The Side Quest Session 16

Alarm. That’s where we ended things in our last session. An alarm being sounded from deeper within the complex in which the party had found themselves. Found themselves here by first passing through a perhaps malfunctioning magical portal, joining a quest to save some elderly folk, becoming the minions? pawns? or simply in the “employ” of the green dragon, Midoritosh, then “guests” of some elves hunting down the same hobgoblin, Kurobosh, that the party were, fleeing through the forest from needle blights, and finally finding themselves in a ruined cellar–with dead hobgoblins that they had just slain–with an alarm being sounded. That’s where we picked up in this session.

This week we had Muse, Rachel, RJ, and Theo so Callie, Grim, Morgraen, Riordan, Rurik, and Aelwulf were present.

Spoilers: There are spoilers for the Dungeon Magazine adventure, Fiendish Footprints, below the break.

My GM comments, as usual, are in [italics and brackets].

With little to do but press forward despite the alarm, the party headed down the only hallway leading out from the wine cellar. The short hallway led to a larger chamber with four pillars supporting the ceiling. A well dominated the center of the room but there was no sign of additional hobgoblins or other guards. Two hallways led out of the chamber from opposite walls. Heading down the corridor to their right, they discovered another fairly large chamber with three large pillars holding up its ceiling. The room stretched beyond Rurik’s magical light glowing from Aelwulf’s helment. In the dimness beyond, Aelwulf was able to spot the remains of a firepit, still smoking, and various shapes–perhaps bedrolls–scattered about the floor. Another hallway led away off to the right. Morgraen came forward, confirmed that the shapes were bedrolls, and heard breathing but spotted no one. She then heard a short growl that was cut short from somewhere in the chamber as well. She also spotted a chest, perilously close to the recently doused firepit.

With little choice but to take the battle to their unseen foes, the party rushed in after a few moments of consulting. Aelwulf took the lead and immediately found that their foe had shifted positions. A massive wolf was wanting to pounce just a short distance away from Aelwulf and pounce it did! Soon two hobgoblin archers came from around a corner and from the other hallway to start taking shots at the party. Lastly, a rather large, somewhat scarred, hobgoblin also came from behind one of the pillars and shot a fan of flames, a spellcaster. The elves had shared that Kurobosh used magic. The battle was relatively brief with the presumed Kurobosh being the last to fall. During the battle, another foe arrived and grabbed Grim from behind, wrapping long, rubbery limbs around him and then the two disappeared only to reappear in a different location away from the party [but turned out to be a small chamber at the end of the hallway leading from the current battle site] only to be attacked by a hobgoblin.

Morgraen was later subjected to a similar attack by this creature that no one ever got a really good luck at. She, however, was less fortunate than Grim. She reappeared in the well about halfway done and fell. When she struck the water, she lost consciousness from the impact. Riordan heard the splash but the rest of the party was still fighting the presumed Kurobosh. Although the impact stunned her, the shock of the cold water brought her back to her senses and she avoided drowning and the party lowered a rope for her once they finished the battle. The creature did not return again to spirit away any of the rest of the party. [Morgraen took a small amount of damage from her fall in the well but it was enough to drop her to 0 Hit Points and face down in the water. Definitely not a good situation but Rachel rolled a natural 20 on her first Death Saving Throw and Morgraen regained consciousness a single Hit Point. It was, quite possibly, the only thing that saved Morgraen from death. A classic D&D moment.]

After the battle, Rurik chopped off and packed the head of the spellcasting hobgoblin with all hoping that it was the head of Kurobosh. Callie checked out the chest and found it largely full of LOTS of silver, mostly of elven make. Grim determined that the battleaxe, javelin, shield, and armor of the lead hobgoblin were magical but there was little else of interest or value in the room.

The party pressed forward by heading to the room in which Grim had previously been taken. This small chamber was home to a wooden coffin and a skeleton that looked as though it had been badly beaten at some time to the point of being partially pulverized. One section of one of the walls in the chamber was dissimilar to the rest. It was a different stone than the rest of the walls and was completely smooth and filled what was once probably another hallway leading out. It was perfectly flush with the edges of the once hallway and of a level of craftsmanship that even the dwarves in the party were impressed. It was determined that the stone was probably at least eight or nine inches think and certainly not very brittle. The next few hours were spent searching for a mechanism or hidden entrance that would provide access to the blocked hallway or beyond. Even sections of the ruins above ground were searched for another trapdoor or other passage down but none were found. The searching above did, however, show that the Needle Blights were still present as many flung their needle darts at the party if they strayed at all from the limits of the ruins.

