Session 42 - Deeper into Boanga

23 Klarmont 1010 - 24 Klarmont 1010

General Summary

The party completes their long rest, and comes back to Vigruth's room, where they confirm that the False Alphaks has not returned. They head down the hallway behind the room with the alchemical spill, and it is reminiscent of the long passage from the surface area down to the main Yuan-Ti area and are apparently heading deeper into Mount Boanga. Eventually it arrives at a door and, naturally, the party quickly opens it. Inside they find a room with three passages. Two have doors, one to the north, and one to the east. There is also a passageway without a door to the Northeast.
The party heads north first and finds a staircase downward with periodic alcoves. Inside the alcoves on either side of the stairs are crystal statues that, once again, look like they have been altered. The heads appear smaller than would match the size of the bodies and the heads have snake like-features. Seraphina attempts to move one, and it begins moving on its own, and springs to life. The party, somewhat prepared for this, jumps into action, and they are quickly defeated. The notable feature of these creatures is that upon defeat, they explode into a blinding flash of light, which if too close and unprepared will blind nearby people for a few moments. There are 6 of these, so by the time they have all been defeated the blindness has affected several party members.
Moving down the stairs, the party finds a doorway that opens onto another vertical lava tube, and they see flitting creatures above them that appear to be glowing. The party decides this seems like a bad idea and returns to the upper room. Next, they head into the passage without a door and find that it is an unfinished passage.  Examining it they see that it is more natural looking than the other, more finished areas.
Checking the door to the East, they find a very similar staircase lined with crystal statues just like the Northern staircase. They discuss options, and decide that they will try to gather the statues in a tight area, and have Leo cast shatter on them. Stavos moves close to one, and stabs it with his rapier, and unsurprisingly they all come to life. Tork immediately runs down the stairs, making it impossible to control the position of the two upper statues, but of course deals massive damage. The plan broken up, the party does the normal front and rear line approach. Elincia once again tries to use her new bow, trying to master the technique the big snake used on her and Stavos, somehow hitting both with a single shot. She aims at the second set of statues down the hall, and this time succeeds in getting a good shot off. The first statue is hit with normal damage, but it then ricochets off of it, and heads directly at the second statue landing a high damage sharpshooter shot! Now that she has the feel for this, the possibilities seem endless! Leo decides based on the damage output of the party, that he will just mete out more eldritch blast, since it is unlikely that the statues are worthy of a precious spell slot at this point. In no time the party has decimated the statues, and managed their temporary blindness from the flashes.
Once again they head down the stairs, and another hallway. This one branches off in a couple directions. The first door they find opens right up onto the spiral staircase down that Vigruth had described. They decide to explore the rest of this area before heading into the area where they expect to find lots of Sturges. Continuing down the hallway, they find a very dusty room with little holes carved into the wall with small slips of parchment. They try to pull one of the pieces of parchment out, but it is so ancient that it crumbles to dust on touch. Leo attempts to see if he can read one of the pieces of parchment inside the wall without touching it, but any symbols that may have been present appear to have completely faded. He decides that it might be best to leave this to Shmid Smilosh and his society of preservationists to work on.
This room has a door headed north, and they move on through. The room beyond appears to have at one point had some elaborate bead pattern on the ceiling, however the strings of beads have failed over the years and now there are colored beads all over the nicely polished floor, and broken bead strands hanging down. In fact, when they opened the door, the door had knocked loose many beads, suggesting that this passage had not been used lately. The party is unable to extract any meaning from what is left of the patterns, and moves on. The next room loops back around toward the spiral staircase room, and then back toward the lava tube room. They explore this direction to find out what was on the other side of the lava tube, and find a strobing, almost blinding color patterned room. Rather than deal with this potential seizure inducing light pattern, they decide to close the door and move down the staircase.
Elincia casts Pass Without Trace, and the party tries to sneak past all the stirges. This seems to be going pretty well, and they are at the base of the stairs before Stavos stumbles, and the stirges take notice. The party rushes toward the columns that Vigruth said the stirges would not pass, and almost get through without incident, but Leo and his owl both take a bite before escaping. Once safely beyond the pillars, they find a couple different passages. In addition to the pillars on this side of the cavernous spiral staircase there is another set of stairs that ends up on the other side (north) of the cavern. They are confident that this set of stairs corresponds to the opposite landing above as well. Both sides have large stone thrones looking out over the cave. There are also staircases leading further down, so there may be more to explore beyond this area as well if they are able to avoid the Sturges. The passage south out of this alcove opens on a hallway running west. The doorway to the east, which they decide to take first, opens on a room with a wide range of creatures. looking more closely, they appear to be taxidermy, which makes them all feel a bit better about the situation, as there is a giant centipede, several giant spiders, and other "big game" that wouldn't be fun to have "come to life" as they are walking by.
The doorway north out of this roomopens up into a chamber the stirges are in, and the party immediately closes the door, deciding to go the other way.
The passage south and west from the pillared alcove winds around and they find it splitting West and North. The north path seems to be coming back around to the other side of the stirge stairway, but behind the pillars. They find a small, mocking statue in an alcove with glowing eyes, and based on their recent experiences, Seraphina takes a big swing with Shatterspike and decapitates the statue. It does not come to life, surprisingly, but the eyes continue to glow on the now forcibly removed head, so Stavos puts it into the bag of holding. This hallway does in fact tie back to the Sturge room pillared area, and they skirt around behind the pillars to the north. Here they find a door with a strange hole in the bottom; when they open the door, they find a room full of snakes. They decide to close the door and go the other way.
Continuing west down the passage, they come to another northern branch, this one without a door, and find a very large pile of bones, mostly humanoid, and, as Tork moves closer to investigate, the bones stir and coalesce into a very large skeletal monstrosity made up of the bones of many creatures. In addition to this, there are several smaller "normal" skeletons around the room that come to life.
The party engages quickly to deal with the undead threat. Elincia summons forth her wolves to help absorb risk, and in no time, the party is able to take down the first big skeleton but, by now a second has coalesced out of the pile of bones. Unsure how this will proceed, they continue to engage and are able to quickly destroy the undead creatures. There is another door north out of this room, and they prepare to open the door, and let the wolves run in to see what threats are there, and as Stavos swings the door open, they find the False Alphaks lounging on a divan, seemingly ready for them. She says "Ahh, there you are, I've been expecting you."

Report Date

19 Mar 2021