Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Been quite a while since I posted.
I am going to back into it as soon as possible. I am hoping my other authors will do likewise.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Whispering Cairn, Part Four: The Feral Dog (Session Five)
Whispering Cairn, Part One: Face in the Dark
21st day of Readying, 595 CY (November 6, Game session)
The party decides to hide out here instead of bringing an unconscious Ozzie back to town. They setup camp and watches. Analyn and Alex go out and scout around, Analyn picks a few dried up berries left over from winter, for her Good Berry spell.
22nd day of Readying, 595 CY
The brave band of adventurers spends this day and night at the Land farm healing and recuperating from the wounds the Owlbear inflicted on them.
23rd day of Readying, 595 CY
The night passed uneventfully, and in the morning the spell casters recover spells and heal Ozzie back up. They then head back to town with the Owlbear chick with the intention to sell it at the Emporium. Getting there they meet Gasper who ends up buying the chick for 2250 gold pieces. They split up there gold and head to the smithy to buy some new armour and weapons. The next stop was the general store to top up some other supplies.
They then head up to the Garrison and Heironeous temple to tithe and spend some more gold. Getting there Mason is giving a letter that had shown up there. The letter is from Tirra saying she is impressed with his ability to spot her and would like to meet to discuss an alliance of sorts. She says she will be at the Feral Dog at sundown should he choose to come.
After some discussion they decide that Mason, Deanr and Ozzie would go and meet with her. They spend the rest of the day laying low at the temple. Mason once again undergoes the ritual of receiving lectures on goodness and lawfulness. He gets great joy out of frustrating the paladins and clerics of Heironeous.
In the afternoon they go visit the We Jas acolytes at the Boneyard. They told the group of their findings at the Land farm. The Wee Jas clerics are concerned and have the party take one of them over to the farm to take a look. The cleric Elise, looks around cast a detect magic spell and looks around some more. Questions them about any clues they may have found, but they didn’t know of anything else. They take her back to the Boneyard.
At sundown the three set out for the Feral Dog. As they enter to see Kullen and company sitting at their usual table. They note that he is there only with three of his company instead of the usual four. Tirra is in the back throwing knives and make wagers on the game. She spots Mason and motions him to join her at her table. Tirra suggests a mutual trade of information that would benefit both her and Mason’s little group of friends, one friend in particular. Mason, intrigued with the offer says he will take it back to the group. They agree to meet at Hungry Gar for breakfast.
Meanwhile, Deanr and Ozzie are sitting at the bar having some beers and watching the goings on in the bar. They notice that Kullen is in an extremely foul mood and abusing everyone he can get his hands on. When the barmaid does not move fast enough, Kullen pushes her and she falls to the floor. She gets back up and limps to the bar. Ozzie, feeling sorry for her, gives her some gold and plays nice with her the rest of the night. Ozzie ends up leaving with Candy when she gets off work. Mason and Deanr return to the temple for the night. Analyn and Alex spend the night at the Midnight Salute partying with the troops from the Garrison. Wilhelm spent the night at the Temple talking with Mélinde the young paladin.
24th day of Readying 595
They get up in the morning and can’t find Ozzie anywhere. Mason, Analyn, Alex, Deanr, and Wilhelm head down to the Hungry Gar to meet Tirra. She is already there and waiting for them. They exchange a few pleasantries and then get down to business. Tirra suggests she may have some information that will make Alex very happy, a name, and in exchange she wants information about the cairn. She tells them she is sure that they have been in one. As much as they would like to deny it, they don’t and agree to an exchange of information.
Tirra tells Alex that the name she has is Talon Zar and that he is the man that killed his father. He tells Alex that he is a very experienced and a very dangerous man and they best be wary of going after him. She lets him know he can be found in Greyhawk. In exchange she asks about whether had come across any “special” leather armour with a certain eight pointed figure. She was also inquiring about a ring with the same symbol. The group told her that they had indeed find some armour filled with corpses but not the ring.
Tirra assures them that her friends would jump the cairn, but asks that once they are done with it that they tell. She says then she will tell her friends about the cairn once they are finished it. She gets them to agree to tell her where it is. They agree to this.
They then leave and return to the temple and wait for Ozzie. Deanr heads out to Allustan’s place to try to gather some more information. He does not get much from Allustan and then heads back to the temple. On the way he runs into a guy named Migos Fehr. They seem to think they know each other, but after a brief discussion realize it is not possible. Because Deanr does not know who his parents are could not help that way either. Deanr returns to the temple to tell his friends of his strange encounter with Migos.
The party then decides to go talk the Green Lady at the temple of Wee Jas. They travel for a few hours and make camp. The night passes by with out incident
25th day of Readying 595 CY
They make their way towards the temple and as they near it they are intercepted by some clerics of Wee Jas. They ask to see the Green Lady in regards to the grave robbing of the lands. One of the clerics goes to the temple to see if she will see them. The cleric comes back and tells them the Green Lady is not interested in meeting with them, but thanks them for their help.
They decide that maybe should they head back to the cairn and see if Alastor can shed some light on where the bones are. They travel the rest of the day towards the cairn and make camp for the night.
26th day of Readying 595 CY
They awake in the morning and continue on to the cairn arriving there mid-afternoon. They check around to make sure that no one else has been there, but find no further evidence of intruders. They make their down to the sarcophagus room. They set up the lanterns and go up and talk to Alastor. Unfortunately he can not shed any light on the where the bones of his family. He is very distressed that they have not been able to help and once again pleads with them to find the bones and unite him with his family.
They discuss the problem further and the only answer they can come up with is to go the Greyhawk to find the bones. They are convinced that that is the way to go. “All roads seem to head to Greyhawk” says Deanr. They decide to try the other elevators and try to finish more of the cairn.
They go and play with the elevator under the yellow lantern. They finally figure out how to make the elevator go up down from the bottom and the top. They all end up at the bottom of the elevator and begin to figure out the room…
They gained 100 experience points for the night.
Total to date; 1600 experience points each.
21st day of Readying, 595 CY (November 6, Game session)
The party decides to hide out here instead of bringing an unconscious Ozzie back to town. They setup camp and watches. Analyn and Alex go out and scout around, Analyn picks a few dried up berries left over from winter, for her Good Berry spell.
22nd day of Readying, 595 CY
The brave band of adventurers spends this day and night at the Land farm healing and recuperating from the wounds the Owlbear inflicted on them.
23rd day of Readying, 595 CY
The night passed uneventfully, and in the morning the spell casters recover spells and heal Ozzie back up. They then head back to town with the Owlbear chick with the intention to sell it at the Emporium. Getting there they meet Gasper who ends up buying the chick for 2250 gold pieces. They split up there gold and head to the smithy to buy some new armour and weapons. The next stop was the general store to top up some other supplies.
They then head up to the Garrison and Heironeous temple to tithe and spend some more gold. Getting there Mason is giving a letter that had shown up there. The letter is from Tirra saying she is impressed with his ability to spot her and would like to meet to discuss an alliance of sorts. She says she will be at the Feral Dog at sundown should he choose to come.
After some discussion they decide that Mason, Deanr and Ozzie would go and meet with her. They spend the rest of the day laying low at the temple. Mason once again undergoes the ritual of receiving lectures on goodness and lawfulness. He gets great joy out of frustrating the paladins and clerics of Heironeous.
In the afternoon they go visit the We Jas acolytes at the Boneyard. They told the group of their findings at the Land farm. The Wee Jas clerics are concerned and have the party take one of them over to the farm to take a look. The cleric Elise, looks around cast a detect magic spell and looks around some more. Questions them about any clues they may have found, but they didn’t know of anything else. They take her back to the Boneyard.
At sundown the three set out for the Feral Dog. As they enter to see Kullen and company sitting at their usual table. They note that he is there only with three of his company instead of the usual four. Tirra is in the back throwing knives and make wagers on the game. She spots Mason and motions him to join her at her table. Tirra suggests a mutual trade of information that would benefit both her and Mason’s little group of friends, one friend in particular. Mason, intrigued with the offer says he will take it back to the group. They agree to meet at Hungry Gar for breakfast.
