In out last session, the party continued to explore beneath Cagair Keep and had recovered a dwarven relic, Bloodcrier’s Hammer. Pressing on with their exploration of what Verrak believes to be Migdhal Yar proper, they found more natural caverns. Looking down a tunnel, Skarr heard a hissing sound and that’s where we pick up this session.
This recap is from Rachel. Todd had to miss this session and so Muse played Skarr. My GM comments, as usual, are in [brackets and italics].
Down in the caverns, Skarr rounded a curve and we heard something hissing. A human-sized lizardman came from the narrow passage to the right. As we moved in, five more lizardmen came toward us from a wider passage across from us. Their skin colors changed as they moved, like a chameleon.
Verrak used Bloodcrier, the dwarven relic hammer, and it surprised us all by shrieking when he attacked with it. The lizardman Verrak hit looked terrified and backed away from him. We ended up taking out all the lizardmen, though not without a few injuries. When Adran cast sleep, a lizardman and Skarr succumbed. When Dench cast a flaming sphere, it damaged the sleeping Skarr in addition to a couple of the lizardmen. Dru was also knocked out by lizardmen. After the fight, Verrak noticed tears of blood coming out of the eyes of the skull on the hammer.
After Dench healed Dru and Dru healed Skarr (and he woke up), we moved back to the room the ramp came into to take a short rest. After just a few minutes, seven more lizardmen came into the room, including an older looking one in back, who chanted something and then disappeared. Adran put two of them to sleep and we took three others out, but the 4th retreated and jumped into the water. Vines sprang up from the floor (presumably something conjured by the chanting lizardman) but fortunately none of us were caught.
[I’m pretty sure that there was also some hissing shouting from up on the ramp before the 4th lizardman creature fled. Rachel also forgot to mention that the lizardmen gave off the horrible stench that they had been smelling in these caverns…yep, troglodytes!]
The chanting lizardman suddenly appeared on top of the ramp behind us and sent two tidal waves at us. Rory and Adran were knocked out, but the rest of the party took out the lizardman and retreated to the room with the altar and doorway where the axes are still swinging. After Adran and Rory were healed, we were finally able to take a short rest. With many of the party’s resources depleted, we decided to head back up to the keep, but the door to the hall with the dworcs’ cells will not open. Verrak briefly talks to a dworc through the door but the dworc stopped responding and they did not open the door for about 20 minutes or so.
[I believe they claimed something about having to take time to go find the key or something like that.]
When we made it back into the main house, Adran asked Skarr to apologize to Bartholomew for punching him. Skarr was resistant but grudgingly apologized. Bartholomew responded that he was waiting for his lord to mete out more proper justice. Hoping it will be an acceptable form of justice, Adran asks Skarr to pay Bartholomew 3gp. Bartholomew does not seem to think this is sufficient, as he leaves the room.
[Bartholomew did not make another appearance during this session. I wonder where he got off to.]
After the delay in being let back into the keep from below, Adran tries to apologize to Debs, the apparent dworc union head whom Adran had briefly put in charge. Following Verrak’s advice, Adran asks Debs what Adran can do to make the dworcs’ lives better and Debs states that paying them would help.
That night, Ugak visits Dench’s room and propositions him. He tries to gently decline, first indicating concern for her already being pregnant (which Ugak brushes aside as a cause for concern) and then telling Ugak that Lokka is his sister, and asking Ugak how she thinks Lokka would react to his sleeping with her. Ugak made a distasteful face and left, closing his door.
The next morning, Lokka woke Adran at 5:00 am for the morning report, that nothing of note had happened during the night. [Ahhhh…isn’t it cute how the two keep flirting like this.] After breakfast, we headed back down but had to wait 40 minutes for Debs to open the door (the dworcs were on break). Verrak inquired as to how Debs and the dworcs had secured the door and kept it from opening, but Debs would not share his “trade secret.”
When we get back to the room with the altar, we see that the axes are no longer in the doorway. We tried pushing a shelf up against the door and a panel opens in the ceiling to let the axes come down and start swinging again. After a couple of us pay attention to the way the axes are moving, a pattern of some kind is noted, but we still cannot figure out a way to stop them or get around them.
