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.