Session 10: Exploring the Catacombs

Session Date: 24 Aug 2011

Game Date: Monday 12 Sept 4711

[The session picked up immediately following Session 9]

After defeating the six human zombies, Halfred and Larissa examined the prison chamber again, while Declan and Charrone examined the zombie corpses. The zombies were wearing tattered rags that seemed to be extremely old and brittle, and were otherwise unarmed and unarmored. The room itself appeared to be unchanged since the previous day. Freshly dried blood still stained the floor from yesterday's fight with the "catacomb creatures." Larissa found a cell which still had a working lock, and Halfred and Charrone piled the zombie corpses into it. Larissa then locked the cell door and jammed the lock, making it unlikely that the zombies would be able to escape if they were to somehow re-animate.

The group took the wooden gangway to the next chamber. That room appeared to be the ruins of an office of some sort, but the furniture and papers had long since crumbled away into only partially-recognizable debris. Bits of wood and paper littered the floor, and a large pile of bones was in the corner. There were also three stone doors on the south wall, each bearing the seven-pointed star shape the party had seen previously. The scraps of parchments were inscribed with Thassilonian writing, but were too fragmented to make any sense. Larissa listened at one of the stone doors. As soon as she touched a door, the pile of bones in the corner animated, and rose to form the shape of a skeletal snake with a fanged human skull for a head! The skull had glowing red gems in the eyesockets. Startled, Larissa was struck by the snake-skeleton. She felt a brief numbing sensation, but almost immediately shook it off. The thing then began to sway back-and-forth in a manner that was hypnotic to watch. Declan and Ted became fascinated with its movement, but Charrone and Halfred were not, and managed to smash it to pieces. The glow in the gems in its skull dimmed, and Larissa liberated them. Inside each of the doors was a tiny chamber, to which was chained a skeleton. However, each of the skeletons seemed to be terribly deformed: one had three arms, one had an immense skull and a very long limbs, and one had a ribcage that went all the way to its pelvis. The party decided to smash these skeletons as well, and they crushed easily. A detect magic spell indicated that one scrap of paper was magical-- a scroll of flaming sphere.

A door to the east led to a stairway going down 20 feet into a dimly-lit chamber. As the party began its descent, a creature stepped from the shadows, vomited a stream of acidic fluid at the party, then stepped back into the shadows! Halfred burst into the room to find a disturbing scene: A large rectangular room with a high ceiling. Eleven chains hung from the ceiling, each passing through a wooden trap door in the floor. Standing next to a large iron lever sticking out of the wall was a hideous creature. Standing a hand taller than a man, it resembled a stout, oversized goblin, but it had strange bulbous growths on its face and arms, and several extra limbs: a foot grew out of the side of its face, a tiny arm sprouted from its shoulder, and a fully formed arm grew out of its left hip. It held a shield in its left "normal" arm, a glowing laongsword in its right, a handaxe in its large extra arm, and a dagger in its tiny arm. It roared in rage, and pulled the lever. Immediately, a grating sound was heard, and five of the eleven chains began to move upward into the ceiling! Halfred attacked.

The creature attempted to keep itself between the party and the lever, but Halfred and Charrone engaged it in melee and managed to get it to move away. It struck Charrone a mighty blow with its sword, but then Halfred impaled it with his mithril ranseur. Not quite dead, it belched more acid at the party before the party took it down. Ted managed to push the lever back just as cages began to rise out of pits in the ground-- stopping them. Each of the five cages held a humanoid zombie which resembled the earlier-encountered ones. Still immobile in their cages, the party made short work of the trapped undead. Charrone claimed the mutant zombie's glowing sword.

Heading south from that room, they checked out a side passage that led to a collapsed staircase heading down. That staircase was completely impassable. The main passage led to a strange spherical chamber which had several objects floating in air: a bottle of wine, a book, a wand, a scroll, and a dead raven surrounded by a halo of floating maggots. The smell of death was heavy in the room. The metallic walls of the room glowed red and crackled with bolts of black lighting, and occasionally the bolts formed spiky runes-- Thassilonian runes. MacGreggor saw that occasionally, whole words formed. He saw the words "slay," "fury," "avenge," and "scribble" form briefly after several minutes of observation. He then entered the room. MacGreggor found that he also floated in midair in the room. Careful not to touch the walls with his hand, he collected the book, scroll, bottle, and wand. Examining the raven, it appeared to have several bites taken out of it, as if it had been half-eaten, and had probably only been dead for a couple of days. The bottle was of fine Korvosan wine of recent vintage. The scroll was ancient, and was in a strange arcane script that used Thassilonian runes. A read magic revealed it to be an arcane scroll of burning hands. The wand was magical, and tests indicated that is was a wand of shocking grasp. The book was written in Abyssal, a language that Declan recognized but could not read, and it included accurate drawings of scores of terrible-looking creatures.

