Date:
Demmasday, 4th of Masporios, 2993 AE
Weather:
Hot, dry
Player Characters:
Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)
Thronebreaker (Thrainor Ironvein), Dwarven mercenary fighter (Martin)
Chrysalis (Lasselanta Ashcroft), Half-Elven mercenary martial artist (Archon Shiva)
Significant NPCs:
Several giant centipedes
Many large spiders
Zombie porter
3 Stone monkeys
Lankios, very old hermit
Carcass creeper
Many Stirges
2 Baboon skeletons
Dust monster
With Vael, Uvash, Michael, and Ioannes all busy, Vallium decided to hire the same pair of Grudge Brigade mercenaries as last time, and explore more of the ruined basement that Jost had showed them. They brought a wheelbarrow full of food as trade goods. It was a hot dry day, so footing was good on the Long Stair, and they did not encounter anything of note on the way to the ruins. They continued north through the ruins of Arden Vul, past the Obilisk of the Sun, through the Forum, past the creepy square tower, to the ruined building west of the Pyramid of Thoth.
They headed down the stairs into the ruined basement, initially leaving the wheelbarrow behind. The stairs entered a large rectangular room with the roof supported by columns, with debris and trash all over the floor, along with a couple of relatively fresh bodies. Vallium first circled the room to find the exits, then came back to search the corpses. Both had necrotic skin and some bite marks. One wore scale armor and the other had mail, and one was clutching a potion that looked magic. They stripped off the armor and took the potion, then went back up the stairs to get the wheelbarrow, and left it just behind the stairs, with the armor inside.
There were double doors in the north center of the room where Vallium remembered running past some giant centipedes, so instead they went to the northwest corner of the room, where there were doors north and west. They listened to both doors and heard noises to the west, so went north. A short passage led to a relatively clear room, containing an anvil with a silver chalice on it. This looked suspicious, but after some discussion Stonebreaker knocked the chalice off the anvil with his axe, and nothing interesting happened, so Vallium took the chalice and put it in the wheelbarrow.
Continuing north, they listened at another door, heard nothing, and opened it. Inside was a dusty room with Thothian frescoes on all the walls and a large stone altar. There were what looked like barefoot human footprints in the dust. Vallium searched the altar and though he found a hidden compartment. He tried opening it and a needle flashed out, but he moved his hands away in time. All three adventurers looked for a way to open the compartment without smashing it (because they were afraid of damaging whatever was inside), but didn't find one. They left the alter for another time.
Farther north, they found another room containing a dead halfling, with leather armor, a shortsword, a sling, a pouch with some spikes and a flask of oil, and a note about using a little pyramid to access the Howling Caves. They found another room with its door spiked just slightly ajar. Inside were a ridiculously heavy magic spear with some Mithric writing on it that Chrysalis couldn't quite puzzle out, along with a pouch with some coins and small green gems. They took everything and again carried it all back to the entrance room to stow it in their wheelbarrow.
While crossing the entrance room, Vallium spotted several giant centipedes, which had squeezed between the not-quite-closed the doors to the north. A brief fight ensued, where all the centipedes were quickly killed.
They next decided to try the western door that they had bypassed before. As they did, some large spiders tried to jump on Vallium's head, but he saw them and jumped back. The spiders swarmed out and surrounded the three adventurers. This led to a fairly long fight, where Chysalis parried a lot of spider bites with her two staves, while the three adventurers gradually killed the spiders. The spiders were good at dodging, but bad at surviving once they got hit. Once the spiders were eliminated, Vallium (wearing the Ring of Free Action) waded into their room through their webs looking for treasure, while Chrysalis and Thronebreaker rested and guarded outside. Vallium quickly found a book written in a weird language that nobody even recognized, and later found a small red gem. Chrysalis wondered if there might be more treasure in the webs, so asked Thronebreaker to cast Seek Earth for both silver and gold. Both pointed back to the wheelbarrow, so they were satisfied that there was nothing else in the webs.
