Here is the campaign log from our third Price of Immortality (PoI) session. This was written by RJ (who plays Rodan and did the last one as well since no one else would/could volunteer this week). My GM comments are in [italics and brackets.]
Note: There are, obviously, spoilers for the Price of Immortality trilogy below. In this session, the party reaches the Crypt and begins exploring it.
[When we last left the party, they had entered the Crypt of the Everflame and found it to be rather dangerous. Monte was down and out. Rodan had expended all of his healing powers. Lilac, with only a couple of hit points left, had been scouting ahead for a resting place when she was ambushed by something that chilled her soul and sapped her strength (six points of Strength damage) and yelled, “Run for your lives!”]
We hear Lilac coming back down the hall and she yells, “Run undead!”
The party turns and readies for battle. Cornichon is readying his crossbow and moves to cover the hallway. I move up to the corner of the hallway, readying to swing at anything undead that comes out. Serena moves closer to Monte who is on the ground, unconscious.
Lilac comes in the room and says, “We need to get out of here.” She explains that something touched her with a chilling hand, leaving her feeling very weak. As Serena picks up Monte, Lilac drops off a lot of her gear and we all head out of the room.
[Lilac dropped all of her gear except for her armor, weapons, and thieves’ tools so she wouldn’t be hindered in her movement by her weakened state. As of the end of this session, all of her dropped gear remained in the “beetle” room…or, at least, as far as the PCs know.]
As quickly as possible, we move past the door from which the crossbow bolts had previously shot. [Nothing happened as the party moved past.] With Lilac in the lead, we head back to the room with the pits. When we arrive, she scouts ahead but does not see the wyverns. After listening at the broken door (the one leading to the entrance chamber), she comes back and tells us that she heard nothing. We debate where we should rest and decide to stay here in the pit room and set watches.
After an uninterrupted and much needed rest, I ask for Milani’s blessing to heal my companions’ wounds before we discuss what to do next. We only have one day of rations left and it is going to take at least a day to get back to town. [Actually, you know it will take at least two days to get back to Kassen]. We elect to head out to the first room and check the other door leading out of it.
Monte leads the way. After checking the entry chamber, he calls us to follow. Fortunately, it looks like the wyverns have left. There was nothing new in the chamber except for wyvern crap. Sneaking up to the doors leading outside (one has been broken and the other is open), Monte sees nothing but ravaged horses and ponies. Most likely the result of the wyverns.
Heading to the unopened door leading out of the chamber, Monte listens but hears nothing. After opening the door, he looks around for anything that might indicate a trap. Finding nothing, he walks in and we follow. As Monte steps into the room, a voice booms, “Magic is the key!”
There is no one in the room. There is simply a pool with a fountain depicting a weeping maiden holding a headless body. We believe the headless body depicts Kassen. Two doors provide exits from the chamber.
Humming to himself, Cornichon looks at the pool. He turns to tell us that he senses something magical in the pool about forty feet down. I keep watch on the closest door. Monte checks the farthest door and finds it is unlocked. He checks the door I’m watching; it is locked.
Lilac looks in the pool and sees a whole bunch of keys at the bottom. We hit on the idea of Cornichon going down and getting the key. He starts swimming down but has difficulty and resurfaces. I help him out of the pool. He needs some weight to help him sink faster. Serena gives him the grappling hook from her pack and he sinks faster with its additional weight.
He reaches the bottom and starts yanking on the rope to have us pull him up. Once back up, he explains that there is a bit of problem. He can’t cast Detect Magic while down there. He could, however, start it up here and concentrate on it on his way down. Another idea comes to us from out of the void…we should tie something heavier to the hook so he can sink faster. We tie my shield to the grappling hook. Cornichon starts humming and we lower him down. He hits bottom. Maintaining his concentration on his cantrip, he rummages thru the keys and grabs one of them. He signals us to pull him up. At the surface, he shows us the magic item, a key. I retrieve my shield.
Cornichon tries to open the locked door with the key but it does not fit the lock.
Monte opens the unlocked door and we head that way. There is a long hallway with alcoves, each has a statue holding a sword. At the end of the hallway is a door. The swords on the closest statues are wrapped in leather straps.
Cronichon smacks himself in the head and runs back to the locked door. I am guessing he has thought of another way to open the door. He tries tapping the door with the key but it still doesn’t open. Monte suggests throwing the key at the door but that idea is quickly ignored.
[Some of the players got the idea that maybe the key’s magic worked more like a wand or similar rather than being “triggered” by using it like a key. This is certainly a distinct possibility (why couldn’t a wand of knock, for example, look like a key) but it wasn’t the case here. As far as throwing the key at the door…well, there was some discussion of how the party is supposed to know if Monte is making a serious suggestion or just being, well, Monte. I don’t envy them.]
Back to the hallway with the statues. It looks like there are eight statues in all. Half of them have their swords wrapped in leather while the other half have naked, and sharp-looking, blades. Liliac takes the lead and notes that the statues are constructed such that the swords can strike down. Checking the floor and walls for any triggers, she starts moving down the hallway. Lilac passes the two sets of statues with leather-wrapped swords. Nothing happens.
She reaches the next set of statues, which have no wrappings on their blades. As she steps between them, both swords slash down and strike her. She crumples under their blow, bleeding and unconscious, and the swords remain in a V formation pressing down upon her.
I squeeze by the others and lay a blessing of Milani on Lilac; her bleeding stops and she regains consciousness but is still hurt. Monte pulls out some of the pillows he has collected and we start to use them to get over the swords. Monte then comes up with the idea of using the leather wrappings to cover the sharp blades. We “leapfrog” the swords in this fashion to reach the door. Monte opens it.
