Chapter 02: Heinous Brother of Death

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Session Number: 202
Date: Sunday 9 March 2014
Venue: Densial's
PCs & Players:

Breg Rog3/Clr10 (Fergus) (kills: none)
Calico Drd13 (Yeran) (kills: none)
Lionel Rgr6/Wiz1/ArcA6 (Ash) (kills: none)
Rowaine Pal13 (Craig) (kills: none)
Troll Wiz13 (Densial) (kills: none)
Violet Drd13 (Tammi) (kills: 1 gaunt, feral humanoid monk evil undead bad guy)

XP Awarded: TBA

TOR4
Troll moves 10 feet and casts Acidic Spatter. The orb of acid strikes the gaseous form and does 32 damage. Ouchies. Lionel fullattacks: three arrows. AC34 hits for 16 + 2 frost damage (seriously mitigated). AC31 hits for 10 + 5 frost damage (completely mitigated - this arrow did no damage). AC20 misses. Violet moves to the side and directs another bolt of lightning at the creature. 3d6=9 damage, but it dodges the bolt completely. Rowaine and Harley close and attack with Divine Might: hits for 28 damage (mitigated). Calico flies deep into the cavern past Harley and casts Lesser Vigour on Rowaine. The creature floats away towards the wall, reforming as it gets close to the brazier. Breg moves to Harley's flank and asks in terran, "Sir wolf, may I heal you?" Harley does not respond. "What about you, Rowaine?" "I give you permission to heal Harley if you wish." Breg Cures Harley's wounds.

TOR5
Troll moves forwards and hits the creature again with Acidic Splatter. AC17 hits for 20 damage. Lionel fires another three arrows: AC37 hits for 14+1 (mitigated), ACCrit hits for 15+4 (mitigated), AC37 hits for 12+1 (mitigated). Violet floats 8 squares closer to the creature and casts Baleful Polymorph on it. The spell does nothing. Rowaine moves behind the creature, presents her holy symbol and says "Be gone, evil filth! You do not belong here! See? Moradin spurns you!" The creature, blind, turns towards Rowaine. It can feel Moradin's channeled wrath but it cannot see it. It chortles. "Of course I belong here! But do you?" Calico casts Kelpstrand. Ranged touch nat1 misses. "This thing is undead!" Breg yells. "Hardy bastards, you can't affect them with things that test their fortitude!" The creature zeroes in on Breg's voice and runs towards him. It encounters Troll first and swipes at him with a clawed hand: the attack is aimed nowhere near Troll. Troll gestures the creature to continue on its way! The creature yells, "Beyond the constant crimson drips, cloaked in darkness this shard sits! Haaargh!" Breg draws his heavy mace as he closes with the creature. "Come here, you bloody bastard!" he yells. The creature swipes at him but misses, not knowing exactly where the dwarf is. Breg swings his mace but misses.

TOR6
Troll steps back and Acids the creature: 21 damage. It turns gaseous again. Lionel readies an attack for when it comes out of gaseous form. Violet draws a wand, commands her carpet of flying to move directly above the creature, leans over (dex check 16 is successful, she stays aboard) and bops the creature on the top of its head with the wand (of Cure Critical Wounds). 4d8+12=35 damage (will half). The gaseous form melts into the ground. Nothing remains.

Lionel and Troll check the remains of fallen adventurers. They died from a variety of wounds: broken bones, bruises, some with marks of raking claws, some with wounds from sword thrusts. Their equipment is mundane and rusting. Calico finds necromantic dweomers on the braziers. He gets the sense that they are designed to bolster something but he is not certain what; it does not fall within his area of expertise. Breg takes a closer look. They are covered with religious symbols that carry the sense of evil.

Calico looks to the south. There, two large reinforced copper and bronze doors stand, nearly ten feet high and ten feet wide a piece. Where the doors meet is a relief image of a skull whose eye sockets are pierced by a serpent. Written in common spanning the top of the doors is the phrase "Portal of the Damned".

Lionel searches an area of the west wall where the creature retreated while Troll Acids the nearest brazier. Calico the bird flaps his wings in alarm. "Stop! What if that was keeping something from leaving?"

Troll pauses. "Can anyone give me a justifiable reason for not doing this?"

"If anything, those braziers are guarding this portal," Breg says. "They are evil. I think we need to destroy them."

"Is it possible that the braziers are stopping Chalychia from awakening?" Calico says mentally.

Troll considers this, rejects it, then continues bathing the first brazier in acid.

Lionel finds a message on the wall, scrawled in blood:

scrawl01.jpg

"Does anyone need healing?" Violet asks.

"I am not wounded, but I do not feel well," Rowaine says.

"Do you mind if I cast a spell to determine what's wrong?" Breg asks. "The spell monitors peoples' health condition and lets me know where they are. I can nominate more than one person… Troll and Lionel, will you also consent?" They do. Breg casts Status. Rowaine is not poisoned or diseased.

