he falls. He then shimmies across the walls, exploring the three other passages around the sinkhole.

To the right, the passage opens into a room that ends in another ledge going down. To the left, the passage continues until it reaches a t-intersection. Directly across from where the party entered is a passage that veers to the left into a chamber. Peering down into the sinkhole itself, Adokas's torch doesn't illuminate far enough to see the bottom, but he can see that the hole appears to be filled with some sort of haze or mist. He also catches a glimpse of some sort of movement below, and decides to leave it alone.

Picking the passage directly across from the rest of the party, Adokas soon sees that the room ahead is filled with bats, roosting on the ceiling. As he sneaks forward, the bats begin to get agitated, so he backs off. Conferring with Tamat, the druid tells him that he knows a spell that will calm animals that could be of use in this situation, but the party decide to explore in other directions rather than disturbing the bats.

The group pick the left passage that ends in a tee and send Adokas again. Adokas looks down the left fork of the tee, and see that it's a short passage which connects to another of the ledges they had previously discovered. This discovery allows the rest of the party to get around to his position without having to climb past the sinkhole, so they use this opportunity to regroup.

The right fork of the tee opens into a room filled with spider webs and spiders. The party see several side passages that are blocked with webbing, but there is only one way to follow that doesn't involve hacking through webbing. They follow this direction, which leads them into a large chamber, again filled with spiders and webbing. As they begin to cross the chamber, two giant, monstrous spiders appear out of the darkness ahead of them and attack!

Zedlyn, Adokas, Flossaria, and Tamat charge forward into melee, while Iriellis stays behind them in order to heal and Sharla and P'hla stay back, unable to get a clear shot. Both Zedlyn and Adokas are bitten by the spiders as they fight, but Iriellis' healing keeps them going, and eventually the spiders go down, with Flossaria claiming both killing blows. Tamat identifies the spiders as a breed possessing a paralytic poison, but luckily both Zedlyn and Adokas seem to have fought off its effects.

Adokas works on extracting some of the spiders' venom while the rest of the group explore the area. The discover that two of the webbed-off side passages lead to the two other ledges that they had discovered while exploring the upper level. There are two un-webbed passages at the far end of the room; one to the north and one to the south. Adokas is unsuccessful in extracting the spider venom.

The southern passage opens into a smaller, webbed room - a dead end. This appears to be the lair of the giant spiders, as it is filled with carcasses and scraps. Wary of more spiders waiting in ambush, Sharla conjures up a pair of dancing lights and sends them into the room, but they don't provoke any response. The party advance into the room, and when they are not attacked by anything, they drop their guard and search through the scraps for valuables. The search turns up a pouch of gold coins and a crystal wand. They give the wand to P'hla and share the coins.

Returning to the previous room, they explore the north passage, which leads to a room filled with bones and carcasses, mostly of animals but with a few humanoids mixed in. They again send the ghostly lights in first, but they again provoke no response. Realizing that searching this area would take forever due to the amount of bones and bodies, Iriellis instead casts a spell to detect magic. She uses it to confirm that the wand from the room before is indeed magical, and she also detects something magical under the layer of bone. They pull it out and discover that it's a rope.

Going over their options, the party decide to return to the sinkhole and explore the room full of bats. Adokas and Tamat make their way across the sinkhole, and Tamat casts his spell, which keeps the bats docile as the two adventurers pass. They step into the room, which turns out to be mid-sized and a dead end. Apart from bats and bat guano, there doesn't seem to be anything of value in the room.

They next turn their attention to the sinkhole itself. They tie a torch to a rope and begin lowering it down. This allows them to see that the total depth of the sinkhole is forty feet, and at the bottom are two undead skeletons, reaching up towards the torch. Iriellis's immediate response is to Turn Undead; she charges forward with her holy symbol and drives them back with holy power. The skeletons cower in the corner of the sinkhole as the party decide what to do.

Worried that the mist might have some sort of magical properties that caused the skeletons to animate, they have P'hla cast her Detect Magic spell down into the sinkhole. The skeletons themselves radiate magic, of course, but the mist itself does not. She discovers something else though - at the bottom of the pit is a magical sword. Adokas pelts the skeletons with sling stones from above until they're destroyed, then they head down to retrieve the sword. Apart from the sword, at the bottom of the pit they discover a series of about forty tally marks scratched into the wall - evidently left by the skeletons while they were still alive.

Considering the directions that the lizardfolk could be in, they decide to search the two rooms containing pools of water, as the lizardfolk could easily have passed through underwater passages. The westernmost chamber, closer to the entrance, contains a small, clear pool, only about two feet in depth. Both Adokas and Iriellis strip down and wade in, but their search turns up nothing of interest.


They step into the easternmost pool chamber, and are about to advance when both Zedlyn and Iriellis notice that something is amiss. They realize that two shapes, which on first glance look like plain old boulders, are actually camouflaged giant toads, nearly indistinguishable from the rock. They stop the rest of the party from advancing and retreat to consider their options.

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