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
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