[Unfortunately for Lilac, I rolled two 1s in a row on her Perception checks while looking for traps. Typically, when I roll a 1 on something like this and there is no trap in the location, I describe what looks like a trap to the player. If there is a trap, well, they don’t spot it. If I recall correctly, she moved to avoid the “trap” that she spotted and moved right onto the trap that she hadn’t spotted.
Using the wrappings on the statues to bypass the sharp blades was a good idea…as long as they didn’t need to come back this way quickly. Given that all of the other traps so far had been “disabled” in some fashion, why weren’t the last two sets of blades similarly disabled? Did the “pranksters” simply not bring enough leather wrappings to cover them? The party had, so far, found additional pillows used for disabling the pits but no additional leather wrappings.]
Beyond the door is a lofty chamber. One half has a lowered floor with stairs on both sides of the room leading to it. At the far end, on the lower floor, is a wooden statue of a man holding two wooden shields. There is writing on the shields but we can’t make out the words from here. Next to the statue is a door.
Monte walks down the stairs to take a look at shields. When he reaches the bottom, the statue animates and the stairs shift to become a ramp. With his motto of always being prepared, Monte was ready for something like this. He swings at the wooden statue with his hammer and his hand axe, hitting it with a resounding whack. It looks like he damaged one of the statue’s shields. In return, the statue smashes Monte with both shields and knocks him unconscious.
With the battle begun, Cornichon starts singing. I move up and so does Serena. Lilac gets her bow out and fires an arrow but misses. The wooden statue moves up and smashes its shields at Serena. She moves back and the statue’s next swing connects, knocking her unconscious as well. I pray to Milani and her healing power courses through me and out to my companions. Monte is back up but Serena is still down.
As the fight continues, Lilac spots something on the back of the statue and yells, “There is a keyhole in its back!” Cornichon still has the magic key we found in the pool. He tries to scramble up the statue but can’t get a good grip. The rest of the party starts to grab the statue to hold it steady so Cornichon has a better chance to insert the key. The gnome gets on the statue’s back but fails on his first attempts to insert the key as the statue struggle to shake him off. Eventually, Cornichon succeeds and, when he turns the key, the statue stops moving.
Having already pushed the limits of Milani’s blessings, I try to heal Serena with my healing kit. I can’t do enough to get her moving so I adminster the healing potion we had been given. Serena regains consciousness but is still in bad shape.
[It was pretty difficult for the party to “deactivate” the “statue” with the key. If they hadn’t, I doubt the party would have survived this encounter. I won’t be surprised at all if there is a TPK in a future encounter. In fact, I’m kind of expecting it at this point. The Wand of Cure Light found below might prevent it.]
We examine the door leading out of the chamber and it is unlocked. Beyond it is a small room with a single table inside. Upon the table are a number of items with notes attached to each. There are two weapons, two wands, two scrolls, and two vials on the table.
As Cornichon starts humming again, we look at the notes. One note reads, “For Cornichon: a wand of lesser confusion.” Another, “For Rodan: a scroll of lesser restoration.” All the notes have one of our names on it and information about the attached item. There are masterwork nunchaku for Serena, a masterwork warhammer for Monte (his note reads, “Monte if you have actually survived this long, this is yours. They made me do it.”), a Wand of Lesser Confusion (10 charges) and scroll of Cat’s Grace for Cornichon, a Potion of Cure Light Wounds (the vial says that it is the property of Father Rantal) and a Potion of Invisibility for Lilac, and a Wand of Cure Light Wounds (10 charges) and Scroll of Lesser Restoration for me.
[The assumption (a correct one) is that these were provided by the PCs’ mentors. This is why Monte’s had the note that it did…he and his mentor simply do not agree on what it means to be a ranger. The potions for Lilac both indicated that they belonged to someone other than her mentor, “Short Change” Jimes. Jimes had already demonstrated his lack of respect for private property in previous interactions with the party. The Wand of Lesser Confusion and Scroll of Cat’s Grace were for Cornichon. The Wand of Cure Light Wounds and Scroll of Lesser Restoration were for Rodan. The Potion of Cure Light Wounds and Potion of Invisibility were for Lilac. A masterwork warhammer was for Monte and a masterwork nunchaku for Serena.]
I use the scroll to help heal Lilac’s weakness and the wand to heal Serena and Monte.
With no other exits to explore here, we head back to the room with the pool and the locked door there. Lilac tries to pick the lock but she cant get it open. As we discuss what to do next, Monte starts to smash the door with his old warhammer. It takes several swings but he finally smashes through the door.
[And making so much noise that he probably woke the dead…]
Inside is a dusty room with a small bench. There is a small mural on the wall depicting the final battle between Kassen and the mercenaries. Kassen’s sword is buried deep in the chest of the mercenary leader. A hallway opposite of the now smashed door leads out of the room.
The hallway turns to the left and ends at a door…
[Hmm…let’s see…the party is in the tomb of Kassen that had also served as the “headquarters” of his foe, Asar, while Asar and a group of mercenaries attacked the fledgling settlement that Kassen founded. It was also the site of the final, and epic, battle between Kassen and Asar and their respective allies. Here is a mural depicting exactly the final moments of that battle. You’d think this might be something that a party of adventurers might be interested in taking a look at as it might have some useful information. Then again, they might just ignore it and push on. You can guess which one my group did.
We ended the session with the party at the door as we had set a relatively strict time limit for this session and the GM was still recovering from a considerable amount of alcohol and a limited amount of sleep from the night before. 😉
Did anyone else notice that there was no mention at all about the mournful wailing? For the record, it isn’t because I never mentioned it during this session.]
