We continue our adventure in our apartments after a wonderfully successful play in the City of Westcrown.
The Party
Bort Taberd – Human [native Chelish] fighter. The son of wealthy merchants.
Toobufforu – Human [native Chelish] rogue. The son of the late famed opera singer (and known lover of young boys) Michelangelo.
Scarvend – Human [immigrant Khellid] sorcerer. Immigrant from the bizarre city of Starfall, he believes himself to be a prophet of the void beyond.
Max Blackstone – Dwarf cleric of Torag. Seeks to bring back open worship of deities other than Asmodeus to Westcrown.
Bindle – Gnome Illusionist. Seeks to allow art back into city.
The Adventure
The next day after the play we prepare to go to the Mayor’s house for a celebration. Our mission is to find the Chelis Crux somewhere in the Mayor’s house. We heal up and do some shopping from the procedes we received from our fantastic performance the night before.
That evening we arrive at the Mayor’s house in full costume from the play. We are greated by the guards at the front of the house with a canopey above a red carpet – it was raining lightly.
We enter the house into a large forya addorned with impressive art and scupltures. This then leads into an arberitum with the ceiling replaced with a starlit clear sky.
We then enter the main banquet hall where several dozen guests greet us as the butler announces our arrival. Everyone seems pleased at our arrival.
Before dinner was to start we split up and mingle among the crowd.
We meet several noteworthy nobels in the city. We all meet the mayor who already had a few drinks into him. The Captain of the Guards, who we meet briefly, leaves before dusk.
The dinner begins with exotic appitizers. All of us only nibble or fake eatting. We all also drink very lightly if at all because we know our mission later tonight.
Several courses of food followed by mingling umongst party guests followed by another couse in the meal continue. Bindle, the gnome illusionist, offers to a performance for the party, but most people are too tanked to appreciate it.
The evening was only interrupted once when Toobuffru was slipped away from the party to ‘explore’ the servants’ quarters. The mayor requested all his servants to search for him and no continue the dinner party until he returned since he was one of the honored guests. After pilfering some loose items and some wine into his Haversack he was found by a servant and returned to the party.
The evening comes to an end and everyone tanked retires to the quarters upstairs. Max, the dwarf, however, is a little tanked himself from the drink and stays at the table.
The rest of the party goes upstairs and finds rooms, but don’t stay in them for long. The rest of the party meets in the dinning area after all the servants and guests have left – the dwarf still there, stitting where they left him.
Toobuffru, the human rogue/fighter, noticed an entrance to the attic during his exploration. We decide to follow him on his hunch and go upstairs. Though a locked door he managed to open we go up a flight of stairs into the attic.
There we don’t find anything partiularly useful. We search all the rooms and find two that interest us. The first a room with many “gadgets” and “retraints” used for bondage we assume. The other a small room with a large metallic mirror.
Examining the mirror Bindle notices that the mirror is magical. Toobuffru touches the mirror and disappears. This must be some kind of portal and we all enter though the mirror.
When we appear we are in a hallway with alcoves on either size every ten feet. A skelton on the ground before us against the wall. We examine it closer and it appears to have been some a mage who died of starvation. Could this be our fate we ask ourselves?
Searching the mage remains we find his spellbook, a Haversack, and several scrolls and pieces of parchment.
We make our way down the hallway to a unlocked reinfored wooden door. Bort, the human fighter, opens the door and we look in. There we see a wall of books in bookshelves along the left wall. The center of the room is divided by obsidian-like walls. To the right a hallway that turns left after about 30-feet.
We enter and start looking at the books. Bort goes down the hallway and when he turns he is meet by three shrieking beasts. Roll for Initiative.
Toobufforu is first and hides around the corner. The two other shriekers move around the center dividers and move along the bookshelf towards Bindle and the Sorcerer. Toobufforu sneaks attack one before it makes it to the casters.
Max, the dwarven cleric, casts Bless and then moves into melee with one of the creatures going towards the casters.
The Sorcerer reaches out and touches one of he creatures with a Shocking Grasp. Bindle lets loose a crossbow bolt but glances off the tough hide. Toobufforu gets hit hard by the creature he is in melee with.
Bort finishes off the creature he was on and moves to help the casters. Another Shocking Grasp finishes off the creature and we then all forcus on the last creature.
Several of us have quills from the creatures in us. Max heals the party and then we continue exploring the room.
We take several dozen books, all very old and valuable to come kind of collector. We go though a door in the opposite side of the room.
