Session 362 - A Most Devious Trap
General Summary
The Story So Far
The King is dead. Long live the King.
King Minigath Elendsa, who had ruled the Kingdom of Kaldor well for thirty-three years, has been assassinated. His nephew, Sir Conwan Elendsa, has been crowned King, but the former King's bastard son, Sir Maldan Harabor, has contested this and made his own claim.
While the kingdom is embroiled in a civil war, the mysterious Esoterical Order of Lothrim has struck. Armies of orcs, many thousands strong, have invaded the fractured realm.
This is the continuation of Session 359 - Blind Orc Quarry.
Location - Olokand Castle in the Kingdom of Kaldor/New Empire of Lothrim.
7th Halane (Autumn) 727TR
Part 1 – A Short Flight
The heroes plan to raid the occupied Olokand castle and assassinate the leadership of the Order of Lothrim. They have heard that the castle may be lightly garrisoned as the evil magocracy has diverted resources to the siege of the City of Tashal.
Valeria, a powerful sorcerer, is well known to the enemy wizards, so she assumes that they may have warded the castle against scrying and teleportation magic. Therefore using Dimension Door to sneak in is out of the question. At night, the party creeps into Olokand village, and Valeria casts Fly on herself and Rycon. Both fly up onto the castle’s main roof section and are quickly joined by the Dryueh, who arrives by more stealthy means.
The roof has a pigeon coop where a pair of orcs torment the poor birds, and there are also several human and orc guards.
Part 2 – Everything Goes Poorly
Valeria magically disguises the party as orcs and casts True Speech on herself so she can communicate. She boldly heads toward the spiral staircase leading down while Dryeuh darts among the shadows in the same direction. The guards are immediately suspicious and begin questioning the unauthorized intruders. Valeria cannot satisfactorily explain who she and Rycon are, so the guards detain them for interrogation.
The party attacks, catching the guards by surprise; they are no real challenge for the seasoned heroes. One guard attempts an escape to warn the castle, but he is intercepted by Dryueh, who is hiding behind the pigeon coop. The Shadow Dancer reads an old scroll with the Suggestion spell, attempting to distract him, saying, “The unidentified intruders are authorized.” But the guard is unaffected by the magic (the DM rolled a 20 on his saving throw). The guard gets away and calls for help as the heroes finish off the few remaining orcs and human guards on the roof.
Part 3 – The Demon Summoner
Shortly after, three knights charge up the stairwell to investigate and are ambushed by the heroes. Valeria still has some time left with her Fly spell, so she levitates up to a nearby tower. She spots movement behind a window; someone is looking down onto the castle roof. They have a good view of the fight.
It is a scary-looking bald woman. Behind her is a large summoning circle containing something large, fiery, and bestial. A demon. The sorcerers trade spells with little effect, although Valeria manages to contain the demonic creature in an Antimagic Field so it cannot interfere. After the party finishes off the knights, they hear the sound of alarms within the castle; it is on full alert.
Part 4 – Trap
Valeria decides to Dimension Door the entire party through the glass-barred window into the summoning room. This should allow the heroes to avoid the masses coming up from below and catching the enemy by surprise in a vulnerable spot.
Unfortuately, a magical trap triggers as she casts the spell. A powerful magical warding, prepared by the wizards of the Order of Lothrim, redirects the teleport magic; Valeria’s desperate attempts to correct the spell fail, and the party is flung to a completely different location, possibly far away. They appear in a cold, dusty ancient crypt, with a dozen stone coffers covered with dwarven inscriptions. With a groan, the stone coffer lids slide off, and hideous undead dwarven corpses emerged and assailed the dumbfounded heroes.
The wrights are animated by powerful necromancy and prove to be quite a challenge. Dryueh breaks from the party to find an escape route. Opening a stone door, he finds a passageway containing several other doorways. The room beyond one door contains loose stonework that starts to animate, amalgamating into a horrific dirty rock mass. This vicious swarm nearly engulfs him, but he wiggles free, retreats, and seals the door shut, trapping the malicious animated rocks inside. The stony mass thumps on the ancient doorway; it may give way at any moment.
There is no obvious escape route, so he begins searching for a secret door and finds one, leading to a passage ending in a locked door. While he furiously picks the lock, Rycon and Valeria finish off the remaining dwarven wrights. Dryueh rapidly picks the lock and opens the door, revealing a circular chamber with a malevolent glowing form in the center. Suddenly, an evil spirit manifests, and the thief feels his life force start to drain, so he backs off. Then, the door holding the fluid mass of rocks bursts open, and the elemental horror launches itself forward. Dryueh deceives it with an advanced illusion, creating an illusionary wall and holding it at bay while the heroes prepare and heal up. Ready, Rycon correctly determines that the elemental will be easily smashed with bludgeoning weapons, and the heroes dispose of the monster.
Part 5 - Haunts
Valeria faces off with the haunting spirit in the circular room and manages to pacify it using her expertise in the occult. The room has two more locked exit doors, and Dryuch opens one and finds a long passage leading to a series of doors and a small underground waterway. He spots movement, and three more dwarven wrights attack, followed by a much more dangerous creature, a horrid hybrid of a deformed human torso attached to a giant spider's body. Worse, this creature has pale, scared, parchment-like skin covering its dead flesh; it is undead and a powerful sorcerer.
The wrights are quickly dispatched, and the undead is a worthy foe launching powerful life-draining magic. Eventually, it is destroyed, exploding into dust after Valeria's Force Barrage. The heroes know this creature is an Amorvin, or free-willed undead, and it will arise again at midnight, possibly tonight or over the next few days. They need to get out of this crypt fast.
To be continued.NPC Interactions
No one this week.
Player Characters
Valeria - Human - L17 Shadow Sorcerer
Background - Magical Experiment.
Archetype - Beastmaster/Wizard.
Rycon - Human - L17 Fighter
Background - Rebel Knight.
Archetypes - Liberator Champion/Dual Weapon Warrior/Swashbuckler.
Dryueh - 1/2 Elf - L17 Thief Rogue
Background - Scout.
Archetypes - Vigilante/Medic/Shadowdancer/Wizard.
Next Session
Rycon
Dryueh
Valeria
Esoterical Order of Lothrim
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