Session 12 of The Side Quest was our fifth with the party on the Lost Island of Castanamir. In our last session, the party had recovered all six of the books on Chakos’ list. They had also gained an “ally” (or at least a new member of their entourage). Lilly had stayed behind with this new ally to learn “some” secret after the rest of the party passed through another of the portals. But before I get to what happened, a bit of housekeeping first. Morgraen and Riordan have both made it to 3rd level at the start of this session. Aelwulf, Callie, Grim, Lavinia, and Rurik are all 2nd level with the remaining characters (Baern, Bronn, Lilly, and Redwulf) are still being 1st level. Why the discrepency? Characters only get XP if the player is in attendance since the character isn’t played when the player isn’t there and, of course, the strings of deaths that Theo’s characters suffered. Since Rachel has missed the fewest sessions, Morgraen and Riordan have reached the loftiest heights of all the characters.
This session we had Geoff, Muse, Rachel, RJ, and Thomas in attendance…only missing Theo and so had a nice full table and nine characters in play. So away we go…
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 the bulk of the party passed through the portal, Lilly was left alone with an evilly grinning Castanamir. He beckoned her to come closer to share the secret that he and Poopsie wanted to share. It became quickly clear that Castanamir was completely nuts and off his rocker. The secret was that Poopsie was not actually a he but a she and that her name wasn’t really Poopsie but he wouldn’t share what it was. In addition, Castanamir–through various actions–that he’s a bit of a cannibal. One of those actions was pulling a finger out of his pocket and chomping on it. The crazy old coot was quite interested in partaking in the culinary delight of one of Lilly’s toes but she suggested that he could have the all of toes of someone else instead. Both Castanamir and Poopsie made it quite clear (yes, Poopsie spoke with Lilly) that she was not to share any of this with the rest of the party or there would be some serious repercussions. With that, they rejoined the party in the next chamber.
After rejoining the party, Castanamir shared another secret with everyone…while giving Lilly a bit of a look. He declared that he had proposed to Lilly and she said yes! Lilly quickly recovered from her initial shock and played along as she was worried that the wizard’s cannabilistic streak might come to the fore if she did not. Castanamir even hocked up a ring, wiped it off a bit, and stuck it on Lilly’s finger…a ring, I’ll add, that was found to be stuck on her finger when she tried to take it off later.
The next chamber turned out to be the one that the party originally entered on this level via the “hole” leading up from the Zim exhibit. The chamber was larg.ely the same as when the party last passed through with one important exception…the hole in the floor leading back down to the Zim exhibit was gone! No amount of searching or tapping on the floor showed any sign that the hole had ever existed. This time, the party also decided to examine the second large mirror in the room. They had only looked at one of them the first time through. Unlike that first mirror examined, the second one did not ripple like a shallow pool of water when touched. In fact, when struck hard, it broke like a normal mirror revealing just a wall behind it.
Passing through another portal, the party returned to the disorienting room with the transparent floor and the apparent world within the room. The “griffins” continued to to circle the top of the tower. The party noticed an archway that gave access to the interior of the tower this time through. Inside the tower was nothing but a spiral stairway circling both up and down on the inner wall. The center of the tower was completely open as far as the party could see both up and down. The stairway was relatively narrow and had no safety railing so the party descended very cautiously.
At the bottom, some two-hundred feet down, was a small chamber. The only thing in the chamber was a large, kind of egg-shaped, piece of an amber like substance. It was some ten feet long and at least four feet wide. The object floated a foot or two off of the chamber’s floor. The substance was not completely translucent but a shadow could be seen within the material…an object that certainly looked like it could be a body. As the party looked about, they realized that it felt like someone (or something) was watching them. There wasn’t, however, any indication of someone (or something) else in the room watching them. The eggish, amber object could not be moved when pushed and even attempts to scratch it with a dagger were unsuccessful. While the party searched and poked and prodded about, Castanamir just climbed up on top of the “egg” and laid down for a quick nap, Poopsie perched on his chest and keeping an eye on things.
After finding nothing that caught their interest, the party went up the stairs and continued to the top of stairs…which ended at a small platform with a trapdoor above, presumably to the roof of the tower. Redwulf slowly opened the trapdoor and took a peek out. He saw a bunch of sticks stacked up. Seeing no immediate danger, he fully opened the trapdoor and climbed up. The roof of the tower was largely dominated by a rather big nest, presumably the nest of the griffins. At least two large eggs sat in the nest. Peeking over the tower’s edge, Redwulf caught sight of the griffins flying up and one let lose a loud screech. Despite being urged to search through the next, Redwulf climbed back down and closed the trapdoor before the griffins ascended to the top. Climbing back down, the party went through another portal.
They eventually came to a new room that they had not entered yet. This one had a four metal spheres, some three to four feet in diameter floating a foot or two off of the ground. A cabinet was in one corner and a worktable with numerous papers and books was in another. A few of the papers were scattered about the floor as well and a stool lay, upturned, on the floor as well…almost as if there had been a struggle in the room. The cabinet contained a single dagger and two silver oval amulets on silver chains. The ovals had no discernible markings upon them. All three items were taken from the cabinet. When the dagger was picked up the holder could hear a voice speaking in their head. It was a rather annoying voice that insistently demanded to be put down, let go, and/or set free. When handed to another character, that character then heard the voice. The dagger was quickly tossed into a backpack. The amulets were also taken.
