Session 05
General Summary
Leading from the Angelic Chamber stairs headed down further into the dark. As the party
descended the stairs grew steadily more ancient and crumbling till they were almost ruined. At the
foot of these ruined stairs stood a huge rusty iron gate. A rusty iron lock lay broken on the floor.
The gate wsa very slightly ajar.
Beyond the gate lay a shadowy scene. It looked like a typical dungeon in many ways - a corridor
lead away with doors and side passages leading off. The whole place was dark and the groups'
lights seemed subdued and dimmed.
As soon as Morgan and Gotrek stepped across the threshold of the gate the first door from the
main passage opened and out shambled a dead creature in a serious state of decomposition. This
zombie was easily destroyed by the combined powers of the party.
Each step forward launched more zombies, ghouls and skeletons at them - all of which they easily
defeated. Eventually they managed to fight their way through to a central plazza where they saw a
graveyard scene.
The daemon released by Embil here was a massive undead with dark cloak and sickle. It rode
upon the back of a huge shadowy black panther. Behind it three more huge black panthers
prowled. The plazza was dominated by an area that looked like a great big graveyard. The area
inside the graveyard was both defiled and necrotic ground. Braken instantly realized this made
undead inside the graveyard consierably more powerful. In addition, various areas in the
graveyard were made from blood rock.
The whole graveyard was edged by a low crumbling wall. There were numerous mausoleums in
the graveyard and many gravestones too.
There were a few mausoleums and a ruined church in the graveyard and four shadowclaw
panthers roamed it. Riding one as a giant spectre in a black cloak and carrying a huge scythe.
Camero's vision told him that the door of the church was some sort of portal and that it would
require two keys to open it. He sensed the presence of one of the keys on the huge spectre. The
undead spotted the heroes and battle began!
As soon as the fight had started a new opponent appeared - a phane wraith, an insubstantial
ghostly figure who fired bolts of necrotic energy at the party which crackled around them and held
them in place. It was also able to translocate our heroes which it did, bringing them into the fight
and within melee range of the shadowclaws and the giant reaper. Add to this the annoying habit
the undead had of rising again when killed in this graveyard and it was always going to be a long
fight.
The party focussed their attacks on the reaper and he was soon brought to justice, after rising once
from the dead. The shadowclaws were relatively easy to destroy, especially when the cleric and
paladin brought their holy powers to bear on them. That left the wraith who was happily flying
around blasting each of our heroes with its necrotic powers and trying to keep out of reach. But
even it was eventually destroyed.
Magma Force collected two large magical black pearls from the antagonists and used them to
open the door to the church. The door to the Church lead to yet another staircase leading down.
This one was lit with lichens giving off a deep sea glow. The stairs were slippery and damp with
rivulets of water dribbling down them. Eventually the stairs led out into a huge cavern, lit by the
same lichens. This cavern was full of a massive lake and there was no sign of an exit. In fact there
was no exit above water.
Sora shapechanged into the shape of an underwater fish and went to investigate the lake. She saw
a large golden coloured building on the foot of the lake a few hundred feet below, with a large
brass door leading into it. She swam back up and reported her findings to the group. Camero
recited a ritual to allow the whole group to breath and speak underwater for a day and the group
swam and walked their way down to the bottom of the lake.
The golden building was easily entered simply by pushing the door open. The waters rushed in,
sweeping the group into the room beyond. Here they saw another door out - which opened
towards them - and a lever. Instinctively they shut the door behind them - which seemed to be
water tight - and then pulled the leaver. Sure enough the water in the room drained out, leaving
them soggy but safe. They then found the second door easy to open. They did so and found
themselves stepping into a grotto.
The grotto was dominated by a huge bowl of water, some fifty or more feet across. The water was
about ten feet deep, yet this only came up to the knees of the towering primordial that stodd in the
middle of it. Currents swirled about it and the base of the water bowl was full of areas of
boltstone. Smaller elemental drudges - perhaps servants or even shards of this greater being -
swam around in the pool. The party quickly determined that this primordial appeared to have no
way to fight them from range so they decided the best tactics were to stand back and blast it, rather
than entering the pool with its currents and dangerous boltstone. But this primordial had been
trapped in the Cube of Xarthus for many hundreds of years and was very angry. Before the group
could bring their plan to bear it had charged out of the pool and engaged them in melee! Still, at
least they didn't need to enter the pool themselves.
The primordial was huge, powerful and dangerous, but it was a relatively straight forward fight. It
didn't appear immune to any of their magical attacks and nor was it employing particularly
cunning tactics. It just ran in and smashed hard. The drudges supporting it also came in and
blasted with primordial energy, but they were easily dispatched. In fact the entire collection of
primordials didn't last long at all, collapsing into big pools of water as they were destroyed - water
which drained back into the big pool in the center of the room.
Inspecting the pool the group found a big grate sat in the middle of the pool. They took a moment
to patch up a few wounds and then swam out to the centre of the pool together. They surrounded
the grate and with their combined strength struggled to lift the grate up against the weight of the
water pressing down on it. But lift it they did, and in doing so they released all the water out of the
pool and into the 'plug hole' below it. With the water, the members of Magma Force were also
swept, sliding down a long, fast water slide until they dropped unceremoniously out of the bottom
of the slide. They fell into a massive chamber, through the chamber's ceiling and dropped with the
water flow into the air...
Report Date
11 Apr 2024
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