Larissa was able to open a secret door behind the hollow panel, which led to a short passageway that ended in an iron ladder leading up through a chimney-like passage. At the top of the ladder was a stone trap door. Halfred climbed the ladder and opened the unlocked trap door, finding himself in a large closet. Tattered remains of robes hung from hooks on one wall, and two rusty ranseurs hung from a rack on the opposite wall. A closed stone door stood to the southwest. The rest of the party climbed into the room.

Larissa listened to the door and thought she heard bubbling water and the sound of a guttural voice chanting. Halfred threw open the door and the party burst into the next room. The room looked to be an immense underground cathedral. Large closed double-doors seem to lead to the northwest. The vaulted ceiling arched 30 feet overhead. The walls were covered with spiky Thassilonian runes. In the center of the room was a large pool of clear water, about 20 feet across and three feet deep, with a ring of polished human skulls balanced on stone spikes surrounding the deeper middle section. At the far end of the room, a pair of stone stairways led to a pulpit on which stood a second pool, this one triangular and filled with churning, bubbling water that glowed bright yellow. The glow filled the room with dim light. Six skeletons, each holding a rusting scimitar, stood immobile along the stairs. A tiny winged humanoid creature wearing a golden tiara and a black dress flew into the air above the glowing pool, and shouted in a guttural, hoarse cry "Intruders! Face my mother's wrath!" It slashed its hand with a dagger, and the blood dropped into the glowing pool. Immediately, the larger pool bubbled violently, and another "catacomb creature" rose out of the pool and attacked, just as the immobile skeletons animated and brandished their scimitars wickedly.

The battle began. Declan summoned the power of the Dawnflower, and the light of Heaven burned away most of the skeletons. The catacomb creature attacked Halfred, and Charrone charged up the stairs to try to engage the creature. It suddenly disappeared. Charrone cleared her mind to bring forth her Sense of Justice, and felt a dreadful evil from beyond radiating from where she had last seen the thing. She swung at the place she felt the evil most, and called out to Iomede to smite the thing from beyond. Her strike was true. The creature attempted to enchant Charrone, who resisted, and became visible again. Larissa hit it with an arrow, and MacGreggor hit it with a magic missile. The creature then swooped at Charrone with its claws out, but Charrone struck it in midair, and it fell, lifeless, into the triangular pool. Both pools bubbled violently, and three more of the catacomb creatures came forth from the larger pool. However, then the bubbling stopped, and glow of the triangular pool quickly faded to nothing. The four catacomb creatures (two male, two female) fought hard, but unarmed and naked were not much of a match for the party, and were all slain.

Charrone pulled the body of the tiny creature from the triangular pool, but it quicky began to liquefy into a foul-smelling black ichor which began to evaporate. It left behind its possessions, including a tiny golden tiara, a magic wand, a magic amulet, and an uholy symbol of the demon-goddess Lamashtu.

MacGreggor translated the runes carved on the walls. They were praises to the Runelord Azlantist, and admonishments to "Revel in the fury of battle," "Crush your enemies and slay their children," "From hatred comes strength, and from strength comes power," and other equally disturbing phrases that exhort violence, hatred, and embracing anger.

The double doors led to the strange alcove in the shrine to Lamashtu. Exploring the rest of the complex, the group found two other empty rooms, and a set of stairs leading up, but the roof above the stairs had collapsed and the passage was impassable.

[To Be Continued...]

Session 9: Return to the Catacombs

Session Date: 16 August 2011

Game Date: Monday 12 Sept 4711

The Sandpoint Heroes woke up early on Monday morning, and had a quick breakfast at the Rusty Dragon before gearing up for another foray into the catacombs under the town. Everyone felt refreshed and ready for another adventure.

They re-entered the smuggling tunnel through the Glassworks cellar, and followed the tunnel to the first intersection, turning to the west. They followed that passage back to the natural cave where they had killed the strange creatures the day before. However, as they approached the cavern, they noted that blood from their fight yesterday was still on the floor, but the bodies of the creatures weren't there. As they passed the entrance to the dead-end natural cavern, two more of the same creatures lurched toward them, striking with their claws!

However, as they fought, they noticed that there was something different about these creatures. They moved with a jerky clumsiness, there was no spark of rage or emotion that they had seen yesterday, and most disturbing, these creatures bore horrible bloody wounds that did not seem to still be bleeding. Declan shouted,"They're undead! I think they're zombies!" as two more shambled from the northern passage.

