A battle of Night and Day.
DM-Mk
Players Abutu the Owl, Nephthys the Spider, Jareth the other Owl, Abu, Eddings, Meraj, Lidian, Xenon, Dwaff, and Tar.
Well it was a slow day and I had completed most of my list.
- Talk to buddy
- Drink some Rum
- Harass Noble folks
- Drink some Rum
- Drink some more Rum
When I noticed Xenon gathering everyone around and telling us about a place far under the earth called the under dark, where I think some of his family lives. I was feeling pretty good about this time, so I thought helping a fellow adventurer out to go see his folk would not be such a bad Idea. It was probably his near-death experience from the thorny blight making him a little home sick.
Poor Meraj was not as excited as the rest of us as the thought of darkness nearly sent her into a panic, however she mustered up the courage to come with us.
So, we headed east from the swollen tooth and made our way to the location the entrance was to be, when we pass a house in the distance, some were saying it was the home of the Mr. Dragon that is or was the militia leader at White Moon Cove. I am unsure because I think someone was saying he had left on a trip maybe, I had no way of confirming this.
Squeezing through the narrow passages was a little tough for me, but fortunately it seemed most of my party members were less than half my size so we all made it to the entrance in good time. I do remember that there was some sort of charcoal or soot on the rocks which got all over our clothes.
Once we got inside things were a little more serious, as we found the remains of what appeared to be an abandon camp with bedrolls and other rubbish and lots of blood smeared on the ground, Walls, rocks, and I thought I saw some on the ceiling. This did not shake us though as we traveled deeper in and soon found a large chasm which was very deep. Xenon said he saw some bugs down there but they fled after he used magical lights to find the chasm bottom.
It was decided then to have one of the group members jump across the chasm with a rope and so Abu stepped forward to accomplish the task. I thought I was going to see the…. “big boned” goblin disappear into the darkness of the chasm, but his leap was a thing of beauty, but then thinking about it his almost spherical shape must make him very aerodynamic.
The rope was then secured using some piton and we all crossed over, some more graceful than other but it’s the results that count when it comes to survival.
Beyond the chasm was a long passage way with a gentle slope taking us deeper into the darkness and we soon found some rooms, one of which had a well in the middle of it. Then suddenly the silence was broken by strange clicking and scratching noises as a large cricket emerged from the darkness and came straight for me catching me in the tight corridor. Luckily Meraj had sent Nephthys forward to shock it, which allowed me to move away from it and into the larger room (I kind of need a little more space than the others). The others then used this opportunity to move forward as Xenon who was in the lead, had been cut off from the group. It turned out that Meraj need for light highly conflicted with Xenon need for darkness and as I moved back the light of the group exposed Xenon to the creatures. Luckily Dwaff was able to simultaneously fight the crickets back while tending to Xenon’s wounds while Abu supported everyone with his fluids.
I listen as what sounded like more of the creatures were gathering and the clanging of a lot of bells and pans. However, I had to sift my focus way from that fight back to the other side of the room where Eddings was holding the door shut, because one of the bunter crickets had come up behind us. I Swapped places with Eddings, so he could go help the others but even after leaving he was still able to give me a hand.
I leaned hard into to the door, but I could tell that the door itself would not hold up for long with all this abuse and soon it crumbled into splinters and I could see the cricket’s beady eyes as I felt a cold breeze crossing my shoulder as Lidian began to pelt it with icy bolts.
Unleashing my bear form I began clawing and biting at it, but the little bugger poked me in the eye and I was blinded for a moment, and if it was not for the gentle caress from Abuta on my head and his vomit washing away the dirt from my eye I would not have recovered in time to kill the bloody cricket.
Of note these crickets were not just overgrown garden variety and had the nasty habit of not dying properly when you put them down, I think Abu said they were undead to begin with.
After resting for a while, we explored some of the other rooms and found a few odds and ends, that’s when Dwaff overheard people down the western passageway speaking in dwarven. Being the only one that could speak dwarven Abu went to go see what was going on and encounter two ghosts. A husband and wife would seemed to be looking for the ghost or remains of their son. It turned out that the husband had turned their son “Shupple” into a golem, but they had sensed the boy ghost some time recently. The wife begged us to find him and said a diary would help us in that cause.
Abu told them we would find their son and so we headed even deeper into the complex and found a long hallway and at an intersection there were Iron bars blocking us from going north and a long trail of soot going north to south.
At the western end there was a door to the north that was trapped and shot out a blast of cold, which Xenon promptly dodged. Beyond the door was another hallway and it had many doors on both sides, that when Lidian came forward to use her divination on the other doors that were lining the corridor and found one with a dart trap, luckily Eddings was able to handle it with a little magic and no one was hurt. It turned out that the trapped door lead to a Library with books about golemancy and how to turn your children into willing slaves and there was also a bloody knife and a strange picture book as well. It was at this time I decided to use my ability to detect magic, as I thought we may be trying out some of the other doors, which might have magic traps and noticed that the northern book shelf radiated magic. The group used that information to deduce that the Picture book was some sort of key and moved it back and forth which caused a strange voice to sound out in dwarven, which Abu translated for us as “What of Shupple”? Lidian then scrapped some of the blood off the knife onto the bookshelf causing it to give way to an opening. Exploring the opening there was a room ahead with a dark stone coffin with what I think they said had bronze engravings which read, “Rest easy Shupple, your father may have love thee”.
After some debating we decided to mess with the coffin and Eddings used a shattering spell to cause the lid of the coffin to become slightly ajar. This was enough for Jareth the other owl to spy a feathered medallion, which I could tell radiated some sort of conjuration magic.
At this point we felt that we had pressed our luck enough and decided to head back to the Swollen Tooth. On the way-out Abu returned the knife to the ghost and said that we would return their son as soon as we could and then headed back to the surface. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to meet Xenon’s folks while we were there, maybe next time we will.
As we traveled back on the surface we came across a band of bards brandishing band equipment and Eddings fell right into group playing his drums. Well the party was on at this point and didn’t stop when we got to the Swollen Tooth. The Party raged well into the early morning and I think I vaguely remember seeing Meraj doing a stage dive while wearing a golden vest as I swigged down my rum.