[Verrak…via yours truly…is pretty sure that the dwarves would not have placed a mechanism for resetting or turning off the trap on this side of the door.]
We went back through the elaborate doors and into the cavern. The lizardmen bodies are still there but look like they have been chewed on by something with large teeth. There are also large puddles around the cavern, including on the other side of the stream and partway into the hallway. They were not here before and do not appear to be remnants of the chanting lizardman’s tidal waves.
We continued moving through the caverns and passages and found a [rather narrow] passage angling up with claw marks in it, indicating that the lizardmen may have come through it. We came to a very large cavern that Verrak recognizes as Glitterhame, which was part of Migdhal Yar, and where a lot of dragonhide and bloodstone were mined. There still appears to be a lot of dragonhide and bloodstone here and Adran notes that mining them could be a good source of income/treasure for supporting the keep. Off one end of Glitterhame we found a large chasm with a worked stone bridge crossing it. Instead of crossing it, we decide to keep exploring on this side of the chasm.
[Dragonhide gems are ammolite and yep, there’s a bunch that can still be mined out of the Glitterhame. Could this be the “treasure” that Caill Dafad mentionend in his will? Although I do recall Adran saying something in a prior session about the caverns and tunnels beneath not being part of Cagair Keep; it seems he may have changed his mind about that.]
We find a passage with more of the big puddles and a stream coming through it. There is a small chamber to one side where the water is flowing and eddying. We speculate that the creature leaving puddles may be in there. Skarr and Dench went back to the room with the ramp to get a dead lizardman’s arm or leg to toss into the room with the eddying pool. Just after they left, a large tusked toad-like creature hopped out from the room with the pool and lands (creating a puddle like the ones we had seen). Its tongue darts out and grabs Dru, paralyzing her and pulling her towards it.
[I’m pretty sure that everyone was waiting in the large cavern, the Glitterhame proper, for Skarr and Dench to return and that’s where the creature attacked rather than in the chamber with the pool.]
Verrak and Adran attacked the creature, getting it to let go of Dru so she can regain her ability to move. Rory came up and attacked it, and then the creature grabbed Rory, paralyzing her and hopping away. The others followed the creature and attacked it so that it dropped Rory. It grabbed Rory again, though she was not petrified this time, and it hopped down from a shelf in the caverns while still holding her. Rory tried to attack the creature, but we ended the session without knowing whether she succeeded or not…
[The creature retreated with Rory in its “grasp” and headed to the small side room filled with water. It went under the water with Rory. She attacked it and that’s where we ended the session without my stating if the attack hit or not. Rachel rolled a total of 14 to hit. Thomas had rolled a 14 on one of Verrak’s attacks and it hit. But, as Thomas pointed out, Verrak is using a dwarven relic that probably has some bonuses so a 14 might not be enough. I guess we’ll find out next session but being dragged underwater while restrained by the massive tongue of some rather large froglike aberration is probably not an ideal situation in which to find oneself. 😉
Beer Log: Using our hit, miss, crit, and fumble rating scale, below is what we sampled this session.
- Boulevard/Cigar City’s Collaboration No. 5 Tropical Pale Ale: A nice and tasty pale ale with fruity and floral flavors. A hit.
- Terrapin Tiramasu-Hoo: Pretty sweet with coffee an cocoa. It was too sweet for RJ but a hit for most everyone else.
- 5 Rabbit Chocofruit Zarzamora: Lots of blackberry with a bit of chocolate. I liked it the best of the three stouts we had but that’s partly because of the acidic almost sour flavor. Others found this to be a bit of a turn off in a stout. I’m putting it down as a hit!
- Funky (Little) Buddha Nikolai Vorlauf Russian Imperial Stout: Turns out I had this one before but I can’t quite remember when or where. Turns out that I liked it a lot more when I had it before (if my Untappd check-in is any indication). It was almost ashy and burnt tasting that I found somewhat less than pleasant but not enough to make it a miss. Let’s just say that it was a hit but only because of a rather low AC.
