Price of Immortality Session #4

Here is the campaign log from our fourth Price of Immortality session. This was written by Todd (who plays Lilac). 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 continues its exploration of the Crypt. We also realize more and more that the module has some continuity issues and could have used some better editing.

[When we last left the party, they had explored more of the Crypt, broken down a door that was simply beyond Lilac’s ability to unlock, and found another door. It is now the eighth day since they left the town of Kassen and the party is pretty much out of rations.

A door. What awaits for us on the other side is anybody’s guess. There is a discussion as whether to press on or rest. We should have already been back to town, or at least been well on our way. The possibility of someone needing our help and the lack of food keep us pushing forward. In this case, a round room with a round pillar in the center. Holes cover this pillar from top to bottom. Holes filled with arrows. Good news…the arrows are blunted. Yipee.

Maybe the moaning guy still needs our help. We back track to the hallway with the cracked door. No moaning, no light shows through the crack. Serena charges down the hall, and leaps at the door. With a mighty “Hyaw!”, Serena flies foot first into the door. A couple more kicks and the door is a pile of splinters. The sickening odor of the room makes Serena wish she had eaten something today.

A body is propped up in the corner. The wounds look self-inflicted. Human waste is all over the room. The walls are covered with writing, charcoal and blood. Most of it illegible. Bits and pieces can be read, looks like warnings to me. One passage is clear, an apology and request for forgiveness. The food and water here has been contaminated.

[As written, the module assumes that the PCs will reach this room early on. It contains a survivor, Roldare, who holed up in here and, well, went a wee bit insane. It was he who had shot the crossbow bolts at the party in a previous session as he believed they were undead. It was he who had been doing the mournful wailing as well. My players, of course, simply avoided the room after having been shot even though it was pretty clear that there might be someone needing help within.

Given that the design of the module was such that the party would encounter Roldare early on before his madness reached the point of no return, it was pretty obvious to me that–after another week or so of being in his situation–Roldare would have descended even deeper into madness by this point. That’s exactly what happened.

On the other hand, Roldare also played a pivotal role in providing the PCs some important clues as to: a) what happened here; and, b) how to bypass some of the traps in the crypt. This is what the writings on the walls indicated. The snippets that the PCs could make out, with one exception, were the clues that Roldare would have given the party in person if he had survived (or, more to the point, if the party had saved him).

The snippets included the following: “…angry bones…” (this was repeated many times “…walking bones…” “…one with the voice of death…” “…stalks these halls in ancient mail…” “…the dead one who speaks…” “…the voice took her…” “…shields and keys…” “the woman’s voice, a trick of the dead one…” “…the bones are inside me…” and “…cut them out…”

The third to last, about the woman’s voice, was a reference to the party’s initial visit to the door when Serena called out to whoever might be behind the door. Roldare, in his madness, thought everything was either actual undead or one of their tricks. He believed Serena’s call to help was a trick of the undead and so he shot.

The last two snippets refer to his worsening madness. After having spent over a week trapped in this small, dark room and thinking everything was undead coming for him, Roldare totally lost it. He started to believe that his own skeleton was some of the “angry bones” and he had to get those bones out. He began to dig at his bones with some of the crossbow bolts that he had available and killed himself in the process. His last note, written in a moment of apparent clarity, read:

I’m sorry Dimira. I hope your soul is safe though I fear mine will soon be in Sifkesh’ evil embrace. I knew not what I was doing. May you and Erastil forgive me.

No one in the party knew the name Sifkesh so they are not sure what that refers to. They are aware, however, that Dimira is the sister of Roldare and that she is also an acolyte of Erastil and serves as Father Rantal’s assistant at the temple. Rodan recalled that he had not seen her in the last couple of days prior to the party’s departure for the crypt. There was speculation that she may also be somewhere within the crypt.]

We go back to the room with the acid spewing beetle. I retrieve my gear. Monte and I venture into the room that had the creature with the chilling, strength draining touch. The fire is out. Monte spots a dagger and key by the firepit. Across the room, I spot the floating, smokey apparition come through the wall. I take a shot at it, and an awesomely beautiful shot it was. The arrow passes through it and shatters against the wall. I run, Monte runs, we all run for our lives.

