Session 84 - The Menagerie

5 Numont 1011 - 6 Numont 1011

General Summary

The party heads back toward the main intersection, prepared for the left branch. On their way back from the hot water bubble room, they close the two doors they didn't dismantle. When they get to the Kelpie room, the water level has receded further, exposing more silt and mud, but no additional treasures.
The left branch leads to a long hallway headed north with 6ft x 6ft copper metal plates spaced every 10 feet. Further investigation indicates that the hallway is flooded with magic power (evocation), but nothing seems to happen to Stavos when he steps between the first two plates. However, gradually he does begin to feel slightly warmer. As he starts to move further down the hall he gets uncomfortably warm, trending towards scalding. The source of the heat seems to come from the studs on his armor, as well as his sword.
Elincia, wearing no metal, strides confidently down the hall - confirming that having no metal causes no heating issue. Tork removes his bracers, and puts them on a belt-loop to minimize discomfort. Elincia casts Dispel Magic in the center of the hallway, and when Stavos moves into this 10 ft section, his armor begins to cool. This seems to have created enough relief that rushing down the hallway only mildly burns the heavily armed (Stavos and Seraphina). Once they are in the antechamber beyond this hall, their metal cools to normal.
At the back of this room is a staircase to another hallway that loops back to the south and another door. Seraphina opens the door and they find a large hallway with two trenches at either end of a very shiny plate. At the bottom of the two trenches (or at least confirmed to be at the bottom of the near trench) are significantly unpleasant looking razor blades, showing signs of age with a tinge or rust. Either way, the trench seems like an undesirable place to land.
Tork, taking the safer route this time, decides to simply sprint along the wall to the other side, bringing a long length of rope before running across. Stavos secures the near end at shoulder height, driving a piton into the wall, to make a nice handrail. Tork pulls the other side taught, and Stavos is able to work his way across. On crossing the first pit, he finds the surface of the plate is entirely frictionless, and would have been impossible to navigate unaided. The rest of the party (except Leo) is able to follow Stavos' lead. For Leo, unfortunately, the rope is a bit high, forcing him to go hand-over-hand. Recognizing this risk, Stavos had left the Eagle Whistle with Leo. Leo, with his perpetual failure to climb effectively, loses his grip immediately after clearing the first pit and landing on the frictionless plate. He immediately falls flat, sliding toward the far end, and completely unable to affect his direction. He ends up using a charge of the Eagle Whistle to alight and fly across to join the group.
The doorway out of this room leads to a T with a short hallway north, and a longer hallway south, with doors at either end. Seraphina opens the door to the north, sticking with the right-hand-rule exploration. This opens to a realatively large room (50x40) with a fascinating floating river flowing through it. It is a couple feet above the floor, and flowing reasonably rapidly from west to northeast. Leo puts his hand into the "river" from the side, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of physical barrier holding the water up. In fact, if he pulls his hands back out, the water drips normally from his hand to the floor - there are even little blind cave fish in the flowing water. In addition to the beautiful river flowing through the room, there are six kayaks near the door, but but no paddles. After a few minutes of discussion, the party decides to leave this for later, since it isn't clear that you could navigate back to this room after leaving it with the strong flow and no paddles.
Instead, they head to the southern hallway door. Opening this reveals a very large rectangular room with five distinct tiers. The upper tier of the room (which includes the door they have entered from) is a 10 ft wide platform. Adjacent to this is a 10 ft wide aquarium, slightly below the floor level, the water surface a few inches below the top tier of the room and 10 ft deep. The inner wall of the aquarium is a glass wall that separates it from a terrarium. This terrarium is actually 10 ft below the bottom of the first aquarium. The inner wall of the terrarium is another 10 ft high glass wall separating it from another aquarium that has water level 10 ft below again. At the center of the room is another recessed area 20x50. It has 20 ft walls (the top 10 ft of which are glass) separating it from the lower aquarium, as well as a door to the south.
Each section has some sort of menacing creature. The upper aquarium has several giant crayfish, the first terrarium has several giant scorpions, the lower aquarium has several giant Sea Lions (half lion, half fish), and the room at the bottom has three Manticores with their wings clipped.
As soon as the party enters the room, all of the creatures take note, and move nearer within their enclosures. As the party makes ready for a fight, there is a loud bonging sound from the center of the room. Seraphina finds herself compelled and walks forward, right into the upper aquarium. Once the sound ends, she regains full control of herself; it seems everyone else resisted the compulsion. Stavos voluntarily jumps right into the aquarium and starts slicing and dicing the crayfish. Leo follows up with Sickening Radiance focused on the far portion of the room, affecting the lower tiers of the room, particularly on the Manticores. The Manticores fire their tail quivers at the party and knock out Leo's concentration, requiring him to recast the spell, and get lower so can use the steep angle from top tier to bottom as cover.