We follow a hallway that splits to the south and west. We take the south hallway and we come to a round room with stairs leading up and down from the platform we were standing at, but the stairs that rose from our position seemed to end up at the platoform where the stairs decended from the platform – the room was very odd.
An open archway lead from this room south. But before we could react Incorporal creatures moved from out the wall and moved towards us. Roll initiative.
One of the creatures attacked Bort while we were all surprised, draining him of his life energy and strength. Another creature moved adjacent and further drained Bort. Toobuffru attemped to flank one of the creatures but failed and fell in Borts square.
The Sorcerer reached out and touched one of the creatures with a Shocking Grasp. Max Channelled Positive Energy to damage the undead creatures.
The creatures attacked again but this time didn’t damage Bort as much. Toobuffru, using his Rogue Crawl ability, tumbled on the floor back into the hallway leading south before standing up.
A Scorching Ray from the Sorcerer finishes off one of the creatures just as another creature appears though the opposite wall and moves towards Bort in the front of the party.
Several rounds later we finish off the incorporal creatures. Max repairs the ability damage using a Wand of Lesser Restoration and heals the party.
We follow the passageway south to a drop-off – the bottom we cannot see. Ten feet away the cooridor continues and turns right about 20-feet after. Toobuffru makes a running jump and easily clears the gap.
The Sorcerer, impatient, also makes a runnin jump and clears the gap effortesly. Bort throws Toobuffru a rope and he ties the rope to himself. Bort ties the rope to himself and make taught the loose rope. Max climbs across the rope. Bindle casts Levitate and pulls himself across the rope.
With Toobuffru and Max holding the rope Bort makes the jump and clears the gap easily.
We move down the hallway and turn the corner to what appears like about a dozen jail cells. We look into the first one and to our surprise we see a bearded devil sitting on the far side of the room with a magical glaive next to him – it doesn’t appear to notice us. We look in all the other cells and all we find are a few skeltons in the cots, but otherwise empty.
We decide to kill the evil devil so Toobuffru opens the cell door as the devil stands up and arms himself. Roll initiative.
Bort, quick to react move to shore up the door, preventing the devil from escaping. Toobuffru tumbles into the room and attacks the creature from behind. The Sorcerer casts Scorching Ray and nails the devil. Max casts Command and orders the devil to drop his weapon.
The devil drops its weapon and then procedes to claw at Bort. Toobuffru picks up the glaive and tumbles back out of the room. The next few rounds we finish off the devil.
Bindle identifies the glaive and notices that its a +1 Keen Glaive, but its also intelligent and radiates evil. He determins that the glaive is too dangerous to keep even after Toobuffru insists that he should have it. Bindle places the Glaive into his Haversack and casts Alarm on the Haversack just in-case the Rogue tries to pilfer it.
We continue past the cells and follow the hallway as it snakes to a unworked tunnel. The tunnel is wet and covered with slimy algae and starts to slope downward. We decide to move very carefully, but the slope becomes too steep to safely move while upright.
Since this is our only way to go Bort goes first and slips. He slides down the tunnel and it curves to the right. He grabs for a handhold and stops himself. He then slowly, while still sitting, moves down to the bottom of the tunnel to a landing into a room with a solid floor.
Max goes next, but falls flat on his buttocks and tumbles the full distance to the bottom of the tunnel. Bort laughs at him as he pull him to his feet.
The Sorcerer is next and carefully lowers himself though the tunnel. Bindle slides on his rump all the way down laughing all the way. Toobuffru then nimbly manuevers himself down the tunnel.
No worst for ware we continue through the labryth of passageways. We come to a larger room with chains hanging from the ceiling over a pit. Bort moves to the edge of the pit and looks into what looks like a furnace of twisted bones and metal. As he turns though one of the chains lashes out at him. Roll initiative.
Tooburforu quick to react moves into the room and strikes with his Greataxe at the chain on Bort, knocking it off him. Bort swings at the animated chain but misses. Scarven, the sorcerer, casts Magic Missle at the chain wounding it. Max moves into the room behind Bort.
Another chain animates and we press our attack. The chains look to try to pull us into the pit, but each time we resist their attacks. We finally defeat the animated chains as they fall into pieces into the pit, but then disappear through a firery portal. We decide not to explore the pit. We heal up and continue through a passway on the far side of the room.
The passageway opens up into another one of those rooms with the stairs moving both up and down but coming to the same landing. The center of the room opens to a pit so dep we cannot see the bottom and a ceiling so tall we cannot see the rof. There are two exits to this room, both open.
