The Side Quest Session 11

This marked our fourth session with the PCs lost on the Island of Castanamir. In our last session, they had fought then allied themselves with some hobgoblins. They then convinced one of them to start a revolt against the hobgoblin commander. Private (recently promoted to God-King) Leigh, however, was the only hobgoblin to participate in the revolt…although it did lead to an all out battle between the hobgoblins and the party. After winning that battle, the party set out to explore another, new to them, area of Castanamir’s home.

This session we had Muse, Rachel, and Thomas in attendance plus we had a new player, Geoff, join us. Thomas had made a second character and Lilly’s twin, Bronn. Bronn is a halfling rogue. Geoff rolled up a elven cleric named Redwulf. So with seven characters participating, we continued with the party’s search for the six books for Chakos and for a way out.

Spoilers: There are definitely spoilers for the old AD&D module, C3: The Lost Island of Castanamir, below the break.

My GM comments, as usual, are in [italics and brackets].

After dispatching the hobgoblins and taking various supplies from them, the party headed back to the Zim Exhibit to begin their explorations of the “upper” level of Castanamir’s. Given the nature of that magical portals, the party, of course, has no real idea if the chambers they’d be exploring were above, below, or to the side of those that they had already explored or, perhaps, a combination of the above. Coming through the portals, the party found that their composition was no longer what it had been in the prior room. No longer surprised by the relatively fickle operation of the portals, they also were not surprised to find that two new individuals had arrived, Bronn (the fraternal) twin brother of Lilly and an elf named Redwulf that no one knew and seemed quite shaken by his sudden appearance.

With little, if any, concern for the confusion and concern of the recent arrivals, the party simply pushed on with their quest and entered the new level. The first room on this “level” had three of the portals and a hallway leading off of it. The hallway simply led to another portal. There were also two large floor to ceiling mirrors. Concerned that they might be another one-way mirror with someone watching from the other side, like in the initial entry chamber, the party gave it a relatively close examination. The mirror they examined was flush with the wall and there was no indication that they could see through from this side. Bronn took a more direct approach and tried to break the mirror. It felt like he struck something solid but instead of breaking, the mirror rippled like a shallow pool of water.

Not wanting to examine the mystery of the mirror any closer, the party exited through the “southern” portal. This led to a small room with four more portals and a normal wooden door. The door was locked but Morgraen quickly fixed that. The room beyond was clearly an alchemical lab. There were numerous pieces of equipment as well as books and scrolls with numerous notes on alchemy. There was also a cabinet holding a number of flasks sealed with wax and a traveling case. There were seven flasks and four had labels: Animal Control, Fire Resistance, Healing, and Longevity. There were also three labels at the bottom of the cabinet that looked as though they had fallen off of the other three bottles. [Officially, the module simply says the potions are unlabeled but I thought it would be a lot more fun to have the labels lying around. From how Thomas reacted to the potions, I think I was correct in my decision.] The traveling case held another seven potions also sealed in wax but the wax was cracked on these. This led to much speculation as to how the ones in the case were cracked but the others weren’t and who and when the potions might have been created. These last seven were all labeled: Healing, Healing, Healing, Healing, Horse Control, Speed, and Water Breathing.

Exiting through the eastern portal, the party entered a large room lined whose walls were largely lined with bookshelves…a library! There was also a scroll cabinet in one corner and a table, chair, and pedestal with a large book atop it. Somewhat more concerning, there was a tall, older man standing near the pedestal, wearing robes covered in arcane symbols. It was immediately concluded that this must be Castanamir but the man did not respond to their salutations. The group began to spread out around the room and Lilly went up to the man. She reached out to touch him and the man said, “Stop.”

Since he did nothing else other than watch the party members as they moved about the room, they took the opportunity to start exploring. Callie headed over to the scroll cabinet and opened it. When she reached to remove one of the scroll cases, the man made a gesture and Callie collapsed to the floor. Upon examination she appeared unharmed and merely sleeping but no amount of shaking would wake her. Careful not to touch anything, the party continued their explorations. They discovered that while the books had not titles on the spines, each did have a series of numbers and letters sketched on the lower spine in rather small letters. They also realized that the large book on the pedestal was a catalog. It looked like each entry had a title and a code like on the books’ spines. With significant trepidation, Riordan reached out to flip the pages of the catalog but the man didn’t respond when he did so. The party puzzled out that the books in this library all had a code begin with the letters LIC followed by a three digit number, a period, and a four digit number. Other entries, however, were not in anything resembling alphabetical order. The last entries had a prefix like BP while the earlier ones were AAL [or, at least, that’s what I think they were…I didn’t take any notes on this.]

It was quickly apparent that the catalog held significantly more entries than books that this library could hold. Riordan began to skim through the catalog to see if he could find the books that the party was seeking. As this was going on, Bronn asked the man where they could find the book Portal Magicks and the man pointed at one of the shelves. The other titles were quickly called out and the man pointed. Each of the six books was in the same general area of the bookshelves.

