Journal 2: Orcs + Spiders = Too many NPCs
Having fled Bazzagog's lair, the party is about to meet the new, tusked visitor's to the long-lost temple.
General Summary
Nero, Nate, Rael and Azeir were sleeping in the living units of Durum Kar when Nero had another encounter with the fair-skinned Elven woman. This time she gave him a satchel of gold, and after he picked it up she leaned in for a kiss. Nero, instead, backed off and woke up to find himself without gold. Later that night, Rael's watch was perturbed by the sound of Half-Orcs entering the temple. After waking everybody up, the party hid behind a minor illusion near the room’s entrance. Ugg, the Half-Orc came to investigate but saw nothing but a caved-in passageway and turned around to traverse the temple further. Kur’Tar, distrusting the situation, came to give a second look-over to the suspicious small pile of rubble. At that exact moment Nate dropped the illusion and greeted the Half-Orc.
Kur'tar, in a valiant attempt to save face suppressed his dumbfounded surprise and walked back to his group, the bandit tribe led by the orc Forgugh. Ugg, apparent conversationalist of the orcs, inquired what they were doing here and proceeded to mock them for their incompetence when the party told the truth. But when the party mentioned Mardak, Forgugh perked his ears. When Ugg told the party to leave their belongings behind and to leave, Forgugh stepped in and told the party they were free to go. However, starting a long tradition of enlisting every character to their group, the party negotiated their way into cooperation with the orcs. Ugg pretended to leave some stuff behind to have a chat with Rael, he told him that they should work together to defeat Forgugh because Forgugh was clearly not in his right mind and unfit to lead. Rael refused this, having other things on his mind, but thanked him for the information and kept his pointy ears perked for signs of betrayal.
Back into the web
The party arrived back at Bazzagog’s re-webbed lair’s entrance. To prepare for an ensuing battle Azeir cast magic armor on himself, which triggered Wild Magic and caused all his hair to fall out, to much shock and surprised laughter of the rest of the group. The group, now doubled in size, proceeded to narrowly defeat Bazzagog and her many arachnid cronies. In the battle, all the half-orc henchmen perished. Nate was paralyzed by the spider's giant poisoned mandibles. In the end it was Nero who managed to cleave Bazzagog in twain. The first time that Forgugh was hit, though, he seemed to be shocked and significantly shifted in attitude. The party noticed this and confronted him about it after the battle while Rael successfully treated Nate’s poison, getting more value out of his medicine kit than surely he thought possible.
Suddenly confronted by his own failure, Forgugh reacts sheepish at first by the party's confrontation. But is intimidated by Nero, who casually gets rid of more and more webbing whilst threatening him. Forgugh details to them how they were stalking a Free Men camp when he was approached by Mardak. Mardak told his troupe to snuff out the source of power in Durum Kar, which he claimed was the source of the spreading corruption. This set off the party’s alarm bells, as Mardak told them the opposite and was nowhere near the area they were discussing at the time this supposedly took place.
Tripping off of spheres
Investigating the remainder of Bazzagog's lair, the party finds the bottom half of a big orb pertruding from the bottom of Bazzagog’s raised platform. Nero climbs up to investigate, but sees nothing but black goo. He also seems unable to lift the orb with his lance. The party, after much deliberation, then proceeded to burn down more and more webbing, laying all their mattresses under the raised platform, until the orb fell into the mattresses, breaking 3 of them in the process. Nate, the first to inspect the orb, touched it and attempted to ascertain the nature of this orb. For a second he felt connected to all the nature around Durum Kar, before he fell unconscious on the floor. After a while Azeir also attempted to ascertain the nature of this orb, he was more successful and saw visages of multiple planes of existence morphing in and out of each other. He deduced that this object was not from this plane of existence. The combined efforts of the group were not enough to lift the orb, however, therefore they left it behind and continued on further into cave that lies beyond the temple.
After some rock traversal the party arrived at a cavernous drop with a sole ladder leading to a protruding rock area. After Rael saved Ugg from falling, to what would surely have been his death, the party arrived at the last rest of Pretorius Thunderborn. And to the side of this long-lost corpse, Stane's gear from a few years ago, that he apparently left behind. The party happened upon a piece of parchment that Stane wrote and spent some time trying to figure out what it all meant. They gathered that Pretorius Thunderborn, last knight of Bahamut himself, is not dead per se. Rather his unconscious body somehow protects this temple from evil. Stane tapped into this power to extend its protection to Bree, but it was too much for his mind and body to handle.
The room to Pretorius Thunderborn’s corpse was closed off by a magical barrier, that after some time Nate was able to figure out the code word for (after inspecting the door magically and figuring out the sung sound of the Celestial language). After getting a rough idea of what Pretorius was doing here and stopping Kur’Tar from trying to take the power for his own goals, the party left, closed the barrier behind them, left the orb in Bazzagog’s lair, and moved back to the first magical barrier they encountered in Durum Kar. Here, Rael worked until the next morning to close off the barrier. The few remaining half-orcs parted ways with the party and the party headed back in the direction of Bree.
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