Everyone except Max and Scarven enter the circular room when all of a sudden a dark-skinned female elf springs from the shadows and attacks Tooburforu. Roll initiative.
Tooburforu and Bort manuver to flank her. Bindle enters the room just as door shuts behind him, cutting both Max and Scarven in the passageway. The female elf tumbles from between Bort and Tooburforu and jumps down into the middle of the room falling down into the darkness. Bindle notices though a Spellcraft check that she is under the influence of a Levitate spell as she disappears into the darkness.
Bindle suspects that the room bottom connects to its top and warns the others. Tooburforu and Bort move to a platform infront of one of the open passageways and prepare to attack. A round later though Tooburforu is sneak attacked by the female elf who was invisible. Bort moves to intercept. She tumbles back away from them again and drinks a potions turing invisible. Tooburforu swings at where he last saw her but misses his mark. The door that was closed opens and Max and Scarven enter the circular room.
We all wait a minute or two, but no additional attacks; she must have retreated. We form up and take the south passageway.
It opens up into an empty 20’x20′ room with a door on the far side with a sign above it in Infernal saying, “To the Observation Tower”. Tooburforu checks for traps and listens to the door, nothing. He unlocks the door and opens it to a stairway leading up.
Bort leads the party up the stairs to a landing with three passageways, one to the southeast, one to the southwest, and one continuing straight south with a sign above each passageway. We then hear a disembodied voice, in Infernal, that rhymes us a riddle from inside the room.
Bindle casts See Invisibility and sees an imp in the room. He informs the party and we move forward attacking in the direction that Bindle directed us, but all our attacks fail and the imp withdrawls down the stairway we just came up. We decide its not worth is to pursue and close the door behind us. We continue south though the middle passageway.
We come a similarly shaped room that we just left, but this time a passageway to the northeast and northwest. We deduce that these passageways connect to the ones in the previous room so we continue south through an open passageway.
The walls here turn from clean-cut masonry walls to unhewn walls carved into the stonework. The passageway turns to the right and slopes downward. The smell of rotting plant matter hangs in the air and becomes nausious. We stop for a moment to get used to the smell before continuing on. Bindle casts Levitate on himself from a Wand.
The algae in the passageway becomes too slipery for Bort and Max who both fall and tumble down about 20 feet into a pool of murky water. Bort sucessfully swim back to the surface onto a nearby ledge. The dwarf however is no where to be seen except for a few bubbles breaking the surface a few feet away.
Bindle and Scarven carefully manuver themselves to the entrance of this long cavern, about 20-foot wide and 100-foot long to the west. Bindle notices a small island about 60-feet away with a spear and something hanging from it, but he also notices some kind of water elemental moving though the water towards as a small wave of the water runs over his feet. Roll initiative.
The water elemental, still underwater, attack the dwarf at the bottom of pool, some 20-feet deep. The water eleemntal is too far away for Bort to attack so he delays. Bindle casts Invisibility on himself and moves towards the island while Levitated.
Toobuffru takes out his glaive and nimbly moves to the base of the sloped passageway and strikes the water elemental.
The water elemental focuses on Max attempts to climb/swim to the surface, but fails miserablly. The water elemental though in its environment slams Max agains the wall and he goes back to the bottom of the pool.
Bindles gets to the island and casts Detect Magic and takes an evil holy symbol at the end of the non-magical spear. Max with no where to goes total defensive agains the water elemental, but the elemental still slams him.
Scarven yells for help and Bindle turns back and moves towards the rest of the party. The water elemental slams the dwarf again and he goes unconcious. The water elemental surfaces and attacks Tooburforu and ignores Bindle 20-feet below him next to the dwarf.
Bindle, a gnome illunionist, reaches into Max’s pouch and pulls out a Wand of Cure Light Wounds and attempts to use it on Max and succeeds on a Use Magic Device check. Max becomes concious and heals himself with a spell.
The water elemental has a couple of lucky hits and Tooburforu retreats up the passageway where Scarven, the Sorcerer, heals him with a wand. The water elemental turns to Bort and attacks him next while Bindle casts Levitate from a wand on Max.
Bort, unable to attack the water elemental with reach defends himself as best he can. Tooburforu and Scarven come back down the slopped passageway. Scarven casts Enlarge Person on Tooburforu and he uses his enlarged glaive against the water elemental.
Max moves along the bottom of the pool and then up and out of the water towards the ceiling. Scarven casts an Acid bolt at the water elemental. Max moves across the ceiling and then above Bort and heals him. For the next few rounds Tooburforu fights with the water elemental until the elemental is finally defeated.