Meanwhile, Deanr and Ozzie are sitting at the bar having some beers and watching the goings on in the bar. They notice that Kullen is in an extremely foul mood and abusing everyone he can get his hands on. When the barmaid does not move fast enough, Kullen pushes her and she falls to the floor. She gets back up and limps to the bar. Ozzie, feeling sorry for her, gives her some gold and plays nice with her the rest of the night. Ozzie ends up leaving with Candy when she gets off work. Mason and Deanr return to the temple for the night. Analyn and Alex spend the night at the Midnight Salute partying with the troops from the Garrison. Wilhelm spent the night at the Temple talking with Mélinde the young paladin.
24th day of Readying 595
They get up in the morning and can’t find Ozzie anywhere. Mason, Analyn, Alex, Deanr, and Wilhelm head down to the Hungry Gar to meet Tirra. She is already there and waiting for them. They exchange a few pleasantries and then get down to business. Tirra suggests she may have some information that will make Alex very happy, a name, and in exchange she wants information about the cairn. She tells them she is sure that they have been in one. As much as they would like to deny it, they don’t and agree to an exchange of information.
Tirra tells Alex that the name she has is Talon Zar and that he is the man that killed his father. He tells Alex that he is a very experienced and a very dangerous man and they best be wary of going after him. She lets him know he can be found in Greyhawk. In exchange she asks about whether had come across any “special” leather armour with a certain eight pointed figure. She was also inquiring about a ring with the same symbol. The group told her that they had indeed find some armour filled with corpses but not the ring.
Tirra assures them that her friends would jump the cairn, but asks that once they are done with it that they tell. She says then she will tell her friends about the cairn once they are finished it. She gets them to agree to tell her where it is. They agree to this.
They then leave and return to the temple and wait for Ozzie. Deanr heads out to Allustan’s place to try to gather some more information. He does not get much from Allustan and then heads back to the temple. On the way he runs into a guy named Migos Fehr. They seem to think they know each other, but after a brief discussion realize it is not possible. Because Deanr does not know who his parents are could not help that way either. Deanr returns to the temple to tell his friends of his strange encounter with Migos.
The party then decides to go talk the Green Lady at the temple of Wee Jas. They travel for a few hours and make camp. The night passes by with out incident
25th day of Readying 595 CY
They make their way towards the temple and as they near it they are intercepted by some clerics of Wee Jas. They ask to see the Green Lady in regards to the grave robbing of the lands. One of the clerics goes to the temple to see if she will see them. The cleric comes back and tells them the Green Lady is not interested in meeting with them, but thanks them for their help.
They decide that maybe should they head back to the cairn and see if Alastor can shed some light on where the bones are. They travel the rest of the day towards the cairn and make camp for the night.
26th day of Readying 595 CY
They awake in the morning and continue on to the cairn arriving there mid-afternoon. They check around to make sure that no one else has been there, but find no further evidence of intruders. They make their down to the sarcophagus room. They set up the lanterns and go up and talk to Alastor. Unfortunately he can not shed any light on the where the bones of his family. He is very distressed that they have not been able to help and once again pleads with them to find the bones and unite him with his family.
They discuss the problem further and the only answer they can come up with is to go the Greyhawk to find the bones. They are convinced that that is the way to go. “All roads seem to head to Greyhawk” says Deanr. They decide to try the other elevators and try to finish more of the cairn.
They go and play with the elevator under the yellow lantern. They finally figure out how to make the elevator go up down from the bottom and the top. They all end up at the bottom of the elevator and begin to figure out the room…
They gained 100 experience points for the night.
Total to date; 1600 experience points each.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Whispering Cairn, Part One: Face in the Darkness (Session Four)
Whispering Cairn, Part Two: The True Tomb
Whispering Cairn, Part Three: Tomb Stories
The True Tomb was started tonight and Tomb Stories was completed.
20th day of Readying, 595 CY (October 15th Game session)
The unlikely band of heroes awake in the morning, having had no encounters through the night. After a brief discussing on a course of action, they decide to try the underwater area they avoided yesterday.
They make their way down to the level and check the area they already cleared. All seemed to be as they left it. They then make their way water filled stairwell. They decided to send Ozzie into the water to scout it out. They tie a rope around him in case he gets into trouble so they can pull him out.
Ozzie makes his way down the stair into the water using his darkvision to see where he is going. He checks to the right and then left passages at the bottom of the stairs. He chooses to head left. Making his way around the wall he comes to an opening leading off to the left. At this point he gets slammed in the head from behind. He turns to run, using the rope to pull himself along faster. The party on top of the stairs figure he is in trouble, start pulling the rope in. He gets slammed one more time before getting up the stairs and out of the water. Whatever hit him does not follow him out of the water.
A quick debate and they decide to send Alex, Ozzie and Wilhelm in to kill whatever is down there. Wilhelm positions himself at the bottom of the stairs so that they can not be attack from behind. With Alex in the lead, carrying the everburning torch, they Ozzie and he make their way into the center of the room. Just as they are getting close to the center a swirling vortex of water engulfs the torch, quenching the magical fire, plunging them back into darkness.
The water elemental swings and strikes Alex with a smash to the head. Ozzie and the water elemental then exchange attacks, with Ozzie doing some minor damage to it. Wilhelm comes around the short wall to back them up. Alex backs off from the creature and lights up a sunrod. Ozzie and the water elemental exchange more attacks and Wilhelm comes in and strikes it with a hard blow staggering it. It makes one more attack on Ozzie and then dissipates in death.
The trio then make their way out of the water so they can catch their breath. They then head back in and make their way to the passage Ozzie had discovered before being attacked. They find a room with at the end of a short passage. It has four benches and several niches along the walls. The niches do not reveal anything important but they find a corpse on the floor. They drag it out of the room and up the stairs.
Searching the body, they find a set of masterwork leather armour and a magical shortsword. Inside a backpack, they find the missing red lantern. Mason checks the body further discovering that the some of the bones are cracked and the marrow has been sucked out of them. He is disturbed by this.
Alex convinces the rest of the group to head back into the water to explore it further. Exploring the rest of the first room they discover a passageway opposite the one where the body was, and a door across from where the stairs are. Alex also notes that in the middle of the room on the pillars is some spigots of sorts, only bigger and the ends has several small holes in it. They surmise this must be where the water is coming from. Right now there is no water coming out of the spigots.
They then head down the short passageway to a small room exactly like the one they found the body in. As Alex enters the room first a ghoul attacks him and he receives a nasty slash to the arm. He briefly feels the loose of his body control but shakes it off. Ozzie moves in and strikes it with a heavy blow and Wilhelm finishes it off with a stab of a halberd. They quickly head back out to catch their breath again then head back to the room and do a quick search of it finding some coins of various denominations and a gold ring with a personal signet on it.
They then decide they are too depleted of spells, healing in particular so they call it a day and decide to camp out back up in the sarcophagus room.
21st day of Readying, 595 CY
After an uneventful night, they party decides to try hanging the red lantern and lighting them all to see what happens. Ozzie and Alex climb up to the tunnel in the blue lantern hall. They notice right away that the face has changed. Where the mouth was is a big dark opening. Alex goes and tries to set off the trap with the bag of rocks trick they tried earlier and nothing happens. He then goes down the tunnel to the pressure plate and steps on it. Again, nothing happens. He and Ozzie make their way down to the mouth opening and look in. They see a room that is twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. The floor appears to be ten feet below them but is covered by what appears to be round, orange sized, metal balls. The ceiling is about twenty feet above them. There is a narrow, about three feet wide, beam of petrified wood heading off into the darkness. Ozzie with his darkvision sees all the way across the room. The other end of the beam is a metal door.
The rest of the group joins them at this point. They scoop up some balls using a bag with the mouth propped open and some rope. Investigating the balls they find them to be made of iron. A plan is hatched to take them out and sell them for gold.
Alex checks for traps at the entrance finds none. In a fit of paranoia checks again and still finds none. He decides to step slowly out on to the beam and see what happens. After a few steps he hears this phump noise and starts to duck but gets hit by a metal ball, similar to the ones below, nearly knocking him off the beam. The ball seemed to be launched out of some geometric designs carved in the walls on either side of the room. He runs back to the entrance, and as he does, hears a voice saying “coward, that almost got you”. The voice sounds like a young teen male.
Once back they decide on a new plan that involves tying a rope around the beam and then to Alex so that he could not be knocked off. They then decide against that and instead send Ozzie down to the floor level to walk across on the balls.
