Last night’s had us continuing our adventures from the last session in the dungeon I-keep-forgetting-the-name-of with characters I-don’t-recall-their-names-unless-it’s-written-on-my-character-sheet.
Backstory
“I can’t read my writing so I may be slightly off on a couple of names, but the ‘legend’ the party is chasing is the Eye of Horum. It was an artifact of great power stolen from the original mage tower. You never got a straight answer as to what it exactly does, but it was used to help a powerful mage become a lich (even though his goal was to become a god). This item has been coveted by a variety of evil baddies over the years, conveniently just as you guys came to town a group of apprentices were subverted an stole the Eye ostensibly for wealth, power, etc. You found their slaughtered corpses at the town of the ravine and have continued on to figure out where the Eye is. At this point, the mission has somewhat changed from let’s be good and retrieve this item to let’s get this because it’s really powerful and we can probably make tons of cash while doing something nice for the community.” — GM
The Party
This evenings party consists of a dwarven cleric of Moradin, human fighter, human monk, half-orc barbarian, half-elf sorcerer, elven sorcerer, a human rogue, human ranger/fighter, and a human mage (me) – a large showing.
The Adventure
We continue from our previous adventure from our two-day rest from the Minotaur camp. Everyone fully rested and everything identified we break camp. We all debate for a while trying to figure out where we want to go next.
We decide first to send our ranger, with new set of Wings of Flying we got from the Beholder’s horde, and scout the silver doorway on a landing of an 80-foot cliff above us.
He flies up and though the shimmering doorway and makes it way though the long corridor. Unfortunately he’s still new to flying and accidentally touches the wall. He momentarily feels weak but shrugs it off.
He flies for a while and finds that the corridor loops around to another door that we had previously discovered. He flies back and reports. The party decides to double back to the river and this time follow it downstream further into the cavern.
With our make-shift raft we built from the shattered remains of a larger boat, we make our way down the dimily-lit cavern.
The cavern opens up and we see a landing with worked stone and pillars to our left. To our right is a large beach that turns to rock.
As approach the landing we notice a set of stairs when all of sudden our raft tips over and we all go spilling into the frigid water. Roll initiative.
In the water in front and behind us we see two large green-slimy trolls that tipped over our raft from underneath. From behind the pillars we see two more show themselves. The Monk moves on shore and moves behind a pillar opposite one of the trolls. My mage in melee with the first troll in the water casts Mirror Image and swims towards the shore and on the beach area while being attacked by the first troll in the water.
Both sorcerers swim for the shore and then cast Magic Missile and Flame Strike respectively at one of the trolls. The ranger flies up and starts pelting the trolls with his +1 Shocking Composite Longbow. The Barbarian swims the shore and engages the closes troll near one of the pillars followed by the other fighter. The rogue in the back of the party is not so lucky.
The cleric swims on shore and blesses the Barbarian’s weapon. The troll nearest the rogue rends him and starts grappling him.
The Barbarian and the fighter hold their own against the two trolls on land. The ranger noting the mage below him are in trouble starts focusing his fire on the troll the now has followed the mage on the beach. The cleric and the monk aids the rogue now being torn apart by the troll.
The Barbarian and the fighter take out the first troll while the ranger single handedly takes out the troll on the mage. The sorcerers and the monk focus fire on the troll with the rogue, while the cleric heals the rogue.
By now the Mirror Image decoys have all been destroyed and the troll is about to make it to the mage when a lucky crit from the ranger takes out the troll. The sorcerer’s finish off the troll and the fighter and Barbarian finish off the last troll. Whoosh.
We put the raft right-side up and moor it to a rock on the landing then make our way down the stairs.
The stairs open up into a large rough-hewn cooridors snaking back and forth deeper into the cavern. The corridor opens up into a large area. On the left is a wall of bluish rock with bright silvery veins. Our dwarven cleric instantly recognizes it as a Mitral deposit. On the otherside of the area though or rogue notices 5 large insect-like armored aberrations with mandibles the size of a human busy borrowing or eating something – they seem to not have noticed us so we back off.
