PC Present
Osirian Silvertongue
Zaya
Fluffy
"Boy"
 |
| The Seven Pillared Hall |
After returning to the Seven Pillard Hall from the adventure in the cisters, no one seemed aware of how close the whole of the community within the vast cavern had come to total destruction. No one even seemed to notice the PCs return. Returning to the tavern, Fluffy comes across Terrlen, the former adventurer turned werewolve, and eventually offers to take up Terrlen's plea for help. Collecting up the rest of the party they follow Terrlen down into the Labyrinth.
Supplemental - House Of Silence
from an issue of Dungeon Magazine #1561,150 XP
Terrlen leads them turn after turn while he assures the party that he does, in fact, know where he is going with more than a bit of backtracking. After wandering, seemingly, endlessly for a day within the darkened corridors of the Labyrinth the party decides to rest in a small alcove. Sometime during the night the party is awakened by scratching and digging sounds from all around them.
Random Encounter - Kruthiks!
1,375 XP
 |
| Yay! Kruthiks |
The party is up and ready as the sounds get louder until, from the crumbling corridor walls emerge a group of kruthiks.
One by one the party is bloodied, which of course sets off Terrlen's lycanthropic curse. Before he can fully turn werewolf, Fluffy performs a healing spell which staves off the transformation. That is until he is bloodied again. This repeats itself until Terrlen is a mess of skin and fur randomly all over his body. When he is finally able to heal to a point he is human he backs away down the corridor.
Orisian, who is quickly hit enough to turn bloody decides to cast 'Scathing Rebuke' and hence forth moves with impunity, as none of the monsters can harm him.
Zaya on the other hand, has no such power and is beaten brutally until she falls and has to be healed then surrounded by the others for protection.
Finally the largest kruthik is killed and the others scurry away the way they came.
(DM note: Yay kruthiks! The party during the 'Keep On Shadowfell' campaign decided to bypass a whole section of dungeon missing my awesome kruthiks I had prepared. But now I get to use them)
The next day they finally arrive at the House of Silence, a series of corridors leading to Minotaur statues and a shrine. The corridors are all lit with cressets burning oil. The party quickly notices magical traps which Zaya quickly disables.
(DM note: so much for getting to use the fun Hell Hounds I prepared)
While inspecting the shrine furthest in, a wraith appears and does battle. The cressets in turn blaze and explode in a series which, even after being warned to move Zaya, the elf, gets torched and is set ablaze. The wraith seems to recognize Terrlen and decides to run past all the party simply to get to Terrlen in revenge for bringing the adventurers to this place in order to undue his curse. The wraith grabs Terrlen and is about to bite and tear at his neck, when Osirian teleports the injured (and ablaze) Terrlen to safety.
After quickly dispatching with the wraith, Zaya approaches the once hunky adventurer/werewolf and pees on him to put out the fire. With the temple smelling like burned dog hair, the party begins to try and destroy the various magical items within. Zaya and Fluffy scour the room for treasure, and the elf eventually notices the statues all have amber jeweled eyes. Finally succeeding to destroy the altar sustaining Terrlen's curse, the adventurers make their way back to the Seven Pillard Hall in silence.
Back at the Hall, Terrlen thanks them for their efforts and tells them of his family that he has avoided since his curse years ago. He now goes to try and reunite with them.
The party decides it may need some help in retrieving the last 2 missing slaves so they seek out the assistance of Brugg, the ogre. After some searching Osirian finds Brugg amongst the caves in what the citizens of the Hall call the Pigeon Holes. After getting everyone's attention with a song dedicated to Brugg, except for Brugg himself, Osirian climbs towards his cave. Unable to complete his climb, Osirian calls out to Brugg for assistance and is able to bribe and cajole Brugg into accompanying the party. Returning to the Hall's floor, Osirian rides Brugg's shoulder to the Minotaur statue in order to call to the mages for information.
Orontor, the last remaining mage in Thunderspire (to his knowledge) appears. The party learns from him that:
- Paldemar was a member of the Mages Of Saruun who has been missing for many months.
- The Blackfangs are a group of gnolls lead by Maldrick Scarmaker
- According to the letters the party has, apparently Paldemar has gone rogue and is associating with the gnolls for some reason and may be in the Well Of Demons, a long avoided section of the Labyrinth.
- The Well of Demons was once a monastery dedicated to Baphomet and the Well Of Demons was a complex designed to test the faithful.
