Secret Tunnel

The litch we killed turned out to be a woman. We found a bunch of journals. There's a gallon of platinum in a bag, which Eorin figures out is a custom spell that requires a code word, or else it renders the items useless. Zelara reads one journal, which is a spellbook written in Infernal, and it looks like it didn't belong to the litch, but rather, a Chelaxian wizard Ursion. Illythan figures out there's a minor gaes on the spellbook that compels you to return the spellbook to its owner. You know, if it's not out of your way or anything. We also found notes to the litch (with Tar-baphon's seal on the bottom) describing our party specifically and how to best fuck with us. At the end of the note, it mentions our work at Carrion Hill and says “see if you can make a deal with them.” The intel in the note is surprisingly good (except for Kyle's gender) and we're concerned that the enemy was able to discover such intimate details about us (such as Orias' family history and Eorin's lineage).

The other journal belongs to a bard, Doritan, and are written in Virisian. They were on an adventure (about 50 years ago) and came across a cult that was trying to release Tar-baphon. He worked with the wizard Ursion, a thief named Brick, a cleric named Imina, and Aeolus the Bastard. The journal talks about their adventures and how Brick and Aeolus didn't get along, so Aeolus found a wizard to curse his crossbow and other equipment. He doesn't say what the curse is. They journeyed from cheliax to virisia. That's just the first journal, we don't know where the other ones are.

Kyle goes to check out the throne. It's a nice throne, indicative of its fine dwarven architecture. There's a stein on the arm. There's something black and thick inside the mug. Orias and Eorin look at it, and notice that it's pure and concentrated magic. Like, 150 proof magic. Eorin can't think of something like this ever being recorded before. Illythan eggs Kyle on to drink it, and Kyle's tongue goes numb as it's immediately absorbed into her tongue before she can swallow. Kyle then feels sick to her stomach. Fortunately, she has an iron stomach and resists the urge to vomit. The rest of us briefly see the inside of Kyle's mouth, like an x-ray. Orias dips his dagger into the magic and it melts. Eorin looks at the stein, and sees that it contains heavy abjuration magic. Kyle then decides to dip her pinky into the magic. Her pinky goes numb and then turns to solid teak (as in, the wood) and now creaks when she bends it.

Eorin inspects Kyle's mouth and sees that her canines have grown and her tongue has elongated and forks at the end. Eorin thinks the effects from having drunk it has ended, but isn't sure and wants to check Kyle again in a few hours. Illythan tries to slap the mug out of her hand, but she pulls it away in time. We're arguing about what to do with the magic when a tiny little stick-figure like think crawls out of the mug, holding a tiny dagger (thanks to Orias' contribution). It leaps at Orias with the jumping power of a mantis. It lands on Orias' nose. Orias plucks it off his nose, but it smooshes in his hand. His glove starts to not feel right and he pulls it off his hand. It turns to beetle's chiton and smashes on the ground. Eorin and Illythan argue that we should leave it, but Kyle decides to try and pour some out. Zelara stops her. Illythan walks away to go exploring and finds the alcoholway. And it is an epic dwarven alcoholway.

Zelara finds a secret passage that goes very far down. Kyle decides to put the mug down and explore as well. She finds the alcoholway an is in awe. Illythan leaves, exasperated. Kyle finds and old dwarven keg, but has no idea how to tap them. Eorin and Orias discover that the kegs are made of mithril. We look around for taps, but there aren't any more left.

Eorin finds another door that's labeled “armory.” The door is locked and trapped. Orias disables the traps and we go through. There's plenty of dwarven armor and weapons as well as scrolls and spellbooks. Most of them are earth and acid related spells. Illythan dumps them all into his haversack along with a bandoleer for scroll and wand organization. Zelara finds a secret tunnel, and Eorin and Illythan follow while Kyle and Orias decide to go poke at the liquid magic again.

Secret tunnel group finds the place the litch has been hiding out. We find two other volumes of the bard's journal as well as an alchemist lab. There's a secret compartment in the litch's coffin. However it's locked.

Meanwhile with team SCIENCE! Kyle and Orias pour out a tiny drop onto the floor. It sits there, and is expanding until it fills a 5 ft square. It starts turning white and becomes a treasure chest. They go and find a pry bar to open it. The chest absorbs the pry bar into it. It opens its lid to show there is now a pry bar inside it.

