A local beer festival and then missing/ill players meant that we hadn’t played for a couple of weeks after the party had returned from Rikaryon’s Island with the requested mushrooms and that Es Sarch had requested to speak with Rory.
Todd will no longer be playing due to personal reasons but everyone else wanted to keep having Skarr around. I’m not completely sure if it is for his martial prowess, healing spells, or to have a scapegoat for when dealing with Lokka. I guess, for now, they’ll just figure out who will play him each session. We pickup with Rory speaking to Es Sarch…which Rachel and I played out before the others arrived.
This recap is from Rachel and we had a full, now five-player, table. My GM comments, as usual, are in [brackets and italics].
There are definite spoilers below for the module, The Sinister Spire.
After talking with Es Sarch and giving him the mushrooms we brought from the island, Verrak returned to our table at the Dripstone Inn and told me (Rory) that Es Sarch wanted to speak with me. I approached Es Sarch and the sounds of the room died away as I got closer to him. He asked me what had “marked” me and caused Imaug to leave us alone. [For those that may have forgotten, Imaug is the aboleth the party encountered a few sessions ago.] I told him that I was not aware of anything having marked me, though I had been carried off by the large frog-like creature before hitting its head in, making my way to the small island where I passed out, and woke up with the spider-themed tattoo on my hand and arm. When I showed it to Es Sarch, he said that one such as Imaug would not respect or defer to a drow marking. Es Sarch asked if I would like to know who or what had marked me and if I would allow him to look. I said yes to both and Es Sarch reached out and placed very slender, pale [and cold] hands on either side of my head. His screaming is the last thing I remember before awaking in my room upstairs the next morning.
[Trust me…Rory got marked even if Rachel doesn’t remember it happening. I do remember when it happened. 😉 ]
In the meantime, Meri saw Rory slumped on the ground in front of Es Sarch. She went over and tried to rouse Rory but was unable to do so. Meri determined Rory was still alive but her pulse was racing. Meri asked Es Sarch what he did to Rory but he was not at all responsive. The group took Rory up to their rooms and Dench cured wounds on her, but she remained unconscious. Verrak and Dench went downstairs to try to talk to Es Sarch but one of the servers kept blocking them from approaching him and just shook its head when they asked the server questions. They ordered food to be brought up to the rooms and the group took turns checking on Rory and taking a long rest that night.
When I (Rory) awoke the next morning, my head felt like a freight train on fire ran through it. We all went downstairs for breakfast and I approached Es Sarch to find out what happened. Es Sarch told me “You have been marked by something that I cannot and will not name. You have my sympathies.” I was alarmed by Es Sarch’s refusal to tell me what it was and what it meant so I tried to press him for details. With some finality, Es Sarch said he will say nothing more on the matter. I reminded him that he had said if I let him look at me to see what had marked me, he would tell me. Es Sarch again said that he will say nothing more on it but that in exchange, he will tell us how to get through the zone of decay to get into the [Necromancer’s] spike, but not until we complete our other job.
[The person that the party believes stole the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords (an assassin named Fadheela) has apparently holed up in the Necromancer’s Spike, according to Es Sarch’s information.]
I returned to the table and told the group what Es Sarch had told me. We decide that after breakfast we will head out to find the old tannery and the passage to Elessarwa’s torture chamber. Meri first tried to ask ratboy for directions, but had better luck talking to the center bartender. Through a combination of Meri gesturing and the bartender grunting, Meri got the directions we needed.
[Hey, he spoke! Just not very much. Why waste words when a grunt and gesture will do? It works for Mac in the Dresden Files so why not this guy. 😉 ]
We headed out of the inn, carefully looking around to be sure no arrows were being shot at us this time. As we rounded the corner of the inn, two derro, two grimlocks, and several drow came running towards us. We moved out of the way and they ran by us. A green glowing form floated after them and then approached us. We figured it must be one of the plague-lost we had been warned about and ran back into the inn. We waited inside a few minutes. Meri tapped into her divine sense to see if she could sense it outside but it did not work through the inn’s walls. Meri’s divine sense did reveal that the 4 servers, center bartender, and Es Sarch are all undead.
