When we stopped our last session, the party had found the entrance to what they believe is Migdhal Yar proper, a set of massive stone double doors protected by two thick, heavy portcullises. It didn’t look like anyone had been here in, well, pretty much forever. We pick up this session with the group trying to determine how to get past the fortifications.
This recap is from Muse. Todd had to miss another session so Thomas played Skarr. My GM comments, as usual, are in [brackets and italics].
We stand at the entrance to Migdail Yar, a portcullis in front of us, with another across the way, beyond which lies a double door.
[Just to add a bit more of a visual, the bridge crossed to a massive face of stone. A tunnel was carved into the stone and it ended in the double doors with the portcullises spaced about twenty or so feet apart from each other, the closest about ten feet from the doors. Above, the stone overhang the bridge and had been worked as a stronghold with numerous large arrows slits obvious. Reaching the slits, however, would require flying or the ability to climb like, well, a spider given how sheer the surrounding walls are…or some clever plan by the PCs.]
Some discuss ways to get past the portcullises, we even try using muscle and forcing it up, but it’s too heavy. With no way thru the portcullis, we determine our best bet to try one of the large arrow slots.
There is some discussion about how to get up there, and whether to send Dench up in animal form, but ultimately decide to rig up a sort of grappling hook with an arrow and some rope. Dru tosses it up a few times until she is able to get it to hold fast and then climbs up to see what she can see. As she reaches the top and puts her head to the hole, she comes face to face with a large ballista bolt. Momentarily surprised and panicked, she quickly drops down the rope.
Rory climbs up to take a look and see what she can see.
She notices that the ballista bolt and the ballista itself appear unused and old, very old. They are covered in mushrooms and fungus. Examining beyond the ballista she sees an area to the rear, about 30 feet back, were there are openings.
We discuss the best plan to get inside. The opening is small, none of us would fit through it as is. We decide that two members need to go, as we can’t let Dench get stuck there himself if something happens and he needs to shift to human form. We settle on Adran shrinking Rory [via an enlarge/reduce spell], while Dench will shift to a rat.
Dench climbs the rope and goes thru the arrow slot. Rory follows but as soon as she enters the slot, a ear piercing shriek fills the air.
They try to run to the right to the openings that Rory had seen but change their minds as they see two doorways, one of which has mushrooms covering the threshold. Peeking in through the opening, they can see a room but not much else. The smell in the area is old, wet, and musty. The mushrooms are of varying sizes, some of which are nearly 4 feet tall.
The sound has not abated and they hurriedly head to the open area to the left but discover that it just contains more ballistas. Ratty Dench then heads to the open doorway with the mushrooms and discovers what appears to be some long rotted weapons racks. As he moves to go forward, one of the mushrooms lifts a foot and tries to stomp Ratty Dench but misses. Ratty Dench flees back to where Rory is, who has now regained her original size.
Three mushrooms [myconids for those who want to know] appear and shoot spores at Rory, leaving her stunned. To help his fellow party member, Ratty Dench shifts back to Half Orc Dench and casts flaming sphere, hoping to flambé the mushrooms. The mushrooms are none too happy about this and retaliate by shooting spores at Dench but he is able to resist their effects and calls out for help.
Although the shrieking is still going on, Dru’s elven ears are able to hear his cry for help and demands that Adran cast his magic on the two of them so they can go help their comrades. (It is noted that Skarr and Verrak are too large and would not fit through the slot even when reduced.)
They climb the rope and Adran works his magic on them. The mushrooms attack Dench and Rory, hitting both of them before Adran and Dru can get into the room.
As soon as they drop into the room, Dru attacks one of the mushrooms, hitting it. Adran soon follows and reverses the shrinking spell on he and Dru. They join the fight with their comrades and although they take a few hits, they are able to take out all the attacking mushrooms. As the last one falls, a wave of tiny mushrooms pour forth and we quickly stomp on them.
We decide to go exploring to find a way to open the portcullises. Dru and Rory take the lead to try and map out the area, keeping with the party’s modus operandi to always follow the right hand wall.