[The fire in this room is out because it only had so much fuel to burn. The module, again, assumes that the party will reach and explore this room relatively early…not four or five days after reaching the crypt. With the fire out and the smoke not as thick, both the key and dagger were pretty easy to spot.

It was an excellent shot…right between the things eyes…if it had any.]

Regrouping in the entrance room, we decide that the left behind key might be needed. Cornichon casts a spell to allow him to flee quickly, should the apparition still be near. Quick as a whip, Cornichon has the key and the dagger. The dagger is magical.

The little bard determined that the dagger was a +1 Dagger. Cornichon did get attacked by the apparition and lost some strength but took no actual damage (he hasn’t taken any actual damage yet).]

We refill our waterskins from the fountain. Using the scribblings as a reference, we take a closer look at the mural. Both Kassen and Asar are wearing oddly shaped medallions. Oh, the key? It fits the lock in the door that Monte trashed, a door that took Monte longer to open with his hammer than Serena with her foot. Girl Power!!

Now we come back to where I started. The room with the arrow filled pillar. Monte enters the room, takes two steps and the door closes behind him. Bad feelings all around. We open the door, to be greeted by a couple of arrows. I rush in, making my way to door on the right. I see see Monte collapsed in front of a door to my left. I’m hit as I try the door. Son of a !…they need to use more blunting.

“Fingers don’t fail me now!” I’m able to pick the lock and open the door just before everything fades to black. Hmmm, wasn’t there something on the wall about shields and keys?

I’m not dead, least ways not in heaven if the angels look like Cornichon. Cornichon rushes to someones aid as I see skeletons in the room ahead of us.

Quietly, and since the pillar ran out of arrows, we move back to the round room. We took a beating. Monte barely survived, all of the arrows most have hit him in the head. Though he does look the better for it.

We rest. Rodan passes healing around. We venture outside to forage for food, and rest for another day. I hope the town wasn’t in a hurry for the Everflame.

[The room with the pillar of arrows has the following advice for the GM:

Despite the efforts of the townsfolk to lessen the threat by loading it up with blunt arrows (that only deal nonlethal damage), this could possibly spell disaster for a group that enters the chamber unprepared.

It did spell disaster for my group. Monte was actually killed by the trap. Given that this mini-campaign is just a test run of the PFRPG to see if we’ll keep playing, I let him spend some Hero Points that he didn’t have to stay alive. In the end, the party had expended nearly all of its healing resources…including all but, I believe, one charge from the recently discovered Wand of Cure Light Wounds. I don’t think this bodes well for future encounters.

Lilac also spent her Hero Point in order to have an extra action to unlock the door leading south. When Cornichon came in, he was able to drag the half-orc through the door so they both avoided getting hit by the arrows.

The massacre largely continued until the pillar, after ten rounds of firing, ran out of arrows. Fortunately for the party, the skeletons mentioned did not react until someone entered the room…a room that had carvings of mourners all along the walls. The short hallway in which Lilac and Cornichon took refuge was not part of their room. After the arrows were spent, the party retreated back into that chamber and rested before pushing on again in the morning. The skeletons were quickly taken down by the party and Monte kicked off their heads.

A stairway lead down out of the skeleton chamber into a small circular room with, depending which part of the room’s description you read, either a pedestal or a pillar in the center. Three exits led out of the small chamber and writing was visible around the pedestal/pillar giving some indication of what each of the three exits led to:

“To the south you might take your ease, to rest and reflect on Kassen’s deeds. To the east lies the wheel, to open the gate. To the west is the resting place of Kassen, hero of the Fangwood.”

The sound of dripping water could also be heard to the east while the stench of rotting flesh emanated from the west. This is where we ended the session.

The comment about hoping the town doesn’t need the flame soon is a good one. The party has taken quite a bit longer to perform this task than anyone would have expected and some of the townsfolk that came ahead to “prepare” the crypt for the PCs obviously haven’t returned. You’d think that someone might have come to check on things by now. I wonder why they haven’t…the easy answer is that it isn’t in the module. I have a better reason that fits with the module and will help get the PCs up to the 3rd level that the second module expects them to be (even though CotE doesn’t directly give enough XP to get to 3rd level).]

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