Meanwhile, back in the alchemy lab, we investigate the other two journals. More crazy adventures from Virisia to Ustalaav. It is the stereotypical adventure. The bard explains how he feels very suspicious of the wizard, and Brick has ceased stealing the Bastard's crossbow. The fourth journal (number 3 is still missing) is his journal while he's in captivity. They've been split up and he doesn't know where the others are. He feels he's trapped inside somewhere, everything is dark and ruined and horrifying. He thinks they've gone underground. He found the remains of towns - recent towns, not ancient ruins.

Back with team SCIENCE! Kyle starts throwing old crappy utensils into the chest, and they turn shiny and platinum after they're absorbed. They throw a plate at it, but it goes through and smashes on the other side. They throw more utensils and they turn to platinum as before. Orias tries to use mage hand to pull the utensils out when the chest reveals them, but it's dispelled.

The rest of the group comes out and finds TEAM SCIENCE! Being dumb. Eorin grabs Orias and asks him to pick the lock on the coffin's secret compartment. The box opens and there's a ring holding a perfectly spherical object that glows slightly. It is intended to be a compass pointing to a specific location. It's pointing downwards. It probably leads to the Darklands, but it would lead us the safest way possible.

Kyle goes all the way back to the fishing pole to try and grab it. She sets off the trap, but is able to get out of the way in time so she doesn't get flung into a sharp coral reef. She tries to chop at the legs of the chair with her sword ineffectually for a while an eventually breaks it off its mechanism. Kyle brings the chair back and throws it at the chest and it bounces off the chest. Kyle then throws silverware into it and waits for the chest to re-open to wedge the chair in the lid, but it doesn't open for once. Kyle tries varied versions of this, but the chest is refusing to re-open after absorbing the silverware and begins scooting away from Kyle. Kyle then begins beating it with the chair – it hides behind Zelara.

Zelara goes back to continue searching the alchemy lab and finds potions of inflict light wounds. Eorin searches the room some more and finds the litch's journal – written in Ancient Thassilonian. She writes a lot about healing magic which she learned about by studying corpses. So she was banished because she would study corpses and carry out experiments on people. She has a lab where innocent people unrelated to her experiments raise unicorns because they have powerful healing properties and she wants to figure out how to replicate those effects. It also says something about the pure magic drink, really called The Black Blood. It's a substance found in Orv (not sure where this place is) people believe it was left behind by the Vault Keepers. The theory is they used it to make the world. She was given a cup, supposedly they're saving it for Tar-baphon.

The chest is continuing to follow Zelara. She tries to baby talk it and it goes over to Orias. Kyle retrieves the mug, and we decide to go down the other hallway. It leads to the part where the dwarves lived in hard uncomfortable furniture. Occupying the furniture is the backup army. SO MANY CORPSES! They are all equipped and ready to go once they're animated. They each have a scroll right above them and are set up in such a way so if you pull on the scroll it activates the spell. This continues for the REST OF THE FORTRESS!

One corpse is not like the others and is walking towards us. It's a revenant and is wearing armor much fancier than the rest of the corpses. It sees Orias, looks extra unhappy, and screams “THIEF!” It charges Orias and combat ensues. Orias notices the insignia on the revenant's sword hilt is the same as the one on his crossbow, Action Bastard. We kill it. Orias tries to touch the sword and it hurts him a lot. Eorin sees that it is a unique cursed item, and is bane to any thief that touches it. But it also does a lot of other cool shit and might have a wish left on it, though once the wish is used, all of it's other powers go away. The armor has the same curse on it, and hurts Orias who touches it before waiting for someone to check it out. The armor is full plate made of mithril and specially decorated. However, the goggles are not a part of the set and grant darkvision. He also has a rod and a belt which are also magical. We also find the Bard's third journal! There's a note on the inside cover that says “confiscated due to revealing of trade secrets.”

Eorin realizes that the bodies can't be raised as undead if the bodies are broken. So we create a series of funeral pyres and burn the bodies while Eorin says prayers over them. We find both orc and dwarf corpses. We leave and take the box of onyx and burn the boxes of corpses near the entrance. We decide to go take a nap in the caravan and bring the gear we find with us.

