Session 1: The Whispering Cairn
General Summary
The party assembled at the Feral Dog in Diamond Lake, where Lins told them about a ruin she’d discovered. It wasn’t on any maps or in any stories she’d heard, so maybe there’s still treasure inside! The party agreed to help explore it, but before setting out. Sigvurd got in a tousle with the bouncer, hurling him across the bar in lieu of paying his tab. Also by stealing two tankards.
The party made it to the Cairn without incident. They discovered graffiti on the walls and added their own names in chalk before going forward.
They found a decayed bedroll in an alcove, and in another, they found the remains of a broken transportation device with the personal glyph of Zosciel on it.
They fought some wolves who came to investigate Sigvurd’s noisy shits and also the general sounds of the party exploring. Sigvurd scared the wolves off by shish-kebabing them on his spear and roaring real good.
As the dust cleared, they noticed a flickering green light coming from further down the corridor.
The party explored a large room that had a cobwebbed archway (the green light came through that). The room also had the wolves’ den behind a cave-in on one far end and on the opposite end, a beautiful artwork of seven figures, each seven feet tall, bald, and each wearing a different coloured robe, arrayed in a rainbow. The stonework was unlike anything the party had ever seen, and Talia recognized it as Windcarving, an art technique quite popular in her time, but long forgotten in Greyhawk.
The party returned to the main part of the room and Nemara used Create Bonfire to burn away the cobwebs, allowing the party entrance into the next area.
The next area was a huge room with a similarly large sarcophagus in the middle, on a platform shaped like an arrow. When Sigvurd tried to lift its lid, a jet of fire spurted out at him, and he barely dodged it! The top of the sarcophagus was a stone relief of a figure similar to the ones in the rainbow room, wearing a scarab pendant with the same glyph they saw before.
This room had seven branching paths out of it, many with coloured lights issuing from them, and the party realized right away that the order matched the art room they were in before. Except in this room, the passages that should have emitted Red and Indigo light were dark.
The party investigated the blue, red, orange, violet, and green rooms, in that order.
- The Blue room had an unusually high ceiling, and the skeleton of someone who died from falling. Vin sent her familiar hawk up to investigate, and the hawk scouted a room 70 feet long and 20 feet wide, with scratches down its length and a carving of a human face dominating the opposite wall, its eyes closed and its huge mouth gaping open in a scream.
- The Red room’s lantern was missing
- The Orange room’s lantern was in place
- The Violet room likewise had a violet lantern in place
- The Green room contained a cylindrical elevator that was stuck. The party could see gems and coins on the floor, as well as mold, decayed rags, and bones. When the sarcophagus arrow was pointed at it, it shuddered and shook but didn’t move. The party clambered inside after testing with a wolf carcass, and as soon as they were all in, the doors slammed shut and the roof began to collapse in on them!