Ozzie gets lowered to the bottom and finds he sinks about a foot or so into the balls. He begins to walk across them towards the other end of the room. He gets about ten feet when a monster, which looks like a worm with four nasty tentacles and a mouth like bird beak. The mouth is lined with teeth. One of the tentacles strikes Ozzie and the fight is on.
The monster attacks Ozzie again, Analyn fire at it and misses, Deanr casts an enlarge spell on Ozzie making him quite a bit bigger and stronger. Alex jumps down to join the fight and lands poorly, falling on the balls. He gets up and readies himself to attack. Mason casts a spell and gets ready to cast another one. Wilhelm jumps down and lands poorly as well, falling and having to get back up. The child voice continues to taunt the heroes as the fight the monster, saying how they are all dead now, no one has been able to kill it.
Ozzie then attacks with rage, making a huge swing, cutting the head off monster. The boy’s voice goes silent for a moment then says “WOW, no one has done that before. Maybe you are the ones to help me”.
A ghost of a teen boy materializes next to Ozzie. He is in tattered clothes and looks like his neck is broken. Ozzie asks him, “who you”? The ghost replies he is Alastor Land, and he begins his tale of woe. How he ran away from home and got killed here. How he now knows his family is all dead and he should never had abandoned them. He is now cursed to remain here until he rights what he did wrong. He then asks the group to help them. He wants them to take his bones to his family’s farm near Diamond Lake. He says that he needs to be buried with his family, and then he can go to his eternal rest.
In return for doing this, he says that there is a latch on the other side of the metal door that will open it. He tells the party he can get through and will open the door for them. Then he will go to his final rest. The party agrees to do this.
So, Alastor shows them where his bones are and also a few more are found. They collect up some coins of various types and a fine suit of banded mail, masterwork in quality. They hide the lanterns in various places with in the Cairn, taking four of them with them. They then leave the Cairn and make their way to where Alastor said they would find the farmstead. They make sure they avoid town and people on the way.
Finding the farmstead and doing a quick look around, they find the grave plots complete with headstones. Five head stones with the names Anders Land: 531-564 CY; Bermissa Land: 534-576 CY; Coldaran Land: 550-576 CY; Gertia Land: 563-576 CY; Alastor Land: 552-. Alastor said he ran away in 565 and died that same year. The problem that the group finds is thus; all the graves have been dug up and the bones are missing. They have discovered a wrinkle in their plan, without the bones of the family; Alastor would not be buried “with” them. That was what he wanted. Now they must find the Land family bones. The question they have is; who would dig up the bones of a bunch of farmers?
Alex scouts around checking for tracks and find that there are some heading back to town and other heading to the farm house. They head to the farm house to look to see if the bones are there. Alex listens at the door and hears some low grunting and other guttural noises from with in the house. The door has already been kicked in. The band of adventurers starts to make their way cautiously into the house. Analyn is watching from a broken window. Around the corner shambles a large bear like creature with feathers and an owl appearance with what looks like some injuries already. Ozzie uses the readied action he had to hit it with his spear and then they fight begins. The Owlbear moves to attack Ozzie striking him very heavily almost taking him down, and in the process grabs him and pulls Ozzie in. Ozzie drops his spear and strikes at it with a shortsword missing. Mason and Wilhelm move to attack it, doing minor damage as Analyn shoots it with an arrow.
The Owlbear then bites Ozzie, knocking him unconscious and leaving him on deaths door. It then tosses Ozzie aside and takes a swipe at Mason, missing him. There are more attacks on the Owlbear, all which it shrugs off with minor damage. Analyn moves into the room and casts a heal spell on Ozzie, healing some damage, but Ozzie is still unconscious. The Owlbear attacks again, doing damage to Mason and then Wilhelm hits it solidly, staggering it. The Owlbear makes one last swing and then falls over dead.
Searching the room, the find a baby Owlbear and some bits and pieces of what was once a human. It looks as though the Owlbear has been feasting on human flesh. There is an intact arm there. Mason inspects the arm and finds a tattoo on it. After some debate as to the origin of the tattoo they finally remember where they had seen it before.
It is the same as the one on the forehead of Kullen, the albino half-orc thug that knocked out Alex on his first night in town. What to do next?
They gained 500 experience points for the night.
Total to date; 1500 experience points each.
Whispering Cairn, Part Three: Tomb Stories
The True Tomb was started tonight and Tomb Stories was completed.
20th day of Readying, 595 CY (October 15th Game session)
The unlikely band of heroes awake in the morning, having had no encounters through the night. After a brief discussing on a course of action, they decide to try the underwater area they avoided yesterday.
They make their way down to the level and check the area they already cleared. All seemed to be as they left it. They then make their way water filled stairwell. They decided to send Ozzie into the water to scout it out. They tie a rope around him in case he gets into trouble so they can pull him out.
Ozzie makes his way down the stair into the water using his darkvision to see where he is going. He checks to the right and then left passages at the bottom of the stairs. He chooses to head left. Making his way around the wall he comes to an opening leading off to the left. At this point he gets slammed in the head from behind. He turns to run, using the rope to pull himself along faster. The party on top of the stairs figure he is in trouble, start pulling the rope in. He gets slammed one more time before getting up the stairs and out of the water. Whatever hit him does not follow him out of the water.
A quick debate and they decide to send Alex, Ozzie and Wilhelm in to kill whatever is down there. Wilhelm positions himself at the bottom of the stairs so that they can not be attack from behind. With Alex in the lead, carrying the everburning torch, they Ozzie and he make their way into the center of the room. Just as they are getting close to the center a swirling vortex of water engulfs the torch, quenching the magical fire, plunging them back into darkness.
The water elemental swings and strikes Alex with a smash to the head. Ozzie and the water elemental then exchange attacks, with Ozzie doing some minor damage to it. Wilhelm comes around the short wall to back them up. Alex backs off from the creature and lights up a sunrod. Ozzie and the water elemental exchange more attacks and Wilhelm comes in and strikes it with a hard blow staggering it. It makes one more attack on Ozzie and then dissipates in death.
The trio then make their way out of the water so they can catch their breath. They then head back in and make their way to the passage Ozzie had discovered before being attacked. They find a room with at the end of a short passage. It has four benches and several niches along the walls. The niches do not reveal anything important but they find a corpse on the floor. They drag it out of the room and up the stairs.
Searching the body, they find a set of masterwork leather armour and a magical shortsword. Inside a backpack, they find the missing red lantern. Mason checks the body further discovering that the some of the bones are cracked and the marrow has been sucked out of them. He is disturbed by this.
Alex convinces the rest of the group to head back into the water to explore it further. Exploring the rest of the first room they discover a passageway opposite the one where the body was, and a door across from where the stairs are. Alex also notes that in the middle of the room on the pillars is some spigots of sorts, only bigger and the ends has several small holes in it. They surmise this must be where the water is coming from. Right now there is no water coming out of the spigots.
They then head down the short passageway to a small room exactly like the one they found the body in. As Alex enters the room first a ghoul attacks him and he receives a nasty slash to the arm. He briefly feels the loose of his body control but shakes it off. Ozzie moves in and strikes it with a heavy blow and Wilhelm finishes it off with a stab of a halberd. They quickly head back out to catch their breath again then head back to the room and do a quick search of it finding some coins of various denominations and a gold ring with a personal signet on it.
They then decide they are too depleted of spells, healing in particular so they call it a day and decide to camp out back up in the sarcophagus room.
21st day of Readying, 595 CY
After an uneventful night, they party decides to try hanging the red lantern and lighting them all to see what happens. Ozzie and Alex climb up to the tunnel in the blue lantern hall. They notice right away that the face has changed. Where the mouth was is a big dark opening. Alex goes and tries to set off the trap with the bag of rocks trick they tried earlier and nothing happens. He then goes down the tunnel to the pressure plate and steps on it. Again, nothing happens. He and Ozzie make their way down to the mouth opening and look in. They see a room that is twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. The floor appears to be ten feet below them but is covered by what appears to be round, orange sized, metal balls. The ceiling is about twenty feet above them. There is a narrow, about three feet wide, beam of petrified wood heading off into the darkness. Ozzie with his darkvision sees all the way across the room. The other end of the beam is a metal door.
The rest of the group joins them at this point. They scoop up some balls using a bag with the mouth propped open and some rope. Investigating the balls they find them to be made of iron. A plan is hatched to take them out and sell them for gold.