"When it hit me," Rowaine says, "I felt a burning cold. I still feel it now. I am the weaker for it."

"I suspect that you have been drained somehow," Breg says. "May I cast a Restoration spell on you?"

"Yes."

Breg casts the spell. Rowaine's two negative levels disappear.

"Is that why you weren't on top form?" Troll asks Rowaine.

"Read into it what you will, Troll."

"OK!"

Breg searches the south door. He doesn't find any traps. Calico supports, looking for magic. The door radiates necromantic magic of a religious nature. He alerts the others. Breg takes a close look. He recognises the symbols on the door as those that respond to channeled divine energy, but there is something in them that prickles the hair on the back of his neck. They are not quite right. He then sees the trap, that is in some way related to the runes. He warns the party.

"Can anyone read these runes on the door?" Breg asks.

"No," Rowaine says. "But I don't have to read to know that it is evil. In fact, the whole place bears the stench of malice."

"If everything here is evil," Lionel says, "then everything here must be destroyed."

"Working on it," Troll says, starting on the third brazier. Calico confirms the absence of magic from the hissing slag of the first two. Violet helps by dousing the spilt embers with water from her waterskin. She then turns her attention to the door. "What if one person went there," pointing to the left door ring, "and one went there," pointing to its mate on the right door, "and knocked at the same time?"

"Don't touch it, please," Breg warns. "It is trapped. Let's not do anything rash."

"Do you have a rash? Do you need a healing spell?"

"I'm fine, thank you. I can see that you think I may have a sense of humour. You are wrong."

"I don't have Knock prepared," Troll says.

"Why would you need it?" Lionel asks. "If there is a door in the way, remove the door."

"It's an option."

"We could just open it," Breg says. "The trap seems magical in nature rather than mechanical."

"Could Harley go through the floor and see the other side?" Violet suggests.

"That sounds like a fine idea," Breg says, turning to Rowaine. "What say you, lady?"

"Very well," Rowaine replies. She speaks to the stone wolf in terran. Harley turns around and paws at the ground, then replies. "Harley cannot enter the stone here," Rowaine reports. After some experimentation, it becomes apparent that the stone is impenetrable to Harley around thirty feet inside the cavern. Violet suggests turning gaseous like the creature and finding a way through the door. No one has that ability just now.

Breg grasps the snake's head and pulls. Nothing moves, nothing happens. He grasps both the head and the tail and tries moving it in every direction. It does not budge. Closer inspection reveals no moving parts. The only thing on the doors that seems like it might move are the two ringpulls. Breg pulls the right-hand ring. Nothing happens.

"I can open the door," Troll says. "We just have to be willing to have the door … go away for a while. And by a while, I mean until somebody rebuilds the door."

The available options seem to be either Stone Shaping the walls surrounding the door, or blasting through it. Troll starts by Aciding the left door's top hinge. The acid starts degrading stone and metal alike; it looks like the strategy will work. He continues. Breg ushers the others to a safe distance. After a couple of minutes, there is a considerable depression in the stone and the edge of the door is ruined.

"What if at some point we find we want to close the door again?" Breg asks.

"So did you want to say that before I finish this hinge?" Troll replies.

"A powerful creature was sealed below here. We may not be able to destroy it. If we cannot, then we may need to seal it, in which case these doors may or may not be useful."

"So you don't want to open the door?"

"I'd like to explore possibilities of opening the door in such a way that would allow us to close it again. Stone Shape, sir?"

"That would leave a hole in the wall," Lionel counters. "That's the same thing."

"We could also close it with a Stone Shape."

"We would have to wait an entire day."

"That is still quicker than destroying the door."

"Troll can make a new door," Lionel counters.

"Are you capable of making a new door?" Breg asks Troll.

"Yeah, probably. Wall of Iron, boom."

"Well," Breg says. "Acid on."

Troll targets the middle hinge, angling the acid right of square towards the supposed space beyond. The hinge disappears, the side of the door is dissolved away and the acid is revealing stone on the other side. The depression is now at least six inches deep, deeper than the thickness of the door, and is still solid.

"We're going to need another spell," Troll says. "My specialty usually involves fire and acid."

The druids don't have any spells prepared that might help, such as Speak with Stone. The party resort to brute force, tying a rope onto the right door ring. Harley acts as anchor, with everyone else in support. A pull with a total of 66 strength points snaps the rope; the door does not budge.

"I'm going to have a look at those runes," Troll says. He casts Comprehend Languages. The spell reveals the runes to be magical in nature but doesn't reveal what they do. His best guess is that they trigger a spell.

"We need magic to get past it, I think," Troll says. "I have a plan, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I think one of you needs to take a hit for the party and do some divine channelling. Just let me get outside first."

The party decide to wait until tomorrow to prepare different spells. They pitch camp in the clearing outside the cavern, on Calico's suggestion that it might be prudent to keep an eye on the area.

As night falls, Breg Consecrates the campsite. The night passes uneventfully. Dawn breaks…

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