2023-05-13 Delve: Haunted Castle, pt 1
Player Characters
- Wiznt
- Balasar
- Val & Soonie
- Tarhun
- Grey
Summary
The party began at The Forlorn Watchtower and traveled to the hill upon which stood The Haunted Castle. A spiraling staircase led the way up and around the hill to its front gatehouse.
The PCs entered a bag of holding and passed it through in order to slip past the front portcullis.
Wiznt used his fines senses to track nearby undead. Grey blasted a ghoul trapped within the gatehouse.
The party explored the courtyard surrounding the central keep. The surrounding square walls were about 400 feet on a side, while the keep was a 200 foot square building in the center. Two side gates separated the front and back half of the courtyard. Planters distributed around the area may have once contained a lovely garden, but now held miserable leafless husks.
Skeletons were scattered about, as if some small battle had taken place. Grey raised a few to fight for him.
The party entered the keep through one of the two backdoors they discovered in the back courtyard. They entered a musty thin hallway traveling along the edges of the keep, once meant for servants and guards. Doors led into different rooms.
They entered a set of double doors into the dining room. Several ghouls, some with distinct mutations, attacked the party along with a few wraiths.
The party found a few secret doors behind statues, buffets, and in the fireplace.
The party continued to the ballroom. Cobwebs connected tables, chandeliers, and curtains, and dim light eked through foggy grand windows. Five musical instruments sat upon a corner stage: a piano, a harp, a violin, a cello, and a bassoon. A hidden compartment in the piano contained jewelry.
The party entered the grand foyer in the center of the building. Staircases led up to a second-floor balcony, and four thick marble pillars supported the pointed pyramidal ceiling high above. Skeletons and rotted corpses were littered abbout the floor. Grey used the hindsight lens and witnessed a hologram of a knight defending a commoner from several ghouls before being overwhelmed. All of the people in the vision were cone-headed (one of the ancient races).
The party entered the kitchen, which was rank with rot. Rats skittered about. Val resisted the smell long enough to search the pantry, and found a corpse clutching a journal.
The PCs traveled forward to the entry chamber with guardrooms on either side. On one side was a mess hall for the castle guards. The other side contained barracks.
One room on the other side was especially dark due to boarded windows. As the parrty entered and searched, a shadow demon and a few shadows materialized. The shadow demon announced itself as Erbor- "Erbor seeks redemption!" They moved to attack, and the shadows managed to drain most of Val's strength.
The group banished Erbor and destroyed the shadows. They allowed him to return from banishment only to pummel him straight back to the Inferno. Wiznt transformed into a powerful giant ape during the fight.
The ape smashed his way outside and climbed on the roof. He busted a hole in the pointed central roof, dropping debris, chandeliers, and glass shards in the center of the grand foyer. He then crashed through the stained glass of the chapel on the second floor.
Tarhun flew up to join, and Grey's zombies and crow traveled up the barrack staircase. The rest of the party began to rest.
Wiznt entered the audience hall with a throne at the back. Tons of ghouls and two zombie beholders turned to fight him. Even with Tarhun's support, the ghouls successfully paralyzed the beast and began to claw him apart. Wiznt gave up on the transformation and fled, while Grey's zombie vanguard stalled the ghouls' advance.
The party fled to a magnificent mansion portal to rest. Balasar teleported them to Basaltthrone, to resume the adventure again later.
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