Alex checks for traps at the entrance finds none. In a fit of paranoia checks again and still finds none. He decides to step slowly out on to the beam and see what happens. After a few steps he hears this phump noise and starts to duck but gets hit by a metal ball, similar to the ones below, nearly knocking him off the beam. The ball seemed to be launched out of some geometric designs carved in the walls on either side of the room. He runs back to the entrance, and as he does, hears a voice saying “coward, that almost got you”. The voice sounds like a young teen male.
Once back they decide on a new plan that involves tying a rope around the beam and then to Alex so that he could not be knocked off. They then decide against that and instead send Ozzie down to the floor level to walk across on the balls.
Ozzie gets lowered to the bottom and finds he sinks about a foot or so into the balls. He begins to walk across them towards the other end of the room. He gets about ten feet when a monster, which looks like a worm with four nasty tentacles and a mouth like bird beak. The mouth is lined with teeth. One of the tentacles strikes Ozzie and the fight is on.
The monster attacks Ozzie again, Analyn fire at it and misses, Deanr casts an enlarge spell on Ozzie making him quite a bit bigger and stronger. Alex jumps down to join the fight and lands poorly, falling on the balls. He gets up and readies himself to attack. Mason casts a spell and gets ready to cast another one. Wilhelm jumps down and lands poorly as well, falling and having to get back up. The child voice continues to taunt the heroes as the fight the monster, saying how they are all dead now, no one has been able to kill it.
Ozzie then attacks with rage, making a huge swing, cutting the head off monster. The boy’s voice goes silent for a moment then says “WOW, no one has done that before. Maybe you are the ones to help me”.
A ghost of a teen boy materializes next to Ozzie. He is in tattered clothes and looks like his neck is broken. Ozzie asks him, “who you”? The ghost replies he is Alastor Land, and he begins his tale of woe. How he ran away from home and got killed here. How he now knows his family is all dead and he should never had abandoned them. He is now cursed to remain here until he rights what he did wrong. He then asks the group to help them. He wants them to take his bones to his family’s farm near Diamond Lake. He says that he needs to be buried with his family, and then he can go to his eternal rest.
In return for doing this, he says that there is a latch on the other side of the metal door that will open it. He tells the party he can get through and will open the door for them. Then he will go to his final rest. The party agrees to do this.
So, Alastor shows them where his bones are and also a few more are found. They collect up some coins of various types and a fine suit of banded mail, masterwork in quality. They hide the lanterns in various places with in the Cairn, taking four of them with them. They then leave the Cairn and make their way to where Alastor said they would find the farmstead. They make sure they avoid town and people on the way.
Finding the farmstead and doing a quick look around, they find the grave plots complete with headstones. Five head stones with the names Anders Land: 531-564 CY; Bermissa Land: 534-576 CY; Coldaran Land: 550-576 CY; Gertia Land: 563-576 CY; Alastor Land: 552-. Alastor said he ran away in 565 and died that same year. The problem that the group finds is thus; all the graves have been dug up and the bones are missing. They have discovered a wrinkle in their plan, without the bones of the family; Alastor would not be buried “with” them. That was what he wanted. Now they must find the Land family bones. The question they have is; who would dig up the bones of a bunch of farmers?
Alex scouts around checking for tracks and find that there are some heading back to town and other heading to the farm house. They head to the farm house to look to see if the bones are there. Alex listens at the door and hears some low grunting and other guttural noises from with in the house. The door has already been kicked in. The band of adventurers starts to make their way cautiously into the house. Analyn is watching from a broken window. Around the corner shambles a large bear like creature with feathers and an owl appearance with what looks like some injuries already. Ozzie uses the readied action he had to hit it with his spear and then they fight begins. The Owlbear moves to attack Ozzie striking him very heavily almost taking him down, and in the process grabs him and pulls Ozzie in. Ozzie drops his spear and strikes at it with a shortsword missing. Mason and Wilhelm move to attack it, doing minor damage as Analyn shoots it with an arrow.
The Owlbear then bites Ozzie, knocking him unconscious and leaving him on deaths door. It then tosses Ozzie aside and takes a swipe at Mason, missing him. There are more attacks on the Owlbear, all which it shrugs off with minor damage. Analyn moves into the room and casts a heal spell on Ozzie, healing some damage, but Ozzie is still unconscious. The Owlbear attacks again, doing damage to Mason and then Wilhelm hits it solidly, staggering it. The Owlbear makes one last swing and then falls over dead.
Searching the room, the find a baby Owlbear and some bits and pieces of what was once a human. It looks as though the Owlbear has been feasting on human flesh. There is an intact arm there. Mason inspects the arm and finds a tattoo on it. After some debate as to the origin of the tattoo they finally remember where they had seen it before.
It is the same as the one on the forehead of Kullen, the albino half-orc thug that knocked out Alex on his first night in town. What to do next?
They gained 500 experience points for the night.
Total to date; 1500 experience points each.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Whispering Cairn, Part One: Face in the Darkness (Session Three)
19th day of Readying, 595 CY (October 1st, 2005 Session)
This morning finds our heroes waking up rested, healed and raring to go. They all gather at the Temple of Heironeous to discuss their plans. From there they head out of town in the direction of the Miner Managers Mansion. Just out of town, Mason once again spots Tirra tailing them. He quickly whispers this to Alex who wants to shot an arrow at her feet. Mason decides on a less violent route and stops and calls out to her. To this he hears some grumbling from behind the shrub she is trying to hide behind. He continues to call out to her until she gets up and heads back into town. They watch until she is out of sight and then continue on their way. Keeping a close eye out for her, and not seeing her again, they make their way to the Mine Managers Mansion.
The mansion is quickly scouted out and finding everything the way they left it, they dig up the six lanterns and continue onto the Cairn. Arriving at the cairn, they search for tracks and find none but their own. They slowly descend into the cairn, making their way down to the lantern room. Much to their surprise they find six of the seven lanterns already hanging there. The only missing is the red one. They debate this for a while but can not figure out how this happened. Deanr suggest they open a lantern shop and “harvest” lantern from here to sell. It is pointed out to him that they would only have a stock of six different lanterns so it would not be a very good idea. Besides said Mason, “We don’t know if they will we appear everyday”.
Seeing how they now have twelve lanterns they devise a plan to try the face in the tunnel again. Taking one of the lanterns, Deanr use prestidigitation to colour the lenses red. Then they hang it where the red lantern should be. They set up their block and tackle again and Ozzie and Analyn are at the entrance to the tunnel. Ozzie once again ties a rope to himself that is spiked to the floor. Analyn makes her way down the tunnel until she gets to the pressure plate. She easily jumps across and checks out the face. Not finding any difference they decide to activate the pressure plate.
They set up a rope system with a bag of rocks to drop on the plate. They then get ready and make the bag drop on the plate. As with the last time, the face trap activates and both Ozzie and Analyn are hypnotized for a few seconds as the winds build. Ozzie finally shakes that off and jumps clear of the tunnel, Analyn likewise does the same, jumping to the chain. They wait out the winds and then make their way back down to the rest of the party. They did note however, that the only colour in the swirling eyes was red. They move on to the original plan.
They quickly setup to make their decent into the hole left by the collapsed chamber under the green lantern. Ozzie is selected to be the one to do the first descent. They knot up the rope and secure it to the top of the hole and he begins to climb down. At the five foot mark they have him drive in a piton and then at every ten foot mark after. Ozzie finally makes it to the bottom. He is followed down by the rest of the fool hardy adventurers until they are all at the bottom.
They find themselves in a twenty by fifteen foot room. They enter through a alcove in the south wall. There is an exit in the north wall heading straight for about ten feet and turns into what looks like a four-way intersection. Ten feet past that intersection is what appears to be another four-way intersection. The hallway continues on into darkness. The room itself has bas-relief carvings in all the walls. They all appear to be same type of men as what was on the sarcophagus upstairs. They all have stern looks upon their faces, arms crossed over their chest, staring with disapproval. The bas-reliefs are all in a poor state of repair, some having arms, heads and other body parts broken off. They also are pitted and scored, almost appearing to be melted in places. On the floor is a large glyph of a stylized arrow similar to the one on the sarcophagus upstairs. It is pointing north down the hallway.
