Empire Group Session III Report

General Summary

THE EMPIRE GROUP RENTS A NEW AIRSHIP & MEETS PRIMUS

• The party decides to go to the Florium Trade Guildhall. Beforehand, Doc unchains Atlas under the agreement he doesn't kill anyone (unless they tell him to) or commit anymore crimes so that they can get him pardoned by the Emperor. Then, they head out to Florium's trading post. Inside the extremely opulent Guildhall, they meet Primus, a beloved politican in the town and head of the Guildhall. Using their authority under the Emperor, they manage convince Primus to allow them to rent an airship until they get to the next town's outpost. Primus also gives them his official emblem as proof of his orders that they may borrow a ship from his guild.
• After some of the others introduce themselves, Atlas says "What am I supposed to say? That I'm worth a million gold pieces?" which causes Chad and Leo to start discussion who's going to tie him up for the reward. Doc dismisses the conversation so he can continue to talk to Primus. Once finished, they head into the next building in order to pick up their new airship.
• The airship turns out to be a Skybarge, a cargo ship that flies at a speed of 2mph. This would put them at reaching the town of Salonac in a little over a day and a half.

"What am I supposed to say? That I'm worth a million gold pieces?"

THE EMPIRE GROUP FINDS AN UNDERGROUND TOMB

• Nearly a day passes as the Empire Group flies on their new Skybarge toward Salonac. When they reach the crossroads between Salonac and Canone, the crew points out an area where merchants have been disappearing into the sand. Lexus explains that the rumor is too new for him to have heard anything about it. Puzzled, the party decides to throw Ivan overboard and see if he sinks through the sand, since if he dies he'll just come back to life.
• After Ivan finds an old gauntlet that ends up being made out of a Mimic, he telepathically messages the party that underground cavern is safe to enter. They decide to jump down after Ivan (taking Lexus with them) and explore the cavern together. They find Ivan, who traveled ahead of them, staring at claw marks on the cavern wall. He uses his mimic gauntlet to switch between different types of claws to try and figure out what creature created the marks. While Ivan is distracted, Lexus examines the claw marks by tracing them with his fingers and remarks that they appear to be from a large, reptilian creature. Leo says it must be a dragon, causing Atlas to run into the shadows and hide. Ivan then casts Invisibility on himself and Lexus.
• Ivan morphs through different types of dragon claws with his gauntlet and ends up finding a match. Leo guesses that it must be a poison dragon. It turns out to be a Black Dragon Claw, but the others can't see it due to Ivan being invisible.
• Doc starts freaking out about the airship and tries to get them all to run aboveground--when Atlas hears a groaning from the next room. He finds a narrow pit covered by iron bars in the west side of the room. While they walk over to the room, Lexus tells them to calm down, claiming that dragons are nearly extinct in the Empire, and there would have to be a great reason for one to suddenly appear. Something would have to specifically attract it.
• Ivan rushes over to break open the bars with his magic hands, while Atlas peers down inside the pit to see a man surrounded by humanoid skeletons. The party wonders if the dragon could be trying to trick them by shifting into a human form, but Ivan still ends up breaking the bars and jumping into the pit. He ends up terrifying the man after turning from invisible to visible right in front of his eyes. The man realizes it isn't another hallucination caused by starvation after Ivan throws him up to Doc, who catches him and asks him what happened. The man explains that he's a merchant named Sevirus, who fell into the tomb on accident. All he could remember was falling into the tomb, then everything went dark. When he awoke, he was already trapped inside the tomb, unable to escape.
• Atlas walks off into another room, which turns out to be a dead end. He turns around and heads toward another room. To keep track of what rooms they have already been through, Ivan makes distinct markings on the walls of each one. They end up finding a large room with a floor covered in acid and a bunch of black and white tiles. Doc realizes the white tiles fall into the acid when touched, but that the black tiles stay solid. Everyone makes it across the river of acid (with Ivan having fallen off and burned his armor off in the acid for a minute before getting out), with Atlas at the head.
• At the end of the tunnel, Atlas finds an unlocked door without any traps on it. He slowly opens it and finds another room with only a golden statue standing in the northwest corner. He writes a note to the rest of the party describing what's in the room and throws it through the door after folding it into a paper airplane. They catch the paper and head over to the door.
• While he's still alone, Atlas investigates the golden statue. It appears to be of a winged person holding a bag of gold in one hand and a scale in the other. At the base of the statue is a strange hole-shape, as if some sort of emblem should fit inside. Atlas contemplates using a chisel or crowbar to cut through the statue and steal the bag made of solid gold from the statue's hand, but decides it would make too much noise.
• The rest of the party enters the room, but they can't find any exits. Lexus examines the statue along with the odd hole at its base, explaining that it's of the God of Business and Commerce, but he can't figure out why it would be here alone. Frustrated, Atlas tells Doc to break the wall down with his warhammer. Doc says trying to destroy it would make too much noise. Meanwhile, Ivan continues to stare at the odd hole at the base of the statue. He seems to recall the shape looks familiar, but can't exactly place where he saw it. However, he knows it must be recent. Atlas wonders if it's his wanted list, but Ivan ignores his comment and says to everyone that he knows one of them has something that fits this shape, he just can't remember what. Doc tries to see if it's the emblem they were given by the Emperor, but it ends up not being the right shape. Doc thinks long and hard for a moment, remembering that he recieved an emblem from Primus before leaving Florium. He tries to fit it into the statue's base next. It ends up fitting perfectly and is taken by the statue.
• The statue begins to speak in an echoing voice, saying "The next room may hold the treasures you seek, but beware of the beasts that lurk both within men's hearts and within this cavern's walls, mortal."

"The next room may hold the treasures you seek, but beware of the beasts that lurk both within men's hearts and within this cavern's walls, mortal."

• Atlas jumps to the conclusion that there must be a dragon in the next room.
• Ivan tries to argue with the statue about being called a mortal, but it has already returned to a normal statue. After the statue stops speaking, the wall next to it opens and reveals a hidden passage into the next room. Doc takes the amulet out of the statue before walking into the next room, but the door doesn't close. When they walk into the room, they see massive piles of gold and treasure. Everyone except Chad bursts into arguments about whether or not they should leave since the hoard is an obvious sign of a dragon. In contrast to their fear, Chad leaps into a pile of gold and starts swimming in it.
• The group's squabbling is interrupted by the sound of a voice saying, "So, you found my hoard, did you?" which makes the party assume it must be a dragon. However, the voice turns out to belong to Primus. Ivan asks Primus if he's secretly a dragon in human form, to which Primus denies. Ivan and Leo start walking off to look through the gold for treasure--until Primus grabs Ivan's shoulder. Ivan's body slowly turns to gold from where Primus's golden gauntlets touches him, and says he can't leave any of them alive now that they know the truth.
• Doc asks why Primus keeps all of his treasure hidden and asks if he uses the gold to help people since he seemed like such a nice, helpful person. Primus admits that he used his position as a trusted politician beloved by the people of Florium to secretly steal from the town's treasury for personal gain. The entrance to the tomb has become unstable, causing merchants to sometimes fall in. When that happens, Primus throws them into the pit until they starve to death.
• Atlas says he won't rat Primus out as long as he gets a Bag of Holding from his hoard. He claims that he wouldn't go to the authorities when he has a massive bounty on his own head, and shows Primus how much he's worth. The promise of the gold reward he'd get from capturing Atlas and turning him in ends up making Primus even more excited to fight them--the exact opposite reaction Atlas hoped to get from him.

Character(s) interacted with

• Primus
• God of Business and Commerce