DFRPG Arden Vul Session 22: The Oracle of Thoth and The Litany of Light

Date: 

Basilsday, 9nd of Gerakios, 2993 AE 

Weather: 

Hot, dry

Player Characters: 

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)

Merenuithiel "Lacrymosa" Armaris, Elven mercenary archer (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

6 ghouls

Yamki, wounded giant 4-armed intelligent baboon

Many large albino baboons

Anaximander, ancient insane cleric of Mitra

Voice of Thoth, ancient god for magic, moons, secrets, etc.

Skeleton cook

Flaming skull

Animated bust of Stamelis, Librarian of Thoth

2 Ibis constructs of Thoth

Ioannes did some research on the copy of the Litany of Light they had found in the Library of Thoth, which pointed to it being a forgery, so he wasn't sure if it was a good idea.  Vael learned the location spells Seeker, Pathfinder, and Trace, and tried using them to find the Troll Lifts and Lillian the missing cleric of Mitra.  Vallium tried and failed to find some magic scale armor, and decided not to put down a deposit on fine-quality scale armor.

Vallium decided the company should try to finish exploring the Well of Light level (except the caves full of baboons), try installing the mirror below the Well of Light, and have Ioannes conduct the Litany of Light if willing and able.  Michael was still off in the mountains somewhere and Uvash had a church emergency, so the shorthanded party hired Lacrymosa the bloodthirsty elf archer.  She asked if it was time to kill the halflings yet, then came along to kill whatever else they needed her to kill.

They got up early on a sunny Basilsday, made good time to the cliff face beneath Arden Vul, then tied themselves together and climbed up the Long Stair (except Vael, who didn't believe in climbing when you could Levitate).  They made it to the top without any problems and hiked to the top of the Well of Light.  Vael cast Flight on Vallium, who carried Ioannes down the Well, while Vael Levitated down and Lacrymosa used Walk on Air to walk down the well as if there were an invisible spiral staircase.  This time, there were no baboon hordes waiting for them at the bottom, so they were able to rest safely.

They went west, then north, and found a door that was spiked shut.  They prepared for battle and Vallium ripped the spikes out.  Opening the door revealed 6 angry ghouls.  A quick fight ensued, where Vallium stabbed the ghouls, Lacrymosa show the ghouls, Ioannes finished off one ghoul with his axe, and Vael supervised while preparing a Great Haste spell just in case they needed it.  They did not.  Digging through the trash in the room found a few platinum coins, a tall bronze magic helmet shaped like an inverted flowerpot, and a wand.  They grabbed the treasure, unspiked a second door into the room for good measure, then continued exploring north and west.

Eventually they doubled back and explored south and west.  They found an empty room, then a room with Continual Light, a fresco of an ibis with orange glowing eyes, a scroll along the wall full of obscure phrases in Mithric, and three blocks of granite shaped like open mouths, with black holes of magical darkness.  They explored the room for a while, until the ibis's eyes flashed and a burst of energy filled the chamber, dispelling all their spells (including all their Blesses, all their Continual Light rocks, and Vael's Levitation) and destroying some of their potions.

After depositing their surviving potions outside the room in case that reoccurred, Vael cast a Light spell into the air, then cast Trace on his Returning Pebble and threw it into the eastern mouth.  He sensed that it teleported way down and northeast, then was still.  A few minutes later, the dispelling effect repeated, taking out both the Light and the Trace.  The Returning Pebble eventually returned, and Vael returned the experiment with the middle mouth.  This time the pebble went down and in the direction he threw it, as if there were stairs or a ramp there.  He waited until the second Trace was dispelled and the Pebble reappeared in his pocket, then returned the experiment with the western mouth.  This one seemed like another teleporter, moving the stone down and southeast.

Meanwhile, Ioannes, re-cast Bless on his other companions, who stayed out of the room to keep from having it dispelled again.  He finally cast it on Vael, and then everyone crawled into the magical mouth.  After going through a brief area of magical Darkness and Silence, they emerged onto narrow stairs leading down, then the passage turned west and they went down some more, until they reached a dead end with a square hole in the ceiling.  Vael re-cast Levitation and popped up into a hemispherical room containing an dais with a magical marble chair and a ibis statue whose wings wrapped around the chair.  In the chair sat a very old, disheveled man who was twitching and mumbling.

Everyone climbed up into the room.  The man did not respond.  Everyone tried talking to him, but he did not respond.  Eventually Vallium pulled the man out of the chair, and then the man noticed them, but did not speak coherently, just babbled about things they mostly did not understand.  It took a lot of prodding to reveal that his name was Anaximander, he was a cleric of Mitra, and he'd been in that chair for a very long time.  Ioannes told the others to pull him out if anything weird happened, then sat in the chair.  He felt a warm layer of air, then a deep voice told him to "Speak Thy Desire."  Ioannes said that he wanted to know the correct way to perform the Litany of Light.  The voice told him that he already had a book that said exactly how to do it, and that instructions could not get much more detailed that that, but maybe he could find a version with more pictures.  Ioannes was then stunned.  After a couple of minutes, Vallium pulled Ioannes out of the chair, and he soon recovered.