They carefully start making their way towards the first intersection, Analyn and Alex in the lead checking for traps as they go. At the intersection the first check to the left. It goes about fifteen feet and then opens up into a large room. Making their way to the rooms opening the group stops just at the entrance. The room is approximately about thirty-five by thirty feet. The west wall is actually tapered in from the twenty-five foot on both the north and south wall. In that area is a small stage with a red statue of a warrior with a large club raised over its head. In the room are also two rows of slabs, about four feet off the floor. One of the slabs has a corpse of a human in red leather on it. Moving into the room slowly, Alex and Analyn checking for traps, they both suddenly feel as if something was trying to affect them, but shrug it off. Then they spot a medium sized beetle coming out of the southwest corner along the wall.
The beetle appears to be drunk, staggering as it moves along the wall. Alex, fearing that the beetle may set off some sort of trap, quickly runs ten feet into the room and fires an arrow at the beetle, missing badly. The party now finds themselves in combat. As members of the group jump into the combat, they find that some of them feel fatigued upon entering the room. After a few missed shots by the party, the beetle belches forth a vaporous cloud of acid at Alex, which he manages to avoid. A few more missed shots and spear attacks by Ozzie and the beetle once again belches the acidic vapour, this time at Ozzie and Mason, both managing to avoid it. Alex jumps in and with a great stab of his spear, scores a hit in the eye of the beetle, killing it.
During the combat, Analyn had jumped up on one of the stone slabs to gain a height advantage and noticed that she was floating a couple inches above the slab, not actually on it. Further investigation by the worthy adventurers reveals that there is a cushion of wind just above the slab. Further investigation reveals the same with the one the corpse is on. The fatigue that some of the party felt leaves them when they leave the room.
They hook the corpse with a grappling hook and pull it off the slab to the entrance to the room. Searching the corpse they find it has on masterwork leather armour and a silver ring on a finger. The armour has a eight pointed arrow symbol on the chest, and the ring too, has this symbol. Mason, using his vast knowledge of religion, determines that this is not the symbol of Kord. Deanr seems to think it belongs to an organization know as The Seekers. They are rumoured to be a unscrupulous bunch that thinks themselves archaeologists and pseudohistorians. Mason pockets the ring.
Ozzie goes up on the stage and investigates the statue and finds it to be life like, He tries to remove the club from the grip of the statue but discovers it is part of it and not removable. He then tries to break the arm off, but to avail. He also notes it is not part of the floor.
The brave group then heads back to the four-way intersection and turn and head north, deeper into the dungeon. When they reach what appeared to be a second four-way intersection, it turns out to be only a couple alcoves opposite each other. Each alcove has numerous pegs which appeared to have had items of some sort hanging off them. Further searching of the alcoves reveals nothing else of interest.
Ten feet past the alcove is a set of stairs going down. The stair well is full of water. They decide to go back and check the passageway to the east from the four-way intersection. Alex and Analyn once again take the lead and head down the hallway. It is fifteen feet long and opens up into a large room that is similar in shape to the one with the red statue. It has what appears to be stone basin in the east section of the room. It is covered in an orange paste that seems to spill from the basin. The substance seems to be hardening. Thousand of small beetles skitter around the substance and tunnel through the chalky stuff.
Quickly retreating before they are discovered, they join up with the rest of the party at the intersection. There they formulate a plan. They put their plan in action. Analyn and Alex head back down the hallway, moving silently and hiding, soaking the hall with oil, until they reach the rooms entrance. There Alex notices that in the southwest corner is what appears to be a hive. They then change their plans a bit. Ozzie comes down the hallway and with Analyn; they throw oil and a lit torch on the hive and start running back to the intersection. A medium sized beetle comes bursting out of the hive on fire, chasing Ozzie. It also is letting out a high pitched squealing noise that gets the small beetles moving as a swarm following after it.
Analyn and Ozzie get back to the rest of the party, the beetle right on Ozzie’s tail. The party the makes their attacks on it, scoring very little damage. It in turns bites at Ozzie and spews forth its acid vapour damaging Ozzie. The swarm moves into the hallway and Alex sets to oil on fire. The swarm moves right up to Wilhelm. Wilhelm swings a torch wildly at the swarm missing any beetles and they move on to him, covering him, biting and dripping acid on to him. The rest of the party kills the beetle by this time. Wilhelm takes his torch and burns the rest of the beetles off him.
The group then goes into the room and searches it. They find three lumps in the orange paste that resembles human bodies. They did those out and find three skeletal remains of some more of Deanr’s Seekers. On one they find three potion bottles and on another a pearl. In the corner where the hive was, they sift through the charred remains finding an amputated hand with a ring on a finger. The ring is inscribed with small feather around as decorations. The three potion bottles have no labels.
At this point they decide they are to beat up and out of spells to continue on with the exploration of the Cairn. They climb back up to the Lantern room and make camp for the rest of the day and night. They put a tarp over the hole and weigh it down with rocks. They also put a few metal items on the tarp so that if anything tries to mess with the tarp it will jingle and warn them.
In the morning they cast a detect magic and discover that the ring, pearl and three potions are magical. They then experiment with the ring, Ozzie jumping from a ten foot height, finds after five feet he floats to the ground. Mason tastes the potions and finds that they all give him the feeling he is being healed. They decided the ring is a ring of feather fall and that the potions are all cure light wounds potions.
Next Mason casts a cure light wounds on Wilhelm and then tries to use the pearl as a focus to recall the spell. He is able to do just that. They discover they have a pearl of power.
At this point they make the necessary sacrifices to their various gods, to which the gods increase their power. They are all now second level.
They all gained 400 experience points for the night. Total to date; 1000 experience points.
This morning finds our heroes waking up rested, healed and raring to go. They all gather at the Temple of Heironeous to discuss their plans. From there they head out of town in the direction of the Miner Managers Mansion. Just out of town, Mason once again spots Tirra tailing them. He quickly whispers this to Alex who wants to shot an arrow at her feet. Mason decides on a less violent route and stops and calls out to her. To this he hears some grumbling from behind the shrub she is trying to hide behind. He continues to call out to her until she gets up and heads back into town. They watch until she is out of sight and then continue on their way. Keeping a close eye out for her, and not seeing her again, they make their way to the Mine Managers Mansion.
The mansion is quickly scouted out and finding everything the way they left it, they dig up the six lanterns and continue onto the Cairn. Arriving at the cairn, they search for tracks and find none but their own. They slowly descend into the cairn, making their way down to the lantern room. Much to their surprise they find six of the seven lanterns already hanging there. The only missing is the red one. They debate this for a while but can not figure out how this happened. Deanr suggest they open a lantern shop and “harvest” lantern from here to sell. It is pointed out to him that they would only have a stock of six different lanterns so it would not be a very good idea. Besides said Mason, “We don’t know if they will we appear everyday”.
Seeing how they now have twelve lanterns they devise a plan to try the face in the tunnel again. Taking one of the lanterns, Deanr use prestidigitation to colour the lenses red. Then they hang it where the red lantern should be. They set up their block and tackle again and Ozzie and Analyn are at the entrance to the tunnel. Ozzie once again ties a rope to himself that is spiked to the floor. Analyn makes her way down the tunnel until she gets to the pressure plate. She easily jumps across and checks out the face. Not finding any difference they decide to activate the pressure plate.
They set up a rope system with a bag of rocks to drop on the plate. They then get ready and make the bag drop on the plate. As with the last time, the face trap activates and both Ozzie and Analyn are hypnotized for a few seconds as the winds build. Ozzie finally shakes that off and jumps clear of the tunnel, Analyn likewise does the same, jumping to the chain. They wait out the winds and then make their way back down to the rest of the party. They did note however, that the only colour in the swirling eyes was red. They move on to the original plan.
They quickly setup to make their decent into the hole left by the collapsed chamber under the green lantern. Ozzie is selected to be the one to do the first descent. They knot up the rope and secure it to the top of the hole and he begins to climb down. At the five foot mark they have him drive in a piton and then at every ten foot mark after. Ozzie finally makes it to the bottom. He is followed down by the rest of the fool hardy adventurers until they are all at the bottom.
They find themselves in a twenty by fifteen foot room. They enter through a alcove in the south wall. There is an exit in the north wall heading straight for about ten feet and turns into what looks like a four-way intersection. Ten feet past that intersection is what appears to be another four-way intersection. The hallway continues on into darkness. The room itself has bas-relief carvings in all the walls. They all appear to be same type of men as what was on the sarcophagus upstairs. They all have stern looks upon their faces, arms crossed over their chest, staring with disapproval. The bas-reliefs are all in a poor state of repair, some having arms, heads and other body parts broken off. They also are pitted and scored, almost appearing to be melted in places. On the floor is a large glyph of a stylized arrow similar to the one on the sarcophagus upstairs. It is pointing north down the hallway.