We headed back out and made our way to the old tannery, easily finding the green stain on the wall. There was a figure in tattered rags sitting slumped against the wall right under the stain. Concerned that it might be a guard blocking the trapdoor to the passage, we approached slowly. As we got closer, the figure jumped up and the hood fell back to show that it is a drow guy [with various boils and sores obvious on his face and hands]. He immediately started ranting at us, something along the lines of. . .
“I am Numa! I am Prophet! I see what will be, and I see the end of all! See there? (he pointed behind us) It punches up from the deep core to the sun-burned surface, rising higher and higher, until it is lost in the white mists that shroud the top of the world! What is it? What is it?!? Not alive, not quite. It is a glyph-scribed obelisk wrapped in eternal storm, hollowed and inhabited by slimy creatures whose hunger can never be sated! It is the city that heralds the end! A city primeval regurgitated by the earth! Vast creatures of the deeps wing about it, and tentacles slither within my head. You know! (he pointed at me as he said this) You’ve seen it too! Your mind bears the mark! Who lives in that city? Sinful, soft carapaces surround minds that churn with philosophies hostile to all other creatures. Roused from the drowned depths, the fabled city is fable no more! I wish the bugs would comb my hair!”
With this last odd statement, he ran off, out of the old tannery. I was definitely a bit unsettled by his pointing at me and stating that my mind bears the mark and I have seen something he was ranting about. While his ranting makes it seem unlikely we could have a normal conversation with him, I wonder if he can really see what has marked me and might be more willing to tell me than Es Sarch is. I could not take much time to dwell on this, as we did not want to attract too much attention as we went to Elessarwa’s torture chamber.
[Okay…it’s official now. An undead information broker and a diseased, crazy drow both can’t be wrong, right? Right?!?]
I checked the trap door and we went down, following the passage to the high point where we found the door to the chamber. I heard [muffled] tortured screaming behind the door, so we knew Elessarwa was here and occupied with a victim. Adran made me invisible and Meri opened the door to the large chamber. [When the door was opened, an alarm also went off.] The drow matron and a guy were behind an altar with a gray gnome (a.k.a. deep gnome or svirfneblin) tied to it. There were three iron maidens, two racks, and a cell with two more gray gnomes behind bars in the large chamber.
The drow guy disappeared pretty quickly. I moved into the room and the rest of the group did as well. The matron cast a spell and summoned two large spiders. It appeared that the invisible drow guy cast a spell as ebony tentacles sprung up in a corner of the room and tried to grab those of us in the area, but the guy did not appear. Dench conjured up two bears to help us fight the matron and the spiders. I stayed invisible and out of the combat to try to keep the element of surprise for when the drow guy reappeared. A lightning bolt shot out toward several of us, but the invisible drow guy still did not appear.
The rest of the group took out the matron and spiders. We tried but were unable to locate the invisible drow guy until we saw a panel in the back wall slide open and closed. I became visible and opened the restraints on the gnome bound to the altar but it was too late—she had already died. I opened the locks on the cell to release the other gnomes who had been calling out for help. [Verrak had let us know that the deep gnomes are good.]
We all left the chamber while trying to avoid the tentacles reaching for us. A few of us were damaged by the tentacles but we and the gnomes got out just before the back panel opened again and drow started spilling into the room.
[I was actually quite worried going into this combat. By the book, a party of six 5th level characters facing a Drow Priestess (CR 8) and a Drow Mage (CR 7) would be a deadly encounter but the group took out the priestess rather easily. What is a male drow to do when his matron (and lover) has been killed? Go rally the House, of course! Not really the intent of the encounter as written in the module but it sure makes sense to me and it added a bit of soon to be seen interesting twist to things. Also, it will make life a bit more complicated for the party as the mage, presumably, did see each of them with the exception of Rory. I just don’t see a drow house not seeking vengeance for something like this.]
We headed back the way we had come from in the passage and Adran climbed up to try to open the trapdoor into the old tannery. As he started pushing it open, he saw multiple drow waiting and then magical darkness, so he dropped back down and said we should keep heading down the tunnel. [Um, ’cause yeah, House Dusklorn damn well knows about that secret entrance and all.] The farther we get, the more cracks there are [in the tunnels walls, floor, and ceiling], and there was water trickling in and crumbling debris. Rory and Verrak heard drow following behind us about five minutes back, so Dench cast spike growth in the tunnel to slow their pursuit.
