Session 0013 - Waves of Ghouls

General Summary

The Heretic, after gaining entry into The Temple of Elemental Evil, continue to explore the area. They hear strange sounds, some rhythmic, some creaking, some rain, and thunder, but most markedly, they begin to hear the faint crying of children as they explore to the North and East of their starting postions

Almost immediately, they find the corpse of a small girl. She is missing her lower jaw and was clutching a small, wooden doll in her left hand.

The party continues to the eastern wing of the temple. There, they find a cauldron that has discernible body parts, such as fingers, feet, and legs, but the majority of the "organic material" within the cauldron appears to be the rest of the bodies, pulverized to a mash "a Human guacamole", as described.

Sken discovers a door to the southeast of this cauldron. Upon approach, he hears the children crying even more loudly. Matteu checks the door for traps and locks; finding none, he opens the door, revealing a chamber beyond, that has a set of stairs leading downwards.

Stairs leading downwards

After briefly searching the room, finding only a black satin robe (which Cathlynn lays claim to), the Heretic heads down the stairs, finding a complex of hallways below. They follow a very long hallway that heads straight forward from the bottom of the stairs; at the other end, is another set of stairs that leads upwards. The party heads up these stairs.

At the top of these stairs, they find themselves in a smaller room that contains a pile of two brown robes. Orianna and Matteu take these. The overall plan with the robes is formulated; the Heretic surmise that these robes belong to priests who work in the temple, and that having a set of robes ready to don at any point might help them conceal themselves from other priests should they be encountered while exploring the temple.

The party continues forward, exploring the room beyond, which has a deep earthen brown-colored tile. There, they find a broken mallet; Mogoth rolls successfully on his religious check and remembers seeing such a mallet on the belt of a head priest who was leading a small of priests through his hometown in the Trollstep Mountains, many years ago when he was a child. They find nothing else of interest in this room.

Room of brown tile

Pressing forward, the party finds another door that leads to a room. This one also is littered with worthless debris. They do find a pile of white robes; Sken spots a more exquisite version of the ivory robes up in the rafters near the ceiling. Sken flies up to it, and brings it down. Inside the robe, they find a fairly recently severed finger. The party keeps the robes found in this room as well, for the same purpose of possible identity concealment at some point in the future.

White robe in the rafters

The party heads back to the main temple area and encounters what appears to be a sacrificial altar. Just to the north of the altar is a very wide and very deep shaft, or well.

A deep shaft near a sacrificial altar

The party decides to go north from here, with the determined purpose of exploring the entire main floor of the temple. There, they find a set of stairs leading downwards, two seemingly new mosaic floor art pieces -- one depicting a dragon, with runes above its head, and the other, two simple runes. Cathlynn is able to interpret the runes as being the Common language equivalent for the letters "KD". Searching their memories, they recall that the dragon cult being accused of stealing The Children of Karja Tal is called "Kult Drachen". They surmise that this must be what the glyphs stand for.

High Altar

Exploring further, they find a throne that sits on a higher dais than the main floor. The tiles that surround the throne have alternating squares of brown, green, red, and white.

Dais and Throne

From here, they look inside a large copper cauldron they find between the throne and the KD glyphs; the cauldron has a well-stoked fire underneath, keeping the liquids inside bubbling steadily. They look inside to find a broth filled with numerous severed heads from several species of humanoids. Orianna and Matteu immediately recognize the religious significance of such a brew (they rolled extremely well on their Religion checks). They know this broth to be a hallmark of the Cult of Greater Cthulhu, where the liquid broth is ingested by cult members in their spiritual practices.

Continuing eastwards from the cauldron, the party finds another door. The door is made of fine wood and intricately carved with depictions of demons pursuing and devouring women.

After clearing it for traps, Matteu opens the door and they find a room that is curtained with fine tapestries that depict graphic pornographic scenery. They find a recently murdered man in a set of nice red robes, who has been stabbed in the heart, the dagger twisted after its initial stab.

Cathlynn finds a small cask of wine imported from Lankhmar near the northern end of the room. There are no other items of interest in this room.

The Heretic decides to leave this room and go back down the stairs they came up from last, the southwesternmost stairs.

After wandering for a few minutes, they decide to follow a hallway to a point of intersection. There, they take the western part of the intersection. The hallway shortly leads to a door straight ahead, and a door to the south.

Matteu checks the southern door and finds that it is locked. Also, he hears the crying of children coming from the other side of the door. Matteu attempts to pick locks but is unsuccessful.

As the party contemplates whether to break the door lock, the western door opens, and in the doorway stands a Ghoul. Behind it are 5 other ghouls. The party rolls for initiative and battle ensues.

Ghoul

The Heretic beat these ghouls after 4 rounds; near the last round, one ghoul in particular runs to the north side of the room they are in and begins to frantically pound on the door. At one point in this battle, Sken falls and makes his first death saving throw. The rest of the party defeat the ghouls before Sken makes his 2nd death saving throw, which allows Cathlynn to stabilize him using her medical kit. She then conjures 10 Goodberries, smashing the juice of 5 of them down Sken's throat, and giving 5 more to Mogoth, who was nearly fatally injured in this battle. The ghoul that ran and pounded on the door is killed by Matteu after he throws his dagger into the back of its head, killing it. The pounding on the door however brings 6 more ghouls. After another 3 rounds of fighting the Heretic beat this wave of ghouls as well.

Everyone in the party gains a level of experience: some from 1st level to 2nd, the rest from 2nd to 3rd level.

Cathlynn begins to itch all over. Orianna gets concerned and comes over to look at Cathlynn, to make sure nothing from the ghouls has infected her. Orianna blinks and points to Cathlynn's upper chest and says "uh babe. Your skin!"

At this, everyone looks at Cathlynn. In front of everyone's eyes, her skin between her collar bones, upper breast, her neck, and halfway down her arms to her elbows begins to turn to what appears to be tree bark. Right afterwards, strings of green vine begin to emerge from within her hair, trailing down towards her shoulders, blending in with her hair, becoming hairlike strands of their own.

Cathlynn explains that after she had died, she was taken into The Feywild. There, the Fey had restored her life but with a marked change -- she became part of the Fey Circle of Druids known as "The Woad". She wasn't sure to what degree her transformation would occur, but she was told that she would take on "very tree-like qualities over time".