Session 46 - Made Plans, Destroyed Tower
1 Felmont 1010 - 2 Felmont 1010
General Summary
The party has an extensive discussion with Black Jack regarding how to take down the Barony. The first step is that apparently the Shires will be declaring war on the Barony in a few days (timing not totally certain). They will then land armies north and south of Halag.
The Baron has pulled most of his troops to Fort Doom and pulled most of the population to Halag. There is a desire to quickly break the city to avoid too much suffering for the enslaved population. The basic concept is that the party, along with two Hin commando teams, will "slip through the blockade" and reach Halag with a shipment of food and supplies. The party will appear as smugglers taking advantage of the ship's shady past. Based on our intelligence on the city of Halag, there are docks on either side of the river. Whichever set of docks is not occupied by the party's ship, the Hin strike team will set ablaze. This should draw out some troops from the barracks to help deal with the fire, and with any luck this will provide the opportunity for the party to break free of their watchers. The party has decided that they will strike the Wyvern Roost, which is by the eastern gate to the city. Once the strike is well under way, the party will set the tower ablaze with Alchemist fire. The two Hin strike forces will then make strikes on two other targets within the city. The goal of course is to sew chaos within Halag, and with any luck draw the Baron's troops from the fort towards the city , which would allow the Hin army to directly engage them in the field, or enable an effective capture of the city by the armies. Since it is likely that the situation will rapidly evolve once the army recognizes that it is an attack, the planning doesn't go much beyond this.
In roughly a week or so, Black Jack will get a message to the party for them to head back out to sea, where they will make contact with a Hin shp. They will then reconfigure the Everlasting Light to more it's original smuggler's theme, and give the crew the option of sitting out the adventure on the Hin ship, or helping with the strike (staying with the ship of course). It will be voluntary of course, and anyone who does not join the raid will be unable to return to town until after the raid is complete.
With that, the party parts ways with Black Jack, and heads off to bed, with a week to burn. Leo suggests that they follow up on the destroyed tower on the side of the Magos river, and the dancing green lights that Tork saw the other night coming from that direction.
They depart in the morning by boat, and are able to arrive in just over an hour, as this is quite close to town. The tower, the Tower of Zenopus, has a rumor-filled past. It has been long "unoccupied", but periodically someone would explore it and bad things would happen to them. Eventually Saltmarsh assautled the tower from the water's edge, and tumbled the top of it. One of the last "adventurer" warnings was that someone had gone to the tower, and in the basement had found a door/gate with chains across it, and when they tried to open the chains, were injured by lightning of some sort.
As the party approaches, it is clear that the "tower" is much less towering as the top several floors are collapsed - only the bottom floor appears to be intact. At the front door, there is a barred entrance with a notice from the town council in many different languages informing readers that entering is trespassing and dangerous, and not to do so. The entrance is barred shut with the gate mortared in place, so there is no intention of this being entered by anyone.
The party scouts around the building and finds a place to climb to the second floor which is all open air. Seraphina scales the wall and lowers a rope for the rest of the party. and they begin exploring. There is lots of rubble, but very little intact, and picking their way through the rubble is difficult. Tork notices a skull poking through the rubble though and, as they move to investigate, it begins to move, rising from the rubble, glowing green in a way reminiscent of what Tork had seen the other night. In addition to the one Tork noticed to the south, there is another skull rises from the northern edge of the floor.
The party immediately strikes out at the undead glowing skulls, landing quite a few blows on the one to the south. It reacts to their strikes by casting a Shield spell, and it casts another spell as it flies away from the party that causes it to blur, naturally making it harder to hit. Both skulls back away from the tower hovering in mid air out of reach physically, but not out of reach of bows and cantrips! Unfortunately, as the skull to the north moves away from the tower it casts a very powerful and devastating fireball spell that hits the entire party! Tork deftly ducks out of the blast somehow avoiding any damage. Seraphina and Leo take full blasts, while Stavos and Elincia are singed, but not too badly, mostly due to the protection provided by Elincia's Bear Totem. The party quickly finishes off the skull to the south with ranged attacks, and once the northern skull is under attack, it burns most of its actions defensively, only sending out some searing rays that don't do too much harm. Certainly nothing like the impressive fireball blast that hit the entire party.
Before long, the second skull is shattered and collapses to the ground below, allowing the party to catch its breath. They quickly survey the rest of the tower, but it has been in rubble form for many years now, so there isn't much to see on this floor. Around to the west end of the floor there is a staircase down, as well as the crumbled remains of what used to be the staircase up to the third floor. This tower was probably quite impressive back in its heyday.
On the first floor, there is also not a lot to be seen. It appears generally intact, but the wooden structures like shelves and doors are all in various stages of decay from exposure to nature for many years. They find a corresponding set of stairs that continue down to the basement level as well. At the bottom of the staircase, they find another warning sign from the town council and another portcullis mounted directly into a "newer" wall, blocking passage. Beyond the portcullis, the party is able to see the door with chains from the legend, as well as some sort of circle/seal on the ground. They decide to break in through the portcullis, and Seraphina does the honors with Shatterspike, and a strong push. With the deterrence out of the way, the party moves to carefully inspect the seal on the floor.
There are eight symbols in circles arrayed evenly around a ring with a pair of circles inscribing and circumscribing the symbols. Leo decides he will begin casting detect magic and, as he is focused on that for 10 minutes, the party experiments. Elincia casts Produce Flame to improve the lighting in the area, and one of the eight symbols comes to life, glowing a bright blue. The party begins to play with different elements like water, and dirt, but nothing seems to happen. However if different kinds of spells are cast different symbols light up. After a while, they flicker back out. When Leo finishes casting the detect magic spell a corresponding symbol lights up again and he recognizes that this must be foreign symbols for the different schools of magic. Running through their various available cantrips, they are able to light up seven of the symbols. Unfortunately, nobody has a basic spell for the school of necromancy, so knowing that they symbols will only stay lit for a little while, Leo goes ahead and casts revivify, destroying 300gp of diamonds to illuminate the final symbol. When this is done, the chains on the door seem to simply fall away from the door, and the door shifts slightly open.
Beyond this doorway, they find another circular room with a smooth sided dark pit. To find what lies beneath the Tower of Zenopus, we will have to wait for the next session, which is scheduled to be in person for the first time in well over a year! Long live the Vaccine!
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