The party delved into the chambers beneath the ruins of Valvur Abbey…but only a bit…in the last session. As we ended, the party had rested for the night, returned to the ruins, ambushed a couple of hidden brigands, and took up those hiding spots for themselves in the hopes of surprising any additional brigands that exit through the trap door leading below.
Jen had to miss this session and so the introduction of her new character is still on hold.
Parts of this session use a somewhat modified version of the adventure, The Shattered Fist Monastery, from Delver #1 by James Floyd Kelly. There may be spoilers.
We pick up with the party waiting to spring their ambush below.
It took some time before some more brigands exited from below through the trap door. In the meantime, Aja experimented with the wand that had been previously discovered below. She was able to figure out that it is basically a wand of magic missile. Full write up will be after the recap.
When more brigands finally did emerge, it was a group of four with each carrying a passingly familiar corpse (the brigands slain by the party the day before). The brigands started to carry these corpses towards the woods when the party springs their ambush. Soon, only one brigand remained alive and surrendered when Norfek told him to drops his weapons.
- The captured bandit, a relatively young man, goes by the name Ink and was rather forthcoming with information. He shared, with some prompting, the following:
- There are still seven bandits down below. This includes their boss, Arkoros. Arkoros is pretty tough…at least to Ink. The new prisoner also shared the general layout of the underground compound that the brigands were occupying.
- The brigands have a prisoner named Tygol. Tygol was captured when he was traveling the nearby road by himself. Arkoros had ordered the capture and has privately questioned Tygol. Ink was not privy to the results of the questioning or why Arkoros had the brigands capture Tygol. The last that Ink saw of Tygol was him being chained to the table in the “hangout” room below.
- Outside of Tygol, Arkoros had the band robbing smaller merchants on the road. No larger caravans and no killing. Arkoros had wanted to avoid attracting too much attention to their little operation.
- Arkoros had brought the brigands here for some job but has not shared the job yet. He has only said that they’ll most likely do it next week.
- Ink had overheard Arkoros and Moody talking one time (Moody is the 2nd in command) and heard Arkoros mention that there was “something” below the chambers and passageways occupied by the brigands. Arkoros had disappeared a couple of times in the passageways near his quarters and no one knew where he had gone.
- In the last couple of days, Ink and a couple of other brigands had heard something moving in the walls below. None had seen or otherwise identified what was causing the noise.
- Eventually, it became clear that Ink was just a kid who fell in with a wrong crowd. With some help, he convinced himself that being a caravan guard would be a much better profession than brigand. He also wanted to go home and check on his mom (Aja claimed to know his mom and that she was doing good).
- Ink helped the party take the corpses into the woods a short distance to hide them and then headed off to his new life (with his weapons and some rations and gold from the party).
- Heading back to the trapdoor to the compound below (which had been left open), Aja used the Creepy Flesh Idol to call forth an arcane eye. She sent it down to explore as it can see in the dark a short distance. Before she lost focus on the eye, Aja was able to scout the chambers and locate the remaining seven brigands plus Tygol, their prisoner.
- The party goes back down and heads to the chamber they had explored on a prior incursion…Aja had spotted two brigands hiding in this room. Using no light sources, the party navigates their way and ambush the would-be ambushers. Unfortunately, one of the brigands was able to yell out, “Alarm!” before being killed.
- Heading to a scouted, but unexplored section, Norfek tosses a lit torch down a passageway. Multiple brigands converge on the dwarf. Before they can be defeated, the party takes some significant damage. Unfortunately, some of the damage occurred when Aja got a critical failure activating the wand of magic missiles and it exploded, hurting each of the party. They retreated out again and moved off into the woods to rest and recover.
- In the morning, the party headed back down. The brigands have abandoned the place. Useful equipment and valuables were gone along with the brigands. Tygol, the prisoner, was still below and chained to a table. His throat had been slit and chunks of his flesh were missing as if he had been partially butchered.
- Free to explore the place, the party looked about. Besides Tygol, the only thing of real interest was a statue of St. Taius in an alcove at the end of a corridor. Experimenting and feeling about the statue, a small button was found on the back of its head. Pressing it lead to a hidden door opening in the wall behind the statue. Beyond was a chamber containing a larger and better crafted statues of St. Taius, six prayer mats positioned in front of the statue, and six skeletons kneeling in supplication. Four were on prayer mats and two were not, kneeling directly on the floor instead.
Given the time, that’s pretty much where we ended. Aja was moving in to prod one of the skeletons and Ellery to examine one to see if any sign could be found of what had killed them.
Here is the magic wand that went kaboom! Of course, Aja (and the players) were unaware of the curse.
The Needler
A slender wand made of a dark wood that has been varnished to a glossy sheen. It is tipped with a crimson red cluster of tiny crystals similar in shape to a quartz cluster.
Benefit: The Needler is activated as if it is a wand of magic missile with two exceptions. First, the user does NOT have advantage on the activation check. Second, rather than a bolt of force, a small shard of crystal jets forth to strike the target and then returns to the cluster of crystal at the wand’s tip. In all other respects, it is as if magic missile was cast.
Curse: On a critical failure, the crystal cluster explodes doing 2d4 damage to all targets Near to the user.