Continuing to explore, the group went north then east then south, again avoiding the double doors where they suspected there might be more centipedes. They first found an old storeroom full of only junk and debris. They then found another storeroom, this one containing a single zombie wearing a dog collar. They were prepared for a fight, but then surprised when the zombie merely walked up to Vallium and didn't attack him. Attempts at conversation were fruitless, but the zombie doggedly followed Vallium around. Eventually they took the zombie's collar, and it didn't resist. Chrysalis suggested putting a backpack on the zombie, but Vallium declined. Eventually they decided to leave the zombie in the room and close the door so it wouldn't follow them.
They continued south, to the other side of the double doors, but didn't see any centipedes. Vallium fully opened a stuck door so they could get out that way without having to squeeze through. They then continued east, and saw some light coming under the door, along with the foul stench of rotting vegetation. The door had a lock on it, which looked recently oiled. Vallium knocked on the door, but nobody answered. He opened the door, which was unlocked. Inside was a room that wasn't fully of trash, and had actually been swept. On the far wall was a pot containing some horrible-smelling stew, over a magical heating tripod. There were also a few vermin corpses arranged on the walls to dry. They looked around a bit, but whoever lived there wasn't home, so they left.
They continued east then north, found doors north and west, and didn't hear anything behind either. They opened the western door and saw a room containing a stone pedestal with a statue of a money on it, with its oversized mouth wide open. A few seconds after they entered the room, the monkey coughed loudly at Thronebreaker, who was not affected. At that point they saw a second monkey statue flying to the west, with huge eyes. The second monkey looked at Vallium, and fire shot out of its eyes and tried to burn him, but failed to penetrate his armor. Vallium wrestled the first monkey to turn its mouth away from Thronebreaker and stop the attacks, then started smashing it against the pedestal. Meanwhile Chrysalis went over to the flying monkey and knocked it out of the air with her staff. A third, previously unseen, flying monkey, this one with huge ears, flew near Thronebreaker and let loose a loud shriek. He hit it with a Power Blow and shattered it. Vallium smashed the non-flying statue against the pedestal again, then Chrysalis and Thronebreaker joined in with their weapons, and all the monkey statues were no longer a threat. Vallium picked up a bone scroll case from the floor. There was also a corpse on the floor, with its ears bleeding. Vallium took a gold ring, some leather armor, and a small ingot off the body, and they returned to the wheelbarrow to stow their loot.
Continuing west from the monkey room, they listened to another door and heard nothing. The door was stuck closed, but Vallium muscled it open. He went into another room to search the debris, but once he disturbed something, the ceiling started caving in. He charged back out the door before any debris landed on his head. The cave-in continued for a while, leaving that room impassable.
Going back east to a door they had bypassed, they found a room with a pool of smelly sludge and a female corpse, this one with no armor. She looked drained, as if by a strix. They ignored the sludge, but looted the body, getting a dagger, a bag of gold dust, and a scroll that Chrysalis said was Detect Magic. Going west from the sludge pool room, they found a door, behind which they heard crunching sounds. Everyone got ready, then they opened the door and charged in. They failed to surprise a large many-tentacled creature that was noisily eating a human body. It attacked Vallium a few times with tentacles and bites, but he parried and blocked and dodged, and then it was three on one. They knocked the creature unconscious within a few seconds, then Vallium stabbed it a lot to ensure it never woke up. The half-eaten corpse had some mail, a broadsword, and a pouch with a few coins and a map. The map showed several rooms, and had notes in Archontean like "secret?" and "short jerks."
Once again they carried all the loot back to their wheelbarrow. On the way, they ran into a barefoot old man who looked like he hadn't shaved or bathed in a years. He introduced himself as Lankios, and invited them back to his room to talk. He offered some of his (foul-smelling) stew, which they initially declined. A long and rambling conversation ensued, where Lankios claimed to have been one of the former leaders of Adrienic's expedition, and said something about a crime where someone named K killed someone named Guivrel. The story didn't make a lot of sense. He also warned them about the nearby vermin. Vallium asked if he wanted to go back to town, but Lankios declined, saying he needed to remain here until the crime was solved, but he wasn't as good at going up and down ladders as he used to be. Vallium donated their extra food to Lankios, and ate a bit of his foul stew.