They also looked to the unexplored hallway that led from the chamber with the well. It was another small chamber that had another hallway leading off from it but it was filled with rock and stone as though it had collapsed. There was, however, a small tunnel, some two to three feet in radius. Tossing a piece of debris that one of the spellcasters had magically illuminated, a worm-like creature could be seen withdrawing deeper into the tunnel and away from the light. The thing nearly filled the entire tunnel, putting an end to any thoughts of squeezing through to find where it might lead.

Perhaps frustrated by the loss of limited time before their deadline was up to return to Midoritosh, Morgraen set about just smashing down the wall, chipping away at the stone with one of her pitons. She had success and she and Aelwulf set about slowly demolishing the blockade. As soon as they had chiseled away a hole large enough to peer through, Rurik took a look beyond. The hallway led off to, from what he could see, another small chamber before continuing beyond. The dwarven wizard “stepped” through the peephole with his magic and set down the hallway to the chamber. Within were two stone sarcophagi and two more hallways leading away. As Rurik quietly passed by one of the sarcophagi, its lid was shoved off from within! A feral, pale, and emaciated creature slunk out, eyes glowing red.

Rurik fled back to the wall but the creature quickly followed and viciously bit him in the neck, sucking about a pint or so of blood. Before the creature could do much more, Rurik was able to cast his spell again to magically step through to the other side of the wall to rejoin his companions. The creature, however, did not give up the chase; it began to tear away at the stone wall with its bare hands, claws actually, trying to reach at the party. After a few strikes against the thing from the relative safety of the other side, the party retired to one of the chambers closer to the interest to lick their wounds and catch their breath. The creature was making no faster progress at clearing a way through the stone wall so why do the work when it could.

Eventually the creature cleared a passage and slipped through. The wounds that had been inflicted upon it before were gone! The party gathered in the hobgoblin “barracks” in the hopes of surrounding the creature when it came in. Instead, it scrambled up the room’s walls, across the ceiling, and dropped down behind the party. Each wound dealt to the creature began to heal almost immediately. The party did a massive amount of damage as the creature focused its attentions on killing Riordan. It wasn’t successful and eventually it was defeated. The tattered and rotted clothing was the only thing the creature possessed.

With the demolition job pretty much completed for them, the party explored the area beyond. The second sarcophagi in the chamber Rurik had already visited remained closed. The walls had frescoes celebrating some old nomadic culture that no one seemed to recognize or take much interest in. The party realized that the map on the wooden chip provided by Midoritosh matched the hallways leading off of this chamber. Following the map, they came to another small chamber with additional frescoes and, more threatening, another sarcophagus with a lid that was already starting to be lifted by something within. Rurik and Aelwulf rushed over and jumped up on top of the lid to weight it down [brilliant!]. As they kept the creature contained, Morgraen set about pounding some pitons between the sarcophagus and floor and then securing the lid with ropes. With that problem temporarily solved, they set off for the next chamber on their map.

This chamber held a wooden coffin that had been badly burned and largely destroyed. The were splashes of dried blood in various spots about the room. According to their map, the next room should hold the object of their search. A large chair and a large suit of armor, scale mail, some twelve feet in height, sat in the chair. A large shield was gripped in one hand and a large scimitar in the other. It seemed lifeless but all expected it to animate when they entered the room. That’s exactly what it did and moved to attack as the party sought to find the hoof of interest. A quick detect magic showed that the armor was the only thing magical in the room and no one could spot a hoof anywhere as the thing struck might blows and seemed to recover quickly from the party’s attacks. Riordan attempted to repel the thing with holy power but it had no impact…it was not undead. A retreat was quickly decided upon.

Even worse, as the party retreated, it could be heard that the pounding of the sarcophagus was sounding louder as though some of the rope bonds had been burst and the party got separated in the retreat as well. Rurik and Aelwulf headed back the way that they had come to jump up on the thumping sarcophagus’ lid again. Morgraen and Callie had headed down another hallway, previously unexplored, that led to another small chamber, empty save a chest in the middle of the room. Grim and Riordan had followed Rurik and Aelwulf but Riordan then started down yet another hallway leading to the same chamber that Morgraen and Callie were entering. He came up short, however, because as the pair entered, the entire floor fell out from under them. This was happening as Rurik leapt atop the sarcophagus only to find that his weight was barely enough to keep the creature within. And Grim, poor Grim, spotted a brief glimpse of movement from down another not yet explored hallway…at least he thought that he spotted movement. The hallway was dark and his light did not penetrate deep enough to give him a good look.

[That’s where we ended the session with not just one but, essentially, three cliffhangers! Things are looking pretty grim for, well, Grim and his companions. I believe the spellcasters are largely out of spells and some of the party is damaged or about to be damaged from a fall into a spiked pit…oh, oops, I don’t think I had mentioned there were spikes at the bottom of the pit yet…sorry. 😉

Next session should be interesting…and hopefully not too deadly.]