Session 24: More Aeorian Ruins?

General Summary

The party came face to face with a towering Stone Golem blocking the entrance into these ruins. FreshbBodies of varying types of Yuan-Ti littered the ground around it. The golem asked, in a monotone voice, "Password?"
The party discussed for a bit over what to do. Should they try to walk by it? Should they attack it? Should they just pack their belongings and head out, thinking they'll come back at a later time? Pooka was an advocate for leaving, but others felt it was necessary to find the beacon the Yuan-Ti wanted.
Ultimately, after throwing around some ideas, they decided to have Brother Les create a stone pillar in front of the door that would be too big for the golem to get through and bombard it with arrows and cantrip spells until it collapsed. And it worked! After slinging easy spells and arrows, with it grasping at the party but never reaching it, the golem lost it's magical hold on its form and fell to crumbles.
The party found a twisting set of stairs heading down just beyond a pair of doors where the golem once stood. They walked down the twisting stairs, a good 3 stories down, until the bottom with a single corridor leading out. It was utterly dark, with the exception of Zanthros' light on his staff lighting up the area around him.
Seeing some branches of the corridor leading to the right and left, with the corridor covered in collapsed rubble just beyond, Atreena snuck off into the corridor to see what she could see. As she reached the side passages, she didn't see anything, but definitely heard some heavy, wheezing, gasping breathing coming from the left passage. It sounded like multiple creatures.
The party came up slowly to her.
Atreena snuck into the passage and saw two rooms to her left and right and the passage continued a little further on. To her right, she saw what looked like a kitchen and an emaciated corpse in robes standing on the other side of a table. To her left, she saw a dining area with another standing corpse by that table. She went back out to alert the others.
Pooka took the lead and charged in, moving to the left and immediately attacking the zombie inside the dining around, finding out that there was a third zombie in here. His lashed out with his Lash of Shadows and started flaying the rotting skin from their bodies.
The rest of the party moved in the best they could in the tight 5ft wide side passage and started battle with the undead. However, this alerted more zombies from the other side passage, and 3 more rushed down the long hallway towards Zanthros who was at the back of the small battle.
While Pooka, Eglantina and Atreena went to work slaying the zombies, Brother Les held aloft his mighty symbol of Pelor and struck fear into the now dead hearts of the Aeorian undead. They ran away down the hall they came from as quickly as the could.
A short time later, the zombies lay in a final death and the darkness became quiet once again.
In the dining room and kitchen, they found nothing of consequence, and just beyond that, a small storage room that had some random supplies, like brooms and shovels.
Down the other side passage, they found small bedrooms with nothing of value, except in the last room, which was bigger than the others with a desk, they found a small gold statue of a humanoid in robes. The same kind of robes of Aeor.
They returned back to the main corridor and approached the rubble. It blocked the hall completely. But they grabbed a shovel from supply room and managed to dig their way past the rubble and used a table to hold hole they made open from further collapse.
Just beyond, they found a small training room off a side passage with long rusted weaponry, and a pair of double doors in the main corridor. They opened it to find the hall continued to another set of doors.
Atreena and Brother Les entered and just before they reach the second set of doors, nearly translucent oozes dropped from hidden alcoves above the doors and started attempting to eat the party. One got close to swallowing Eglantina, but she proved too fast to be engulfed by the acidic ooze. The party quickly turned them into sludge on the ground in no time.
Just beyond the second set of doors, they found stairs heading down. Atreena again snuck down to see what she could see.
At the bottom, she found a small room with a pedestal that a small black cubed chest sat on. Standing on either side, a pair of armored figures with glowing blue gems in their chests and large glaives in their hands, guarded the chest.
Devising a plan to try to avoid a fight, Brother Les gave her a blessing from Pelor, and Atreena used her sudden feline quickness to rush into the room, grabbed the chest from the pedestal, and ran out.
The armored figures became aware and followed her up the stairs.
Atreena made it halfway down the hall before they came up to the party as they were going to try to rush out, but the figures proved too quick. The fight was on!
The party pulled out their heavy hitting spells and tactics. Magic Missiles, glowing orbs of Pelor, many eldritch blasts, and the lash of shadows slowly but surely took chunks of armor and then the automaton pieces underneath away. At one point, one of the mechanical warriors sliced up Brother Les across his chest and legs, that it proved too much from his body to handle and collapsed and was close to death. But his god, Pelor, spoke into his ear, "Not yet" and woke him from his path to the underworld.
But in short order, the party remained victorious and stood over the broken bodies of the mechanical knights. But the gems still glowed.
As for the chest, it was a 1ft cube chest with small seem and no latch to open it. But it had two small insets in the front.
The party grabbed the gems from the bodies of armor mechanical figures and put those into the insets. The chest opened with a small breath of air escaping. Inside, was a large, twelve sided black dodecahedron with gold trimmings and small handles on each side. It seemed...beckoning to Atreena. She grasped the object and stared into it and was immediately mentally pulled into the object.
She first saw nothing but blackness, but then stars erupted from the void and she felt pulled through space. Then flashes of images appeared. People and places, faces from dreams she's had. Orcs, goblins, drow, and a bugbear. Some hunting, some working in stores, one appeared to be rich, another poor...all of these were her memories of past lives that she knew but could never explain how she knew she lived they lives before. And, without still a clear answer, she at least had another piece to her puzzle.
She returned to the dark, quiet corridor with her friends. Knowing the power of this magical beacon, they looked to leave the cave and take from here and keep it from the grasping, reaching coils of the Yuan-Ti.
Looking to get back to the Eryn'alqua, they set their sites on Bysaes Tyl. What lies in store for them there and maybe meeting the Ring of Three?

Report Date

27 Feb 2021