Vallium thought they had explored most of the level except for the stirge-infested area to the north, and suggested they try to run past the stirges into the other rooms there then slam the door, rather than fighting a possibly huge number of stirges. They successfully managed to run past the stirges into a room to the northeast, with a few parries and blocks required. Once they closed the door behind Thronebreaker, they looked around and saw that the eastern wall had collapsed, but there were some legs sticking out, and there was one boot on one of the feet. Chrysalis and Thronebreaker thought the boot looked magic, so Vallium and Thronebreaker tried moving stones while Chrysalis pulled the body out. The single boot was all they managed to get though.
Thronebreaker thought there was another door nearby to the southwest and it was open, but Vallium remembered it as closed. In any case, they decided to repeat their trick of running to the other door past the stirges then shutting it to keep them out. Thronebreaker was correct and the door was open, so this was pretty easy; they only had to parry a couple of stirge attacks to get inside. The room contained four stone vats, one empty, one with water, one with some foul-smelling rancid former food of some sort, and one with lamp oil. They didn't need any water or oil, so they left. This time, they sprinted north, toward the stairs that they came up last time. The stairs spiraled down a few hundred feet, into a square room with no obvious exits. They walked through the illusory wall to the west, into a room with an open wooden door south, a closed stone door south, and a closed wooden door west.
They listened to the closed doors, heard nothing, and went west. The room there contained two animated skeletons of baboons, who attacked. Vallium shield rushed it and it went down hard, as if particularly brittle to crushing damage. Chrysalis smashed the other one with her staff and it fell to pieces. The only semi-intact furniture in the room was a single cupboard, which contained a few pieces of parchment with Mithric writing that Chrysalis could not puzzle out.
The stone door to the south did not have a handle and they could not figure out a way to open it. Thronebreaker pulled out his portable battering ram, enlisted Vallium to help, and powered up Power Blow. Together they smashed it for enough damage to shatter the door. They proceeded south down a passage, through a normal wooden door, into a mostly empty room containing an old wooden desk and chair covered in gold leaf. Gold is gold, as the dwarves say, so the three of them spent the next fifteen minutes painstakingly removing gold leaf and putting it in a pouch. Thronebreaker then noticed a few flakes the others had missed and spent a couple more minutes making sure absolutely no gold was left behind.
They went through a door east into a room with a couple of inches of dust on the floor, and some bright orange light coming through peepholes near some large bronze double doors to the south. As they searched the room, some of the dust formed into a miniature tornado, which attacked them. The wind blew them around enough that Chrysalis and Thronebreaker had a hard time keeping their bearings, but Vallium's magic ring left him unaffected. The three of them took turns bashing the dust creature, but their blows only did minimal damage, so it took a long time to beat it down. It failed to injure any of them, however. When it finally went down, they dumped some water on its remains, which seemed to finish it off. Searching the room revealed a magic halberd and a human corpse. The body had a gold signet ring with "Gregor" inscribed, a magic potion, and a flask of water.
At that point, Vallium declared that they had found enough treasure and he did not want to press their luck further by opening any more doors. So they went back up the stairs, then tried sprinting past the stirges again. This time, about a half-dozen were waiting for them, and one managed to bite Thronebreaker. It was only a minor wound, and then they were past the stirge lair. They continued back to their wheelbarrow, dragged it up the stairs, and headed back south across the ruins, down the Long Stair, and then back to Gosterwick.
Once back in town, Thronebreaker discovered he was feeling awful: the minor stirge bite was starting to give him a nasty case of Stirge Fever. Not wanting to unnecessarily spend any of his hard-earned gold on a cleric, he sat at home, counting his money, and waiting for his strong dwarven immune system to fix the problem.
GM's Comments:
Three-player sessions move faster than four- or five-player sessions, and in this case one of the PCs was clearly in charge and the other two were working for him, so it was fun to watch people make quick decisions and methodically explore a level.
Achievements:
- None
XP:
- Exploration: 18 new locations, good for 1 XP
- Loot: magic spear, magic halberd, lots of valuable weapons and armor, etc., good for 2 XP
- Total: 3 XP
Next Week:
We should have more PCs next time. Maybe they'll try to finish off the stirges, or the halflings, or something else.
