Session 17 - Another Sticky Situation

22 Flaurmont 1010

General Summary

The party with the cryptic warning in mind, moves tentatively on from the room with the two monks (though they double-back to get the silver coffer before moving on further). They start with the eastern exit from the Monk room, and after a short hallway they come to a room full of fire beetles; the party is hesitant to engage the apparent swarm. After much discussion they trick the beetles into moving out of the way to explore the area and get to the door on the other side. It also appears that the eastern door from the hallway connects to the trapped hallway from earlier. The northern door that they were able to get to without disturbing the beetles leads to a long stairway up. Near the top of the stairs Tork finds a pressure plate, which he avoids to scout out the next area.
Finding a large, many-eyed guardian in a scorch marked hallway, he retreats back to the party and describes what he saw. The party decides that fighting this potential "many-eyed god" that might "bring down a fiery death", while leaving the beetles behind them, might be unwise. They retreat back the way they came, and decide to draw the beetles into the trapped hallway beyond the eastern doorway. The party goes back to that hall, and the agile front line folk go up the hallway to try to draw out the beetles, with the perhaps not well communicated nor agreed upon plan of drawing the beetles into the trapped section of the hallway, and safely disposing of them. The glowing orb is still present, however, and when Tork advances toward it, it moves on into the beetle room and starts zapping the creatures, which scurry away from it. The orb then attacks Tork, and the party one-shots the orb (not as tough as expected!). The orb now eliminated, Tork tries to draw the beetles back out by tapping his spear on the floor. The beetles, detecting something at floor level, re-emerge and try to attack Tork. He disengages, and heads back toward the rest of the waiting party, and as the beetles advance the trap fails to go off, and the party ridiculously easily kill all the beetles. For the most part so quickly that many don't even get a chance to attack!
Anyhow, now that the beetles are dealt with, the party decides it might be best to explore the other passages before heading "upstairs." Exploring the passage north out of the monk room they come to a large block blocking two possible paths. To the north appears to be a ramp, and to the South a hallway. There are cracks but no-one can easily fit through, so Elincia transforms into a small snake to explore the northern passage first. It is a long ramp that seems to parallel the staircase to the east, and after getting to the top, appears to reconnect with the same room with the many-eyed terror. It turns and starts to move toward her, but she double-times it out of there and is able to safely return to the party. She then heads down the southern passage (after spelling out "Monster!" to the party), and finds a hallway with a door. Based on their memory of where they have been, it seems likely that this connects back to the hallway by the tilt-a-room where the silver coffer was found.
They choose to try this way first, rather than trying to chip the block away. They go back to the tilting alcove and follow the hallway beyond, coming to a door. Opening the doors they find a large room with dozens of life-size clay statues, arranged like a small army. Time has not been kind to these statues, many have collapsed in decay, but many are still standing with completely rotted weapons; they are impressive nonetheless. In the northern part of the room, there is a large dome of plaster with no apparent way "in". After examining some of the soldiers, and taking a couple of the obsidian blades from the spears, Stavos tries to find a way into the plaster dome. Chipping away at a section of the plaster near the base, he finds that there doesn't seem to be much structure to the dome, and it soon crumbles, showing a few long dried corpses inside the dome, wearing some jade pectorals, and some other artifacts. The party grabs the valuable looking parts including a silver and turquoise amulet and the pectorals, but leave a lamp that appears plastered into the floor. After some more searching around, the party concludes that they are done with this room, and open the eastern door, which in fact ties back to the southern hallway from the block. They elect to take a short rest, and in the process identify the magic items they had found, and it also gives Tork a chance to attune to the bracers of defense found earlier. The amulet it seems is an amulet of protection from turning, which doesn't help anyone in this party.
The party, now rested, decides to go up the long staircase again, since breaking the giant block will take quite some time. However, there is some concern about the whole party making it over the pressure plate, as it is likely they will get part way past and get noticed by the monster in the next room. Eventually Belfur decides to test the trap. The rest of the party moves down and away from the doorway in the former beetle room, and Belfur jumps on the pressure plate. The shelf at the top of the stairs crashes down as a giant millstone rolls down the stairs. It severely mauls poor Belfur, and crashes on down the stairs, through the beetle room, finally halting when it hits the southern door. Amazingly, Belfur is still "standing" after this, but he looks downright terrible. The party comes up the stairs and heals him. Stavos takes the lead, to the eye monter hallway and slashes at the creature; it explodes in a cloud of spores, levaing Stavos coughing but otherwise unhard. It seems in the end, the most dangerous thing in the encounter was the millstone!