The journal continues on about hwo they stopped at Carrion Hill b/c the wizard wanted to meet one of his old teachers. The bard feels the wizard has been acting weird since then. They came to this cavern where they found the cult. He believes they were doing well at first and then the cleric, Imina, betrayed them. Imina and Ursion (wizard) fought back and forth, and ursion killed the Bastard. Doritan thinks Brick might have escaped, but he was captured by weird tentacle things, and then the journal ends. Trade secrets: Brick had been hiding stashes of things he had stolen from the party all around the world and marked them with a clay brick on top. He believes there's one right outside. There are also the command words for the entire Action Bastard set of equipment. There's one other note in the back of the book. Someone tore out the page, but if you do the pencil dust thing, you can read the imprint of the torn out page on the next blank page. It's got the cleric's last name written down: Imina Baphon.

We look around outside and find Brick's stash of loot. It is full of AMAZING THINGS! Like, Staff of Power amazing. We sell it all to to the University and become crazy ass rich. They de-curse the sword and can't figure out where the compass leads to. They recommend NOT FOLLOWING IT! (note: the chest did not follow us out of the tower). We discover, in the Bastard's sword hilt, a note and a scroll of true resurrection. The note says that if we found the sword on his body, if we bring him back to life, he'll call it even. We give the scroll to the orc shaman to cast to bring him back.

We are about to leave, when Hell Knights arrive to arrest Eorin for murder. They're accusing Eorin of animating a corpse and ordering it to kill a girl in Carrion Hill.

Here comes the horrifying part: 1

Into the Fortress

We healed up with potions and went after the Grave Knight. Zelara was able to track him, and Kyle shot him good. We continue on, and make our way to the enemy stronghold: a tower built into a mountain. We decide to sneak up to the door and try to get in, since we don't see any sentries around the tower. Illythan checks to see if the door is locked and trapped. The door opens to a spiral staircase leading up and several crates on the floor. Zelara pulls out a crowbar and cracks open one of the crates: it's filled with black onyx which is used to create undead. The other crates are full of skeletons. We decide to deal with the crates on the way back out, and head up the stairs. It quickly becomes very, very dark. Eorin casts light on his shovel, and Illythan scouts ahead. He doesn't encounter anyone on the second floor, and finds some crates up on the third floor. These crates contain foodstuffs for orcs. He reports back that there's a door entering into the keep on the second floor. We travel up to the second floor and Illythan checks the door for traps. Zelara listens at the door, hears nothing odd, and pulls it open.

There is a cliff and a very sturdy looking bridge across the chazam. We begin to cross the bridge, when it suddenly moves. Zelara jumps out of the way, but Illythan and Eorin are trapped: the bridge has morphed into a cage that is hanging over the chazam. Zelara finds four buttons on the wall, all with the same symbol on them: a square with a circle in it. The bottom closest to the door seems to have been pressed the most. Zelara presses it and the trap disarms and the bridge unfolds back into a bridge. We cross the bridge and find another set of buttons and a door. Zelara opens the door and we see an entryway designed for a group of dwarves to gather and gear up if a threat arises. There's some broken gear lying around and another door. Both doors (including the one we entered through) can be bolted from inside this room – probably to prevent orcs from following them up from underground. The doors are made for dwarf sized creatures, so we do have to crouch down to go through. We go through the door and find a room with a fire pit, a table and chairs, and stairs leading up to another door. The fire pit has a chimney hole that goes up extremely high. The floor is tiled, but none are raised. Zelara goes up the stairs and tries to open the door. The stairs turn into a slide and causes zelara to fall into a pit trap, and she vanishes. She re-appears at the top of the chimney and continues falling. A giant spike erupts from the bottom of the fire-pit, but Zelara avoids it. The door, however, remains open, and we dash through.

We are now officially in cave territory: no more fine dwarven architecture. We can hear the sound of water. The caves are vast, and there are faintly glowing fungi along the walls. We find the edge of an underground pond/lake with a chair and fishing rod. There's tension on the string (so it seems as though there's a fish on it). There's a sack next to the chair. We decide it's a trap, and don't touch it. We walk along the edge further into the cave. We find a tunnel that goes farther into the mountain, but decide to continue exploring. We find one other passage that heads off more to the edge of the mountain. We can feel air coming from this tunnel and decide to investigate it. It's a straight shot out until it gets to a curved area that leads to the cliff-side. Eorin supposes this is where the dwarves tossed out their trash.

