Session 20 - Blinded by the Light

24 Flaurmont 1010

General Summary

The party is prepared to enter the Eastern door from the cat room when Leo has a "bright" idea. He chugs the sample he took from the glowing well, with the thought that it might be a fly spell or something like that. Instead, it seems like nothing happens. The party collectively shrugs, and opens the door.
As per the rest of the temple, this door opens on a hallway, which the party boldly enters. The other end of the hallway ends in a door. Through this door, they find another hallway of all things, this one doubling back to the southwest, mostly reversing its path. This hallway, amazingly enough leads to yet another door. This one facing east. The speed of moving through the hallways has emboldened the party, and there is no hesitation this time on opening this door!
This door opens on a relatively large room with a sickly looking willow tree in the center of a pool of brackish, oily water. The tree does not look well, and the party moves to investigate, further, but as the party approaches the water, the tree begins to assault them. It strikes the four nearest party members with its wispy tendril like branches, and pulls Seraphina in toward its now visible maw. The branches themselves seem not to deal damage, but the bite is harsh. In addition to the nuisance factor, the tree seems quite hard to damage - with its surprisingly hard bark, most attacks seem to go nowhere. Right when it seems like the party is making progress at freeing itself from the grasp of the tree, it pulls four in toward its maw and does a very hard bite! Thankfully, everyone is in good enough health before this strike, so nobody is knocked out. In a few more rounds of heated fighting, and the party shifting to fire and radiant spells, the tree eventually withers and lets go of them. As the party licks its wounds Stavos searches the area, and within the maw of the creature, he finds 12 pieces of Blue Jasper, thankfully indigestible, but suggesting that some earlier explorers may have been less fortunate than the party. By now it is becoming clear that the potion Leo drank is doing something strange to him. The glow of the potion is now emanating from his mouth and spreading. Soon it has gotten all the way to his eyes, and he is blinded by the brightness coming from his own eyes. The party decides that perhaps the potion of health will reverse this process and save him. It is administered to Leo and quickly reverses the effects.
Feeling a bit beat up from this combat, and dealing with Leo's strange glowing problem, the party elects to take another short rest when they find their way back to the large double-headed snake room with the fresh air. They take another look down Leo's throat, and it seems the glowing is present again. Stavos asks if he wants to head back to town, and go to the temple, but Leo estimates that this will take too long anyway when travel is taken into account. He is willing to gamble that the effects will wear off naturally. After they get their gear back in order, they head to the southeastern door from this room, and the bolder pace of exploration continues! They quickly move through the hallway beyond, and snake their way west, then around a corner, and find themselves at a staircase headed up and east. Unlike the staircase in the far south, this appears to be fully intact, with no rubble. As the party moves up the staircase, the wall at the top of the stairs pivots down, and a stone dragon statue emerges, and "breathes" fire down upon them! This is not too harsh a blast, but every time someone moves, it seems to trigger the fire again. The party is blasted four times before it seems to "run out of steam" and withdraws back into the wall. The party tenderly moves around past the trap, fully expecting it to start all over again, but it seems spent. Once the party is all in the hallway past the trap, Seraphina takes out her anger on the statue by busting through the false wall with Shatterspike, and rages on the stone statue until it crumbles before her in a steaming pile of rubble. Meanwhile, the rest of the party has taken this time to recuperate a bit, and is now better able to deal with whatever comes next. Unfortunately for Leo, the "glowing' problem still seems to be present, though its spread seems much slower than the first time.