We find several rooms and corridors, a small door to the right and further along, a set of double doors. We decide to try out the small door first and find a chamber with four large columns in the center and, to either side of the columns, two large statues of very mean looking dwarves. We investigate the room, looking for any clues, but none in the party are knowledgeable about dwarven history. It is remarked by Rory and Dru that Verrak would be most impressed with these statues and it was too bad he was not there for he may know of their significance.
Not finding any sort of levers or such, the party presses on and heads to the double doors. More corridors and doorways abound. Each appears long forgotten and empty or simply is an alcove with an arrow slot, much smaller than the ballista slot we came through. We eventually find another set of double doors that leads to another chamber where we find another dwarven statue (a more fatherly dwarven figure this time) and more corridors.
Following our pattern we spend quite a bit of time mapping out the area, trying to find something to assist us. We eventually find a room with a large metal wheel but despite our best efforts, we cannot get it to budge. We rest for a bit before Dench shifts to a brown bear and finally gets the wheel to turn. Hoping this has opened the portcullises, we head back to the area with the ballistas where we entered, searching the rooms along the way, finding nothing but what appears to be long deserted barracks.
We get back to the area but the shrieking starts up again. We are able to relay information to Verrak who lets us know that only one of the portcullises opened and we let him know about what we found, hoping he would be able shed some additional light on how to get the second one open.
We decided to send Dench back to try and open the double doors beyond the second portcullis. Shifting into a rat, he slips through the second portcullis. Then shifting back to half-orc, he start to push open the entry doors of the “keep.”
[And that is where we ended the session.
A lot of walking about and searching a keep that obviously hasn’t seen much use in a very long time. Outside of the “mushrooms” and some fungus encountered in what was likely a pantry type area, they really didn’t spot anything living. At one point, they did peek through the smaller arrow slits (all of which appeared to overlook a central hall of some sort) and spotted a rather bumpy floor…lots of rather long-dead dwarves.
I took some time recently and mapped out the areas, at a typical battlemat scale of 1 inch = 5 feet, that they’ve explored beneath Cagair Keep so far. I put out the figures for the party in various locations for a sense of scale. I couldn’t actually fit the maps together like they should be on the floor…I don’t have enough floor space. The top portion of the pic, goes from the bottom of the “poop shaft” (which gives access to the area below from Cagair Keep) at the left to the Glitterhame with the beginning of the large bridge to the far right. The bridge continues in the bottom of the picture over to the upper portion of the “keep” that was explored in this last session. Click on the picture for a full size version.
Kind of scary that this only scratching the surface of what’s below Cagair Keep…oh crap, did I not delete that before posting? Oops! 😀
Beer Log: Using our hit, miss, crit, and fumble rating scale, below is what we sampled this session.
- Funky Buddha Nib Smuggler: A definite hit! It is easily the best Funky Buddha that I’ve tried other than Last Snow.
- Good People IPA: I had this once before and was not a fan…that might have been a result of trying a bunch of other beers at the same time. This time, I’d say it was a hit. Not the greatest but not a bad IPA. RJ had brought this by months ago and it got buried in the beer fridge. Kind of funny that I liked it better after it aged for awhile.
- Smuttynose Smistletoe: Well, it was our last session before Christmas so a “Christmas” beer seemed appropriate. Not bad at all, a little fruity, a little earthy, pretty tasty. A hit.
- Crafted Artisan Meadery/Cigar City Criminal KLP: The KLP stands for Key Lime Pie (I assume) and that’s pretty much how it tasted. It was too sweet for at least one of the players palate but others liked it quite a bit. I was in-between the extremes so we’ll call it a hit.
I didn’t let him fall…I just didn’t have the spell ready. Sheesh!!! 🙂
Would something like this be worded better?
“Where Verrak nearly fell to his death after Adran guaranteed him that he would catch him with his magic if he fell.” 😀
Just having some fun at Adran’s expense…again. 😉