We turn around and follow the tunnel that heads further into the mountain. The tunnel gets narrower and narrower, forcing the party to travel single file. We come to a hole in the ground, that we could probably jump across. There's something squishy and unpleasant at the bottom of the hole. Kyle jumps across the hole, only to slam into an invisible wall and fall into the hole. The hole is filled with gelatinous cubes, and Kyle is severely injured by the fall. Zelara directs her rope of climbing to wrap itself around Kyle and we pull her out of the oozes. Eorin figures out the invisible wall is actually a device, and there is some way to turn it into an invisible floor. He doesn't know if it's a mechanism or a key phrase or spell or whatever. Kyle shoots the oozes dead from atop the hole, and Zelara figures out there's a mechanism to activate the floor at the bottom of the pit. Zelara climbs down to the bottom and ties a normal rope to the lever. She takes a moment to rifle through the bodies that had been trapped in the oozes. She finds a waraxe (which she can hear sing when she holds it). She climbs back out and we pull the lever from atop the pit. Eorin identifies the spell on the waraxe as from the evocation school. We cross the invisible bridge. About 80 ft along we find another door.

This door isn't trapped, but it is locked. Zelara pulls out her crowbar and forces the door open. The room is 40ft by 40ft and has a door on the other side, It is full of armor. They don't look like dwarven suits of armor – they appear more human sized. They're all full plate, but missing helmets. There's a longsword for each suit of armor. Eorin prepares to cast detect magic on one of the suits of armor when it animates and attacks him. A melee ensues, and while Zelara and Illythan do damage it, but then Kyle shoots the shit out of it epically and it dies.

Then the far door opens and we hear a clanking, see a mess of gears and metal, and a voice tells us to surrender. We fight for a few moments, and quickly realize that it's a clockwork golem. It grapples Zelara and starts to try and feed her to it's clockwork bits. Eorin figures out it's immune to magic and has massive damage reduction, the exception being rust spells and adamantium weapons (neither of which the party has). It asks us to comply again, and Zelara and Eorin comply. Eorin heals Zelara, while Kyle continues to shoot at it. Kyle and Illythan back into the narrow hallway as Kyle continues to attack. The golem moves toward Kyle, and Eorin and Zelara can see into the next room. It's a dwarven great hall – full of stone tables and chairs none of which look comfortable at all! There is something sitting in the throne. It's cloaked and masked and all that fun stuff. Though bigger than human sized, but not quite large yet. Illythan remembers the sack next to the fishing pole, decides to hope to god it had something useful in it, and runs full tilt back along the tunnels. The golem transforms into a 20ft by 5ft wall and inserts itself into the hallway. It hits Kyle pretty hard, shredding her, but is now trapped in the hallway. Zelara draws her bow, and begins attacking it once more. Illythan finds the sack and sees a bunch of scrolls. He scans one, sees that it's Rusting Grasp, grabs the sack and runs back to the group. Kyle steps out of the reach of the golem and continues to shoot, her arrows slowly but surely whittling away at it. Eorin notices something is off, but can't pinpoint what, and takes a full defensive stance as he heals himself. Kyle continues to shoot at it.

Something touches Eorin, and he is critically wounded as the imp familiar of the figure on the throne casts the harm spell on him. The concerning feeling Eorin had was air moving strangely as the imp invisibly flew towards him. Zelara notices the imp, but decides getting the rest of the party together is the best way to help Eorin and continues attacking the golem. Eorin channels energy and heals himself. Illythan returns and attempts to cast rusting grasp on the golem. The spell fizzles and doesn't work. Kyle shoots it again, and finally, the golem dies, exploding shrapnel and gears everywhere. Fortunately, everyone was out of range and remained unscathed.

The imp leans over Eorin and whispers. “Give in, or we both die.” Eorin looks at it defiantly, and gives a prayer to Pharasma, declaring “I am a priest of Pharasma, and my faith is sound!” Both Eorin and the imp are promptly hit by a flame strike spell from the man on the throne. Eorin falls to the ground unconscious. Zelara rushes over and tries to pull Eorin out of the line of sight of the dude on the throne. Kyle channels energy to heal the party, and Eorin wakes up, still severely wounded. The man on the throne moves forward, but seems to be stumbling a bit. Zelara draws her standard sword and shield and waits for it to cross the threshold. Eorin channels as well, and figures out the man is a powerful cleric and litch, but is recovering so it's probably going to be easy to kill. Illythan and Kyle promptly do so. It crumbles to the ground.