Session 16 - Entombed

22 Flaurmont 1010

General Summary

The party heads to the East exit from the room. The door opens onto a hallway with wet walls which, upon inspection, is apparently acidic, as Belfur finds his hand burning to the touch. There is a strange section of wall on the south side of the hallway, and down the hallway the passage turns left. The party tries to work the strange section of wall to open it up, and Stavos explores around the corner, finding a stairwell up that has another collapsed ceiling. As they are working the stone back away from the wall, they find themselves slightly injured from the air quality, which seems a bit off everywhere in the dungeon.
Eventually the party is able to force the strange section of the wall to slide inward. They find a room with six urns sealed with wax. Belfur examines one more closely and eventually decides to open it, and dips his dagger in. The contents appears to be some kind of oil. Meanwhile Leo has cast comprehend languages to understand the words on the far bronze doorway. Once this casting is complete, it appears to be signifying "Here lies Tloques-Popolocas, master of the others, who is like the wind and the night!"
The party is a bit split on whether to proceed, but eventually they decide to open the door and see what lies beyond. They find a large burial chamber with glyphs on the floor, which Leo reads as "Ah, defilers! Now you shall join me in my eternal resting!" The room has a large casket in the center, and an Axe embedded in the far wall. The warning glyphs on the floor give the overall party cold feet about entering the tomb, and in the end they agree that they could always come back.
The party returns to the central room with the giant crab, Kalka-Kylla, and take a look at the western door. Stavos quickly examines the north door, but finds it to be submerged in mud, and the door opens inward. The party elects to go west first, and opens the door to find a hallway. Part way down the hallway there is water bubbling up through the floor and forming a stream that heads away from Kalka-Kylla's room. They work their way down the hallway and find a statue with black gemstone eyes, one of which seems to be falling out, and what appears to be a sword behind it's back (which is not stone). They look closely at this, and then determining that this statue looks a bit unstable, use Belfur's Mage hand pluck the gems and the sword from the statue. The "eyes" appear to be large pieces of obsidian, and should be valuable. The sword is made with obsidian and teak, and definitely appears valuable as well.
They move on down the hallway, and find another room. There are two smaller rooms to the left and right (east/west) and a larger room to the north. The smaller rooms have a fountain in each of them, the left fountain having a family of tadpoles and toads living in it. Stavos and Leo take a closer look at the eastern well, and a swarm of rats attacks. The party makes incredibly short work of the rats, and Leo continues poking his 10 ft pole of colapsing around in the bottom of the fountain. Convinced that there are no beasts waiting to pop out, Stavos reaches in and finds a brass amulet with green gemstones, and some symbols engraved on it. Leo begins ritual casting comprehend languages, and the rest of the party begins exploring the larger room to the north. This room is flooded with water (about two feet deep, and the floor below the water is incredibly slick, reducing movement speed to 1/3rd.
Almost immediately they are attacked, as the "spot on the wall" appears to be a giant slug/snail creature. Naturally it is difficult for anyone to directly engage the slug with the greatly reduced movement speed, but the Slug nearly immediately performs long ranged line attack that hits both Tork and Belfur. by the second round of combat, some are able to make attacks, and by the third round the creature seems to be scared, and withdraws. Some of the party wants to let it go, but Leo is tired of the party being attacked (unprovoked) and continues the assault, killing the slug creature. They dice up the creature, so that it can be delivered to Kalka-Kylla as a snack, which they do before returning. Leo recasts comprehend languages, and the amulet reads "Lord of Snails." Perhaps they could have controlled the giant slug? The party doesn't find anything else of value in the room, and continues through the north door.
Here they find another hallway, with a similar stream of water draining into the slug's room. they follow the hallway along and around the corner and find a door bulging to almost bursting. Belfur using a method used to judge beer height in a keg, determines that the water level is very high on the other side of the door, and the party decides it would be unwise to open the doors. Instead they head back to Kalka-Kylla's room and start digging out the mud in front of the northern door. Eventually they are able to open the door, and unsurprisingly, on the other side is a hallway! However they hear something melodious coming from the room beyond the short hallway, though they can't tell if it is singing or the sound of water flowing beautifully. Belfur, not one to trust in such things, tries to stopper his ears for protection. Meanwhile the party advances into the room, and they hear a splash, and the musical sound stops. They find themselves in front of a small indoor beach with a small pond and a doorway with sun markings beyond. On the western end of the room there is another door.
Stavos, with his swimming and underwater breathing capabilities provided by his helm, explores the pond in search of whatever had caused the splash. Underwater he finds what appears to be a beautiful woman who beckons. However, Stavos being a bit more cautious, beckons for her to come back toward the beach, and as he turns to swim away she touches him, causing a tightness in his chest, but no damage. He does not strike back, but continues back to the shore. She follows, and when the party is all there, they attempt to speak in different languages, and it turns out she can speak Elvish. Elincia and Seraphina recognize her to be a nereid, or a sea nymph. She seems to not know of what is beyond this room in either direction. The party asks if she will help them get to the door beyond the pond, and she says she will if they give her something shiny. They ponder this, but decide to head to the west first.
Once again they find a trickle of water coming up from the floor, and running along the hallway and off to the west. At the end of the hallway, there is a passage to the south and a door to the north (where the water is headed. They first explore the passage, which is actually quite narrow and low-ceilinged. By triangulation they estimate that this come out just behind the statue they encountered before the snail room. Returning to the passages entrance they open the door, finding themselves just on the other side of the bulging doors from earlier. Out of curiosity, they decide to force the doors open from this side, and Stavos with his swim speed gets to try this. When the doors open the water rushes from this room down the hallway they had earlier explored and off to the snail room. Unfortunately, after draining the room, they just find an empty room, with nothing of interest at the bottom.
