Chapter 9, Session 6: Layers of Sin
General Summary
'So, let me tell you a fucking story. Perhaps you will just walk away but, judging by the rest of this damned dungeon I highly doubt you're smart enough to do that.'The party fell down the sinkhole at speed, licking thier wounds and leaving behind the insane wrath of Enarys Walker. As they descended, Fen ensured Mimsi was healed but, in general, the group moved with an alert focus and entered into the next room. An empty cavernous space that reeked of blood and decay. After checking on Lyren Killian, vomitting and retching in the corner of the room and admitting that he was struggling to handle dungeoneering with the party. The group moved forward and noticed that the room was covered in blood and scales across the ground, there was a mound of corpses decomposing in the corner and there was also the smell of a rat-like snuffling and chewing accompanised by the sound of wet meat and breaking bone.
- Kodo confronts the Firbolg executing others to others.
The party elected to ignore this creature and not disturb it, instead, they entered into the next room with Kodo rushing ahead and beelining for the grate. This left the party unable to warn him as, hanging from the ceiling like a operatic and gothic monstrosity, there was an amalgamation of kobolds that had chewed, tore and bit through eachothers body's in order to connect to one another and form a 'Kobold King' in the shape of a dragon that dropped down on and brutally attacked Kodo, nearly knocking him unconscious with one round of attacks. Though, peculiarly, the party then watched as the kobolds forming this creature barked and squeaked at eachother and, notably, harmed and even killed one another.
Olympia, desperate to stop Kodo from getting killed, used Polymorph to turn him into a mouse which removed the Kobold King's attention from him. However, this led to the creature turning on the rest of the party. Meanwhile, Kodo, as a mouse decided to dive through the bars of the grate and descend to the next level. However, he did not realise the drop was 60ft down and so, unable to draw on his monk abilities, Kodo took enough damage from the fall to destroy his mouse polymorph and subsequently knock him to unconsciousness as well. With Olmypia feeling the spell drop.
The party moved with urgency to reach the next level down, with Olympia dimension dooring down to the next level but, after rolling poorly on a luck check, she found they were in a long and narrow tunnel with the unconscious form of Kodo 100ft away from them. She began to run along with Fen however, as they moved, they triggered a trap on this floor which unleashed a torrent of darts and arrows that Olympia managed to dodge whilst Fen was hit by several arrows. Fen then used his grimoire to teleport 90ft next to Kodo and feed him a healing potion, however, in response, Kodo weakly stumbled to his feet and just kept moving forward; immediately activating a tripwire that bombarded him with magic and knocked him unconscious once again.
On the ground above the trio; Lyren used Dimension Door to escape and go to the lower floor to join the others, leaving Ez alone to face The Kobold King which breathed a beam of steaming hot blood over Ez and dealt relatively high damage to him before Ez responded by casting Confusion which was extremely effective and bought him time to descend down the grate and join the party where he healed the unconscious form of Kodo and threatened to restrain the firbolg if he continued moving as it was clear the party needed to put up Fen's protective hut and rest.
When Kodo argued against this, claiming that the party could leave him to do this alone, the rest of the group made it clear that wouldn't happen and Kodo acquiesced and so the group bunched together and set up Fen's Hut protection whilst Ez quietly tried to clean himself in the cramped space and Olympia worked to clean up Kodo's blood and dirtied state. Kodo meanwhile dreamed and yet again encountered The Stranger where they discussed food and the fact Kodo learned much from people and the food they like.
After resting, the party let the hut drop and had Fen lead the group forward in an investigation where, upon scoring a 35 on the investigation check, he accurately spotted, deduced and predicted every trap. Including the final trap in this tunnel which was a ceiling that dropped after 5 rounds of combat. With Fen's warning this was no longer suprising to the party and so Olympia used Polymorph to transform the creature controlling the ceiling trap into a mouse and used the flying carpet to transport the party to the top of the wall and into the next room whislt Lyren and Ez flew and Kodo run up the wall.
The party snuck into the next room where they found the basement of this dungeon level that was occupied by Tanha The Voracious, a VERY large and overengorged vampire with thin and withered limbs from a lack of movement; Tanha picked disgusting bugs off of his own body and seemed to speak to them, asking them to tell him a story as he ate them.
Thoroughly disgusted, the party decided they would rather not face this creature and noticed there were two exits: A small manhole size corner grate covered by hay and a larger grate covered by Tanha's huge body. The party decided to utilise Dimension door to get through and Olympia attempted first on the small manhole but found that the spell rejected her and Ez, harming them both as well. Next, Fen attempted to Dimension Door and aimed for the grate beneath Tanha which succeeded and left the party floating down with Ez's draconic wing constellation to support them.
Below them was a rather unexpected sight as, suspended above a deep and almost neverending chasm, was a small firbolg hamlet filled with poorly dressed large firbolgs that quickly scuttled and moved through the streets in near silence whilst there were also longer limbed and bloodied vampiric Firbolgs that moved through town with a hungering and feral urgency.
The party hunkered down around the corner from the main street and the group asked Kodo what he would like to do, when the firbolg acted in a puzzled way he explained that he did not see himself as 'one' of the firbolg's and instead they were just another group to him. With that sobering thought, the party watched on as a crimson furred firbolg in scorched black plate armour, with two vampiric firbolgs flanking his sides. This figure loudly shouted for the next group to come forth and a group of four tattered and crying firbolgs were shuffled out of a nearby building and forced to kneel over the bridge. The scorched firbolg asked the group to 'tell him a story of those above, those above who walk through our levels and kill our guards.' One of the captive firbolgs desperately claimed they didn't know anything and the scorched firbolg killed them in one blow before moving onto the others.
The party watched before Fen asked Kodo what he wanted to do; the monk angrily spun on Fen and asked why it was his decision. Fen replied that, even if Kodo didn't see himself as one of them, they were still his people that he was watching get slaughtered and killed and turned into vampires at the hands of Silas Povir. Hearing this, Kodo stood and shouted to the scorched armoured Firbolg asking to tell him a story.
The firbolg, not recognising Kodo asked who he was and the monk responded aggressively claiming he was the one who would tell a story of walking through the levels of Fallrock, killing every threat in the way and slaughtering those who interrupted his attempts to kill Silas. He offered the firbolg the opportunity to walk away and let him pass but the firbolg refused and, standing by to support. The party flew into battle.
Report Date
14 Oct 2023
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