The old guy asked a few jealous questions about how Ioannes had gotten answers and said maybe it was a good idea to bring friends along to pull him out of the chair.  While he rocked on the floor, the group went out an exit to the south, into a room with a magic pool, whose water was overflowing the basin and streaming out of the room to the southeast.  Vael cast Analyze Magic, which said that the pool was designed to increase its user's intelligence.  That was enough for Ioannes, who immediately took a drink and felt smarter.  Impressed, Vael also took a drink, but felt sicker rather than smarter, then felt his guts twisting.  Ioannes cast a couple of Stop Bleeding spells and a Major Healing on Vael to help repair the damage, and the poisoning eventually subsided.  Vallium explored the water damage crack, but it wasn't big enough to go far, and he didn't find anything in the water.

Returning to the Oracle room, the group grabbed Anaximander and headed back up the stairs.  They left the dispelling room before it got another chance to ruin their spells, and headed for the Library of Thoth.  There they introduced Anaximander to the animated bust of Stemelis, and let the two ancient guys keep each other company while they explored more.

Vael found a secret door north of the kitchen, which led to a dusty narrow corridor.  In the corridor was a skeleton with a chef's hat and a cleaver, who was angry at the intrusion.  He was only one skeleton though, and Vallium and Lacrymosa finished him off pretty quickly.  The skeleton had a scroll in its hand that turned out to be a recipe for baboon stew, which they took.  Continuing east, they found another secret door at the other end of the passage which led to an area north of the baboon cave.  They saw Yamki, the giant 4-armed baboon they had wounded before, leaning on a stick, standing in the entrance to the cave watching them.  Neither side made any threatening moves, and the group moved away from the baboons.

They went north to a room with a baboon statue and a door they had not tried before.  The door had a picture of an ear on it, so everyone listened to it, but heard nothing.  It was locked, and Vallium pulled out his collection of keys.  The first one he tried fit, and he unlocked the door, but a needle trap was triggered.  He pulled his hand out of the way in time to avoid being pricked, if there was ever any chance of the needle penetrating his armored gauntlets.  After some brief discussion of whether they could try to recover poison from the needle, they decided the risk to reward ratio was poor, and Vallium carefully broke off the needle and threw it into a corner.

The room to the north was large, with columns, a dais in the center, and an opening to the Great Chasm to the east.  Vallium checked out the chasm, while Ioannes and Vael looked at the dais.  There was an ivory oliphant, and a Mithric note that said to "Name Thyself and Whisper They Message and Thou Shalt Be Rewarded in Thine Ear."  Vael complied, but the message he received was some stupid song about 99 flagons of ale on the wall.  Ioannes also tried, and heard a very deep voice saying "Me hide pretty rock in water.  Nobody find it now!"

Looking over the chasm, Vael thought he saw something to the southeast.  He Levitated over the chasm to inspect a creepy magical soapstone idol of some kind of salamander, with empty eye sockets and a gaping mouth.  He came back and cast Flight on Vallium so that Vallium could carry the others over the chasm.  They avoided the statue and explored a cave filled about 3 feet deep in bones.  After not finding anything in the bones for a few minutes, Vael searched for secret doors, and found a concealed exit to the east.   He then cast Seek Magic, then Seek Earth twice, for gold and platinum.  When these spells revealed nothing in this room and platinum off to the east, he suggested they stop searching and go east.

It led to a large round cavern, with a shaft in the middle, in which there was a huge creepy triangular obelisk, clearly crafted not natural.  The obelisk continued up about 20' above their heads, and down farther than their Continual Light went.  Vael Levitated up to the top of the obelisk and saw a pentagram on top, with a metal coffer within the pentagram.  He avoided touching the pentagram and tried Apportating the coffer open, but it appeared to be welded shut.  He looked at the pentagram to see if it looked like platinum, but it looked more like silver to him.  

Vael flew back down, informed the others, then flew down the obelisk about 90' without seeing the bottom.  Not wanting to stray too far, he flew back up, cast Trace on his Returning Pebble, and dropped it.  It fell about 150' before stopping.  Vael then flew down to the bottom and found the obelisk sat in a natural cave, with nothing very interesting within range of his light.  Not wanting to explore solo, he returned to the others.

Leaving the obelisk, they went north down a narrow tunnel until they found two bodies, one wearing slightly glowing orange mail, in front of a stone chest.  As they inspected the bodies, a flaming skull flew out of the wall to attack Vallium.  He parried, and a quick combat ensued, where Vallium kept stabbing it (while not doing much damage, as his sword mostly passed through the flames) and Lacrymosa tried both arrows and her cloak.  Eventually Vallium scored three critical hits in a row and the skull was dispelled.  They searched the bodies and found a small magic silver eye, a few coins, a scroll, and a couple of potions.

Iaonnes went to open the chest but Vael yelled him away and tried using Apportation instead.  That failed because the chest was locked.  Vael thought he noticed some writing on the chest and cautioned the others against reading it.  Eventually he opened the chest with a Lockmaster spell followed by an Apportation, without setting off any traps.  Inside the chest were a bunch of silver coins, a few of the extremely valuable huge ancient octagonal platinum coins, a magic silver torc, another copy of the Litany of Light (this one much shorter and less fancy than the one from the library), a magic pick, and a few potions.