Very astutely, Osirian thinks to ask the mage about his new armor found from the adventure in the cisterns. The mage quickly discerns that there is something wrong with the armor and that Osirian should probably attempt to take it off. It seems the armor was perhaps designed with a halfling in mind and Orontor, with only a sly sympathetic smile, asks whether Osirian may know of anyone wishing to do the halfing any harm.
(DM note: Well played Gendar. Well played)
With that, they are off towards the Well Of Demons, using the rough map given to them by the mage.
After a day's travel they party decided to use 'Wizard's Curtain' to conceal themselves in a large corridor of the Labyrinth. During the night Zaya awakes, thinking she has heard a noise and feels a chill down her spine. After trying to rouse the rest of the party to be ready, no one else perceives anything and falls back to sleep. Zaya lays back down, this time in the shelter of Brugg but fails to get any sleep.
W1 - The Chamber of the Well
1,050 XP
Here the party huddles around the rooms entrance and Zaya throws in a burning torch to light the room. Finally Osirian boldly steps to the middle of the room and now they encounter 2 Cavern Chokers, a Ghoul and a Phalagar.
 |
| It's much larger in 'real life' than in this picture |
Zaya scours the room only to find a few silver pieces, an old compass and some rotten teeth.
W2 - The Gnoll Barracks
1,200 XP
Here the party encounters a small group of gnolls who are tending to several starved hyenas which they turn on the party. It's a bit of a tough slog mainly because the fighting was crowded into a small corridor. After watching Brugg throw a hyena, Osirian instructs him to throw a gnoll into a more open room so Osirian and Boy can finish him off. Brugg proceeds to pick up a gnoll but, unable to throw it, simply walks it into the room and sets him down nicely, says 'Ok..bye now' and goes back to the corridor. Not exactly what Osirian was wanting but it works anyway.
When the monsters are defeated the group proceeds to do the usual inspection of the area. Zaya again finds a bit of gold and a topaz but the real debate comes to whether or not anyone wants to inspect the fetid and rotten hyena pen. Everyone decides whatever is in there cannot be worth smelling like hyena crap for the rest of the campaign. Everyone that is except Fluffy. (who can know what goes through a kobold's mind)
Fluffy starts to poke through the vile muck and with a huge smile pulls up a magical cloak of resistance. Not wanting to put the smelly cloak on just yet, Fluffy packs it away in an empty chest he has been waiting to find a purpose for.
(DM Note: I was going to be a little disappointed if they didn't find it but I totally understood why they thought it might not be worth it)
W3 - Practice Hall
1,300 XP
The PCs enter a long dark corridor with 3 doors along its length. Zaya checks one door...no sounds. Zaya checks another door and hears animal sounds. Calling over to Fluffy to listen, he discerns it sounds like a boar in distress or injury. He stealthily opens the door....and completely fails at hiding himself. But before being shot in the arm by an arrow, he notices the room contains a large cage containing a dire boar and several hyenas surrounding the cage.
After quickly closing the door the party moves to the third door and bursts into the room for a surprise attack. The room is filled with several gnolls who were using the animals as target practice from behind the safety of a crude barricade. The party moves among them to try and quickly dispatch the gnolls.
Two of the gnolls who were holding bows shoot towards Osirian but the gnolls, and Osirian, are completely baffled by the shots that were going wide seem to swerve at the last moment in order to hit the hafling dead on through the armor. The entire party, and gnolls, seem to pause as they try to take this information in.
(DM Note: it was a guilty pleasure (no really I tried not to take pleasure in this....really) in seeing everyone seem to forget about the warning about the armor only to be completely surprised at this turn of events and try to figure this one out)
After seeing the baffling success of the bowshots, the other gnolls try to move into position in order to send their arrows down on the halfling. Osirian is quickly taken down, Fluffy is able to heal the dying Osirian and the rest of the party moves into position to protect him.
The party finally is able to finish off the gnolls and then proceeds to continue the barbaric game that the gnolls were playing, killing off the hyenas (with Brugg playing wack-a-mole with the hyenas). With the hyenas dead they players approach the caged dire boar, which they discover is has been domesticated...someone's pet.
Fluffy carefully opens the cage and successfully uses a nature skill to calm the beast down in order to try and heal it. The healing skill fails and the creature bites at him. So Fluffy again attempts to calm the beast down with another nature skill....and fails. Now the creature is scared and angry and Fluffy is chased out of the cage while Osirian slams closed the cage door behind Fluffy.
The evening ends with the party at the barricaded end of the room trying to get a good night's sleep in order to heal their wounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment