Session 21 - Mirror, Mirror

24 Flaurmont 1010

General Summary

The party feeling a bit refreshed from the heals handed out by Kukulkan, moves on, deciding to pursue the second secret passage in the hallway next. Heading down this narrow passage, they come to a door. They quickly push through the door, with their recently found decisiveness, and find themselves in a long room with four mirrors on the walls, and an oblong pool of golden water in the center of the room. They split up to investigate the different mirrors, and in the white mirror, Seraphina catches a whiff of nutmeg from the mirror, but even upon touching the mirror, nothing seems to happen. Stavos goes to the blue tinted mirror on the far western wall, and sees his reflection tinted blue. When he touches the surface of the mirror, he is teleported to the other side of it into a pool/tank of water. Conveniently, with his helm, he can breathe underwater, so this does not panic the party or Stavos. He decides to use his dagger to punch through the mirror, and splashes back into the room after a few blows breaks the glass. Leo takes a handful of water and sprinkles it into the pool of golden liquid, to see if it is boiling water hot, but it just dissipates into the fluid uneventfully.
Elincia walks up to the Northwestern mirror, and looks into it, and her reflection blurs and turns into an ancient Traldar version of herself. The image in the mirror speaks some words in the ancient dialect that nobody can understand. Leo starts casting Comprehend Languages, and the party continues to investigate the room. Stavos looks into the red mirror to the east and sees his reflection, and a ghostly white form next to it. The form morphs into a giant spider, which then attacks and kills Stavos's reflection, drags it to the ground, and begins devouring the poor soul. The party disturbed by this decides they should stop working with the mirrors. Leo finishes his spell, and goes up to the black mirror. His reflection, much like Elincia's blurs and becomes an ancient Traldar version of himself. Leo uses his Hat of Disguises to change his appearance to match that of the reflection. The image says the same phrase again, but now Leo comprehends it to be "Command me to answer and I shall." He explains this to the party, and they try a few commands, but the image in the mirror just stares blankly at them. In the end, the party decides to try the other doorway from the branching hallway.
That eastern door opens to a large room that once again appears to be a diorama. There are 5 distinct "regions" in the room, a sandy desert scene to the west, a pleasant plane of grass to the south, a glacial scene to the east, a swampy scene to the North, and in the center, a hill. Each scene depicts various things. The hill scene in the center has humans being driven by devils or demons to push a large rock up the hill; a hole in the ceiling above the hill shines an eerie silver light. The swampy scene shows humanoids struggling not to drown, and there is a river coursing through it, ending where it falls into a steam-filled chasm in the northwest corner of the room - is this chasm, worms pursue the fleeing forms of naked people. The plains scene seems idyllic, with hunting scenes, but there is a valley filled with fire running through it. The glacial scene seems barren, much like the desert scene. Perhaps this diorama is depicting the need for balance in the universe to create the best conditions for life? Too hot or too dry, and it becomes a wasteland, too cold, a barren wasteland, too wet, a swampy mess, but balance leads to the happy plains scene? Regardless, the party experiments with the various zones.
Stavos tests the desert scene; his nose begins to bleed profusely when he steps off the gravel path. Tork tries to climb the central hill to investigate the hole in the ceiling, but is sent tumbling into the desert scene. Belfur steps into the plains, and nothing seems to happen, and Leo follows, and also nothing happens; Seraphina also rolls right in. However, when Stavos enters, a wave of contentedness washes over him and he just wants to sit down and enjoy it. This is allowed to go on for a bit, but Leo determines that something should be done, and he slaps Stavos, and it seems to trigger a response, and he is surprised that he is just sitting around. Meanwhile Seraphina has examined the door to the east, and has determined that it would not be so hard to open. Belfur tries to go into the glacial scene and is severely injured by the harsh cold, that seems to cut right through his metal armor. The party determines that they should take a look into the eastern door, so everyone has to enter the plains. Tork seems to also succumb to the euphoric state, and it takes Leo several attempts to shake him out of it, but he does come back. The party all seems to be OK, so Seraphina opens the door.
This room is much smaller, and has some objects around it, including a stone cylinder on a shelf in the back, and a glazed flask with dried powder in the bottom. Belfur moves to investigate, and upon stepping into the room, a horrifying creature begins to appear out of the detritus on the floor. Eyes open everywhere, along with horrifying maws that start chanting a terrible chorus. The party immediately moves to attack this writhing horror of eyes and mouths. It isn't too difficult to hit, but the chorus seems to have a chance of disabling its opponents. Thankfully this doesn't seem to affect many of the party, and they are able to mete out significant damage to the creature. Elincia seems to lose some effectiveness, but is able to move away from the creature. Those in immediate striking range are bitten at by the creature. After a few rounds of combat though, the party over-matches the horror, and it collapses to the ground in a heap. Elincia and Leo, horrified by the creature, want to burn it, once the party has collected the items from the shelves. As the party leaves, they have to deal with the sedative effects of the plains again, but once again, they eventually overcome this. Elincia and Leo burn the creature to ash to ensure it doesn't come back to haunt other people in the future.