With their desire for treasure temporarily met, they went back to the Well of Light to try replacing the mirror and saying the Litany of Light.  Vael cast Flight on Vallium again so he could ferry the others across the chasm, and then everyone went back to the library.  Stamelis looked ready to have Anaximander taken off his hands, then was disappointed when Vallium just grabbed the huge mirror from behind the stacks and went right back out the door.  Vallium maneuvered the mirror onto the tripod while Vael and Ioannes gave helpful hints.  Eventually they placed it correctly and light went out in all directions, then Vael went to play with some of the secondary mirrors and bounce the light around.

With the mirror in place, Ioannes conducted the Litany of Light.  He went to the four small rooms surrounding the Well of Light, and in each room said the correct Mithric words.  His poor Mithric pronunciation was just good enough to trigger each effect, and he ended up with Infravision, an intelligence bonus, See Secrets, and Invisibility.  Vael and Vallium followed him around and repeated the rituals, and each of them got the same bonuses.  Lacrymosa did not participate.  With See Secrets in effect, everyone started running around looking for secret doors.  They found one northeast of the Ruby Chair, and another one northwest.

They opened the secret door northeast of the Ruby Chair (with the hidden catch on the floor made obvious by Thoth's blessing) and went east into a room, with an apparently accurate magically animated star field on the ceiling (despite it being daytime outside), and a couple of mosaics, one depicting the room with the Ruby Chair, another depicting some unknown large room with a bunch of statues.  They continued east to find a room with a couple of corpses, which Ioannes thought had been killed by some kind of strong impaling damage.  Both were wearing red ceremonial robes and hats.  One had a belt pouch, which they took without opening.  Another was lying on a big bronze key.  One was wearing magic boots.  They took all the loot but left the old rotted robes and hats.

Continuing east, they found a room containing two ibis statues.  The statues unfortunately did not seem to like visitors, and animated and attacked Lacrymosa, the only visible intruder.  Looking at their beaks, Ioannes now had a pretty good idea how the corpses to the west had been impaled.  Invisible Vallium had a free shot at the back of one of the constructs, and hit it squarely, but not hard enough to take it down.  Lacrymosa ran away while rapidly firing arrows, which the other construct dodged with amazing speed.  Ioannes and Vael tried to stay out of the way and stay Invisible.  After a few more tries, Lacrymosa finally managed to nail one of the constructs in the leg, slowing it and knocking it down.  It didn't dodge so well after that, and stopped moving after a few more arrows hit it.  Meanwhile Vallium landed a second, harder hit on the other ibis to slow it, then finished it off.  With See Secrets still running, everyone noticed a secret door on the south wall behind where one of the constructs had been standing, but nobody opened it.

In a hurry to go home, the party took a quick look to the east and saw a dead-end room with some spiral stairs down.  They then doubled back, closing the secret door behind them.  They went back to the Library, retrieved Anaximander, then went back to Gosterwick.  Vallium took Anaximander to the Temple of Mitra to see if they could help him, while Vael and Ioannes went back to the Arcane Practitioners Club to start identifying their loot.

GM's Comments:

That was an exceptionally productive delve.  All the previous visits to the Well of Light level had been interrupted by periodic baboon attacks, but with the baboons apparently herded into the Howling Caves to the southeast, there were fewer interruptions this time, which made exploration easier.

Using a Trace spell on the Returning Pebble was a creative way to figure out what the 3 dark mouths did, without actually risking crawling in.  Vael used a lot of caution this session, not touching the salamander statue or the pentagram on top of the obelisk, and trying to open every container with Apportation rather than his hands, but still got poisoned by the magic pool.

Anaximander seemed too crazy to give the party useful information, but Ioannes still dared climbing into the marble chair that they pulled Anaximander out of, and got an answer about the Litany of Light.

Replacing the mirror and performing the Litany of Light correctly got four useful magical effects with long (but not permanent) durations.  See Secrets revealed three secret doors, two in areas the group had walked past before without searching.  And Invisibility gave Vallium a free rear attack on the ibis construct, which contributed to quickly winning that battle.

Achievements:

• The Rescuers: 1 XP for pulling Anaximander out of the Oracle of Thoth and bringing him back to town
• The Litany of Light: 1 XP for restoring the mirror and performing the full Litany

XP:

• Exploration: About 17 new locations, 1 XP
• Loot: A few magic items plus 5 of those valuable huge ancient platinum coins, 2 XP
• Achievements: 2 XP
• Total: 5 XP

Next week:

They left a couple of secret doors and a staircase unexplored at the end of the session, so they'll probably be back.  Though there was some talk of trying to rescue Lillian, the canon of the Temple of Mitra in Newmarket, now that Vael has some knowledge magic that might make it easier to find her.  (Of course there was also talk of killing Plumthorn's halflings, but pretty much only from Lacrymosa, who always wants to kill the halflings.)