Having seen what happened to Callie when the she reached out for a scroll case, the party was ready for the man to attack when they went for the books. Bronn, Riordan, and Morgraen all reached for two of the books each. The others were prepared for battle. As soon as the trio reached out to remove the books, the man gestured again and Bronn and Morgraen both collapsed, just like Callie. The man’s hands then began to crackle like electricity and he struck Riordan, hurting him but not mortally. The non-napping members of the party attacked and soon the man fell. He then began to slowly melt into a puddle of something viscous…somewhat like a wax figure melting.

Grim quickly took advantage of being able to explore without interference and sought out a spellbook specializing in Evocation in the catalog. He found one and then found it on the shelf. When he pulled it from the shelf, unfortunately for him, it exploded in a blast of fire that did enough damage to incapacitate Grim. With half the party incapacitated at this point, the rest of the party hunkered down to wait until their sleeping beauties woke which was after about an hour.

The party then began to quickly move through various rooms in search of an exit. The first room that they entered was a small, round room with a pool that dominated the room, nearly filling the space. The pool looked to be about five or six feet deep with as short wall about a foot high encircling it. The bottom was filled with coins and some bones, most likely bones of humanoids. Despite a couple of characters having a greedy streak wider than their shoulders, no one wanted to mess with the pool and so the party pressed on. The room, of course, had four portals around its circumference.

The next room was another round room but it was much larger than the pool room and had the recurring four portals. It also had a large tower in the center of the room and the floor was, well, absent! The tower was perched atop a rocky outcropping that jutted out a couple of hundred feet above an ocean’s surface. Two suns could be seen hanging on the distant horizon just above the ocean despite the constraints of the room’s walls. Two large creatures were circling around the top of the tower. None of that, however, was what caught the characters’ immediate interest. That was reserved for the fact that they were falling! There was no floor…at least until one of the character’s realized that the floor was solid, just transparent. With that realization, the party quickly passed through a portal.

This led to yet another small room with four more portals and a wooden door. Beyond the wooden door was another small room with a heavily reinforced door with a small barred window. Peeking through the window, Bronn could see some sort of workshop. There was a rather large anvil in the middle of the room and a workbench in the far corner. Numerous metalworking tools were scatted on the table along with small models of various constructs. One was actually running in circles on the workbench. Three more or less man-sized shapes were draped under dark cloths and three metal constructs, humanoid in shape, were simply standing, bending to touch their feet, and then stand again in an apparent endless cycle. There were also a couple of the “watermelon” cleaners that the party had encountered in the initial entry chamber on the workbench, unmoving. Rather than enter and explore further, the party elected to enter another of the portals.

This one led to a room cluttered with various cabinets, chests, trunks, statues, paintings, and what have you. All of it was scattered about and looked as though it had been ransacked but little taken. An old man was sorting through some of the clutter while a crow perched nearby. The old man immediately yelled at the party to leave as the crow cawed and hopped up on his shoulder. The party did not comply and started to ask various questions, foremost of which was how to get out of this place. The man, who appears to be Castanamir, eventually admitted that he couldn’t remember where the exit was anymore. He was actually in here looking for his map of the place. If the party agreed to find the map, he’d show them the way out.

And so the party began the task of searching through all of the clutter…a task that would end up taking at least a few hours. Lilly, however, was much more interested in the crow, wanting to speak with and befriend her. However, she was actually a he and his name was Poopsie…a name that he quickly lived up to when landed on Lilly’s head and, well, you can guess the rest. While the party searched, Castanamir took a nap. Not having found anything that appeared to be a map or otherwise useful in making their escape, the party headed for another portal. Castanamir came with them.

This room was relatively small and held a cot, a large brazier, a table, and a pedestal with a book upon it. There were also many metallic looking tapestries hanging from the walls which looked as though they had been scorched by intense flame or heat. Riordan reached out to take the book and it exploded in fire much like the one in the library but more intensely. He was badly injured but subsequently healed by Redwulf. When asked about the room, Castanamir couldn’t quite remember what it was all about.

There was still no obvious sign of an exit or an indication of how to exit Castamanir’s home in this room and so the party started for another portal. Castanamir, however, yelled at them to stop. He claimed that Poopsie wanted to talk with he and Lilly but in private. He promised that they’d be just a moment or two before they followed. So the rest of the party passed through one of the portals, perhaps forgetting that Castanamir might just take Lilly through a different one and they might never find their hippie friend again. After the rest of the party passed through the portal, Castanamir turned to Lilly with a crazy grin on his face.

[That, of course, is where we ended the session…actually, we ended it before that last sentence but that’s what’s going to happen anyways so why not make Thomas sweat a little before the next session.

After all the time they spent on the first “level” of Castanamir’s home, the party definitely took a let’s just find the exit approach once they recovered the six books from the library. They’ve been taking a systematic approach in passing through the portals so they can map out this level but is their haste possibly leading them to miss something important that might point to the exit. Hmm…maybe…maybe not…I’m certainly not going to say but I will place that seed of doubt in their mind. It is, after all, my job as a GM to do so.