They carefully start making their way towards the first intersection, Analyn and Alex in the lead checking for traps as they go. At the intersection the first check to the left. It goes about fifteen feet and then opens up into a large room. Making their way to the rooms opening the group stops just at the entrance. The room is approximately about thirty-five by thirty feet. The west wall is actually tapered in from the twenty-five foot on both the north and south wall. In that area is a small stage with a red statue of a warrior with a large club raised over its head. In the room are also two rows of slabs, about four feet off the floor. One of the slabs has a corpse of a human in red leather on it. Moving into the room slowly, Alex and Analyn checking for traps, they both suddenly feel as if something was trying to affect them, but shrug it off. Then they spot a medium sized beetle coming out of the southwest corner along the wall.
The beetle appears to be drunk, staggering as it moves along the wall. Alex, fearing that the beetle may set off some sort of trap, quickly runs ten feet into the room and fires an arrow at the beetle, missing badly. The party now finds themselves in combat. As members of the group jump into the combat, they find that some of them feel fatigued upon entering the room. After a few missed shots by the party, the beetle belches forth a vaporous cloud of acid at Alex, which he manages to avoid. A few more missed shots and spear attacks by Ozzie and the beetle once again belches the acidic vapour, this time at Ozzie and Mason, both managing to avoid it. Alex jumps in and with a great stab of his spear, scores a hit in the eye of the beetle, killing it.
During the combat, Analyn had jumped up on one of the stone slabs to gain a height advantage and noticed that she was floating a couple inches above the slab, not actually on it. Further investigation by the worthy adventurers reveals that there is a cushion of wind just above the slab. Further investigation reveals the same with the one the corpse is on. The fatigue that some of the party felt leaves them when they leave the room.
They hook the corpse with a grappling hook and pull it off the slab to the entrance to the room. Searching the corpse they find it has on masterwork leather armour and a silver ring on a finger. The armour has a eight pointed arrow symbol on the chest, and the ring too, has this symbol. Mason, using his vast knowledge of religion, determines that this is not the symbol of Kord. Deanr seems to think it belongs to an organization know as The Seekers. They are rumoured to be a unscrupulous bunch that thinks themselves archaeologists and pseudohistorians. Mason pockets the ring.
Ozzie goes up on the stage and investigates the statue and finds it to be life like, He tries to remove the club from the grip of the statue but discovers it is part of it and not removable. He then tries to break the arm off, but to avail. He also notes it is not part of the floor.
The brave group then heads back to the four-way intersection and turn and head north, deeper into the dungeon. When they reach what appeared to be a second four-way intersection, it turns out to be only a couple alcoves opposite each other. Each alcove has numerous pegs which appeared to have had items of some sort hanging off them. Further searching of the alcoves reveals nothing else of interest.
Ten feet past the alcove is a set of stairs going down. The stair well is full of water. They decide to go back and check the passageway to the east from the four-way intersection. Alex and Analyn once again take the lead and head down the hallway. It is fifteen feet long and opens up into a large room that is similar in shape to the one with the red statue. It has what appears to be stone basin in the east section of the room. It is covered in an orange paste that seems to spill from the basin. The substance seems to be hardening. Thousand of small beetles skitter around the substance and tunnel through the chalky stuff.
Quickly retreating before they are discovered, they join up with the rest of the party at the intersection. There they formulate a plan. They put their plan in action. Analyn and Alex head back down the hallway, moving silently and hiding, soaking the hall with oil, until they reach the rooms entrance. There Alex notices that in the southwest corner is what appears to be a hive. They then change their plans a bit. Ozzie comes down the hallway and with Analyn; they throw oil and a lit torch on the hive and start running back to the intersection. A medium sized beetle comes bursting out of the hive on fire, chasing Ozzie. It also is letting out a high pitched squealing noise that gets the small beetles moving as a swarm following after it.
Analyn and Ozzie get back to the rest of the party, the beetle right on Ozzie’s tail. The party the makes their attacks on it, scoring very little damage. It in turns bites at Ozzie and spews forth its acid vapour damaging Ozzie. The swarm moves into the hallway and Alex sets to oil on fire. The swarm moves right up to Wilhelm. Wilhelm swings a torch wildly at the swarm missing any beetles and they move on to him, covering him, biting and dripping acid on to him. The rest of the party kills the beetle by this time. Wilhelm takes his torch and burns the rest of the beetles off him.
The group then goes into the room and searches it. They find three lumps in the orange paste that resembles human bodies. They did those out and find three skeletal remains of some more of Deanr’s Seekers. On one they find three potion bottles and on another a pearl. In the corner where the hive was, they sift through the charred remains finding an amputated hand with a ring on a finger. The ring is inscribed with small feather around as decorations. The three potion bottles have no labels.
At this point they decide they are to beat up and out of spells to continue on with the exploration of the Cairn. They climb back up to the Lantern room and make camp for the rest of the day and night. They put a tarp over the hole and weigh it down with rocks. They also put a few metal items on the tarp so that if anything tries to mess with the tarp it will jingle and warn them.
In the morning they cast a detect magic and discover that the ring, pearl and three potions are magical. They then experiment with the ring, Ozzie jumping from a ten foot height, finds after five feet he floats to the ground. Mason tastes the potions and finds that they all give him the feeling he is being healed. They decided the ring is a ring of feather fall and that the potions are all cure light wounds potions.
Next Mason casts a cure light wounds on Wilhelm and then tries to use the pearl as a focus to recall the spell. He is able to do just that. They discover they have a pearl of power.
At this point they make the necessary sacrifices to their various gods, to which the gods increase their power. They are all now second level.
They all gained 400 experience points for the night. Total to date; 1000 experience points.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Whispering Cairn, Part One: Face In The Darkness (Session Two)
18th Day of Readying, 595 CY (September 10th 2005 Session)
The Party awakes in the morning and gathers at Deanr’s place. They go to various places around town and sell of the goblin weapons and armour they recovered. They then head up the road towards the Mine Managers Mansion. Mason notices that someone is watching them as they leave town. It is Tirra, an elf adventurer from Greyhawk. She is rumoured to be in town with two others that have told people they are here to search the Stirge Nest Cairn and plunder all its riches. Everyone in Diamond Lake knows that was plundered years ago. When they arrive, Analyn and Alex scout it out to make sure the goblins did not return. They then head towards the Cairn.
They find the entrance covered with shrubs, branches and other pieces of foliage. After clearing it out, they find an entrance way heading off into the darkness. The walls have intricate designs on them with hints of colour specks of paint suggesting at one time this was elaborately decorated, though with some gaudy colours. There is a whispering sound in the hallway, sounds almost like words.
Making their way down the hallway, they come to a four way intersection. To right they find a deep yet empty alcove. To the right they find another alcove of the same dimensions, but there is what appears to be a Halfling sized bedroll there. Alex and Analyn sneak in and check it out and find an old rotted bedroll that falls apart when they search it. They also find some wood chips that looked like someone had been whittling here. They find that the walls have small tubes built into the designs that are sending air down into the Cairn. This is where they surmise that the whispering sounds they hear are coming from.
They continue down the hallway and come to a second four way intersection. There they find the left branch blocked by a cave in; off to the right they find a dead end with a broken mirror stand with strange runes on it. Deanr interprets the runes to be of some sort of runes for names and others are runes of power for travel. They surmise that at one time a portal of some sort stood here. They find some black glass shards on the floor and scoop them up for future use.
They continue down the hallway further and come to another four way intersection. To the left is another cave in. At this time they notice the odour of wet animal hair and spore. Alex and Analyn, who are scouting ahead of the rest of the party hiding and moving silently, stop and start looking for the source of the odours. They then hear the low growl of some beast and turn in the direction it comes from, the cave in area; they see two small points of light in the shadowy debris. At this point the rest of the party is coming up behind them. They silently decide to wait to see what happens rather than giving away their position.
As Ozzy comes into view, a large wolf comes charging out of the cave in area, heading straight at Alex, followed closely by two smaller wolves. Analyn shots an arrow at the large wolf, scoring a direct hit in the throat of the wolf. Not realizing it is already dead, continues with its charge and collapses and comes skidding to a halt at Alex’s feet. The other two wolves continue on towards Ozzy, apparently unaware of Alex they pass right by him.
