Here is the write-up from our fifth session with our Beginner Box Hack (from Rachel). Austin is not going to be able to play for awhile due to family and work commitments so Remel has been replaced with Lemer (still an elven wizard but, as Todd put it, with a little more backbone). Lemer is going to basically be a “group character” and played by whoever wants to in any given session.
Spoiler Alert: There are spoilers for the adventure Fangs from the Past published by 0one Games. My GM comments, as always, are in [italics and brackets] as usual.
[When we last left the party, they had just discovered a way to melt the crystal that surrounded a magical sword by reflecting sunlight onto the crystal. This, of course, was the clue left by the sage on the pedestal by the toppled statue of a Sturgimate in the old abandoned village, “…may sunlight overcome hard words.” As Aaron directed the sunlight and began melting the crystal, the Sturgimate made an appearance at the entrance of the ramp…while Aaron stood at the end.]
We could hear the sturgimate laugh as he stood in the entrance of the ramp. Aaron tried to continue holding the mirror so that the sun reflected on the crystal, which was starting to dissolve. The sturgimate threw a few spikes at Aaron, injuring him and interrupting his concentration with the mirror. Dent and Lemer joined the rest of us near the crystal, in case the sturgimate came closer, but Shadow wounded the sturgimate with an arrow, which sent it flying away.
While I healed Aaron’s wounds, Shadow held the mirror in place so the crystal would continue dissolving. Once just a bit of crystal was left at the bottom, Aaron reached out and grasped the handle of the sword, and I cast comprehend languages so I could read the writing on the blade of the sword. I read it aloud—”Bleydeleka”—and the sword sparked in Aaron’s hand. Lemer studied the sword and determined that it is imbued with lightning, which is triggered on and off by saying “Bleydeleka.” The sword shines like a torch when it is “on.” [Mechanically speaking, it is a +1 longsword that does an extra 1d6 electrical damage when it is “on” and little lightning sparks arc up and down the blade, illuminating as well as a torch.]
With the sword freed from the crystal, and the crystal growing back once sunlight was no longer aimed at it, our next task was to figure out how to enter the dragon doors. Lemer decided to try out the penknife and ask it the correct combination that was needed to open the dragon doors. The knife cut through a piece of paper from his spellbook, and the paper crumbled onto the floor, spelling out the message “Hang the silver and the brass to the sun and be your doubts deleted by its run.”
We noted that the penknife was silver and that the magical brush Dent had found was brass, and that the round opening at the top of the penknife was the same size as the round openings at either end of the brush. We spent some time looking around the dragon doors to see if there was anywhere that the items could be hung, particularly around the two suns that are carved into the doors about the dragon images. After not finding anything and discussing other possibilities [That’s quite an understatement. 😉 ], we headed up the ramp to the outside, keeping a wary eye out for the sturgimate. We planned to try holding the penknife and brush up to the sun to see if that gave us any clues (maybe some of the roman numerals on the penknife would become illuminated?), but once we made it to the opening, we saw there was a natural balcony with a passage to the left. The passage led to a spiral staircase up to the roof [peak], where we found a sundial with a dragon head on it, which matched the headboard of the bed.
The holes at the top of the penknife and each end of the brush fit perfectly over the rod on the sundial. We put the penknife and brush onto the sundial’s rod, and the penknife moved to XII while the brush moved to V. The rod was on the II, indicating that it was 2:00.
At first we thought that the placement of the penknife and brush indicated numbers to be excluded from the combination, so we went down to the dragon doors and Aaron started pushing the Roman numerals in the order on the sundial, planning to leave out the XII and the V. When he pushed the VII and the VIII, they depressed and turned cobalt blue, making us think we were on the right track. When he pushed in the IX, however, it depressed and also turned blue, but then all the numbers depressed with a grinding noise and the color faded.
We went back up to the sundial and tried it again. By now it was 3:00, so the rod’s shadow was on the III, while the penknife again went to the XII and the brush went to the V. We speculated that maybe the correct sequence was the numbers between the XII and the V, so we went back down to the dragon doors and tried again. The same thing happened—when Aaron pushed the I and the II, they depressed and turned cobalt blue. When he pushed the III, it depressed and turned cobalt blue, but then all the numbers depressed with a grinding sound and the colors faded.