While the fact that they were fighting the animated corpses of the monsters they'd fought yesterday was very disturbing, the zombies were far less-effective combatants. The party destroyed the abominations before too long, while taking only minimal damage themselves. Halfred suggested chopping up the zombie corpses to prevent whoever animated them from doing it again. The party agreed, and commenced chopping.

The Heroes entered the complex again, and finding nothing in the entry room, proceeded to the first junction in the hallway. They decided to turn right this time, and followed the passage a short way to an irregularly-shaped room with a dais and altar on the back wall. The walls were carved with images of many foul-looking monsters, and the altar itself bore the carved image of the head of a three-eyed jackal. Declan identified it as the symbol of Lamashtu: The Demon Mother of Monsters. On the top of the altar was a basin-shaped depression, which was filled with water that seemed perfectly clear but smelled foul. MacGreggor took a flask of the water for future study. Charrone suggested that it was probably unholy water of some kind, and perhaps even a rumored unholy substance called "Waters of Lamashtu" which bestowed a dark gift to those foolish or devout enough to drink it. MacGreggor declined to sample the water. Ted and Larissa examined a suspicious-looking alcove, but were not able to figure out its purpose. Charrone sensed a palpable aura of evil in this place, and suggested that they get going-- which they did.

They walked past the statue room, and came to the door to the prison, where they had fought their second battle with the strange creatures. Larissa heard a shuffling and moaning on the other side of the door, so she opened it very carefully-- which was a good thing, because on the platform on the other side of the door were six humanoid zombies!

Declan summoned the power of the Dawnflower against the undead, and many of the zombies seemed to sizzle in concentrated sunlight. Charrone and Halfred waded into combat, and Larissa fired arrows into the frey. MacGreggor fired some magic rays at the zombies, and Ted used his telekinetic attack against them. The zombies put up a hard fight, slamming Halfred and Charrone a couple of times each, but the party was able to destroy them. and enter the room.

[To Be Conitnued...]

Session 8 (Part 2): Into the Catacombs

[Read Part 1 first]

The second room off of the secret corridor was even more interesting. It was a simple stone-walled room, but a five-foot wide worked stone passage was visible in the far wall. It looked like the opening of a mine shaft, with wood beams reinforcing the walls and ceiling every thirty feet or so, and went to the northeast. It seemed to slope slightly downward. Halfred could feel cooler air waft from the opening, and he saw what looked like a lot of goblin tracks come out of the tunnel into the room. Any tracks going back into the tunnel were obscured by the rest of he tracks.

The group guessed that the two escaping goblins must have run out through this passage, which was most likely the "smuggling tunnel" that Ameiko had mentioned. Lighting torches and lanterns, the group decided to pursue the goblins via the tunnel. Halfred led the way. The tunnel itself was expertly constructed, fairly old (at least 20 years old, thought Ted), and very straight. After following the tunnel for about 400 feet, the party found a side tunnel leading west. That tunnel had been bricked up at some point in the past, but now the wall had been knocked in, from the side of the main tunnel. Broken bricks and mortar were scattered on the floor of the side tunnel. given the amount of dust on the fallen bricks, MacGreggor estimated that the brick wall had been down for at least a few years. Painted on the wall of the side tunnel in Varisian was the message, "Do not enter. Danger." The party decided to investigate this side passage.

The side passage went west for a few hundred feet, the bent northward. The tunnel continued northward for several hundred more feet, whn the party saw another side passage to the east. As Halfred moved to investigate this new chamber, he was suddenly attacked by two hideous creatures! The creatures were roughly humanoid, hairless, and stood on two back-bent doglike legs. Their skin was a sallow flesh tone. Their two arms seemed to have two elbows, and their hands were three-fingered talons. Their mouths were filled with canine teeth, and were flanked by tiny arms, each with a three-fingered hand. It also looked like their lower jaws could also open sidewise. Their eyes glowed red with malevolence and anger. They wore ancient-looking chain shirts and wielded ranseurs. They shouted with eerie deep resonant voices in an unknown but chillingly evil-sounding language.

A fierce fight was joined by the rest of the party. At one point, one of the creatures bit Halfred, and his head was suddenly filled with feelings of anger and hatred, but he managed to collect his thoughts. The creatures proved to be fierce combatants, but the party outnumbered them three-to-one and prevailed with minimal damage. The victorious heroes took the creatures' weapons and armor, on the chance that they might regenerate.

