Session 28 recap
The party:
Hector, a 7th level Archontean fighter
Fannie Mae, a 3rd level halfling
Capdoffer, a 6th level Imperial goblin
Batengis, a 7th level Khumus acolyte of Tingri
Susarra, a 6th level Archontean fighter (retainer)
Scylla, a 5th level Archontean ranger
After waiting for the paralysis from their encounter with the ghouls to wear off the party cautiously reentered the anti magic room. They immediately noticed that the oddly carved box was gone and speculated that some footsteps they had heard while resting may have been someone (or something) surreptitiously retrieving it. Proceeding carefully to the south the party found a room that appeared to be a former preparation chamber. Frescoes that used to depict serene images of Thoth and his priests had been mutilated and defaced, and the equipment destroyed. Scratched into the walls were many sentences in Mithric, which Scylla was able to report as being about cannibalism, fear of someone named Jhentris, and murder.
Continuing through an open door to the east they’d discovered another wrecked room although the frescos in this chamber were in better shape and depicted a kneeling Thoth blowing the wind of wisdom onto the heads of busy priests, all of whom were engaged in research and experiments of some sort. A few minutes of searching through the rubble uncovered two potions, six silver holy symbols of Thoth, and a backpack with a few hundred ancient silver pennies.
Returning to the west the party moved south through a door into a thirty foist by fifty foot room. The floor was littered with broken glass vials and other equipment. Sitting on a makeshift throne made of bone and wood resting atop a desk placed on top of a table was the larger and more intelligent ghoul they had encountered earlier, holding the carved box. As the party moved into the room to dispatch this apparent Ghoul King, he muttered something in Mithric as he opened the box and four miniature ghouls and seven miniature skeletons emerged, quickly growing to normal size and moving to engage the party.
Batengis turned the skeletons and Susarra threw a potion of hostile levitation on the Ghoul King but he was able to resist its effects. A pitched battle ensued but the party was able to use the doorway as a bottleneck and espite about half the party being paralyzed by the ghouls again, the undead host was dispatched with no casualties suffered.
Searching the room the party found piled by the throne six copper daggers, a copper torc, a bronze circlet, over six hundred ancient silver pennies, a divine scroll of Holy Name, an amulet, and four potions. The Ghoul King was carrying a wand and a key. Piling the treasure into Larel’s Sack the party returned to their quarters in the Goblin Warrens after carefully returning the ivory coffer to the anti magic room. Batengis took time to determine that the amulet they had recovered was magical but nothing else was.
After turning in late Batengis took time on the morning of the 6th of Molivios to determine that the club they had taken from the mad druid Gerrilad, made of beechwood and incised with a multi-spoked wheel filled with lapis lazuli, was magical. The party returned to the baboon level and forced open the northern door in the anti magic room which had been spiked shut from the inside. The chamber contained three ramshackle sets of wooden shelving and the floor was littered with broken glass. Two ivory wands lay broken on the floor and th bodies of two Thothian priests sat against the far wall. Examination of the bodies indicate Doha the priests had taken their own lives. Searching the room uncovered a ring, a divine scroll of Augury, and a pouch filled with small garnets worth a total of one hundred gold. Both of the priests were wearing orange silk robes with arcane sigils of Thoth embroidered on them.
Returning to the anti magic room and heading west, the party shortly encountered a locked stone door which the key recovered from the Ghoul King opened. The chamber beyond was seventy feet square with rounded corners. The walls were plastered and painted inky black, while the thirty foot ceiling was painted sky blue. A Continual Light spell in the center of the ceiling illuminated the room. The floor was of black marble with a white marble pentagram occupying the center of the room. A small ivory coffer that appeared similar to the one in the anti magic room rested on the floor next to the pentagram. In the northwest corner of the room was one of the six foot diameter teleportation circles. Wandering around the room (but always staying within the pentagram) were a rat and a goat.
Entering the chamber and examining the various contents, the party found that the teleportation circle contained what appeared to be a full set (white, yellow, blue, green, red, and black) of the glass squares that they theorized allowed operation of it. The ivory coffer was carved in different but still blasphemous imagery’s nd the rat and goat would not leave the pentagram when tempted with food even though both acted as if they were famished. Taking only the glass squares the part left everything else alone and left the chamber, locking it behind them.
