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, a human rogue, human ranger/fighter, and a human mage.
The Adventure
We continue from our previous adventure with a night’s rest in the gargoyle’s nest, perched above the large hallway we fought them all the night before. We debate which way we should take the party. The ranger reminds us that the night before he found a Purple Worm trail leading north.
We send the rogue out to scout for the party. He stealthily and silently slinks his way though the large dark hallway we along a ledge. He finds a short bridge the spans a crevas that leads to the east. Continuing to the north and then to the east the hallways tees north and east. He follows it east where it doubles back to that small bridge and then opens up into a giant cavern with a lake.
He returns to the party and reports. We decide to follow the passageway north.
The rough walls become smooth worked stone. On the walls we find these incredibly lifelike canvas of demons and adventures fighting or being violated. We send the rogue to scout.
He comes to a large room with a large mound of earth filling it, the size of a small hill. To his left is a 10-foot wide cooridor heading west.
The rogue follows the cooridor west about 40-feet and it opens up into a large room. In the room he sees coiled up a large Purple Worm that appears to be resting – for the moment it appears it doesn’t notice him. He scans the room and sees a treasure trove of gold and equipment – probably a half-dozen previous adventuring parties tried to defeat this beast.
The rogue returns to the party and reports.
We start to formulate plan trying to organize our party to best attack this creature when all of a sudden a hole 10-foot wide opens underneath the center of the party. The fighter is grabbed by the worm and the mage falls into the hole with them both. Apparently the worm noticed the rogue with its Tremorsense ability. Roll inititive.
The worm is 15-feet below the party in the hold with the fighter in his mouth. The rogue fires at the worm with his short bow, followed by a flurry of surikens from the monk, an arrow from the barbarian’s longbow, and a barriage of arrows from the ranger flying above with his Wings of Flying. The worm swallows the fighter and he’s all but presumed dead. The worm also stings the mage, but the mage survives, for now. The mage casts Haste on the party. The cleric contimplates his actions for a moment and then pulls out a jar of green slime and throws it into the mouth of the worm theorizing that the green slime would eat the worm from the inside out.
Next round another barriage of arrows from the group fire on the the worm. The worm bites at the mage but fumbles. The worm pushes up and deposits the mage on the top of the hole and is now in the middle of the party. The cleric commands the worm with his Rod of Rulership to go towards the Umber Hulks we fought earlier. The worm is complelled to comply, however, the mage being in the way fails his Reflex saving throw and is sumarily smeared along the hallway the worm slinks down.
While the worm is away for the moment the rest of the party goes into the Purple Worm’s den and loots. The Ranger guarding the rear, however, notices something weird in the painting on the wall. Apparently the characters in the painting are moving!
Out jumps from the painting a human wizard and a human fighter! They tell how they were trapped in the painting and had to fight their way out…somehow when the party ran off the worm they were able to break the curse that trapped them.
The rest of the party joins the new members and we move north to avoid the Purple Worm that is expected to return in a minute or two.
Our Ranger notices an opening about 20-feet up into a room above the cooridor we are in. He flys up and notices two doors in the room. Our Rogue climbs up and investigates with the Monk and the Barbarian behind him.
The Rogue searches for traps and listens to the doors, nothing. He then unlocks one of the doors only to be surprised by a Mummy!
The Monk, quick to react jumps in front of the door and slams the Mummy only to have the other door open and be surprised by a Mummy in robes…not looking good.
Our Barbarian climbs up to help the monk, but is too late as the monk is obliterated by one of the mummies fury of attacks. Our Ranger flies up and shoot one of the mummies. One of the mummies moves to the edge and confronts the Barbarian. The mage lets off prepared Scorching Ray into the mummy, hitting him squarely. The spellcasting mummy seeing a spellcaster casts a spell and summons a demon to attack the mage. Appearing above the mage is a devil with a longspear that moves and attacks the mage.
The cleric casts Silence into the room with the mummies. We are however outmatched as the mummy destroys our Barbarian in one round and the summonned creatures fells the mage. The rest of the part is about to run when the cleric pulls out the Rod of Rulership and commands the mummies.
He commands them to disrobe go back into the one of the rooms they entered. To draw attention to of the Purple Worm that was about to return he also had them dance while the rest of the party gathered the remains of the fallen party members. Luckily a portal was only a few dozen more yards away back to town.
We end the session with nearly half the party dead. We all decide perhaps we are not ready for that part of the dungeon and decide to reenter the dungeon after a week or preparations from the top and work our way down again, this time taking noticing of parts of the dungeon we had no explored earlier.