Tooburforu inisists that he could had killed the creature if he had the glaive from the bearded devil. Bindle, being the mischieviness gnome he is creates a Silent image of him dropping the evil glaive into the water near the island; Tooburforu dives into the muck and searches for the glaive at the bottom of the pool.
We search the room and there’s nothing of note except the evil holy symbol of Asmodeous Bindle found on the spear. The cavern opens up to the north at the far west side. We swim or levitate across the pool to the sandy beach. Bindle casts Presidigiation and cleans us all up and then we continue north.
The unhewn passageway turns into worked masonry again and then enters into another one of those circular rooms. Each open passageway though now connects to another one of these circular rooms with no ceiling or floor except for stairs that move both down and up but end up at the same landing in front of each passageway.
We continue though about a dozen of these circular rooms, each time trying to take the western passageway whenever possible. After about half-an-hour we finally come out of the maze to a passageway leading west.
We take this passage and then it turns north and then tees to the west. Bort leading the party takes a left and goes about 20-feet until the passage way angles left to a 10×15-foot room with a humanoid figure wrapped in cloth that stands and turns towards Bort. Roll initiative.
The creature moves surprisingly quickly and intercepts Bort in the 5-foot hallway. The rotting flesh smell overwhelms Bort and be beings coughing. Tooburforu asks for the glaive and Binble hands him halberd disguised as the glaive. Scarven shoots an Acid bolt at the mummy while Max feebling attempts to shoot the mummy from the back of the party with his light crossbow. Max yells at Toobufforu to get of the way so we can move up.
Toobufforu tumbles behind the mummy and swings at it, but misses with the halberd that he thinks is a glaive. Max moves up behind Bort and Channel’s Positive Energy damaging the Mummy. Max and Toobufforu successfully ward of the rotting flesh smell excuding from the mummy.
We continue a few rounds until we defeat the mummy. Searching the room we find nothing of particular value and continue north and then west into a large room with a doorway to the south and west.
The door to the west is a reinforced wooden door with ornate carvings. We examine it and find that the door is magical. Toobufforu carefully checks for traps, but nothing. The mage and the cleric can’t make out anything so we open the door to a shimmering view of our apartments. It appears to be some kind of portal similar to what we came though to this, what we believe, to be an extra dimentional dungeon. We close the door and go though the south door.
The passageway opens into a large room smelling of filth and dreck. The room opens up to a platform with stairs leading down on each side to a pool of sewage 20-feet below. A landing about 30-feet on the otherside of the pool can be seen. Two large chests can be seen in two alcoves beyond. We carefully move towards the edge of the platform.
Bort notices as he’s looking around the pool swirling. Four shapes form and out of the muck comes move these muck covered abberations. They start moving up the stairs.
Bort and Toobufforu each take a set of stairs and wait for them to reach the top. Bindle, still with levitate, floats to the top of the room and starts crawling across the ceiling. Scarven shoots and Acid bolt and Max moves behind Toobufforu to assist.
The muck dwellers make it to the top of the stairs where they are met with a singing blow from Toobufforu felling one with a well placed hit. Bort finishes one off with a pair of attacks from his shield and his longsword. Bindle lowers himself to the landing on the far side of the room and moves towards one of the large chests.
Soon thereafter the muck begins to swirl again, but this time a much larger form begins to appear. Bort finishes off the last muck dweller and starts heading down the stairs. Toobufforu and Bort finish off the last muck dweller on the other set of stairs so Toobufforu can move down the stairs. Scarven moves to the edge of the platform with Max overlooking the pool.
From the edge of the room a large mutli-armed beast bursts out of the sewage. Its eyelid opens and a large eye looks directly at Bort.
Toobufforu and Bort are quick to react as they both move down the stairs and jump off the landing into the waist-high muck to melee the beast.
The beast, with is multiple tenacles, lashes out at Bindle, Bort, and Toobufforu hitting them with its razor-sharp claws. Scarven moves to the edge of the platform and Acid bolts it.
Bindle casts Invisibility while Bort and Toobufforu manuever to flank. Max channels positive energy and heals everyone except the beast. Scarven shoots a well placed Scorching Ray into the belly of the beast. Toobufforu and Bort finish it off a few rounds later.
Bindle casts Knock and opens one of the chests. Inside he finds a bunch of gold and misceneous papers in one chest and what we came for, the Chelis Crux in the other chest! We clean ourselves off and gather all the items from the two chests back in the room above the platform.
We open the door in the previous room on the west wall and all pass through the portal. We appear in our appartment safely.
Session ends here.