The cavern that the creatures had been in was apparently a natural cave that the worked passage broke into by happenstance. There was nothing of else in the cave other than interesting rock formations. Following the tunnel again, the party found another side-tunnel heading east about thirty feet ahead. Like the entrance of the original side-tunnel they had followed, the entrance to this passage seemed to have been bricked up once long ago, but the wall had been taken down some time in the past few years. They decided to follow the main tunnel this time, but found that it dead-ended in about sixty feet. Ted, who had knowledge of stoneworking, noticed that the workmanship of the passage seemed to indicate that the excavators seem to have abandoned the tunnel and simply stopped digging. They returned to the eastern side-passage.

That passage went about thirty feet and then seemed to break into the western wall of an existing chamber: the floor of the chamber was about a foot below the floor of the tunnel. The chamber was of very different construction than the tunnel: the walls and ceiling were lined with ceramic tiles, and the floor was marble. The floor was littered with lots of rubble-- some of it seemed to be debris from the side tunnel punching into the wall, and the rest seemed to be broken pottery. MacGreggor thought that the architecture had a late-period Thassilonian feel to it. There was a stone door to the north.

Larissa checked the door for traps and listened at it, and found nothing. The door opened up into a dusty hallway. Following the hallway, the group passed one side-passage, and entered into a moderately-sized room with a vaulted ceiling. In the center of the room was a finely-carved statue of a wild-eyed female warrior-mage, holding a ranseur in a threatening pose. The statue bore an inscription in ancient Thassilonian, "Alaznist: Runelord of Righteousness." Examining the statue, it was apparent that the ranseur held by the statue was not carved of marble, but was a separate item that could be fairly easily removed. The ranseur itself was a work of art.

The statue room had open passageways leading north and east, and they saw that the eastern passage ended in a staircase going upward. They went north, following the passage to another closed stone door. Larissa found no traps or heard anything through the door, and Halfred opened it. The door opened up into a much larger chamber, with a wooden platform just beyond the door. The stone floor of the chamber was ten feet below the platform, and the ceiling was 20 feet above. The room appeared to be a prison-- small cells with iron bars lined all of the walls. Two wooden staircases led down to the stone floor, and a the platform extended as a catwalk into the middle of the room, then turned right into another stone passage. Halfred went down the stairs to examine the room, and a three-clawed hand grabbed his foot from below and tried to pull him off the stairs!

Two more of the same kind of creatures encountered earlier attacked. Again, they each wore chain shirts and were armed with ranseurs. However, these fought with even more skill and ferocity than the earlier ones. Charrone and Halfred both fought one of the creatures, while the other attacked Larissa and Declan. Ted and MacGreggor were out of spells, and were throwing knives, to little effect. One of the creatures knocked Larissa's bow from her hand and closed in for the kill. In a desperate move, Larissa drew the blow-tube she'd taken from Tsuto earlier that day and blew the contents into the creature's face. The effect matched what Tsuto had done to Halfred, and the creature broke off the attack, unable to see. Larissa and Declan were able to finish off the blinded creature, then assist Halfred and Charrone. While very bloodied, the combined forces of the party managed to drop the other creature.

While looting the creatures' weapons and armor, the group decided that a retreat was prudent, and they went back through the complex to the entrance tunnel. Passing the statue of the Runelord, Larissa announced her intention to liberate the ranseur. MacGreggor did not sense any magic, Charrone did not sense any more evil than the rest of the pace, and Larissa did not find any traps, so Larissa carefully pulled the weapon from the statue. Nothing else happened, and the group left the complex, and followed the tunnels back to the Glassworks.

In the daylight, the ranseur's quality, craftsmanship, and value became apparent. The blade was made of mithril, and the haft made of darkwood, and both blade and haft were decorated with exquisite markings.

Ted instructed the guardsmen to lock the Glassworks cellar doors, and to place a double guard on them. The party was surprised to find both Mayor Deverin and Father Zantus at the Glassworks, who said that they were discussing a discreet means of burying old Lonjiku without causing undue alarm with the townsfolk. Ted mentioned the double sets of books and said that when the catacombs were cleaned out, someone could go down and retrieve them safely.

The group went to check on Ameiko, and persuaded her not to leave the safety of the town without an escort. After that, everyone went to their rooms for a well-deserved rest.