The party returned though the portcullis to the east and proceed from that room north, finding a locked door that they wrestled able to open with one of the keys they had liberated from Gerrilad’s corpse. This was found to lead to the large alchemical laboratory they had previously entered from a secret door in the north wall. Tables and shelves filled the forty by seventy foot room. Against the south wall on the east was an enormous carved baboon face with extended tongue. The features were exaggerated, with hollowed-out eyes and nostril cavities that extended over the tongue. On the west side of the door was an eight foot tall stone warrior holding a solid iron spear.
Recognizing the stone statue as an Archontean animated construct the party was prepared when it advanced on them as they entered the room and it was easily defeated. Deducing that the giant baboon face was a device for concocting potions, the party spent some time trying to use it to no avail. Searching the room uncovered a host of mundane alchemical ingredients as well as two wands, a periapt, and two arcane scrolls. Batengis was able to determine that the spear was magical.
Returning to the portcullis room the party began exploring the eastern corridor. A broken door in the southern wall led to an empty closet. A door to the north led to what appeared to have been barracks, with a shelf in the opposite corner that contained what a clockwork statue of a raven. As the party approached the raven it began to utter phrases in Mithric about the nature of arcanum and salacious musings about the parentage of the high priest of Thoth amongst other things.
When the party opened the next door on the southern wall they found a large pile of skeletonized baboon corpses, beyond which was the mostly skeletonized form of a large human dressed in chain mail with an enormous axe laying nearby. The walls were brightly painted with pastoral scenes of hunting with birds and dogs in marsh and forest, a large ibis accompanying the hunter in every scene. Against the east wall was a simple rope bed with rotted bedclothes on top of which was a desiccated female corpse. The corpse clutched a metal wand in its left hand, while its right hand was encased in a blackened leather glove. A remarkably well preserved linen belt pouch and leather backpack were also present.
As the party entered the room and approached the female corpse, a loud groaning began to issue from the skeleton near the door. Hector and other threw the axe in the hallway and scattered the bone, but when Fannie Mae began to examine the corpse on they bed, the bones assembled in a skeleton and the axe flew from the hallway and into the skeleton’s hand. Screaming something in Mithric, the terrifying visage of the skeletal warrior frightened the party such that everyone except Fannie Mae fled in terror, and, not wanting to be left alone, Fannie Mae followed.
Deciding to leave this room alone, they continued down the corridor to anon door through which they saw Sisco holding court with a troop of hooting baboons. Passing this room by as well, they went north to a room that contained a tunnel to the surface which they had come down before. Returning to the portcullis room they proceeded south, past the staircase they had taken to the halfling level some weeks before, and took a narrow southern hallway that led to a dormitory of sorts, with twelve elaborate cells separated by teakwood doors and walls. A life sized stone statue of a human priest in an action pose stood just to the west of the door, and the intricacy of its carving indciatedt that it was a petrified person. The party used the scroll of Stone to Flesh that they had purchased to use on The Pointer and the individual survive the transformation, although the circumstances he found himself in were somewhat troubling to say the least.
Luckily Scylla was able to converse and empathize with him based on their similar histories. He was a low level priest of Thoth named Remagis who had been turned to stone by a Sortian during the abandonment of the Thothian Precincts of Arden Vul in the waning days the Archontean Civil War. Searching the room uncovered a silver candlestick, a set of loaded dice, and a red glass square for the teleportation circles.
Returning to the main hallway and going first east and then south, the party passed a room with two doors that had been spiked shut from the outside, with baboon feces smeared on the door. Listening at the door revealed the unmistakable meeping and slavering of ghouls and the party decided to leave well enough alone.
Continuing down this corridor, a door on the eastern wall led to a room that Remagis identified as the guard captain's chamber. Searching this chamber uncovered a well made long sword with a baboon skin grip and a battered copy of The Courtship of Julius the Exarch, a somewhat ribald tale.