The party examines the various monkey-like corpses, and finds a bag full of silver "bullets" for a sling, which seem worth keeping, but with no sling users in the group, they collect them and move on.
The next hallway has pictures of what appears to be a sport of some sort with a ball and two athletes with sticks that seem to be driving the ball along in mural form on the western wall. There is a covered hole at this (southern) end of the hallway with some glyphs, so Leo casts Comprehend languages. The words say something to the effect of only open the pit if you are prepared for the challenges of Pelota. Stavos elects to open the pit, and inside are six jade figurines, a jade placard, several skeletons, and a black ball on top. When Stavos pikcs up the ball it comes to life, zooming partway down the hallway. The party, unsure what to do, tries various things, such as gathering the figurines from the pit. Tork tries to grapple the ball, but fails, and it bounces off the wall, and into his chest, mildly painfully. Eventually they decide that perhaps attacking the ball is the way to advance the game, as every time they successfully strike the ball, it moves down the hallway. eventually they get themselves spread out down the hall, and are able to hit it enough times in a row, and the ball hits a special indentation at the end of the hallway (which lights up), and a bell sounds, and the ball flies back to the center of the hallway - they see a similar indentation light at the far end of the hallway. They repeat the process, the ball trying to move north and the party sending it south, until hits the indentation in the wall again, again the bell chimes and the ball returns to the center of the hallway. They repeat the process once more; this time the ball seems to permanently become attached to the "goal." The goal becomes dim, but the one far to the north remains lit. The party gathers the remaining jade figurines from the southern "goal' area and go to examine the north end. They find a compartment with several items inside: pink pearls, a whistle, and a necklace. Leo tries blowing on the whistle, and floats up! It appears to allow the user to fly. He stops blowing the whistle to say that he is taller than Tork, and finds himself crashing sadly to the floor. Apparently the effect only works while you are blowing the whistle. Interesting!
Anyhow, they head east from the northern passage, and find another door, which opens without any trouble. Inside seems to be a cat-themed room, with everything from stuffed house cats to tigers arrayed throughout the room. There are various doors out of the room, as well as another altar space on the northwest part of the room with a cat statue and a dagger of some sort. There is a large figure, similar to the statue found earlier near the slug room, on the northeast (the room seems oriented off-cardinal). The southeastern wall is carved to resemble a snarling tiger - Belfur notes that the hollow eyes might be similar to the sockets of the earlier statue, and tries to push the obsidian "eyes" from earlier into the sockets. They don't seem to fit, but as he is doing this he notices a lever of some sort in the socket. Naturally he triggers this, and another hidden doorway opens to a strange passageway.
Belfur examines this hallway, finding it has a long, deep pit, with poles spanning across the hallway every five feet or so. The walls glow with a violet light, and at the bottom of the pit are some strange looking plants. By now Stavos has joined him, and since Belfur is curious about these plants, and their possible brewing benefits, wants to get down to check it out. Stavos hooks his rope and grapple hook onto the first bar, and Belfur begins to descend toward the plants. Pretty quickly the plants start "shooting" thorns at Belfur, at least one scoring a hit. Stavos starts pulling him back up, but Seraphina literally dives right in, jumping sword first down onto the first of the attacking plants - she finds that anytime someone contacts the plants large blossoms they become stuck to them. This hallway, being just one person wide, does not seem conducive to fighting, as the access to the plants is poor with them being 25 feel below, so over time Belfur, Stavos, and Tork all jump down onto the plants, and Elincia and Leo shoot from above. The fight seems to be going pretty well, with the party struggling to get "access" to the far plants, but when Belfur jumps down to one of the middle plants, a far plant manages to land a particularly nasty hit on him, creating some concern that yet again, his health is in danger. The party is able to fight on, finishing off the plants, and restore his health sufficiently to prevent him from passing out, and eventually they are able to climb back out of the pit, retreating to the "cat" room for another rest to "lick their wounds", and heal up. So far their luck with traps seems worse than their luck with things that "look scary"!
Time will tell what other fine things they are able to uncover in this ancient temple!

Report Date

26 Apr 2020