Session 16 - Under The Statue - Deborah's Notes

General Summary

Deborah's familiar is a 'perfectly ordinary' hummingbird called Patter. Hettie offers to feed Patter some clothes, as that is what Pecorino likes and maybe Patter likes eating clothes too. Deborah thanks Hettie and says that Patter likes flowers. Hettie offers to bring Patter a bunch of flowers instead. Deborah outwardly thanks Hettie, and inwardly starts to plan how to surreptitiously feed flowers to Pecorino without Hettie noticing.
Maetica's older sister Gauldot has a large spear strapped to her back with a pair of curving antlers and a drop of blood carved into it. Rakki recognises it as bearing a resemblance to the symbol of Baenor the Bloody, one of the patrons. She is telling stories of how she fought off a bunch of gnolls.
Gauldot, Maetica, and their family will return to wandering. Maetica is ecstatic at the prospect.
Rakki remembers that Baenor's Spear is the name of the mountain range to the west. The giants intend to roam in that direction. If we wish to cross the mountains, we should find Baenor's pass.
The giants trade with us. Deborah and Hettie pool their resources and purchase a pair of Goggles of Night. They're fabulous. Deborah enthuses that Hettie can use them for nighttime fireworks or sneaky fireworks. Hettie is also enthusiastic.
The group heads to the broken statue to try and unlock the door underneath it with the key that they found in the jungle.
There are broken clockwork constructs lying on the ground. They're either rusted or recently damaged. Deborah is very excited by the prospect of clockwork, and scavenges things from the corpses. She gets some mechanical parts and figures out that the constructs were powered by small fire elementals and dragonsparks.
The statue is hollow and 200-300 ft tall, criss-crossed with beams and struts. There's a large spiral staircase leading up. The staircase leads to the outstretched hand, which is a good scouting location. The doorway we need to go to is the basement.
Ilalai figures out that the giant statue is probably of Adaxus, an ancient fire giant.
The party heads to the basement and finds a trapdoor. A sign above it indicates that what is beneath the trapdoor is dangerous and should only be approached in a large-ish group. The trapdoor lock has been busted open by a different adventurer. All of the signs down there are oddly amicable in tone, and written by somebody called Gideon.
Hettie opens the door with the cylindrical crystal we found in the jungle. It looks like the keyhole can be manipulated, letting us take the crystal key with us. We have two keys and intend to try and keep both on us at most times.
The door closes whenever a key is not in the keyhole.
We proceed further down and find a large square landing with an iron chain draped across it. There's another sign attached to the chain, which says 'DANGER. JUST KEEP GOING DOWN. THE ENTRANCE TO THE COMPLEX IS DOWN THERE. ALREADY LOST ONE PERSON HERE. DON'T HAVE THE KEYS ANYWAY.'
Rakki spies an iron chest. Ilalai wants to investigate the chest. We go investigate the chest.
The room is large; 60ft x 50ft. There's a huge engraved stone door in the wall opposite us. Underneath a blanket there is an old charred body. Hettie figures out that the body was badly burned by fire, probably male, had the stature of a human or elf, and is roughly 7 months old.
Ilalai finds a secret door with a natural 20 investigation. There are charred scorchmarks and bloodstains surrounding the secret door. She also locates a ceremonial dagger sized for giants, which Shiv can use as a greatsword.
The secret door has a faint trace of evocation magic around it. The huge door has a subtle yet complex magic aura to it. There's a set of four sockets in the door; each socket has a symbol carved above it. The symbols represent earth, air, fire, and water. There are four octagonal gems in the large chest. The corpse had notes on it, and the obvious solution to the puzzle is not the correct one. Most of the notes are burnt away, so the corpse obviously did something that led to its death.
Deborah, Hettie, and Ilalai read the inscriptions in Giant on the dagger, and put the gems in the corresponding sockets. The gems glow slightly in response.
Mafaldine eats a BaoZi of Giant Strength, grows freakishly muscular, and he and Shiv force the secret door open. He sees a flickering of flame and a dull red glow. Shiv casts Dancing Lights on the flickering and flames surge forward at speed. A large humanoid-esque steamy creature begins to charge the door. We go into combat.
The steam monster sets Shiv and Mafaldine on fire. Rakki douses Shiv and Ilalai douses Musclesdine. Hettie shoots fire off at the elemental, which makes it even larger. We all resolve not to use fire any more.
The creature runs through Shiv, Mafaldine, and Rakki. Shiv and Mafaldine critically succeed on their attacks of opportunity. Rakki critically fails.
Shiv almost bisects the creature, but is set on fire again. Patter the 'hummingbird' flits over and injects healing salve into her neck.
Hettie fires off a thunderous chromatic orb at the elemental, causing it to explode.
Mafaldine, Shiv, Ilalai, and Rakki are all still on fire. They stop, drop, and roll, and extinguish the fire. There were lots of ouchies all around.
We then discovered a fizzling out terminal, which Mafaldine, Deborah and Ilalai decided to strip for parts. Deborah takes the lead and gathers about 50 kilos of arcane plates. It is an invaluable resource for elemental research, and contributes 500gp of value towards repairing the laboratory.
Together we solved the gem puzzle and touched the ceremonial dagger to the large door. It swung open, and led onwards...

Report Date

21 Oct 2019