After waiting for the buttons to reset, Aaron got an idea. He ran back up to the sundial, where the rod’s shadow was now on IV, and the penknife again went to XII while the brush went to the V. Aaron ran back down to the dragon doors and pushed the XII, the IV, and then the V. The doors opened and there was some white mist beyond that dissipated as we entered. I prayed to Sarenrae for her assistance in helping the spirit of the Sage to know that we meant him no harm or disrespect. We moved through a short hall to a large natural cavern with a very large dragon skeleton in it. The floor of the cavern was covered with lots of silver leaf scales (that looked very much like dragon scales). The only items in the cavern besides the dragon skeleton and the silver scales were a pedestal and a silver box atop it.
I opened the silver box, which contained four silver keys (most likely to the doors that Aaron had broken down) and a leather pouch with five fangs in it. Lemer detected magic on the fangs and found that one of them [the shortest] had slight tendrils of magic heading towards the dragon doors. Following the direction of the tendrils to see where they led, Lemer ended up just behind Shadow, who was just calling out to us that the sturgimate had returned. The sturgimate demanded that Lemer give him the fangs. The sturgimate flicked his tail and cast magical darkness in the hall between the cavern and the doors, and knocked out Lemer. We were able to take out the sturgimate before he could get to the fangs, and Dent cut off the sturgimate’s head for us to take back to Willoweed with us. Dent also gathered up some of the silver scales into his pack and we put some in the silver box.
[It was actually a very short fight and the Sturgimate did very little damage outside of taking down Lemer. Aurora, in a bit of poetic justice, got in the killing blow (remember, her father had been one of the Sturgimate’s victims). The party didn’t even need to invoke the “curse” by breaking the fang (not that they knew that would invoke the curse). Lemer checked the magic on the fangs again once he was conscious and noticed that the tendril no longer led away from the one. They concluded that this probably meant that all five of the Sturgimates are dead.]
At this point we realized that we were quite peaked from not having eaten as much as we should be, so we headed out through the gorge. [Hmm…they left with five days of rations each and had been gone for like six or seven days now…yeah, I’d say pretty peaked.] As we were about to pass through the palisade, we spoke with one of the kobolds on guard and he brought the kobold chief out to speak with us. We showed them the head and told them that we killed the sturgimate. There was some cheering from the kobolds. The kobold chief asked about silver, and we told him that there was plenty of silver there. He asked if we had taken any silver, and I emphasized that there was plenty of silver in the cliffs.
[Ah yes, the kobolds and the silver. This is what everyone had forgotten about. Aurora had promised the kobold chief that they would not take any of the silver. Of course, she had no idea what he was talking about when she made that promise and, I believe, assumed that the chief was refering to a silver mine or similar. Little did she know, however, that he was actually refering to the sage’s abode. How did a bunch of kobolds know about this? Well, I’m not telling…at least not yet. But this does pose a bit of a dilemma for the PCs…some 1,500 pounds of silver…a promise to a bunch of kobolds…a community that could probably use the money…and, of course, adventurers who want treasure. I wonder how the PCs are going to deal with this.]
We started back to Willoweed, though it was rough traveling because we did not find much to eat on our way. The last night we camped, just a few hours from Willoweed, Aaron was disturbed by screams from the direction of Willoweed during his watch. Aaron woke the rest of us and we started heading in the direction of the screams. Shadow and Lemer moved ahead of the rest of us and spied a campfire in the woods. They saw about 12 loggers with a goblin who was strung up between some trees. The loggers were heating an axe on the fire and using it to burn the goblin, laughing boisterously each time it screamed. From what Shadow and Lemer saw, it appeared that the loggers were torturing the goblin for sport, not because they were trying to obtain information from the goblin, and they were considering what to do next.
[The goblin was bleeding badly from its mouth along with the other wounds from the torture it had suffered so far. This, of course, is where we ended. Shadow had knocked an arrow to shoot the goblin and put it out of its misery while Lemer was preparing to cast, I believe, magic missile to do the same. Aaron, Aurora, and Dent were all a bit back due to their slower movement rate. Of course, that slower movement rate–with the exception of Dent–is due to armor. Since everyone except Aaron had been sleeping, no one else is actually wearing any armor so Aurora can be up with Shadow and Lemer if she wishes.]
