When our last session ended, the party had–somewhat–consolidated their hold on Cagair Keep. Additional troops, nearly all half-orcs and some progeny, had been brought in by Thokk and had sworn some sort of orcish oath to Adran. The dworc servants were helping Adran settle into his new role (and, for varying reasons, learning to dislike Strik). Perhaps even more importantly, a secret entrance to some sort of lower level had been discovered! Caill’s will had hinted at treasure that those who invaded his keep probably would not have found and the dworcs had told Adran he would find great treasure below. Now we’re talking…loot!
This recap is from RJ. Muse and Rachel both had to miss this session. Also, Andrew had to “tender his resignation” from the group with a busy schedule and a planned move out of town. I learned my lesson last time with Bran (Todd’s prior character) departing as he had. So this time, Luther just kind of faded…stage left. My GM comments are in [brackets and italics].
When we last left our heroes, Strik was opening the wooden door at the bottom of the shaft we had found in Caill Dafad’s sitting room [study, not sitting room]. The hinges and the door were in good shape and opened easily. There were steps leading down, Strik heads down but stops as he hears a chipping sound. It sounds like metal chipping at stone and it sounds like there is more than one. [A lot more than one. 😉 ] Strik decides to wait to the rest of the party comes down.
While back up in the office, Adran asks Berguk to get Lokka and he sends his brother to go get her. Dru goes down the rope next and then Rory. Skarr goes down next to secure the area so it is safe for Adran.
As soon as the party starts coming down the rope Strik goes down the stairs and into the room. The room is stone, worked stone in fact and there are several doors on the far side. There look to be 15 doors on the far wall that lead to a hallway with some more doors on the other side as well as a single door at the end of the hallway. [Only 10 doors on the far wall with five more on the near wall and the last single door.]
Adran has not come down the rope yet and Skarr is wondering what’s going on, so he decides to climb back up. When he gets to the top, he sees Adran and asks him why he hasn’t come down the rope yet. Adran explains that he is waiting for Lokka to come so he can tell her where they are going and to make sure she doesn’t cause any political problems (like killing any messengers or envoys from Daggerford or Waterdeep). Skarr looks frustrated and in a very firm voice “Why don’t you leave her a note or give Berguk the message to tell her?” Adran thinks that’s a very good idea and asks Berguk to get some paper and a pen. He goes to get the items and Skarr looks out the window to call for one of the guards to go get Lokka but thinks better of it. Berguk brings back pen and paper and Adran starts to write his note. The note basically tells Lokka that he and his friends are going down the shaft to investigate and that if any envoys come by specifically from Daggerford or Waterdeep to treat them as guests. Skarr is getting more frustrated and asks why he doesn’t just give Berguk the message. Adran tells him that Lokka may not believe it if it comes from Berguk and that a signed note would work. Adran asks if there is something to seal the note with, but Skarr is adamant that we get going so Adran hands the note to Berguk, tells him to give it to Lokka, and starts to head to the shaft. Berguk asks “Do you know if the captain can read?” Adran turns to Skarr and asks if his sister can read. He looks at him, deadpan, and says “Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Adran thinks that is not a good idea and decides to head down the rope. Berguk opens the note, reads it, folds it back, and tries to hand it to Skarr and tells him “Take this to Lokka.” Skarr just stares at him and tells him no, “I am going down there too, you will have to give it to the captain.” He then turns and heads down the rope after Adran.
[I love it! I think that between Skarr being his personal bodyguard…and Todd’s character…and Lokka being the captain that Adran (and RJ) is going to have his hands full not saying the wrong thing and pushing one of them too far. Pushing too far is probably not going to be good for his health.]
While this was going on upstairs, Strik goes up to one of the doors and notices some markings on the side of the door. As he is looking at the door, he has a sudden urge to investigate the door at the end of the hallway. He rushes over there and opens the door and inside he sees a desk with a chair, bookshelf, another door, and a chest. They all look rather new and in pretty good shape. As Strik opens that door all the other doors open and there are what look like dwarves, but they have red eyes, shabby clothes, some gaping wounds, and their skin looks pale [and kind of emaciated too]. They are carrying picks and hammers, when the doors opened the sound of metal on stone stops and they start shambling out.
