Date:
Lunday 30th of Deuterios, 2994 AE
Weather:
Cool, fair
Player Characters:
Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)
Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)
Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Cosmo)
Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)
Thrainor "Thronebreaker" Ironvein, mercenary dwarf (ArchonShiva)
Significant NPCs:
Fael, Druid
Onyx, Alpha Cat
Basil, Right for Riches employee
Akla-Chah, Rudishva AI
Stamelis, Head Librarian of Thoth
Many Bestial Varumani
Publius Lanlius, Oathbound Knight Commander
8 Oathbound Knights
Lepp, Adventurer
Gorlen, Varumani lift operator
2 Varumani lift laborers
4 Spearman Constructs
Bottleneck, Goblin sergeant
Many goblins
The Plan:
- Fight the bestial varumani and explore the area behind them
- Explore the area around the surgical bay
- Explore near the behir caves
- Scry more Thothian teleportation rings
What Happened:
Ioannes hadn't spoken to Onyx in a while, so he hired Fael the druid to cast Speak with Animals. Fael insisted they go outside the town walls where the urban sprawl wouldn't interfere with nature's karma. Onyx complained that Wicktrimmer had been out of town too often, and his underlings at the Rarities Factor didn't supply enough variety or quality of fish for Onyx and all the cats in his town. He also noted that Ioannes was gone through his Rug to this "Beacon" place too often, and that Pelteon was insufficiently attentive because of her own problems with some human.
Vael failed to find anything worth purchasing at Creon's pawnshop, but found a couple of folding ladders for sale at the Demmasday market, and bought both.
The group hired Thronebreaker at the Grudge Brigade, then went through the Teleport Rug to the Beacon. After giving Akla-Chan and Basil a copy of their delve plan, they went through the Rudishva teleporter to the secure vault near the Cloister. They crossed the Cloister, went down the secret passage, then went north and east through the caverns, until they reached the sloping passage down. From there they went west and south to the area where the bestial varumani tried to ambush them.
This time, Vallium didn't bother with diplomacy. He just waded in and started stabbing varumani. More came in to reinforce them, but most were unarmed, fighting with bare hands. Their leader had a huge club and seemed a bit more skilled, but all but one of the varumani went down under attacks from Vallium, Uvash, and Thronebreaker. The ones that weren't killed by Vallium's flaming sword started regenerating, but he doubled back and singed them before any got back up.
Wanting to find the one that got away, the group explored the surrounding rooms. To the south they found a room with a few chewed-up fresh adventurer corpses and some treasure. They quickly looted then pressed on. They eventually found the cowardly varumani hiding in another room to the east. He didn't last long.
With all the bestial varumani gone, Vael said they should search the room. Uvash found a secret door, and Vael found how to open it. It led down some stairs to a room that was dominated by a pool of yellow water. Uvash immediately drank some, despite the color, and was rewarded with a magical boon, all his combat fatigue instantly melting away. Vael, Ioannes, and Thronebreaker then all had a taste. Vael cast Identify Spell to see what boon each received, and it was a Shield, a Might, and a Protection from Evil. Vallium declined to drink.
Leaving the pool room, the group found a locked door. Vael used Glass Wall to peek through and saw a large room full of statues. He Lockmastered the door open, and they went in and saw that most of the statues were of the great archon Marius Tricotor. One had a lesser statue of a younger man bowing to Marius, who an inscription identified as Lucius Cornelius, scribe and confidant.
After looking at the statues for a while, the group started search for secret doors, and Uvash saw a crack in the ceiling above the central platform. This reminded someone of a paper they had back in the Beacon. They went back to get it and read that it said to twist the ring on the statue's hand. They did that, and a secret trap door in the ceiling creaked open.
Most of the group went through the Rug back to the Beacon, while Vael and Vallium Levitated through the trap door, then went down a very tight passage north, then slowly lowered themselves through a hole in the floor. There they were confronted by a squad of ancient knights, wearing yellow tabards labeled "MI". Vael diplomatically explained that they were honorable visitors, not tomb robbers. The Knight Commander said that honorable visitors to the Tomb of Marius were permitted as long as they didn't break anything, steal anything, or make too much noise.
Vael and Vallium explored the area, passing three closed doors and opening a door to the west. There they found a room with eight statues of spearmen, four statues of Marius in various poses with indentations around the skull and eyes and chest, and a huge head of Marius. They put the Rug down and let the others through. Everyone spent some time investigating the statues and reading inscriptions and listening to the head give a magical speech. Eventually they decided that today was not the day to figure this out, and they doubled back to the hallway with the waiting knights. After asking permission, they started opening other doors. One led to two sets of stairs up, one spiral and the other straight. Another led to an empty room. Another was locked, and the knights said they didn't have the key.
After asking permission, Vallium used Lockmaster to open the locked door. Inside were some bodies of ancient knights, some magical armor and weapons, a key, and a few maps. Vael announced that he could take the bodies back to town for a proper burial but he would need privacy to do the teleportation spell. As soon as the door was closed, Vallium carried the corpses through the Purple Rug to the Beacon, but also took the key. He went through the Green Rug to Gosterwick, then sprinted to the shop of Theopilos the Locksmith. Theopolis was in, and Vallium said he needed a key copied immediately. Theopolis agreed to do it immediately but charged extra for haste. Vallium ran back to the Green Rug in the Arcane Practitioners Club, hopped through the Purple Rug back to Arden Vul, and put the key back on the table.