Meanwhile, Seraphina has swings Shatterspike into the first pane of glass, shattering it, and dropping all the water down to the first terrarium level, mixing the combatants. The gong rings out again and Leo and Stavos march toward the center of the room. Seraphina puts up a Mmoonbeam targeting a corner of the upper aquarium and terrarium, forcing creatures to burn themselves to approach the party. Leo gets his senses back and moves further away from the middle (and the Manticores). A reasonably large number of the combatants have been impacted by the Sickening Radiance by now, making them a bit less threatening. Ultimately the Manticores succumb to the toxic radiation. Stavos, having moved forward several times is getting close to the edge of the radiance, and all the enemies have fled the area of effect, so Leo drops the spell. Just in time too, as the gong goes off again, compelling Stavos to scale the last wall, and drop to the bottom where the Manticores just died. Upon landing, he notices a safe in the northern wall of this tier. Ignoring it for now, he begins climbing back up the difficult wall with his immovable rod.
In a few more rounds, the party takes down the remainders of the menagerie. The room is now a mess, and no longer the beautiful display it once was. However, with the monsters taken down, the gong has stopped sounding. The party approaches the safe, which Leo handily picks. Inside they find more money and more jewelry, but still nothing that looks like artifact piece they are searching for. After a few moments, a high-pitched sound begins emanating from the safe. The party backs away, but the tone continues to get louder and higher in pitch, eventually shattering the remaining glass walls, causing all the water in the tiers above to pour down. This clearly would have been dangerous if the beasts were still alive but, in this case, the party is simply wet again. The extremely loud tone stops and the water seems to be draining, though excruciatingly slowly, in the corners of the lowest tier. By the door on the south wall of the room, there seems to be a barrier of some sort preventing the water from getting to the door. Unfortunately, it proves equally effective at preventing the party from getting to the door.
They decide to take a short rest, but find the draining is slower than they hoped. They decide to extend their short rest into a long rest and wait out the water.
Thankfully, by the time the long rest is over, the water has fully drained from the room. With the water gone, the barrier seems to have dissipated. The door leads to a very nicely appointed treasure room! In this room is a beautifully crafted greatsword, its blade black and starry. In addition to the intriguing sword, there is significantly more jewelry and money, as well as a potion of greater healing, and a scroll of protection from fiends.
Leo attempts to identify the sword, and hears a voice in his head stating that he is not worthy, and to find someone worthy to wield it. Leo replies aloud, "I am not interested in wielding you, merely identifying you!"
Seraphina takes the sword and Leo tries again to identify it while she holds it, and in her head the same voice enters, and tells her she is not worthy either. Finally Stavos tries, and the sword says, "You, you have potential." Stavos ignores the sword and puts it into his bag of holding, finding himself hesitating but ultimately storing the weapon.
Clearly, this is a powerful artifact, like the ring before.
They head back up to the room with the mystical river floating through it. Seraphina during the break fashioned some paddles from segments of a door. They put three of the kayaks into the water, and go two to a boat. Tork and the Flesh Golem are in the first boat, Seraphina and Elincia in the second boat, and Leo and Stavos in the final boat.
As they float through the tunnel, it seems downright pleasant. Ahead they see some light indicating a destination. When they emerge from the tunnel, they find a large group of heavily armed humans near the floating river, which enters from the northest of the room and exits at the south. They are wearing plate mail and two pairs of them have nets. There are nine of these humans, and they don't seem friendly. Relaxed by the previously peaceful ride, Tork is not prepared for an attack and it caught by surprise. It is a bit less unusual that Leo, all the way at the back and still in the tunnel, is surprised by the combat. However, most of the party is more alert and the enemy is quickly engaged. Leo hits the leader and half of the knights with Synaptic Static, unfortunately catching the Flesh Golem and Tork in the blast too. Of all the resistances Tork has, apparently psychic damage is not one of them, and he fails his saving throw, diminishing his offense for once. The majority of the knights hit by the blast are also affected.
Elincia hits a grouping of knights with Confusion, limiting their impact on the party, and making the east side of the "river" pretty safe for getting out of the boats. The first person out of each boat has a tendency to rock the boat for the second passenger. This means when Seraphina exits, Elincia topples out as well. This isn't too much of an issue though, as she is able to crawl to the north side of the room, away from immediate threats. Stavos hops out on the north side as well, to help protect Elincia. Miraculously Leo doesn't topple from the boat, forcing him to jump out of it, which he does with some degree of aplomb, only going prone for a moment! Tork and the Flesh Golem got out on opposite sides of the boat. Fleshy helps Seraphina on the east side, while Tork heads right for the leader of the knights.
One knight takes a big swing at Seraphina, and with a quick response, Seraphina shatters his sword, leaving a stub of a blade in the knight's hand. Unsure what to do, he continues his fight with Seraphina with the dagger-like leavings of his sword. Tork, even with the disorienting effects of the Synaptic Static, is able to take the leader down surprisingly effectively. Seraphina plus Fleshy, and all the support from Elincia's arrows and Leo's blasting, take down the eastern front, while Tork and Stavos take on the opposite side of the stream. Stavos incapacitates one of the knights for later interrogation.
On the leader's corpse, they find some interesting magical boots, a key, and a metallic loop that seems to share the same design style as the Wheel of Stars. Perhaps they have found the artifact!

Report Date

03 Mar 2024