[Strik felt overwhelmingly compelled to investigate down here further. Not big deal, right? That was the party’s goal anyways. I believe that Rory felt a similar compulsion]
Strik feels that he needs to get in and yells follow me, Dru and Rory rush into the room and Strik steps in and closes the door. He turns around and starts looking thru the room. He looks on the desk and sees another polished turd like the one above. It looks like a paper weight and he puts it in his backpack. Going thru the desk there are more papers in the same language [script as that around the prior doors and unrecognized by the trio of PCs] and more writing tools. There are papers on the desk but no one can read them, it doesn’t look recognizable to anyone. There are four books on the book shelf and Dru pulls one down and opens it. It is in the same writing as the papers on the desk. They look at the chest and it is locked. Rory gets her tools out and eventually opens the chest. Inside are three sacks and a pouch. There are copper coins in the first (and biggest), silver coins in another, and gold in the last [and smallest] sack. Roughly about 1500 coopers, 1000 silvers, and 100 gold. Inside the pouch, are gems and a ring. The ring seems to have the same kind of language engraved inside it.
Dru goes back to the door and listens. She hears the chipping sound again and opens the door. The Zombie dwarves shamble out again and she quickly closes the door. She lets the party know that they are still there.
Eventually, Adran gets down the rope. He looks around for the rest of his friends but doesn’t see them. He starts down the stairs, hears a chipping noise, and sees the doors at the end of the room are open. He peers at the doors and sees figures chipping at the side with picks and hammers. He turns back to the rope and yells, “There are doors open down here, were they open before?” The figures start shambling out and towards Adran. Skarr yells down, “What doors?”
As they start to get closer, Adran casts invisibility on himself and moves out of the way. Skarr reaches the bottom and looks down the stairs and sees some movement but not much else. Skarr pulls out his sword and shield and starts to head down the stairs. The movement is the zombie dwarves as described before. The zombie dwarves start attacking Skarr, he takes a couple of hits and then he swings at them but it doesn’t seem he is doing as much damage to them as he should. Adran decides to see if he can distract them and casts light onto one of his daggers and throws it across the room. One of the creatures goes to investigate. Around this time, Skarr calls out to his deity and several of the creature’s starts to turn away and move away from Skarr. Two are still there, Adran calls out to Skarr “I am invisible do you want me to help you out?” Skarr responds, “No, hide and try to find the others.” Adran goes and looks around the corner and sees more creatures in the door making the chipping sound. Skarr eventually takes the two out.
Adran tells him what he sees around the corner and that there are more around the corner. They move deeper into the room and start to head around the corner where the other doors are. Skarr starts to move very quietly around the corner and as soon as he does the dwarf zombies start to come out again. [We also had a short discussion at the table about the difference between being quiet and being hidden…the dwarf things could see Skarr passing by even though he was quiet.] Adran tells Skarr to head to the door, Skarr doesn’t leave his post and stays right where he is. They start to surround Skarr and bump into Adran and start to grab whatever they can (since they can’t seem to get closer). They attack Skarr and he takes a couple of hits. Adran decides to cast invisibility on both of them. The ones that were grabbing Adran look like they are going to hurt him. Skarr decides to cast sanctuary on Adran and the three that were grabbing him let go. The rest of the zombies stop moving and wander back into their doors and start chipping at the walls again.
Skarr starts to move towards the far door and Adran has his hand on his shoulder. Adran starts to feel that Skarr is going too fast, that he is going to make too much noise, and get both of them killed. He feels [perhaps like a compulsion?] he has to get the door right away [I thought it was get to the door as quietly and safely as possible] and he kicks Skarr’s legs out from under him [since his bodyguard was simply going forward too fast to be safe and quiet]. Adran’s invisibility goes away and Skarr falls down with a loud crash. The Zombies start to shamble out and Adran runs to the far door, he trips over something (the invisible Skarr), gets up and heads straight to the door. As he gets to the door, the door is opening and he steps thru. Adran is relieved that he got to the door and is proud of himself for getting there.