Deanr steps up and fires a crossbow bolt at one of the wolves, scoring a critical hit in the eye, dropping the wolf in its tracks. The third wolf makes a failed attack on Ozzy and he rages, swinging widely, cutting deep into the wolf killing it. The adventurers then hunker down for a moment to assess their surroundings. They have found themselves in a chamber that splits off to the right and left, with a cobweb choked passage leading away to the north.
They send Alex to investigate where the wolves came from and he mages to wiggle his way through the collapsed passage into the wolf den. There he finds the remains of the boy they are looking for and various other bones and remains. Searching through the bones, Alex finds the skeletal remains of what may have been an elf. In this he finds a gold arm bracelet and a decorative indigo lantern. Not finding anything else he pulls the remains of the buy out of the den, return to the party and reporting his findings.
The party then heads to check the west wing and finds a raised platform at the end of it. Analyn climbs the stairs up and stand in the middle of it. Looking around she appears to be standing in the middle of a room with seven hallways leading of. Each hallway dead ends with a chain hanging down, and a lantern hanging at the end of each chain. The lantern colours are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Though this is only a mural on the wall, it appears very life like. After investigating the mural further, they determine it is not a portal.
They then continue down the north passage way, clearing out the cob webs as they go. They find a set of stairs going down. Ahead they see a green glow that flashes and sparkles. Making their way down the stairs they find a large room like the one in the mural. A large sarcophagus sit is the centre of the room on a raised dais. Around the room, spaced out evenly, are seven hallways. Each hallway is about forty feet long and dead ends just like the mural in the hall above. Each hallway has a chain hanging down for a forty foot ceiling, a lantern at the end of the chains. Be low each lantern is a slightly smaller than five foot diameter circle carved into the floor. The only difference is the red and indigo lanterns are missing. The green lantern is giving off light which is being reflected off the ceiling by small bites of glass and shining metal. They inspect the lantern and find it has an everburning torch in it. It gives the room an eerie appearance. At the end of the hallway with the blue lantern is what appeared to be a tunnel forty some feet above the ground, heading off in a north eastern direction.
The party then decides to check out the passage way and develops an elaborate rope and pulley system to get up there. They go get the mule and bring it in as far as it would go. It would not pass where the dead wolves were. They tie it up here getting their equipment. Seems they have this idea they might get pushed out of the tunnel up there and fall forty feet to their deaths. Analyn, Alex and Ozzy go up and prepare for the worst, and as expected, it happened.
Analyn made her careful down the tunnel until she sees what looks like a bas relief of a face with an open mouth. As she got closer, it looked like one of the face that was seen on the sarcophagus down below. Just a few feet from it she hers a click and suddenly things start to happen. The eyes in the face start to spin and a many colours are seen in them, red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet. A wind starts to build from the face. Before she knows it, Analyn finds herself being blown out of the tunnel by one hundred mile an hour winds. Alex and Ozzy realize this is bad, jump off the ledge to end up hanging below. Analyn gets blown out of the tunnel and barely catches the chain that holds the lantern. She hangs on for dear life as the winds build to hurricane force. The party member below also find spot to hide and wait out the wind. It lasts about ten minutes and then as suddenly as it came, it went.
The party then decides maybe it is safer to play around with the sarcophagus. Deanr thinks the amulet around the neck of the figure on the sarcophagus is a symbol representing a name, maybe "Zosiel", a powerful elemental figure. Alex and Analyn check it for traps and low and behold, one is found. They determine it is a magical trap and have no way to disable it. The idea then comes up to tie a rope around it and then standing back pulls the lid off. A cone of flame shots harmlessly out of the sarcophagus for fifteen feet. They then carefully go look in and find it empty. They search it for secret compartments and find nothing.
The idea next floated is to go back to the hallway where the room mural is and investigate it further. When they get back there, they discover the remains of the mule. It seems to have hung itself in the winds that blew through the hallway when the trap was set off. Again finding nothing special about the murals they collect the equipment off the mule and have Ozzy drag it outside. They then go back down to the sarcophagus. They decided to play around with it.
Ozzy tries to push it clockwise and discovers it moves all the way until the head points at the yellow passage. The sarcophagus stops with a click, the circle that was under the lantern rises up to just under the lantern. This appears to be some sort of chamber that would fit one medium sized person or two small ones. Inspecting the chamber the adventurers find it to be empty.
They then push the sarcophagus again and moves until it stops, pointing at the green lantern. Another chamber rises up and as it does, it makes all sorts of weird grinding and rumbling sounds, like stone rubbing on stone. This chamber seems to be empty as well. They then go to push the sarcophagus again and they hear the same grinding, rumbling noises from the green shaft.
The sarcophagus head points at the blue lantern and this time nothing happens. They then push it again, stopping at the indigo lantern. Another chamber rises up from the floor. This time they find the body of a medium sized humanoid that looks like it has been crushed. They pull the remains out of the chamber and search it finding some gold, silver and a small ruby. They then push the sarcophagus again and it stops at violet. Nothing happens. Once again pushing the sarcophagus, stopping at red, nothing happens.
They continue to push it around to orange, the original spot. Nothing happens at orange either. Sitting back and debating what to do, they decide to push it to green and investigate that chamber. As they pass by yellow the chamber goes up and down again. Coming to a stop at green, the sounds of grinding and rumbling stone can be heard. The chamber rises about half way out of the whole when it shudders and drops down back down the hole, smashing to pieces at the bottom.
A few moments later they hear the sounds of a thousand tiny feet skittering up stone. It gets louder and louder until suddenly bursting out of the hole is a swarm of yellow/gold beetles. The swarm starts moving towards the group and they run for all they are worth out of the Cairn.
Just at the exit they stop and prepare to battle the beetles. They bust oil vials on the stone floor and then wit with a lit torch for the beetles top reach them. Once the beetles enter the oil, Ozzy lights it up with a torch. Hundreds of beetles burn up in the flaming oil. Those that don’t continue on to attack the carcase of the mule, these are quickly killed. It is noticed that the beetles leave behind a slime trail that appears to be acidic.
Following the beetles was a strange looking insect like creature with six legs, legs that look like sharp swords. It has one eye, no mouth is apparent. It moves to attack Ozzy. The party quickly get the beast surrounded and dispatch it without too much trouble.
They return back inside to the hole where the chamber fell. Looking down it goes off into darkness. They then drop a lit torch down the hole and see it is about one hundred feet to the bottom. The sides of the hole are scarred and pitted and looks easily climbed. Realizing that they are about out of spells the group decides to head back to town. At this point, Mason informs the party that he thinks they were spied on when leaving.
After discussing it, they take all the lanterns from the Cairn and take them to the old Mine Manager Mansion. They bury them in two different spot s around the yard, and make so many tracks it would be impossible to determine what was going on here. They agree not to speak a word about the Cairn to anyone in town. They agree that all they did was find the boys body in a wolf den and killed the wolves.
They return to town to return the body of the boy and recuperate from the days work.
They all gained 350 experience points for the day.
Total to date; 600 experience points.
The Party awakes in the morning and gathers at Deanr’s place. They go to various places around town and sell of the goblin weapons and armour they recovered. They then head up the road towards the Mine Managers Mansion. Mason notices that someone is watching them as they leave town. It is Tirra, an elf adventurer from Greyhawk. She is rumoured to be in town with two others that have told people they are here to search the Stirge Nest Cairn and plunder all its riches. Everyone in Diamond Lake knows that was plundered years ago. When they arrive, Analyn and Alex scout it out to make sure the goblins did not return. They then head towards the Cairn.
They find the entrance covered with shrubs, branches and other pieces of foliage. After clearing it out, they find an entrance way heading off into the darkness. The walls have intricate designs on them with hints of colour specks of paint suggesting at one time this was elaborately decorated, though with some gaudy colours. There is a whispering sound in the hallway, sounds almost like words.
Making their way down the hallway, they come to a four way intersection. To right they find a deep yet empty alcove. To the right they find another alcove of the same dimensions, but there is what appears to be a Halfling sized bedroll there. Alex and Analyn sneak in and check it out and find an old rotted bedroll that falls apart when they search it. They also find some wood chips that looked like someone had been whittling here. They find that the walls have small tubes built into the designs that are sending air down into the Cairn. This is where they surmise that the whispering sounds they hear are coming from.