Meanwhile, Vael cast the Copy spell on all three maps. All seemed very old. One depicted the City of Arden Vul before it was destroyed. Another showed Burdock's Valley, long ago. The third showed the area around the Tomb of Marius.
Eventually the knights got suspicious and pounded on the door, but by then everything was back in place and the bodies were gone, so their suspicions were unfounded. Vallium tested the key in the door, and it fit, so he gave it to the Knight Commander.
Everyone went back west and tried the spiral stairs. They went up hundreds of feet, to a cellar room just beneath the surface, containing a Thothian teleportation ring. Looking at their book of Teleportation Ring coordinates, Vallium theorized where this must be, but they popped up the ladder to the surface to be sure. It seemed to be the northern island with the Donjon, which they had never visited because of warnings from Cronos's men about deadly constructs. Not wanting to be spotted by the dragon, they immediately went back underground.
They tried the other stairs, which led up a shorter distance to a room containing some spearman statues and several fishman corpses. The only other exit was some narrow stairs leading to a flooded area, so they went back.
After spending some time looking at the knights' equipment and comparing it to the statues in the Tomb of Marius, they decided they didn't have a good match, and would have to come back another day. They doubled back to the area where they had fought the varumani, and found a stuck door they hadn't opened. Vael used Glass Wall to look through it, and saw a human on the other side of the door, leaning against it to hold it closed. He had also spiked it shut from the other side. Some yelling through the door convinced him that the varumani were gone. He pulled the spikes out and introduced himself as Lepp, an adventurer. He said his group was ambushed by the varumani and he feared some of them might be dead, but he had run away and hid. The descriptions of his companions matched the bodies they had found, so they told Lepp that his friends were indeed dead, but they would get him out.
They escorted Lepp east to the barricade that they were pretty sure led to the Varumani Lifts. They knocked on the barricade until Gorlen the lift operator opened it. He let them through, and asked where Lepp's friends went. Everyone explained that someone bad had happened, but nobody mentioned that bestial varumani were involved. The company paid Lepp's lift fees and said that he should tell the goblins at the top that the Right for Riches company sent him, and that they would give him an escort home.
One narrow and rough passage led to a hole in the floor, which seemed to go a long way down. Vael dropped a Continual Light rock, and it fell into some water, which looked like a constructed spillway. He cast Wizard Eye and had it explore the spillway. The water flowed west to east. To the east, the spillway eventually narrowed, turned northeast, and then flowed to the edge of the Great Chasm, where it became a waterfall. To the west, it went up a waterfall, then became the Drowned Canyon. The wizard eye spotted a Thothian Teleportation circle to the south of the river, but something destroyed it before it saw anything else.
Near the barrier to the Varumani Lifts was a locked door, with snow and frost coming from under it, and a sign in Varumani. Ioannes used Gift of Letters to read the sign, which said "Entrance Forbidden! This means you!" Ignoring the sign, Vael used Lockmaster to open the door. Ioannes went back to the Beacon to get the Boots of the North, which would provide warmth and good footing. The group went south down a snowy passage, then west into an icy room with a suspiciously thawed fountain in the center. There were four statues of spearmen in the corners of the room, and two larger statues of legionaries with drinking cups, pouring water into the fountain. Uvash kneeled right down and drank from the fountain. The water tasted bitter, and the four spearmen immediately animated and attacked.
The spearmen were very tough, but had a hard time hitting anyone. Vallium and Uvash and Thronebreaker smashed them, while Vael cast Great Haste on Vallium and Ioannes mostly hung back and defended himself, until he had a chance to take a cheap shot on a stunned guardian. Eventually all four spearmen were defeated. At that point everyone except Ioannes was pretty cold, so they decided that was enough of these frozen rooms for today. They went back to the Varumani Lifts, but decided not to pay the fare, instead having most of the group take the Rug back to the Beacon, while Vallium and Vael flew up to the Sundered Span, then hiked through goblin territory back to the Glory of Weskenim. They asked the goblins if they had seen Lepp, and the goblins said he had gone up the stairs to the Pyramid of Thoth. The group went up the stairs but saw no sign of Lepp, and assumed he'd gone back to Gosterwick on his own.
The group asked Bottleneck for private access to the northeastern room with the teleportation circle. They used the Rug to bring the others back from the Beacon, then they placed the combination of tiles that the book said led to the "Ancient Hall of Set." Vael tried scrying the gate, but it was dark on the other side. He then cast Continual Light and Trace on a Returning Pebble and put it through. This showed a large room, with some statues near the Ring. The Trace revealed that the room was down and west. Some kind of spectral figure appeared near the gate and threw the glowing rock down a tunnel, out of the room, making the area around the gate dark again.
At that point they were getting tired, so they retraced their route back to the Beacon, then took the Rug back to Gosterwick. All the bonuses from the magic fountain went away over the next few hours, except for Ioannes's increased strength, which remained.
GM's Comments:
Two big fights, with nobody hurt. Found a bunch of rooms, a bit of treasure, the Tomb of Marius, and a few more connections between levels. Seemed like a pretty good week.
Achievements:
The Rescuers: 1 XP for rescuing Lepp from the bestial varumani
XP:
- Exploration: 15 rooms, 1 XP
- Loot: The varumani had a decent haul. 1-2 XP depending on what they sell.
- Achievements: 1 XP
- Fountain: Ioannes got a permanent +1 ST, worth 10 XP
Next Week:
They plan on visiting the varumani market and trying to meet the varumani Thegn.
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