Having explored all the known pathways, the party decides to attempt to climb the hill again to investigate the hole in the ceiling again. Seraphina with her extreme athleticism succeeds in climbing the hill, and is able to help Tork up as well. Tork tries to scramble up into the hole, but it is difficult to do more than determine that it appears to be a steeply slanted shaft that has some light at the far end. Flametalon has been killed the last time it flew up a shaft, and Leo has not had a chance to re-summon since. However, Belfur, with the aid of his whistle, is able to fly. Before he does, Stavos hands him the grappling hook and Leo ties an extra length of rope to the other end to ensure it will be long enough. Belfur whistles his way up to the hole and up the shaft. Some distance in there is a split and, as he approaches this intersection, the party loses sight of him. He is able to get the grapple hook secured before retreating back to the party with a wide-eyed look. He lands and explains that there is a giant spider around that bend. The party prepares for the spider to emerge, but it does not seem to want to come to them, much as their prior experiences with spiders, this one prefers to fight in its territory. Seraphina and Tork help the rest of the party up the hill, with varying degrees of success, but eventually they are all up. Stavos got pretty beat up in the battle with the horror in the other room, so he will bring up the rear. Seraphina is prepared to lead the expedition, followed by Tork, Elincia in spider form, Leo, Belfur, and then Stavos. The tunnel is not a great place for melee combat, as it is hard to get access to the spider around the small bend. Seraphina is able to engage directly, but Leo is able to go next, and can't get an angle on the spider. It seems everyone is corked up in the tube. Tork, unable to reach melee range, throws a spear at the spider, and moves to the other side of the passage to clear things up. Elincia slips past Tork to explore the way beyond, but by the time the party starts to have some freedom of movement, Seraphina has soloed the spider to its death with the use of a smiting blow, which deals plenty of extra damage. By now Elincia has scouted out the next room, and given the all clear, and Tork follows right behind her.
The party emerges from a fountain with a platter in it, and finds themselves in a room with three fountains and a staircase to a door on the west wall. The Northern fountain appears to have gone dry some time over the millennia, but has some calcium and lime built up in it. The Southern fountain still contains water, and what appears to be a crayfish in the well. Once everyone is situated in the room, Belfur uses Mage Hand to try to pick up the crayfish from the fountain, but upon contacting the water, it rises up into some sort of water creature! Uncertain who has disturbed it, it strikes out at Seraphina, who is able to deflect the blow easily enough. The party does its thing and quickly works the water creature down to a mere puddle on the floor. Belfur once again uses mage hand to pick up the crayfish, and it turns out that it is just a shell, but under the shell is a key on a chain. Leo prestidigitates the built up scale from the chain and key, and it is a nice platinum key on the chain. They scrub the bottom of the dried well also, but besides a fancy marble and inlay fountain base, they do not find anything of interest. The party keeps moving forward, and passes through the next door.
Here they find a large room full of trinkets, and a large decaying centaur on a pedestal with an impressive looking spear. Throughout the room there are large piles of "treasure" that seem to be made up of costume jewelry and other worthless trinkets. There are two large urns full of polished riverstones, and Stavos digs through these to find a few genuine valuables at the bottom. Meanwhile, Leo is casting detect magic and, once that is up, it becomes clear that the stone rod found in the room with the many mouthed horror is also magical, along with the spear and the centaur itself. This, by now does not surprise the party, so they prepare themselves for combat, and Tork tries to extract the spear from the grip of the Centaur. This is completely unsuccessful with regards to taking the spear from the centaur, but it does seem to cause it to come to life. It is really quite an impressive creature, but the party was expecting this, so were prepared for combat. They all get a good hit in on the creature, and they start feeling pretty confident, when it attacks Tork. It's tactics do not seem so different from Tork, as it strikes hard with the spear, then moves to more unarmed attacks, but this creature is quite a bit larger than Tork, and attempts to trample him with its hooves. It nearly knocks out Tork in a single round of combat, shaking the party a bit but, due to their raw numbers, they are able to take it down before it gets a chance to attack a second time (thankfully). Tork was quite bloodied from the attack, and everyone is feeling a bit worse for wear, so they elect to take a bit of a break, and study the magical items they have found.
It turns out that the rod from the mouthy-horror room is a Rod of the Pact Keeper, the very item Leo was seeking from Winston's! Leo trades his ring of protection with Belfur to acquire the rod. The spear is clearly magical, and Tork is excited by the prospects of its attributes, but he has not shared the details with the rest of the party. The pendant found in the room with Kukulkan is a Periapt of Health, which should be helpful for any front line player who needs regular healing. They are still unable to glean more information about the potion residue in the various flasks they have found. With the re-arrangement of magic items amongst the group, they elect to spend a little more time familiarizing themselves with these items to enable them to effectively use them.
The next adventure, they will presumably be able to test these new tools out!

Report Date

26 May 2020