They head back to see the nereid, and discuss what to offer her before returning to her room, and decide to present her some silver pieces. When they discuss this with her, she says no - not metal, but gems. The party considers what they have on them, and before anything can be determined, Seraphina offers the nymph her ruby. The nereid wants to look at it closely, and eventually agrees. This seems like a hefty sum to get assistance to go to a door 20' away, but so be it! The [Narad?] shows them that there is a ledge just below the surface of the water along the east and north wall, allowing them to fairly easily find their way to the door. She swims below and looks prepared to catch them in case they should fall. Having gotten to the door, it opens easily, and they leave the room, and Seraphina gives her the agreed upon fee.
They find themselves in a hallway that leads to a larger hallway with murals painted on the walls, and an arched doorway at the far end with snakes carved in the arches. Upon closer examination, it seems that the sun in the mural is a separate piece. They try pushing on the "sun" and it slides easily to the side, exposing another passageway hidden behind, at a higher level. The party decides to explore this hidden passage first, and the shorter folk are given a boost up, and Tork jumps up last. Surprisingly enough, they find themselves in another hallway. This one lined with various figures, including a bison, a coyote, a bear, and an eagle . Opposite each (except the Bison) is a hallway. The Eagle appears to have a gold bracelet in it's beak. As they approach each, they examine the figures, and try to determine their meaning. Across from the coyote, the hallway appears to have a light that is moving away from them. The party begins pursuit of the escaping light, but as they advance down the various hallways, it seems there are more and more traps to be found. Eventually the party confers and decides it might be better to check out the other paths before returning to this one.
They head back to the corridor with the animal heads, and investigate the Eagle head that has the bracelet in its beak. Stavos tries the substitution trick, cutting an arrow down to lengths to slide in place of the bracelet. However when he tries to position this makeshift brace, the jaw still snaps, but fortunately he was quick enough to get his hands out of the way first. No harm no foul! Interestingly enough, no other events seem to be triggered by the jaw snapping shut. The party looks closely at the other animals trying to determine if there are any movable parts, but it doesn't seem that way. In addition, they try to investigate the wall opposite the Bison, as this one doesn't seem to have a corresponding passage. They find no trace of loose bricks or a door despite their best efforts.
After a while they head down the second passage, opposite the bear. A short way down this passage, they find a silver chest on a pedestal in an alcove off the hall. Stavos and Seraphina make their way up the single long step toward the chest, and when they get close to the chest, the floor falls ~10 feet, and the "step" flips up like a steep ramp. From the main passage, it seems the floor pivoted up, and there is a large rock wall with no obvious way to get in to help Stavos and Seraphina. They open the chest, and find a small fish statue. Upon closer examination, the base of the statue flips open, revealing a small hole lined with illuminated beads. When they reach inside to see what is in there, it activates! The fish then begins flying around, and away from them. It stays away from them as they try to capture it. Eventually they begin to work together to chip away at the rock of the "step/ramp", primarily with Shatterspike, and with about an hour of work they are able to chip it away enough to get back to the rest of the party. The rest of the party takes a bit of a break while they do this, though Tork goes back to the prior hallway with the mural to see if there are any corresponding mechanisms that might help with freeing Stavos and Seraphina.
Upon escaping from the ramp trap, the fish flies away back down the hallway, and around the last passage (at the end of the hall). Here there are long dead humans on display, and as the party runs down the hall in pursuit of the "flying fish" these human forms come to life! There are 15 of these zombies, and Seraphina has run all the way to the end of the first passage, and is trapped. The rest of the party, not so far ahead, immediately works to destroy these zombies. Leo drops a Shatter in the middle of the hallway, this time clear of everyone (just barely) and takes out several of them in one attack. Elincia places a Bear totem, fortifying the party members, and things start to look brighter. Seraphina casts misty step, and rejoins the party ranks, greatly reducing the danger of the situation, thankfully. With their enhanced ability now to concentrate on a few zombies at a time, the party is able to make relatively short work of what at first looked like a very dangerous situation.
Now that the zombies have been cleared out, they are able to pursue the flying fish, and eventually Tork and Stavos, with their dexterous attempts, are able to recapture it, and it is once again controllable and disabled. Putting it into the bag to prevent further hi-jinx, they continue to explore. The party now has several loose ends behind them, however everywhere they go there are more doors and hallways.
Continuing beyond the Zombie hallway, they find themselves in another large room with paintings on the walls, two divans in the center of the room, and two more on the east wall. On the two divans in the center of the room, there are very dusty reclining humanoid figures. One male, and one female. They have various valuable items on their persons, and seem to have a layer of dust indicating hundreds if not thousands of years of inactivity. The female has what appears to be a wand, and Leo immediately moves to investigate. When working it free from the female, both the male and female jump up and into fighting stances. The "wand" now in Leo's hand seems to be just a fan, and Leo tries fanning the female to defuse the situation, but instead combat ensues.
These two figures seem to be skilled in unarmed combat, able to strike 3 times quite hard each round, and they are hard to hit. Thankfully, the party far outnumbers them and in just a few rounds of combat, the ancients are taken down. The party examines the items on the two, and some items appear to be magical. The party decides to take a short rest here, though the foul air continues to burn their lungs. Leo uses this time to cast Detect Magic (to tell what some of the items are magical), and also Comprehend Languages, to understand the symbols on the large writing on the western wall of the room, which ominously states "Beware... many-eyed god will bring down a fiery death."
Perhaps this warning will make more sense after further exploration.

Report Date

19 Apr 2020