Continuing south led to a corridor that led east to the Well of Light. Proceeding west they examined an empty guard post before entering a more interesting chamber. This room was lit with a Continual Light spell and a fresco of an ibis occupied the entire western wall. The north wall featured a fresco of a smaller ibis head from whose beak spouts a scroll. The curves and wraps of the scroll occupied most of the wall. On the south wall, three blocks of granite protruded from the wall. These blocks, six feet wide, three feet tall, and proceeding three feet into the room) had been carved to resemble open mouths, complete with hints of teeth. None of the parties light sources could illuminate inside the mouths. Carved on the floor in front of the mouths was a phrase in Mithric which Scylla was able partially translate as saying “Those who would seek Thoth’s knowledge must possess ____ to follow ____.” Remagis identified this room as the Antechamber of the Oracle, and said that he had been too junior a priest to have been allowed inside when he was petrified.
Careful probing with poles and a lit torch indicated that nothing destructive happened to objects placed inside the dark mouth, and the cavities inside the mouths were about three feet by three feet on the left and right but that the one in the middle concealed a set of stairs leading down. Tying a rope to Fannie Mae’s waist, she climbed into the darkness of the eastern mouth, but as soon as she had completely entered the darkness the rope went slack and fell out of the opening. Realizing that they had to rescue the poor halfling the party made preparations for exploration. Kissing Scylla goodbye (as they had grown quite close) Hector told her to remain in this chamber for an hour before returning to their quarters in the Goblin Warrens for two nights, and then returning to the villa.
Preparations made, the party stepped through the darkness inside the carved mouth and found themselves in a looming nave of granite thirty five feet tall in the center, flanked by side chapels and culminating in a marble clad apse. Slender columns of red-flecked onyx defined two narrow. Frescoes depicted the twelve ancient deities of Archontos. Along the first part of the nave the frescoes depicted generic scenes of the gods in action, with their usual iconography but changed to specific Thothian imagery around the apse. At the mouth of the apse was an open pit which dropped down into the darkness. To the north of the pit sat a three foot tall triangular dais of white marble. Within this triangle is a second triangular dais on which stood a twenty foot tall statue of ibis-headed Thoth with his hands palm out: in the left hand was a scroll and in the right a feather. On the first dais and in front of the statue was a settee of red silk, looking very much out of place. Piled in front of the settee was a mound of treasure. Two huge candelabra burned strange black candles that produced light but no smoke.
Sitting on the settee was a slim human dressed in orange ceremonial robes and headdress of Thoth, and carrying a white, ibis-headed wand. Introducing himself Oziman he greeted the party warmly but his debonaire manner was belied by the thirteen ghoulish debased figures groveling at his feet. The party quickly saw through his cultured arcade and decided to exercise the better part of valor. Running quickly too the south through the temple they crossed a small bridge across the Great Chasm came to an intersection. A room lay to their left, its frescoes having been largely covered by crude images of snaky tentacles, white bipedal figures, and bones. Two enormous cauldrons sat in the center of the chamber which smelled terribly of blood, charred meat, smoke, and decay.
Eschewing this chamber the party took the right passage which proceeded southwest before turning to the west and entering a chamber thick with dust and trash, except for a path marked with bare human footprints running from where they had entered to an eight foot wide opening into the chasm, fronted by a low balustrade. A teleportation circle occupied he southwestern corner of the room. In the northwest corner a staircase filled with spider webs beckoned and, with the sounds of their pursuers growing ever closer, the party chose this route, burning the webs as they went.
With the running footsteps ceasing behind them, the party turned their attention to the webs. After ascending about a hundred feet they found themselves surrounded by four huge spiders. These were dispatched but not before one bit Hector and his fortitude failed him and h dropped dead on the steps. A quick ritual with the Jade Cup of Life Restoration had him quickly back on his feet however and the party continued up the stairs.
At the top the party found themselves in a familiar place, on a small porch overlooking the Great Chasm on the Goblin level, near the smaller stone throne and just east-southeast of the tomb of Ptoh-Ristus. Thankful to have survived this close call, the party returned to their chambers where Batengis determined the the sword they had found in the guard captain’s chamber was not magical before they bedded down for a well earned rest.
RIP:
Hector, killed by a huge spider [Resurrected with the Jade Cup of Life Restoration]
Foes defeated:
Four ghouls
Seven skeletons
One Ghoul King
One Archontean animated construct
Four huge spiders