Zoé's Report on The Spire of Secrets

A loose recounting of Zoé's first (and currently only) expedition into the Spire of Secrets on Elementra Island, where she was hired by Norringham Ballistar to assist him in raiding the tower. (This was about ten to twelve months before the start of the current campaign)

Date of initial report finalising; Meadhan, 17th of Early Rimefall, 29 ASC.

Voidford Village - The Beachfront Hub

I'm surprised such a village exists in the Archepellago. Full of retired adventurers and their families, who i suspect may be just as powerful. Whilst I'm confident a handful of these people could raid the Spire of Secrets if they wanted to, for some reason they refuse to go inside the spire itself, preferring to live modestly on the beachfront, extract materials from the petrified rainforest and sell them to travellers passing by and adventurers heading to the Spire itself.

given that most people after the spire don't come back, i can understand why they try to sell people as much as they can to get every last copper piece.

Despite being a relatively small village, most of the families operate their own stores when not tending to their other business. from what i could gather, they mostly craft and sell adventuring gear and on occasion, magical items. On the flip side, these people don't like to be haggled and the only people they seem to even consider doing discounts for are those who survive their first trip into the Perfired Rainforest, if not the Spire itself.

The Petrified Rainforest - an eternally shifting dungeon

Norringham wasn't kidding when he said this place was an evershifting maze full of hostile creatures, and petrified depictions of such but for the most part don't seem to have any other effects, at least that i haven't observed yet.

the party, myself included, have been struggling to stay focused with this mist cloaking the area. Not only is it limiting our vision, but the couple times we've been able to rest we barely got an hour in before one of us awoke with outlandish nightmares. whilst i need further proof, i suspect this mist is to blame and anything longer than an hour's rest would undo us.

According to Norringham, he's been in this rainforest at least a dozen times before he made it to the Spire his first time, yet he swears this maze of jagged crystals is constantly shifting after every visit. He's apparently put markers down since his third run, but we've only encountered two of these markers, and not in the places Norringham remembers putting them.

we did consider flying, but our wizard learnt the hard way that the crystalised canopies were too dense to move through quickly, and that was before the critters above and lack of vision forced him to come back down.

by the time we made it to the Spire, we had already blown through most of our reserves and had already lost two of our party members. Though luckily for us, there seems to be a small breathing nest between the mist and the spire, allowing us to properly catch some sleep out of sight of the roaming guardians.

The Spire of Secrets - the Tower that breached the skies

Even before we entered the tower, I could see that it was impossibly tall and wide. you'd think something this large would be visible to the entire archipelago, but given that the tower disappeared into a breach in the sky after a certain point would explain why none of us saw it before arriving on the island. the ominous "Keep Out" sign by the door was certainly an indicator this Valda character didn't like visitors.

we barely get ten feet into the tower before we are stunned with shock. Scattered throughout the room and neatly arranged along the walls were marble statues of what seemed to be terrified individuals, quite lifelike in appearance. although a quick identify spell revealed something that horrified us. These statues were actually people, real people, petrified and frozen in marble, a couple of them I recognised from previous jobs a few years back. It didn't help that some of these statues unexpectedly came alive and attacked us.

by the time we reached the seventh floor, I had begun to notice a pattern. Aside from the ground floor, each floor we visited so far was split into multiple chambers like a typical wizard's tower, statues of various petrified adventurers littered the walls and there was always a chest and a bookshelf hidden randomly. some of these books had knowledge and secrets lost for centuries, some had incomprehensible text that strained our minds, and the rest was relatively mundane knowledge. the chests had a random assortment of items, presuming stuff the petrified adventurers dropped or lost before turning to marble. much to my dismay, at least one book and chest were revealed to be possessed and attacked us along with some of the statues. I can't help but notice that each collection of statues seems to share certain traits. My theory was later confirmed when we found a discarded note talking about "Classes, subclasses and variants", which seem to indicate this Valda character is arranging his victims depending on their training and specialisations, though I'm to sure how he's able to deduce such.

Something I should note down as well, some of these rooms did have a couple of traps rigged up, mostly pits that would have dropped someone down a floor and an anti-magic rune that briefly shut off our magic gear. I'm lucky my gauntlets depowered themselves after a few minutes.

Hoard Room - when things went from bad to worse

I think it was the 11th floor, but we found a massive chamber full of magic items, and when I say full, I mean there must have been hundreds upon hundreds of magic items just littered across the room.

This, much to our shock, was also where myself, Norringham, Damian and our other three remaining party members encountered the man.. well Lich, Valda himself. apparently, he was busy casting some kind of ritual and didn't notice we were in the tower until after we entered the chambers.

He was equally shocked, and furious, that another group of adventurers had entered his tower without his permission. Though when he seemed to have calmed down Valda looked at each of us and immediately called us a different thing; me a Death Knight, Damian a White Hat, the other three a Mad bomber, Enforcer and Rum Priest respectively. i couldn't help but let out a chuckle when Valda took one look at Norringham and demanded "What the hell are you supposed to be?" Still, him calling us by our specialisations was spooky.

What happened next took us by surprise. Valda clicked his fingers and the majority of magic items magnetised together and formed a large hoard golem that not only started attacking us, but attempted to absorb our magic items as well.

Valda himself wasted no time slinging spells at the rest of us; Firebolts, magic missiles, even a few shields and a counterspell. though when he got bored he obliterated our Rum Priest with a disintegration ray.. this distracted the rest of us, allowing the golem to take down the Mad bomber and Enforcer. immediately afterwards, a white shockwave echoed through the room and our two dying companions slowly turned to marble, though not before the mad bomber's grenade dealt a significant blow.

Norringham ordered me and Damian to push on, but both of us realised this was suicide especially as the golem had only just been damaged and Valda wasn't even tired. the two of us attempted to retreat, but we got knocked down and I felt the petrification try to take effect, only just managing to resist it. It looked like Valda was about to finish me off but Damian must have caught his attention as Valda began focusing on him and Ballistar. Damian told me to run and with the help of the Skelly boys, I managed to run, and run we did.