At the end of our last session, our intrepid adventurers returned to their explorations, encountered some troglodytes, and found the Glitterhame…a rich vein of gem stones that the dwarves of Migdhal Yar had mined ages ago. They also encountered something rather disturbing. After retreating to the safety of Cagair Keep for the night, they found that something else…something disturbing. Some creature had been gnawing upon the bodies of the dead troglodytes and leaving large, wet prints throughout the caverns. Then they found the creature…or perhaps better put, it found them. A large, pale frog-like thing with a massive tongue and tusks attacked. As we ended the session, it had grabbed Rory and was retreating with her into a watery chamber. We pick up this session right there.
This recap is from RJ. Craig and Muse had to miss this session and so Thomas and Rachel, respectively, played Dench and Dru. My GM comments, as usual, are in [brackets and italics].
We saw the frog thing take Rory around the corner. We are in pursuit and we see it drag Rory down into the water with her daggers held high
As the three (Verrak, Adran, and Skarr) are swimming down thru the watery tunnel, it is very dark and murky. [Chumlike was even used to describe the limited range of sight in the water.] Verrak sees a troglodyte’s head float by and he is startled and takes in some water as he is swimming. After a few more minutes without being able to get air, Verrak starts to head back. Skar and Adran continue on and pop up in [some stale air in] a cavern with a column in the middle.
The cavern is filled with water and no place to get out of the water. They swim closer to the column and see that there is a wall behind it. Adran swims to the wall and feels around for another tunnel, he then dives under hoping to find another tunnel where the monster took Rory. As he is feeling around, he sees the monster at the bottom. There is no Rory but its tongue is out and reaching for Adran. Adran waves his arms and pops up again yelling, “It’s down here.” Skarr dives down and sees the monsters and determines it is dead [as there is a rather large puncture wound in its skull…possibly from a rapier like the one Rory wields. I believe that Adran had also spotted Rory’s rapier lying at the bottom of the watery cavern moments before.].
As Adran is swimming back to the column, he sees something in the water by the column. He swims closer and see’s that it is a body, in fact it’s Rory. Adran swims up [to find that she is half-propped up on a small ledge above the water] and pulls himself up on the ledge of the column. Rory and a bag are on the ledge. Adran turns Rory over and see’s she is still breathing. Skarr swims over and heals her. She coughs up some water and Adran asks her what happened? She explains that she killed the monster and then she was swimming and [just as she blacked out she reached the ledge and the last thing she felt was] something biting her hand. She starts to scratch at her hand and then she sees a tattoo on her hand of a spider with a web. She has no idea of how that got there, I tell her we need to get back to the others and we can examine it better out of this cave. I grab the bag and we all get back into the water and start to swim to the exit. I noticed Rory’s rapier at the bottom of the pool and I head back down to get it. I see some coins while down there and grab a few. I give Rory her rapier back and we swim into the tunnel to get back to the others.
While this was going on, Verrak did not make it back to the others before losing his breath. He made it through the tunnel and started floating to the top when Dru and Dench saw him. They jumped in and pulled him out of the water, cleared his lungs, and cast heal on him. He is still hurt but told them that he didn’t have enough air to get thru and that he had not seen Rory or a sign of the monster before he had to turn back.
Adran, Skarr, and Rory come back thru the tunnel and pull themselves out of the water. Rory shows her tattoo to everyone and Verrak is fascinated by it. He is examining it, asking questions, and even asks if he can try to pry one of the stones out. Rory declines his request. The tattoo doesn’t come off when rubbed and it feels raised where the red stones are. Adran suggest she tries to fire a web from it and see if it works. She makes a gesture with her hand and says ‘web’; nothing happens. Skarr laughs at that and all of a sudden her arm starts to change: metal scales encase her arm, claws come out where her fingers are, and she mutters “Butch” and swings at Skarr with her claws. He avoids the swing and she looks surprised at her action. She says that she just saw Butch and that she wanted to hurt him. She was pretty guarded about Butch and what he meant to her. A discussion goes on about what to do about her tattoo (get rid of it) but Rory says, ‘I can use it’. Skarr says that Rory needs to go in front of him from now on.
Adran looks at the coins he got from the bottom of the pool and see’s that they are copper and dwarven made. He looks in the bag and realizes it is bigger inside then out. He reaches in and pull out some onyx dice. Verrak says the bag could be magical and suggest just turning it over and dropping everything out. Adran does that and a shower of coins come out, a pitcher made from bloodstone, a soapstone bracelet, and a bloodstone locket. Engraved on the locket is ‘May our love grow as long as your beard.’ I gather everything up and put it back into the bag tie and it to my belt.
We all look a little rough and decide to head back out to the axe room and take a short rest. We heal up and head back in. We first head to the tunnel with scratches on it and realize it’s a tight fit, but Skarr suggest Rory to take a look since she has this new weapon and Rory agrees. She goes in and it starts to incline up to a point where she is going to have to climb. She comes back and informs us the direction and that we would have to climb up to continue, with not that much rope and other avenues to explore we move on. We stop and look at the waterfall [in the first cavern beyond the dwarven doors] again, nothing behind it, and the tunnel where the water comes from has some room we could craw thru but it would be a tight fit.