All of the spheres appeared to have doors of some sort but without a handle. One of the doors was open but upon examination, showed that it was hollow inside and empty. Morgraen experimented with one of the closed spheres and eventually was able to open the door (by simply pushing inwards on it). As it opened, a greenish light flowed out and engulfed her…a green light that looked much like one of the spheres in the Zim exhibit. Rurik immediately tackled Morgraen in the hopes of taking her out of the light’s embrace but did not succeed. Before she lost the ability to move or speak [i.e., paralyzed], Morgraen was able to communicate that she could feel her strength being drained away and that she could hear dogs barking. Riordan tried striking the light with his mace but only succeeded in smacking Morgraen in the head [Rachel rolled a natural 1 on the attack]. The annoying dagger was retrieved and questioned but it gave no answers as to how to handle the light and Castanamir was likewise unhelpful. Eventually, Callie used the annoying dagger to “stab” the light and succeeded in making it release Morgraen and dissipate.
Shaken by this experience and a bit tired from their explorations, the party relaxed for awhile. As they did, Riordan looked through many of the scattered papers. All were written in Draconic and he could determine that they dealt with the summoning of spirits from the Ethereal Plane. These spirits, known as the Zim, had a great deal of variation rather than being a single “species” of spirit. They could be bound to items and it was quickly assumed that some of the items in this chamber, such as the annoying dagger, might be bound Zim. Most of the notes, however, were written at a level that was well beyond Riordan’s comprehension.
Heading back to the chamber with the two mirrors, the party spent quite a bit of time searching all of the walls and in the area where the hole had once been. They found no secret doors or stuff of interest. Bronn finished breaking the whole of the mirror that had had a piece broken off previously but still only found wall behind it. This only left a couple of chambers that hadn’t gotten even a cursory look yet. One of these was the workshop and so the party returned there for further investigation.
[Somewhere around this point, Rachel puzzled out the pattern of the portals. It had been determined before that going through a portal in one direction always led to a portal of a specific direction. Passing through an eastern portal, for example, always exited from a northern portal. Added to this was which portal would lead to which room such that once it was known where one portal in a chamber led to, the party could determine where the other three portals led to. Experimentation with this showed the logic to always hold.]
Callie snuck into the workshop proper to see what was on the side of the room that could not be seen through a window in the door giving egress. A large forge dominated that area of the room. Despite Callie’s entering the room, the three constructs that were repeatedly bending over, touching their toes, and standing back up did not change their pattern of behavior. Nor did smaller scale constructs on the worktable that were moving. Redwulf joined Callie in the room and the two headed for the three figures covered in dark cloth. The cloth completely covered whatever was beneath and the cloth draped all the way to the floor. Given that whatever the cloth covered was about the same height and generally the same size as the three constructs touching their toes, the party reasoned that there were three more under the cloth. Callie and Redwulf yanked one of the cloths off.
It was, indeed, one of the constructs and it immediately moved to attack. Both Callie and Redwulf scrambled away but not far enough to avoid the stream of noxious green gas that the construct “breathed” out of its mouth at them. Battle was joined and only certain of the party’s weapons seemed to do any damage to the thing. Magic also damaged it and a trio of magic missiles from Grim dropped the thing…or at least caused it to cease functioning. The party elected to not disturb the other cloths and headed out.
Eventually, it was decided that they should go “fishing” in the chamber with the pool. While the bulk of the party waited in the chamber previously known as the room with two mirrors, Lavinia and Bronn went into the pool chamber and moved close to the portal that led back to the chamber now known as the room with one intact mirror remaining. Lavinia drew her weapons and took up a defensive position. Bronn jury-rigged a crude bucket from a hooded lantern and tied a rope to it. He tossed it in the pool to scoop out some of the treasure within. As soon as the makeshift bucket struck the water, the same water rose up as a rough and menacing humanoid shape. Lavinia, despite being the armed defender, immediately darted through the portal, leaving Bronn to face whatever the pair of them had awakened in the pool.
However, Lavinia may have done nothing but jump from the proverbial skillet and into the fire. In the other chamber, the rest of the party prepared to wait for a bit before going to find out what had happened to Lavinia and Bronn. As they started to relax, Castanamir–in a corner of the room–simply said, “I told you to stay out of the pool room.” He then cackled gleefully and started to cast a spell as Poopsie gave everyone the evil eye.
[That, as you might have guessed, is where we ended the session…just a few minutes early. I really do like ending on these sort of cliffhangers when I can.
One thing that I didn’t really include in the journal is Castanamir’s continued insanity and growing threats. He and Lilly would often have a private word under the guise of sharing a private moment between the recently engaged. His threats continued to grow and eventually focused on the party NOT going into the pool room. His mental stability was also shown to be increasingly wobbly. In one moment of clarity, shared privately with Lilly, she asked why he was doing all of this and not just showing them the way out. His response was simply that it was more fun this way…with an evil grin, of course. Every single time that Lilly started to hint at what was going on, Poopsie would let loose with a caw that would immediately shut her up.
Thomas was a very good sport and played along with it all very well. The rest of the players also didn’t use the info that their characters didn’t know even though all of the interactions between Castanamir, Poopsie, and Lilly all occurred in front of all of the players…although they might not have picked up on all of them. As usual, I enjoyed playing an imbalanced NPC and consider it quite the compliment that Rachel said I was starting to creep her out a bit too much. I mean who wouldn’t want to climb into bed next to someone who was just acting like he was an old, creepy cannibal who considers farm-funky toes to be a delicacy! đŸ˜‰