Strik looks at Adran and asks “Where’s Skarr?”
Adran responds “He is back there, he fell.” While still in the doorway, a Zombie strikes out at Adran and hits him with a solid whack. Strik starts to head to the door, Adran says “he is invisible though” and steps inside and Dru closes the door.
Skarr sees the door close and stands up slowly. The Undead things look around and eventually head back to their doors. Skarr moves slowly and quietly to the far door where Adran went. He opens the door and Strik is standing there, Skarr says “Let me in” and Strik moves out of the way. Skarr comes into the room and Adran drops the invisibility spell.
Now since the party is back together, they tell each other what happened. Strik tells them that they did find some treasure, Adran is happy since now it looks like they can afford the keep. He also shows him the ring. Adran puts the ring on but nothing seems to happen. As he looks at the ring closer he realizes that the ring is his mother’s wedding ring. [Or one that looks very, very similar to it.]
The party looks hurt and heal up. There is some discussion about who is better at protection between Strik and Skarr. No real winner was decided. We decided to keep going on and take the books with us and leave sacks [due to the bulk and weight] but do take the pouch with the gems.
We open the other door in the room, we hear that scrapping, chipping sound again. It is a long hallway, with bunch of doors again on both sides. [Even more doors this time around! The more the merrier!] It has the same marking next the doors as the prior doors. The party moves down the hallway, where there is another door. Rory looks around the door to see if there are any trip wires or anything that would show if the other doors would open, but the constant sound of chipping and scraping seem to be distracting her. We decide to go in and open the doors. As we open the door, the other doors open and the scrapping/rapping sound stops. We rush into the room and shut the door. [What’s that saying about only who rushes in? 😀 ]
As we are looking around the room, which is square and has another door on the opposite side and two openings to the left and right, we hear a rasping sound from the right hand side. Skarr grabs Adran and moves him behind him as a figure moves quickly into the room from the right side. The figure is wearing dark armor, dark skin, pale hair, reddish eyes, it looks emaciated, and part of its nose is missing. It looks at the group with a dark hunger and comes at us. It draws a dark blade as it comes.
Adran steps forward and throws a fire bolt at the figure. Dru shoots at it and misses and Rory steps up to it and stabs at it with her rapier and moves away from it. It comes after her and misses with its sword and swings its other hand at Strik and misses. Skarr comes over and nudges Rory out of the way as it swings again and misses her.
It starts to mutter in Undercommon, “It’s been soooo long…sooooo hungry.” We keep attacking the creature but our weapons don’t seem to be hurting it as much as they should. It steps up to Dru and hits her with the sword, Dru looks hurt. Skarr comes up and hits it with its sword but it swings back and hits him with his hand. Skarr looks hurt and a looks a little worse for wear. [Only a little?]
We start to hear a sound from the left and another armored emaciated figure moves in the room from the left. We knock the first one down and move to engage the next one. Rory steps up and hits it with an excellent thrust and moves out of the way. Strik moves in and takes some damage but not from its hand. Dru and Adran both throw fire bolts at it and keep chipping away at it. Rory again gets in another thrust that should have put it down but her blade doesn’t seem to go in as deep as it should. It swings again at Strick but he dodges out of the way and Rory comes in again and it puts it down.
[Rory showed that rogues really can dish out a LOT of damage in 5e. She probably did at least 80 points of damage in just a few rounds and only at 3rd level. I guess it helps that she got at least one (was it two?) crits.]
Skarr moves over and chops their heads off. As we look at them, they appear to be drow and have spider symbols on them, and a[n unrecognized Drow] house symbol on them. Strik takes one of the house symbols and puts it in his backpack. There is also a pouch and some strange coins in it made of metal we don’t seem to recognize. [Oh goody…more potential plot hooks.]
