Wherein Sol Gets Touched in the Darkness
This session (Barrowmaze 19/Northern Reaches 36) was played on Monday, April 30th.
Kelg
Sol
Cromwell
Serge the Tabernac
This report will be short and sweet. I'm simply trying to fill in the blanks between last session and the next, but don't worry some very interesting things went down.
The session centered around the exploration of new and undiscovered areas of Barrowmaze. The party wandered through the halls fighting off all the usual badies, ravenous zombies and the like. The first interesting encounter happened in a room that was nestled deep inside of the barrowmaze. In this room were some alcoves where gold and treasure was found and a large archway. the party veered close the the archway and looked through it. It led into a small room and the party discussed options. Cromwell had his wits about him, and before any of the more "courageous" members of the party could step through the archway, he tested the floor inside with a ten ft. pole. Immediately, the mother of all portcullises dropped down from above.
Cromwell brushed sweat from his brow. However, immediately after the portcullis dropped a strange and shadowy creature passed through the bars of the metal gate. Everyone ran with the exception of Cromwell Kelg and Alson. Cromwell was the only one to be attacked by the shadow. Rather than being injured by the thing, Cromwell felt his strength being sapped. Luckily, Kelg's magic warhammer pierced through the shadowy apparition and killed it. "Killer" Kelg remarked to the returning party that "he shoulda thrown hammers at em' when they turned tail". With the threat gone, the party managed to hold this massive portculles open long enough to allow a hireling to search inside. There, he found the remains of a robed man holding a silver coffer. The silver coffer contained a magic key. And the coffer itself was worth about 100 gold pieces.
The party found a bunch of loot before and after this, and returned to town. On their return, they explored and area of the crypt that led to a room with several switches. If they had remembered the note they found that read `first up, then down`they wouldn`t have got themselves into so much trouble. Stink Flipper was sent inside to flip the switches and to see what their effect was. The first switch seemed to set off a trap which old stink flip survived. The second opened a large rusty metal door. The party decided to explore through the door and found it immediately closed behind them. This was not good.
Following their only path forward they found a gigantic crypt room with a statue of Nergul (a colossal one) standing over a fine silver long sword. Along all of the walls were burial alcoves filled with skeletons and treasure. the party diligently smashed all of the skeletons in the alcoves hoping to prevent them from animating and attacking them. It seemed to work as they did not rise from their graves at all. Searching all of the alcoves yielded some very interesting items. A magical coffer was found, locked. As fortune would have it, the key they found earlier opened this box! what luck. inside was a silver dagger (later revealed to be a +2 magic enhancement), a magical set of spectacles and a scroll. When worn, the spectacles grant the effects of comprehend languages and read magic to the user. Very useful! The scroll also contained a protection from arrows spell. The party also found an unclocked wooden coffer. Cromwell opened away from his body, causing a poisoned dart to shoot out and hit the wall infront of him. Inside was a magical spear head. The party also a magic ring and a magic spear. Sol later found it was a ring of protection +1 and kept it. Serge attempted to use the spear as he found it. turns out it was cursed as a -1 spear that could not be dropped. Serge moaned and bitched about this for a while. He would soon find it was ablessing in disguise though.
The party also found a secret door in one of the alcove chambers that led to a room full of pit traps. Kelg fell down two and survived barely. The party realized that there was no feasible way to cross the pits and that they had to try and bust out of this area the way they came. That way was through the locked and heavy rusted metal door. The party made their way back to the heavy doors and broke out the sledge hammers. They eventually broke through the portal but in the process attracted nefarious creatures from the corners of the maze itself. As the doors flew wide. four Wights hissed at them, and said vile disturbing things. The party braced for attack. The wights layed their claws upon Durdir and sucked the very life from him, and left him a grey ashen corpse on the ground. Serge commanded Stink Flipper to take Durdir's place, and he did so, obediently. Stink Flipper punched the wight in the face, and as he did so, his life energy was sucked from his body, and he collapsed dead. Serge gasped and realized that even touching their face was enough to kill a man (or mongrelman) The wights could now make their way to Sol. During all this, Kelg had managed to slay a wight or two, other members of the party lobbed flaming oil and holy water at the abomination. Cromwell attempted to turn the fiends and failed, and subsequently blinded one with a light spell. Serge also found that even though his spear was cursed, it was still magical and could harm the beasts (non-magical weapons wouldn't work). Before the Wights could be totally slain though, the final one grasped Sol by the throat (nat 20) and suched some life away (one level + a shit ton of exp). The party finally slew the beast and Sol was left panting and terrified.
Now Sol's player was very upset about this, having lost not only one but basically two levels because he reverts the 0 exp mark of the previous level. Sorry if that makes no sense but suffice to say the rules are harsh on this. Also, there was no save that could be had against them, and a natural 20 always hits. added to the fact there was no room to flee if they wanted, Sol was fuming. He decided to run back and grab the silver sword because he had nothing left to lose. Serge stopped him, saying that he was still a skilled fighter with a greta amount of wealth and magical aartifacts at his disposal. Sol conceded the point and commanded Sorlof to rescue the blade. Turns out the blade was merely an illusion, and as Sorloff approached it, the floor made way to a pit full of green slime, where he was instantly digested. The end.
Back in town, the party gave Sol his choice of magical items for biting the bullet. Though, Cromwell charged him 50 gold for the magic spear head, and later received a stern message from St. Ygg telling him to give the gold back or be punished for greed. Cromwell learned his lesson by this point and refunded the money.