Session 8 (Part 1): The Rescue of Ameiko

Session Date: 27 July 2011

Game Date: Sunday 11 Sept 4711

[We picked up immediately following the events of Session 7]

After sending Tsuto off with the guards, the group decided to find out where the two goblins had fled, and proceeded downstairs to the Glassworks cellar. The cellar appeared to comprise of a single 10-foot wide corridor with two right-angle turns, as if it were three sides of a rectangle. There were storerooms on the outside wall, all of which were empty save for the one farthest from the staircase-- in it they found a bound and badly-beaten Ameiko lying on the stone floor. She was alive, but semiconscious. They untied her, and Declan cast a curing spell, and she seemed to improve greatly.

Ameiko said, "Thank Desna that you came! I don't know what my brother would have done with me-- I think he's gone completely insane! He's working with the goblins, and I think it's pretty clear that he had something to do with the attack during the Swallowtail Festival last week!

"Anyway, he called me here to tell me that Father is a crook-- that he'd been working with Sczarni smugglers for years to buy and sell contraband using the Glassworks as a front: mostly poisons and drugs, things you put in bottles. Apparently, there's some kind of smuggling tunnel here in the cellar somewhere. Tsuto used that tunnel to bring in some of the goblins during the raid, and he brought the goblins in that way last night.

"He also said that the first goblin raid was just the beginning, and that I was the only thing in Sandpoint that he thought was worth saving. He gave me the opportunity to join him and his little group of cutthroats. I slapped him for even contemplating committing such a heinous crime. At that, he sucker-punched me, then set his goblins on me. While they were beating me, he said that Nualia is their leader-- and his girlfriend. I managed to say that she had died along with her father Curate Tobyn, but he chuckled and said that she had set the fire, killed her father, and faked her own death, and was glad she'd done it! I cursed him. At that, he back-handed me across the face, and I must have passed out.

"We've got to alert the Sheriff and the Mayor, and also tell Father what's going on here. Let's go!" Charrone broke the news of Lonjiku's death, and Ameiko became quiet and solemn. "In that case, I think I just want to go home and be alone for a while." Ted and MacGreggor saw her upstairs to the guardsmen, and Jubal brought her home.

While Ameiko was telling her story, Larissa and Halfred began looking for the smuggling tunnels that Ameiko mentioned. Larissa found a secret door which opened to a corridor linking the north and south passages. She found two rooms off of this corridor-- one was an office which contined a desk and a bunch of filing cabinets. The cabinets contained records of Lonjiku's dealings with the smugglers and other illegal activity. Also on the desk was a small leatherbound journal, with Tsuto's name on the inside cover.

The journal had about two dozen pages of vellum. About half of the pages contained charcoal-ink-and-chalk drawings of the same beautiful woman, most often nude, in various erotic poses. The woman's hair was always colored with white chalk. Interspersed with the erotic drawings were several maps of Sandpoint, each of which detailed a different attack plan with about 50 goblins. Four of these plans were crossed out, and a fifth was circled. The party recognized this plan as the actual plan used by the goblins for the attack at the Swallowtail Festival. After more erotic drawings were a second set of attack plans, these using about 300 goblins and included siege engines. A few of these plans were scratched out, and none were circled.

After the circled attack plan was written:

The raid went about as planned. Few Thistletop goblins perished, and we were able to secure Tobyn's casket with ease while the stupid rubes were distracted by the diversion. I can't wait until the real raid. This town deserves another good burning, and this time it won't just be the north end!

After the second batch of attack plans:

Ripnugget seems to favor the overwhelming land approach, but I don't think it's the best plan. We should get the quasit's aid. Have her send up her freaks from below via the smuggling tunnel in Father's factory, and then invade from the river and from the Glassworks in smaller but more focused strikes. The rest except Bruthazmus agree, and I'm pretty sure the bugbear is just being contrary to annoy me. My love is too distracted with the lower chambers to make a decision. She says that once Malfeshnekor has been released and is under her command, we won't have to worry about subtlety in our attack. I hope she's right.

The second-to-last erotic drawing of the woman depicts her with a bestial right hand with three talons. The final drawing in the journal shows her with two such clawed hands, elongated canine teeth, horns, bat wings, cloven feet, and a forked tail. On the page between these drawings is the following passage:

My love seems hell-bent on going through with it–nothing I can say will convince her of her beauty. She remains obsessed with removing what she calls her "celestial taint" and replacing it with her Mother's grace. Burning her father's remains at the Thistletop shrine seems to have started the transformation, but I cannot say that her new hand is pleasing to me. Hopefully, when she offers all of Sandpoint as a burnt offering to Lamashtu, her new body won't be as hideous as that talon. Maybe I'll still luck out. A succubus is a kind of demon, right?

Larissa compared the handwriting of the journal with the letter to Ameiko, and thought that they matched.

[To be continued...]