Session 55: Redcorn to the Rescue
11/12/23-11/13/23, rest 11/14, active 11/15
PC: Gwendolyn, Galt, Cleet, Redcorn
Hench: Beyza, Mahin, Madrof, Mulligan, Cleric_01
The group swapped out a member, Legany for Cleet, but otherwise maintained momentum by deciding to return to the dungeon from last session. Their clammer crew from last time refused to return to the cursed waters, which led to Cleet funding the purchase of The Keef Richards, a sailing boat that was apparently going to end up as a smuggling or drug running vessel or something.
Captain Mick Jager and the crew of two with other silly names I can’t remember happily boarded and for a keg of ale agreed to babysit the boat while the adventurers dove in the water.
Galt the mariner Venturer did the swimming to set their ropes for descent and the party entered the dungeon through the zipper flap into the pale, pock-marked stone of the dungeon, the little sea-borne critters skittering away from their light just like last time.
They descended immediately to level 2 of the dungeon, where there was a life-sized obsidian statue of the same seemingly indestructible material that the tower was made of. The statue was relatively featureless, with all sharp angles and edges. Loremastery revealed to both Gwendolyn and Cleet that this was some sort of religious statue of a foreign pantheon.
As the party carefully explored this second level, they burst through a stuck door and into a room filled with angry fire beetles. The fight wasn’t particularly dangerous but they did take some knicks before killing all of the bugs. Cleet’s summoned berserkers did some work and then stood around, eager for more killing, so the party rushed into the adjoining room.
This very large space had sea kelp hanging from the ceiling, obscuring the view at eye level and slapping annoyingly against the face of anyone of average human height or taller. The party spent no time in here, sending their summoned warriors charging to the northern door. One fell in a pit trap, but they scooped him out pretty quick and kept going, the conjured men repeating “Face, Face, Face” as a marching cadence in response to Cleet’s spoken command of “Go find me something with a face”.
There was a pit trap in the next hallway that the berserkers “found”, killing two of them, and they disappeared just before rushing the door at the end of the corridor. Rest in peace, crazy meth-head tweekers from beyond.
Some old waterlogged furniture occupied the next room, with a cabinet in decent shape and an absolutely foul 20x20 rug dominating the center of the floor. Cleet rolled the massive thing up, squeezing mildewy disgusting water from it and revealing nothing much underneath. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn located a false bottom in the cabinet with a little treasure in it. Cleet put on a disgusting mildewy robe from the cabinet and the party lugged the whole lot back to the surface, with Cleet promising the sailors bonus pay if they could clean the rug.
Back in the dungeon, back to the rug room, and into the next. There was a cracked portion of floor here that one of the hench discovered was trapped, rocks falling to graze him for minimum damage and smash against the floor. Shortly thereafter the stones rose back into the ceiling as if by magic. The party avoided this area and went east, where they opened a door into some kind of chapel. Loremastery failed them here, but the obsidian altar on the north wall with disgusting blue and silver trappings made them uncomfortable.
When they entered the next room, a horde of zombies rushed them. This fight was also extremely one-sided. Cleet cast Hypnotic Pattern, which I had some trouble adjudicating. Undead are immune to charm, but that’s more an illusion? Idk, I figured pretty lights could distract zombies, why not, and between that and the cleric the fight was over pretty quick.
Bodies filled this room in various forms of decomposition but there was no treasure. The group spent a lot of time searching this room and the previous for secret doors but found nothing. While searching the altar room, they heard some sort of commotion in the room with the rock trap. I used some pretty fantastic analog foley to mimic the sounds of bats. Total immersion.
Gwendolyn had one of her hench advance a short way down the hallway and throw an iron spike at the trap. They were trying to catch some of the unknown enemy in the trap but succeeded only in scaring them off. The second activation crushed a stone trap door in the floor, revealing a cavity underneath with a chest in it. After some fooling around they got it out and got some more treasure, which again they took to the surface. The sailor crew was doing their best with the rug but making little progress while Captain Mick Jager looked on with ale mug in hand.
Their third trip took them to the only portion of the level that they hadn’t explored, revealing an empty room which they spent several turns searching for secret doors. A random encounter finally popped, with a double handful of Throghrin charging in from the direction of the altar room.
The party was surprised and quickly lost their heavy fighter hench to the ghoul-like paralyzation the creatures deployed by touch. Cleet had a massively effective second cast of Hypnotic Pattern, dazing 75% of the enemy. Unfortunately, the rest of the creatures doled out paralyzations faster than the other PCs and henches could kill them, eventually leaving Cleet alone with two active and eight inactive bad guys. The wizard fled.
I had the party roll to see whether the creatures captured them for some dark ritual or just killed them. Roll went against the PCs and they were stroked while Cleet fumbled around in the dark. He crept back to witness the corpses being carried off to the altar room. He picked up the party’s torch that was lying on the ground and barely made it to the exit chamber before it ran out.
At this point, morale was pretty low at the table. Gwendolyn was one of the OG PCs and her crew of hench was pretty stout in magic items and time invested. Cleet threw up the bat signal, sending a panicked messenger pigeon to Redcorn the Cleric who they all had adventured with in the quest to stop the Dark Hymn. “Help help” or something to that effect. He also sent a panicked message to each EARS office that Gwendolyn was dead and they should take up arms and riot in her memory.
Redcorn is a high level cleric that has advanced into domain management and retired from session play, but he came to the rescue of his long-time adventuring companions. He mobilized some of his henchmen and arrived by griffon back, where Cleet led him into the dungeon. The relief force easily dispatched the random encounter of Throghrin they discovered, which was purely organic and perfectly timed, even capturing one and interrogating it to learn there was in fact a secret room behind the altar that they party just failed to locate previously.
They stacked on the door, busted in with spells, and easily defeated the remaining creatures who were preparing the corpses for some heinous dark ritual that would give them three black mana. Or something. The group pulled some meager treasure from the room, leaving an absolute load of copper, and retreated with the bodies of their friends and henchmen.
The rest of the session was hustling to various temples and altars and such to get the best casts of Restore Life and Limb that they could and rolling all the mortal wounds/tampering with mortality rolls for the fallen. They only lost one henchman permanently, everyone else returning with various levels of discomfort and recovery time.
Musings:
Anything that can paralyze is nasty. This party was relatively small in terms of what they usually bring, so each one that got nicked was a more significant loss, and the weird creatures aren’t undead, which is the group’s usual “I Win” button with clerics and turn undead.
I was honestly hoping to catch Redcorn with one of them, but the heavy spellcaster presence and foreknowledge of the fight prevented it from ever really being a thing. It’s kinda lame to have a get out of jail free card like that, but it’s all above board story wise so I can’t really complain and there was definitely risk involved with the corpse recovery.
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