As they worm their way through the hallway west, then north, they find a hallway with various bits and pieces that seem out of place. Tork, with his heightened senses checks out a few suspicious sections of wall in the hallway, and finds two false walls that open on additional passages. The party elects to head to the western secret passage first, as this appears to wind back south. They head down this narrow passage, and find yet a vaulted room. There is a strange raised platform, just a few steps up, with what appears to be a frosted glass cylinder extending from the center dais. There are four sets of steps up to this elevated platform, one to the west (toward the doorway), one north, with what appears to be a full set of impressive plate armor and weapons on a stand, darkness fills the eastern steps, and the southern steps seem to dance with multicolored light that seems to have no source. In the hallway approaching this area, there is a large jade mask hanging on the wall. Tork moves to ascend the western steps, but immediately experiences a wave of exhaustion, and moves to sit back down. Belfur pulls him back from the steps, and he immediately feels refreshed. This seems to be some kind of magical exhaustion. Leo asks Tork to try lifting him directly up to the platform instead of using the steps, and he is repulsed by some sort of force. It almost seems like a wall. A bit less tangible, but impenetrable nonetheless. The party decides to avoid the menacing armor, as there appears to be blood at its feet. Stavos explores the eastern steps, and finds them not only dark, but when he tries to ascend the steps, his feet slip out from under him and he tumbles back to the base of the steps. Meanwhile Leo has decided to investigate the large jade mask on the wall, and when he lifts it from the hook on the wall, it triggers a trap, and he finds himself behind bars. Seraphina quickly employs shatterspike again to break the bars and free Leo. The mask itself seems to do nothing, however. Leo has also finished casting detect magic by this point, and the trinkets around the cylinder do not appear to be magical, however, there is a sign of something magical above the cylinder of frosted glass.
An ominous voice, strangely understandable to all, booms out, declaring them defilers, and notifies the party that soon the room will fill with toxic gas unless they find the antidote. The door to the hallway slams shut, and the party considers what to do next.
They decide to try all four staircases at once. Tork and Seraphina the northern steps, Belfur and Elincia the western steps, Leo the southern steps, and Stavos the dark eastern steps. On the count of three, all surge forward in an attempt to perhaps overwhelm the forces repelling them. However, the west, south, and eastern approaches all seem to be foiled by the various magics. Belfur and Elincia are faced with exhaustion, though Belfur quickly uses the whistle to escape the stairs, and pulls Elincia back as well. Leo is bounced off a force wall of some sort, and Stavos once again slips and falls on the eastern steps. To the north, however, Tork and Seraphina successfully climb the steps, and the ominous armor comes to "life" and starts attacking them. Not too surprisingly, for a full set of plate armor, it seems quite difficult to hit with attacks. Belfur attempts to go over the force wall, but it seems to extend all the way up, Seraphina and Tork initiate combat for a round, but then switch tactics. Seraphina backs away, drawing a reaction attack from the armor, and she drops Moonbeam on the armor. Tork takes this opportunity to climb up the glass cylinder to grab the magical item above. Meanwhile Leo hits the armor with psychic damage from his maddening hex, and drops sacred flame on it. Stavos shoves the armor off the ledge, and it falls prone, still in the Moonbeam, Tork, now down from gathering the potion from above the cylinder, has moved to attack the cylinder. Seraphina does the same, both controlling the Moonbeam to hit the armor, and using Shatterspike to attack the glass cylinder. Seraphina destroys the glass cylinder with shatterspike, at which point the animated armor collapses and claster to the ground. From within the cylinder, a celestial flying serpent escapes.
It thanks the party, and introduces itself as Kukulkan, and a couple party members recognize it as a Couatl. It explains that it has been trapped for it doesn't know how long by the evil creatures that built this temple. It apologizes for misleading them, there is no poison gas coming into the room. The party asks if there is any way for it to help with Leo's glowing condition, and it examines him and says, yes, it can cure this condition. Kukulkan also heals the more injured members of the party, and points out some additional magic items that were in the cylinder with it. The valuable trinkets around the cylinder apparently are of no interest to it, so the party gathers these up to sell back in town. Not only are there two magical items, but the formerly animated plate mail is still a set of functional plate mail! This is not useful for most of the party, but Seraphina, with her great strength, could effectively wear this armor and gain some benefit. She does not, however, like the ominous looks of the artwork on the armor. Perhaps that could be improved with the help of the local smithy.
The party shows Kukulkan to the exit in the airy room below; it seems quite pleased to be free, and departs.
The party work their way back upstairs, and the busted up dragon does not attack. They get back to the room they found Coatl in and decide to take another short rest before continuing their temple exploration.

Report Date

22 May 2020