Our plan is to surprise the monsters using our Horn of Blasting and Horn of Valhalla. Surprise round.
The mage moves into position an uses his Wand of Cone of Cold on the monsters. The monk moves in front of the mage and uses his Horn of Blasting on the monsters. The fighter summons five level 5 Barbarians in front of the monk and orders them to hold their ground. The ranger, flying above the party, shoots one of the monsters with three successive shots. The sorcerers each fireball the lot, while the cleric blesses the Barbarian’s weapon and the Barbarian moves forward in rank with the summoned Barbarians ready for attack.
The monsters engage, move up to summoned barbarians and then use their Confusing Gaze on the adventurers. Everyone is hit with the gaze attacks except the cleric, the sorcerers and the ranger who are out of range. Two of the summoned Barbarians and the monk make all their saves while everyone else is effected.
The Barbarian and two summoned Barbarians flee. The rogue and two other summoned Barbarians stand there babbling, while the mage attacks the nearest target, the monk with the last blast from the Wand of Cone of Cold.
The cone hits the fighter, the two summoned barbarians, and more importantly killing all the monsters – the monk and rogue evade easily. With all the monsters killed more than half of the party are still under the influence of the Confusion.
The cleric readies an action to Dispel the effect on the Barbarian if he attacks, while the monk deals with the mage, and the fighter, after dismissing the summoned Barbarians, engages the rogue.
The Barbarian charges the cleric after a failed Dispel attempt and takes the cleric down to half. The ranger attacks the Barbarian, drawing attention away from the cleric. The Barbarian, unable to fly, takes out his bow and starts pelting the ranger flying above him.
Once the spell wore off and everyone heals up and searches the area. The dwarven cleric, of the Earth domain, uses Stone Shape and Soften Earth and Stone to extract 100-lbs. of Mithril ore from the vein, enough for 2 Breastplates. We pack what we could into our Bags of Holding and continue though the snaking rough-hewn passageways.
We continue though the passes and come upon a room with several large holes, burrowed though the stone. The rogue sneaks up and looks around an notices that below are at least 6 more of these insect-like creatures. We decide to backtrack and take another way.
The passageway opens up into a long and 40-foot wide by 50-foot high cavern. On either side of the cavern are ledges we see 25-feet off the ground.
The ranger notices some tracks or rather impressions that look familiar. He examines them closely and notices that it is a Purple Worm trail! He motions the rest of the party back.
He cautiously flies up to the top of the corridor and looks to see if there’s anything on the ledges at the limit that his darkvision granted from the Belt of Dwarvenkind.
On the ledges is a large nest of gargoyles he estimates to be at least 15. He silently makes his way back to the party and reports.
After some second thoughts we decide to engage the gargoyles. Surprise round.
The sorcerers each cast Fireball on the nests above them. The mage casts Fog Cloud over the party as the range flies up and pelts the nearest one.
The rogue, though, sneaks from rock to rock to the base of the ledge waiting for all the gargoyles to pass.
Apparently there were more than we originally anticipated and they swarm towards us…our count has at least 30 heading our way.
The sorcerers each cast Fireball again taking out about half of the weaker ones, while the mage targets one with his Wand of Magic Missile. By this time the gargoyles have engaged the fighter, Barbarian, monk and cleric. The rogue though starts sneaking up to the nest above while everyone’s attention is on the fight.
After several rounds of fighting we dispatch the last of the gargoyles. We look around and notice the rogue is missing and start searching. The ranger find the rogue in the nest and the cleric orders him down.
The cleric is very upset and starts interrogating the rogue. The rogue though is a terrible liar (-1 to Bluff), and thus the cleric sees right though his ruse. The Barbarian throughly searches the rogue to find a few items that were not on him.
We break camp for in the gargoyle nests to rest up.
We call it an evening. Great session