The Side Quest Session 13

In out last session, the party continued their explorations of Castanamir’s home. They had solved the riddle of how to get around the place but they still had not found an exit. There was one room that they had not really explored, one with a pool of water with much treasure at the bottom. Although Bronn had wanted to take some of the treasure, he had been convinced to leave it alone by the rest of the party. Fresh out of ideas for what to do next, they all agreed to tamper with the pool and that’s largely where we had ended the last session with Bronn and Lavinia in the pool room and the rest of the party and Castanamir in a different room. Neither location looked to be safe as the session ended.

This session we had Geoff, Rachel, RJ, Thomas and were joined by Geoff’s son, Alex. So we had Redwulf, Morgraen, Riordan, Lavinia, Rurik, Lilly, and Bronn who were joined by Pablo, a dwarven monk. We’re pretty much sticking with the Basic Rules for this campaign but Alex wanted to play a monk and it was pretty much a one-time thing so why not.

It also turned out that Session 13 was an unlucky number for one of the PCs who died. I won’t tell you who…you’ll have to read this session writeup to find 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].

Castanamir’s threat turned into a gleeful cackle as he gathered magical energies to release some spell. Before he could complete his spell, however, a new person…a dwarf…stepped through the nearby portal and bumped the wizard, disrupting the spell. The wizard quickly recovered and soon a large cloud of sickly green gas filled a large part of the room with a number of the party caught within it. The ensuing battle was relatively short and Castanamir was defeated but not before a few interesting things had happened. Castanamir tried to convince the party to stop fighting or he would say a word that would kill Lilly. It was believed that he was bluffing but he wasn’t. With a single word, Lilly felt the life drained out of her through the engagement ring that Castanamir had given him. She collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Poopsie also transformed from a crow into a some scary, almost demonic, ghoul-like creature. When Lavinia dropped Castanamir with one of her arrows, Poopsie went crazy and pursued her regardless of the rest of the party. Even after his attacks had incapacitated Lavinia, the creature kept attacking her, tearing out chunks of her flesh before Poopsie was killed. Upon its death, the creature’s body simply faded away. [Don’t forget that Lavinia had run from the pool room as soon as the watery creature appeared there and thus had jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.]

After the battle, Riordan administered one of the potions of healing that had been found in the alchemy lab on this level to Lilly. It was one of the potions with a cracked wax seal that had been in the found traveling case. Lilly immediately began to convulse and foam at the mouth…the potion was either poison or had gone bad with the same result. Fortunately, the party was able to tend to her without resorting to anymore of the cracked potions. Castanamir’s body was searched but he really had little of value. They party did find the orb and wand that had been found in one of the rooms that Castanamir had taken but not the ring he had taken. Lavinia wanted to cut him open to see if he had swallowed it [he had] but no one else liked that plan. It was also assumed that there was no way that this person had been Castanamir…he simply had been defeated to easily to be a powerful wizard thousands of years old.

Meanwhile, in the pool room, Bronn was confronted by some sort of liquid creature that rose out of the pool. The creature, whose name was Naran, indicated that the treasure in the pool belonged to it. Anyone who attempted to steal it would be harshly dealt with and, as a demonstration of its power, Bronn was struck blind momentarily. Naran explained that it would answer any questions that Bronn might have but that fair compensation would be needed. Compensation that could take the form of treasure, magical items, or lives. Bronn hemmed and hawed and eventually excused himself to rejoin the rest of the party as he really had very little that he could offer in compensation.

Rejoining the others, both parties shared what had happened in the absence of the other. There was then a good amount of discussion about what could be given to Naran in exchange for answers to their questions. The foremost question, of course, was the location of the exit. Going back into the room, the party “summoned” Naran again. To again demonstrate its power, Naran transformed Bronn into a cat and Lavinia into a poodle and the dog began to chase the cat around the room before they both vanish! With appropriate respect of Naran’s power, Morgraen asks where the exit from Castanamir’s home could be found. In exchange for the answer, she offered up bot hfo the silver amulets found in the conjuring room as well as the amulet that had been taken from the Zim Exhibit [plus, I’m pretty sure, one other item but I don’t remember which]. Naran responded that they could exit by either using the Dimensional Hopper or through the back door in Castanamir’s rest area. Morgraen then asked if Bronn and Lavinia would be returned and offered the staff found in the Zim Exhibit. Naran responded yes and both reappeared, crawling on the floor chasing each other but in their normal forms.