We check out the two openings to the left and the right. There is a bunch of debris and dwarven skeletons in both chambers. We decide to take a short rest and Strik prays to his mysterious deity and we all feel better. After are rest we move to the door.
We open the door and inside is a pit that goes down a long way. On the ceiling over the pit is a mechanical device that has a chain and cables. The device looks destroyed and the cables goes down about 10 feet and look like they have been severed. There are cables that lead out from the device and go into the other rooms where pulleys are attached to the ceiling. We decide that we need to get back to the keep before going any further. But at least we know where we are going to get Adran’s destiny.
[The destroyed “machinery” was in each of the side rooms with a pulley-like thing over the pit. It was pretty clear, obviously, that some sort of contraption for moving things up and down the shaft was once here.]
We make a plan to get back by both Skarr and Strik calling on their deities and making the undead dwarves back away from us. We head back in to the room with long hallway and multiple doors and Skarr rushes in and calls down the wrath of his God and several of the undead move away from him. Then Strik does the same and several more move away. We just need to deal with about 4 of them that block the hallway but we knock one down and we all run straight to the door. We eventually make it to the next room.
We hope that we can run straight thru the next room and close the door and start our way up. We open the door and we run thru, Skarr is the last one thru and he closes the door. We get up to the top and…
[That’s where we stopped for the night. I couldn’t very well tell them what they found back up top in the keep. I mean what if Lady Hawke had attacked and overrun the keep in the couple of hours that they were all down below? Or what if Thokk had come back with Snowball and decided he did want the keep after all and was waiting up top for them to return? What if Ugak was waiting with more breakfast for Strik? It would just spoil the fun if I had told them which, if any or multiples, of those were what they found back in the keep.
For the record, there were nearly forty of the undead dwarf things. I believe that the party only “killed” three of those if I recall correctly. That’s a whole passel of baddies still waiting in the explored areas down below…not to mention whatever baddies might be down that “elevator” shaft.
And what’s up with all these zombie-dwarf things? Where’d they come from? How’d Caill deal with them? I suppose he did mention something about his wards holding the doors. I wonder if all these doors are what he was referring to and, if so, why aren’t they holding now. It isn’t like wards would go away weeks after the caster died, would they?
Life-sucking, undead drow? WTF daHeadRat?!? The party is only 3rd level!!! Oh, chill out! They handled them with very little problem. Just because Skarr’s maximum hit points got lowered a wee bit isn’t something to get all upset over, is it? And really, aren’t you more curious about there being undead drow period? Where’d they come from?!? I sure hope that I’ve got some kind of backstory all written up about this. Maybe I do or maybe I don’t…what do you think?
Beer Log: Using our hit, miss, crit, and fumble rating scale, below is what we sampled this session. Of course, without Rachel’s notes to rely on, there is a good chance that I might have missed one.
- Straight to Ale Monkeynaut: Courtesy of RJ. Okay but not the best IPA. It might have been a bit old too as I’ve had Monkeynaut before and definitely liked it better before. A weak hit.
- Straight to Ale Monkey’s Uncle: Also courtesy of RJ. The Imperial IPA and was better than the Monkeynaut. A hit.
- Karben4 Brewing Fantasy Factory: Also courtesy of RJ. I had never heard of this brewery before but it’ll be hard to miss it if I ever see that label again…a cat carrying a golden gun riding a fire breathing unicorn and that’s just the start. A damn good beer too. I liked this one a lot but not quite critworthy…close but not quite.
- Prairie Bomb!: Damn good stout. I’m pretty sure that this was a crit for Thomas and pretty close to one for me but not quite. A good, solid thwack with sneak attack damage.
- Prairie Christmas Bomb!: This was a miss for me despite how much I like the regular Bomb! There was something about the spice (anise perhaps) that just didn’t work for me.
Another good session and good tasting. Although the dwarf things didn’t seem like much individually, I think there was a definite tension at the table with the number that were encountered. A straight up fight could have turned into a TPK and it was great to see a different tact taken by the group. 😉 ]
