2023-01-18 Delve: The Watchers' Den
Player Characters
- Atalanta
- Callisto
- Alystin
- Val & Soonie
- Balasar
Summary
The party traveled west from Crow's Brook toward the rumored location of the ancient Watcher's Den.
On the way, they passed a cluster of scorch berry bushes. Atalanta read the druidic runes left by the Circle of Sandstone. The runes provided information about the bushes' maintenance (last watering, last fertilizing, etc) and other nearby clusters. Alystin distributed a few berries around the area.
They approached the entrance to the Den along the western cliff wall of Scorch Alley. The entrance in the sandstone wall was a trapezoidal awning supported by two pillars. The door had an eyeball symbol and had words inscribed around it in an ancient language resembling constellations. Three gargoyles glared from atop the awning.
- Balasar used comprehend languages to read the text, which provided a riddle.
- Alystin offered a drop of blood to the door, the solution to the riddle. While the door slowly grinded open, the gargoyles animated and attacked.
The PCs entered the dark, smoothed cavern. The first room contained a runic clay golem and a set of double doors. Balasar determined that the golem's runes would protect it from different types of damage.
As the party began moving the golem from its pedestal to put it outside, it awoke and attacked. Its runes changed each time it took damage, making it immune to the type(s) it took from the previous hit. The party defeated it.
The party came to a four-way fork. The forward path was caved in and blocked. They traveled right and sent Alystin's imp left.
The party found a room with stone desks and chairs, that was ashen and thoroughly charred. There was a bas relief depicting a landscape with mountain, forest, beach and sea, with a few small shelves attached. Three figurines with drop-shaped heads were scattered about the room, each with a poem inscribed into its base in constellation script.
The PCs followed the figurines' riddles and placed them correctly upon the bas relief's shelves, causing a side door to open.
The side door led to an ancient archive full of empty shelves, that had also been thoroughly incinerated. A thorough search of the room found small scraps of paper that had survived, and a fourth figurine. The figurine was a mimic, which the party easily dispatched.
The party returned to the study and continued forward along the curving path. It ended in a fork: left led to a large central room, and the other path was an upward spiral staircase. They took the staircase first.
The stairs led up to a room full of hanging bars and muck, which turned out to be bird droppings: this room was a dovecote for carrier pigeons. Just beyond the room was another small room with a view of the desert outside: a lookout. A few more document fragments were found there.
They returned down the stairs and walked into the large room. A large demon with crablike pincers rose up from the central pedestal, mentioned that he was bored from guarding this place for so long, and expressed glee at having something to kill. He introduced himself as Chitzifutzl and called out to his shadow demon friend Erbor, who joined the fight. Balasar taunted Chitzifutzl during the fight, so the demon responded by stunning him. The party were able to defeat them, but Chitzifutzl escaped by teleporting using a set of obsidian shards in the room. The PCs destroyed the shards afterward.
The room contained the blocked path and a new path on the opposite side that they came in, a long curved row of benches around the entrance-side, a large mirror in the back, and a pedestal containing an empty tin can, an empty censer, a green primal crystal, and three candles (red, green, blue).
They continued ahead to find a mess hall, kitchen, and pantry. They found a jar of salt, a potion of greater healing, and a jar of gross water.
They continued back toward the entrance, into a simple room with a runic tunnel that Alystin's imp had discovered previously. An inscription on the wall provided a riddle, which they quickly solved, allowing them to pass through.
Beyond the tunnel was a hallway with a row of doors. Six were bunks that contained a few document fragments and a yellow candle, and the last room was a rusted armory with a bone shield that has survived the test of time. It was a +2 shield.
The party pieced together messages from some of the record fragments found. They were able to follow the instructions they discovered to complete the "farspeaking ritual" in the large room. The mirror widened and pushed outward, forming a large concave bubble. Its extradimensional space contained a few chairs, which had compartments with a magic stone and one last document fragment. The bubble space seemed to reach into a large dome-shaped room with a set of double doors and three similar mirrors. The party determined that the bubble was impenetrable, and spent a while trying to understand what they were witnessing and where they should go next.
They returned to Crow's Brook with new ancient secrets and two magic items in tow.
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