They continue down the hallway and come to a second four way intersection. There they find the left branch blocked by a cave in; off to the right they find a dead end with a broken mirror stand with strange runes on it. Deanr interprets the runes to be of some sort of runes for names and others are runes of power for travel. They surmise that at one time a portal of some sort stood here. They find some black glass shards on the floor and scoop them up for future use.
They continue down the hallway further and come to another four way intersection. To the left is another cave in. At this time they notice the odour of wet animal hair and spore. Alex and Analyn, who are scouting ahead of the rest of the party hiding and moving silently, stop and start looking for the source of the odours. They then hear the low growl of some beast and turn in the direction it comes from, the cave in area; they see two small points of light in the shadowy debris. At this point the rest of the party is coming up behind them. They silently decide to wait to see what happens rather than giving away their position.
As Ozzy comes into view, a large wolf comes charging out of the cave in area, heading straight at Alex, followed closely by two smaller wolves. Analyn shots an arrow at the large wolf, scoring a direct hit in the throat of the wolf. Not realizing it is already dead, continues with its charge and collapses and comes skidding to a halt at Alex’s feet. The other two wolves continue on towards Ozzy, apparently unaware of Alex they pass right by him.
Deanr steps up and fires a crossbow bolt at one of the wolves, scoring a critical hit in the eye, dropping the wolf in its tracks. The third wolf makes a failed attack on Ozzy and he rages, swinging widely, cutting deep into the wolf killing it. The adventurers then hunker down for a moment to assess their surroundings. They have found themselves in a chamber that splits off to the right and left, with a cobweb choked passage leading away to the north.
They send Alex to investigate where the wolves came from and he mages to wiggle his way through the collapsed passage into the wolf den. There he finds the remains of the boy they are looking for and various other bones and remains. Searching through the bones, Alex finds the skeletal remains of what may have been an elf. In this he finds a gold arm bracelet and a decorative indigo lantern. Not finding anything else he pulls the remains of the buy out of the den, return to the party and reporting his findings.
The party then heads to check the west wing and finds a raised platform at the end of it. Analyn climbs the stairs up and stand in the middle of it. Looking around she appears to be standing in the middle of a room with seven hallways leading of. Each hallway dead ends with a chain hanging down, and a lantern hanging at the end of each chain. The lantern colours are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Though this is only a mural on the wall, it appears very life like. After investigating the mural further, they determine it is not a portal.
They then continue down the north passage way, clearing out the cob webs as they go. They find a set of stairs going down. Ahead they see a green glow that flashes and sparkles. Making their way down the stairs they find a large room like the one in the mural. A large sarcophagus sit is the centre of the room on a raised dais. Around the room, spaced out evenly, are seven hallways. Each hallway is about forty feet long and dead ends just like the mural in the hall above. Each hallway has a chain hanging down for a forty foot ceiling, a lantern at the end of the chains. Be low each lantern is a slightly smaller than five foot diameter circle carved into the floor. The only difference is the red and indigo lanterns are missing. The green lantern is giving off light which is being reflected off the ceiling by small bites of glass and shining metal. They inspect the lantern and find it has an everburning torch in it. It gives the room an eerie appearance. At the end of the hallway with the blue lantern is what appeared to be a tunnel forty some feet above the ground, heading off in a north eastern direction.
The party then decides to check out the passage way and develops an elaborate rope and pulley system to get up there. They go get the mule and bring it in as far as it would go. It would not pass where the dead wolves were. They tie it up here getting their equipment. Seems they have this idea they might get pushed out of the tunnel up there and fall forty feet to their deaths. Analyn, Alex and Ozzy go up and prepare for the worst, and as expected, it happened.
Analyn made her careful down the tunnel until she sees what looks like a bas relief of a face with an open mouth. As she got closer, it looked like one of the face that was seen on the sarcophagus down below. Just a few feet from it she hers a click and suddenly things start to happen. The eyes in the face start to spin and a many colours are seen in them, red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, and violet. A wind starts to build from the face. Before she knows it, Analyn finds herself being blown out of the tunnel by one hundred mile an hour winds. Alex and Ozzy realize this is bad, jump off the ledge to end up hanging below. Analyn gets blown out of the tunnel and barely catches the chain that holds the lantern. She hangs on for dear life as the winds build to hurricane force. The party member below also find spot to hide and wait out the wind. It lasts about ten minutes and then as suddenly as it came, it went.
The party then decides maybe it is safer to play around with the sarcophagus. Deanr thinks the amulet around the neck of the figure on the sarcophagus is a symbol representing a name, maybe "Zosiel", a powerful elemental figure. Alex and Analyn check it for traps and low and behold, one is found. They determine it is a magical trap and have no way to disable it. The idea then comes up to tie a rope around it and then standing back pulls the lid off. A cone of flame shots harmlessly out of the sarcophagus for fifteen feet. They then carefully go look in and find it empty. They search it for secret compartments and find nothing.
The idea next floated is to go back to the hallway where the room mural is and investigate it further. When they get back there, they discover the remains of the mule. It seems to have hung itself in the winds that blew through the hallway when the trap was set off. Again finding nothing special about the murals they collect the equipment off the mule and have Ozzy drag it outside. They then go back down to the sarcophagus. They decided to play around with it.
Ozzy tries to push it clockwise and discovers it moves all the way until the head points at the yellow passage. The sarcophagus stops with a click, the circle that was under the lantern rises up to just under the lantern. This appears to be some sort of chamber that would fit one medium sized person or two small ones. Inspecting the chamber the adventurers find it to be empty.
They then push the sarcophagus again and moves until it stops, pointing at the green lantern. Another chamber rises up and as it does, it makes all sorts of weird grinding and rumbling sounds, like stone rubbing on stone. This chamber seems to be empty as well. They then go to push the sarcophagus again and they hear the same grinding, rumbling noises from the green shaft.
The sarcophagus head points at the blue lantern and this time nothing happens. They then push it again, stopping at the indigo lantern. Another chamber rises up from the floor. This time they find the body of a medium sized humanoid that looks like it has been crushed. They pull the remains out of the chamber and search it finding some gold, silver and a small ruby. They then push the sarcophagus again and it stops at violet. Nothing happens. Once again pushing the sarcophagus, stopping at red, nothing happens.
They continue to push it around to orange, the original spot. Nothing happens at orange either. Sitting back and debating what to do, they decide to push it to green and investigate that chamber. As they pass by yellow the chamber goes up and down again. Coming to a stop at green, the sounds of grinding and rumbling stone can be heard. The chamber rises about half way out of the whole when it shudders and drops down back down the hole, smashing to pieces at the bottom.
A few moments later they hear the sounds of a thousand tiny feet skittering up stone. It gets louder and louder until suddenly bursting out of the hole is a swarm of yellow/gold beetles. The swarm starts moving towards the group and they run for all they are worth out of the Cairn.
Just at the exit they stop and prepare to battle the beetles. They bust oil vials on the stone floor and then wit with a lit torch for the beetles top reach them. Once the beetles enter the oil, Ozzy lights it up with a torch. Hundreds of beetles burn up in the flaming oil. Those that don’t continue on to attack the carcase of the mule, these are quickly killed. It is noticed that the beetles leave behind a slime trail that appears to be acidic.
Following the beetles was a strange looking insect like creature with six legs, legs that look like sharp swords. It has one eye, no mouth is apparent. It moves to attack Ozzy. The party quickly get the beast surrounded and dispatch it without too much trouble.
They return back inside to the hole where the chamber fell. Looking down it goes off into darkness. They then drop a lit torch down the hole and see it is about one hundred feet to the bottom. The sides of the hole are scarred and pitted and looks easily climbed. Realizing that they are about out of spells the group decides to head back to town. At this point, Mason informs the party that he thinks they were spied on when leaving.
After discussing it, they take all the lanterns from the Cairn and take them to the old Mine Manager Mansion. They bury them in two different spot s around the yard, and make so many tracks it would be impossible to determine what was going on here. They agree not to speak a word about the Cairn to anyone in town. They agree that all they did was find the boys body in a wolf den and killed the wolves.
They return to town to return the body of the boy and recuperate from the days work.
They all gained 350 experience points for the day.
Total to date; 600 experience points.
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