Suddenly the tunnel collapsed under us! Adran quickly cast feather fall and captured all of us except Verrak and the two gnomes at the rear. We fell 60-80 feet with debris falling around us. We pulled Verrak and the gnomes into a tunnel and cavern, out of the falling debris. Dench revived Verrak but we were unable to resuscitate the gnomes. [Both gnomes perished in the fall. Is Adran ever going to actually keep Verrak from falling with a feather fall spell? (Refer back to Session 15 for when it last happened.)]
After a short rest and Skarr healing all of us, Meri started checking out the passage beyond the small chamber. A pseudopod shot out of the watery, oily dampness on the wall and attacked Meri. [Pretty much everything in this chamber and tunnel leading off was covered in a film of oily water. Also, the initial chamber into which the party had fallen was quickly filling with debris, cutting off that as a route out but maybe also leaving the drow to believe that their quarry had perished in the collapsed tunnel…maybe.] Another one popped out and attacked her from the wall about 10 feet from the first one. We were able to take them out relatively quickly, but acid from one of them weakened Meri’s armor.
We moved through the passage carefully, fighting and taking out several more of the blobs before getting to a larger chamber. As we started crossing the chamber, a larger blob dropped from the ceiling onto Meri. When she slashed it with her sword, it split into two smaller blobs; three smaller blobs popped out of the walls around us. We took out all of them though some of us were injured, and Skarr’s sword was damaged by some of the acid.
Suddenly Adran hears a voice inside his head say “Hi, what’s your name?”
[And that is where we ended the session.
The initial tunnel ended in a t-intersection and the party had come down the right hand section without really having explored the left hand section much at all. This, essentially, left Adran in the “back” of the party and closest to that unexplored section while the others had been in the larger chamber, fighting all the blobs. So I wonder what or who the source of this voice in Adran’s head might be. I chuckle just a little inside each time I think about this.
And blobs are so much fun! Almost as much fun as rust monsters!
So we’ve gone off the rails of The Sinister Spire module but that’s okay…it’ll be more fun (and complicated) this way.
Beer Log: Using our hit, miss, crit, and fumble rating scale, below is what we sampled this session.
- Alesmith My Bloody Valentine: I had meant to break this out a couple of weeks earlier when it was, well, the day before Valentine’s Day. Oh well, still a damn good beer. It has become a bit of a tradition to have this each year but first time we shared with the gaming group.
- Orpheus Atalanta: Courtesy of RJ…I think he’s trying to make up for not having picked up any Westbrook Gose up in GA. He’s brought it before and he is free to pretty much bring any of their stuff any time that he’d like. They are all solid hits and near crits!
- Crafted Artisan Meadery Codex Combustum: Another of Crafted meads and I’m still not impressed. It isn’t bad but it isn’t really good either. Pretty much hitting and then rolling below average damage.
- Cigar City 110K+OT Batch 8: An Imperial IPA in the series. A few months old and malty and pleasant with just a bit floral and grapefruit. A hit but that’s about all.
- Westbrook 5th Anniversary Chocolate Raspberry Imperial Stout: Tasty! The raspberry was nice in the stout but the chocolate was not very pronounced. If there had been more chocolate with that raspberry…possibly a crit! As is, a very solid hit.
- Six Point Hi-Res: Rachel and I had shared one about a week or two earlier and it was rather “abrasive” in that the resiny-ness bordered on shellac. This mellowed and it was more piney but still quite boozy. I’d have said the first can was a miss but this one with the group was good enough to be upgraded to a hit. Someone must have forgotten to add some modifier when they first rolled. 😉
- 5 Rabbit Chocofruit Mandarina: Not a bad stout at all. The hint of orange is a nice touch and I thought that this one was a bit better than the Zarzamora one we tried a few weeks ago. A hit.
I played D&D in the 70s. Do you know any groups that still get together with the books and graph paper?
Christine – There are D&D games going on in town and my impression is that they are all either Pathfinder or 5e version of the game. The only “open” game that I know of is the Fallout Comics game on Wednesday nights. The “regular” players get priority seating but if a player is missing, anyone who shows up is welcome to jump in for that session. If you’d like more info about this, let me know.
You could also post something on the Tallahassee Gamers facebook page or Tallahassee Gamers Meetup page about looking for a game.