We come back over to where the stream goes under the wall. We get an idea to put some air in a water skin and put it in the water and see if it floats out where the stream comes into the tunnel where the frog monster was. Three of us go [to the frog chamber] and see and the others wait five minutes and put the skin in the water. They come over but after more than ten minutes, there is no sign of the skin.
Rory and Dench decide to get in the stream and swim under the tunnel to see where it goes. They come thru the other side to a large cavern [with many side passages and caverns]. Where the stream exits the cavern, going through another narrow tunnel, there seems to be a crude gate system and they find the water skin up against it. They retrieve it and move the opening they saw to the right.
It seems to be a nesting ground for troglodytes. There are young and old troglodytes bodies lying dead on the ground. There are several eggs smashed up on the ground as well. (I can’t remember if the bodies were chewed on or not. [Yes, they were chewed upon.]) Finding nothing of value, they get back into the stream and head back to the group. Rory lets us know what they found.
After some discussion, it is decided that we will cross the bridge and head into what we hope is Migdhal Yar. It is very dark and quiet as we head onto the bridge, Verrak seems awed being on the bridge. As we look down, we can’t see the bottom but we do see columns every 60 feet supporting the bridge we are on. Up in the distance we see a wall in the middle of the bridge. Verrak says that is probably the guard house and is the half way point.
Adran turns off his light spell and we walk closer to the wall. The wall is pretty smooth and looks to be about 60 to 80 feet tall. There is an opening in the wall and it looks like it is a tunnel with an opening on the other side. We don’t see any portcullis or gate on this side and we are a little worried about any murder holes in the tunnels.
As we are examining the gate house, Verrak is gone. We look up and he is being pulled into the air by a spider like creature on top of the gate house. Then another two show up next to first and something shoots down at Skarr but misses. It is laying on the ground and looks like some kind of silk filament. Another shoots down at Skarr and he is pulled up into the air. Adran and Dru show fire bolts at the creatures and then move back into the tunnel. Rory runs thru the tunnel hoping to get to the other side and find some stairs, but when she gets to the other side she doesn’t see a way up and starts heading back to the group. Verrak is almost to the top and Skarr is halfway up and when he cuts the filament pulling him up. Adran casts feather fall and Skarr falls to the ground slowly like a feather. Dench transforms into a spider and starts to climb the wall. Verrak at the top pushes off the wall and casts thunder wave at the three creatures and they are pushed back and Verrak is pulled on top of the wall. The creatures come in and they attack him with their claws, he gets hit pretty hard and decides to make his escape. He turns around and runs off the wall thinking that his new friend [Adran…for the record] would save him with a spell. Unfortunately, his friend just cast that spell and couldn’t cast it fast enough to stop Verrak’s fall. There is a loud splat and Verrak is down on the ground, blood coming out of his body. That’s when he gets hit with the filament again and is pulled up. Skarr casts a spell and Verrak is moving slowly, realizing he is being dragged up again he casts ray of frost at the monster. Rory gets back and as one of the monsters spits out its filament she pushes Skarr out of the way and she gets hit and is starting to be pulled up as she planned it out. Dru and Adran keep throwing fire bolts at them and one goes down. Dench is halfway up and sees Verrak and webs him which stops him from being pulled up momentarily. Dench keeps moving up and gets to the top. He attacks one of the monsters from behind and both of the spider creatures let go of their captives and they start to fall to the ground. Adran casts feather fall and they both get to the ground safely. Dench is attacked and decides to withdraw and heads back down the wall. The two creatures move back to the edge to shoot at Dench the spider when they get hit with several spells and both go down.
We heal up and continue on to the city. The bridge starts to slope down and we see another cave and a portcullis. As we get closer there are parapets above the portcullis where a defender could shoot arrows down on the enemy. Luckily there were no defenders there now. We look into the tunnel and see another portcullis and a double door closed. Dench turns into a normal spider and starts to climb up the wall…[to enter via some arrow slits that were spotted on an upper level.]
[And that’s where we ended the session. Not much of a cliffhanger but certainly some unknowns. This is likely Migdhal Yar proper…the westernmost outpost of an ancient (and fallen) dwarven empire. From the looks of entry area between the two portcullises, no one has been here in quite a long time. I wonder what might lie forgotten within.
Beer Log: A pretty slow night on the beer front (partly because we had brownies and gelato with a rather tasty raspberry and framboise lambic reduction as a topping…made by yours truly. 😉
Using our hit, miss, crit, and fumble rating scale, below is what we sampled this session.
- Cascade Elderberry: A hit but really, what else would a Cascade sour be…maybe a crit from some of them. Shared by RJ and a wonderful tart, tangy, and fruity beer.
- Stone Your Father Smelt of Elderberries: Very boozy gruit…I’d say very much like a barleywine. Some herb but I didn’t get much fruit. Tasted a bit better once it warmed up some. Opinions varied on this and it probably ranged from a miss to a pretty solid hit amongst the group. It could be a hit or a miss for me depending on the night and what else I’m drinking.
dang…i missed out on all the yummies AND a cool session!