The party took their leave and set about trying to find Castanamir’s rest area without asking any additional questions. A number of the chambers on this level were given thorough searches taking hours in each. They found no hidden doors or the like. Operating under the [correct] assumption that the exit was not one of the four portals in each chamber, they figured there must be a secret room they had missed. Heading back to the pool, Naran was summoned again and was asked for the path to get back to their own world. Naran responded by describing a route back to the hall with the mirror and then to go into Castanamir’s rest area and through the back door. For this answer, the party tossed the orb that had been found into the pool [along with one other item that I don’t recall at the moment…maybe the case with the cracked potions]. When asked how to open the door to the rest area, Naran responded to use the handle and received the plant from the Zim Exhibit in payment…much to Lilly’s chagrin.

Back in the hall with the mirror, the party focused their attentions on the mirror. Eventually, Redwulf realized that the pattern of ripples in the mirror [remember, it rippled like water when touched] suggested that something else was in one location of the mirror’s “depths.” Reaching in, Redwulf found that his hand could slip deeper into the mirror than in other locations and that he could feel what might be a door handle within. Turning the handle, a click could be heard from the wall opposite the mirror as a door slowly swung open to reveal a dark chamber beyond and a large man, some seven feet tall, that looked to have been sewn together from various body parts! Based perhaps on tavern tales and perhaps on the construct workshop they had encountered, the party assumed it to be a flesh golem!

It became quickly apparent that mundane weapons had no really effect on the creature. Unfortunately, the party had very few magical weapons [I believe that maybe only Morgraen and Lavinia had any in one of the shortswords from the Zim Exhibit and the silver dagger from a prior adventure]. The creature was tough…damn tough…and could dish out some pretty damaging blows with its fists. The party threw pretty much everything they had at it [good thing they had taken a long rest before encountering it] but it still incapacitated Morgraen as it focused its attacks on whoever was damaging it the most. Lavinia took up the magical shortsword and continued the attack after the dwarf fell. She too fell to the creature’s attacks but, unlike Morgraen, her wounds were mortal. Finally, the spells of Lilly, Redwulf, and Rurik dropped the c reature. [I’m still adjusting to the idea that a cleric can have a 1st level spell that does 4d6 damage on a hit…Guiding Bolt…but good thing it did or more PCs would have died. Remember, this is a module from back in the 70s and a flesh golem would have been a very tough fight back then. But the golem did have one weakness, it deactivated in darkness. Although this wasn’t obvious to the party, there had been a prior hint. The constructs in the workshop that had drapes on them didn’t activate until the drape was removed and the construct was exposed to light. I can’t say I would have made that connection either.]

Mourning their fallen friend as best they could, the party went in to examine the new chamber. Inside was a trio of chests off to one side, a set of shelves with boxes upon them at the far end of the room, a post about three feet high in the middle of the room with a leather strap attached to the top of it with a belt attached to the strap, and another portal! The PCs quickly set about examining the various elements of interest. The three chests did not have any apparent traps and were easily opened. One held a couple of fairly large sacks of coins, one with gold and one with silver at 1,000 coins each. The second chest had two pouches that were filled with assorted gems including a pearl! [The party had been looking for a pearl for awhile now as Riordan has Identify as a domain spell. The question now, I suppose, is whether or not the pearl is worth at least 100gp.] The last chest contained a jewelry case that contained a strange amulet. Circular in shape, it had runes carved around the outer edge and a dial with a pointer in the middle of the amulet.

The boxes on the shelves contained a variety of clothing and journals. The journals looked, with quick glance, to be journals written by Castanamir.

The strangest sight as the short pole in the middle of the room. A leather strap was attached to the top of the pole and hung almost to the floor. At the other end of the strap was a loop and a belt was threaded through the loop. It certainly looked like it was setup to somehow restrain someone by buckling the belt around them. However, it didn’t look like it would do much keep them restrained as they would be able to free themselves by simple unbuckling the belt.

The party divvied up the coins and gems (after Riordan took the pearl). Bronn took the amulet and the belt and some of the journals were taken by some characters. The party then passed through the portal to find themselves in the underground tunnel from which they had originally entered Castanamir’s home. Taking the spiral stairs back up to the surface, they found that the near hurricane force storm still raged. Despite the pelting rain and howling winds, the party was able to make their way back to the large portal on the surface which had brought them to this place from the Valley. Thankful to have found their way out, the party hurried through the portal and, hopefully, back to their own world.

[That, of course, is where we ended the session.]