Session 138: In the Eye of the Beholder

 Day 24 of Harvester:

The usual group of Feno, Kyro, Lhoss, Armatzi, Niki, and Arnd head quickly head back to town in order to try to get back to the Foaming Mug for a late dinner. With a hurried pace through the creepy maze, marsh and forest, the group makes it just in time for dinner. Following dinner and the evening rest, the group gets up and heads back towards the Barrow Maze. When they arrive at the Barrow Marsh, the smells, and the general atmosphere makes the groups' stomach churn. With their collective nausea, they enter the Barrow Maze early afternoon. Entering in and heading towards the area they were last in; the group hears the unmistakable sounds of scratching nearby. It is coming from the pit the group had discovered in a previous adventure. Not feeling the bit curious, Feno trudges onward and forward, avoiding whatever is making the noise. Arnd and Niki following him into the next room. Lhoss, decides to look into the pit, and in that instant realizes the folly of that decision. The moment she peered down into it to look into it, the smell of rotten flesh hits her nostrils. This rotten flesh smell causes her to expel her partially digested breakfast along the floor of the Barrow Maze, and the edge of the pit. At nearly the same moment, Armatzi decides to investigate the noises coming from the pit as well. The sights and sounds from the pit overcome his stomach, and he lurches out his breakfast as well. While they are vomiting near the pit, the rest of the party are blissfully unaware and enjoying their ration lunch in the next room. Lhoss and Armatzi make their way slowly towards the next room and eventually rejoin the party, with Lhoss slowly sipping water in respite for the recent actions. After some time, both Armatzi and Lhoss are able to eventually eat lunch and the party moves forward to the area with the steel porta coulis. 

When they arrive in that area, they discover that the porta coulis is down, and in a locked position. This surprises the group, as they had left it open when they passed through it last. After some discussion on what to do, they decided to back track and head towards an area Feno remembered they forgot about in a previous visit. As they were traveling in that direction, Lhoss noticed a hidden latch along the wall, and upon lifting it, found a secret passage to the hallway that connected to area near the porta coulis. This hallway was just past the room that had the lever that controlled the metallic gate, thereby circumventing the obstruction. The group follows this hallway and Lhoss discovers more hidden doors along the way, thanks to more discoveries of hidden latches and switches. Feno, in a moment of clarity, grabs a few fist-sized rocks and places them strategically in front of the hidden doors. He does this in order to see if there is any movement, one way or the other, from them. The group then continues to follow the passageway, which opens up to an area that goes up to the north, and down to the south. The Fount is glowing very brightly now. The group opt to try going south, and immediately notice the Fount slight dim its light, and lessen its intensity. Armatzi immediately says they should proceed north instead. The group then turn about face, and marches northward. As they do so they notice large piles of refuse and rubble from the collapsed ceilings nearby. The group leaves the piles alone and proceeds north ward, entering the northern door. 

Upon entering this new room, the group's eyes are greeted to a large antechamber filled with four large demonic statures. The stench of death emanates throughout this new antechamber. As they march forward, they view each statue, and upon closer inspection, the statues eerily glow and leer with unholy light. With each step forward, the stench of death becomes more and more pronounced, almost overpowering. The Fount of Law glows brightly and pulsates. As the group nears two open double doors, a large army of undead creatures comes into view. The familiar skeletons, zombies, are among the creatures, as well as a new formidable creature lurking in the shadows. This large creature, full of eye stalks, often causes terror to those that behold it. As the group attempts to quickly formulate a battle plan, the monsters move forward. Feno moves forward in order to throw oil, but Armatzi quickly gives him holy oil to throw instead. When Feno moves forward, the large Beholder states:

“Foolish mortals! You dare to trespass upon my domain, wielding your feeble holy relic as if it were a weapon against me! Know this: I am Ibixibildo, master of this realm. Your presence fills me with nothing but disgust and contempt. You come seeking to vanquish me to rid the world of my glorious presence? You are nothing more than insignificant insects compared to my might. Your precious holy object may cause me pain, and may fill me with fear, but know that I am not so easily defeated. I am a creature of darkness and power and shall not be cowed by the likes of you.”

And with that, Feno throws the vial of holy water at few skeletons that were bunched together. The vial shatters, destroying one skeleton in the process, and damaging several others with the holy water spray. Lhoss steps up and fires her ever reliable magic missile at the Beholder. The magical creature swats it away effortlessly. Her jaw drops, as she had never seen that happen before. Kyro notches an arrow in his bow and fires at the Beholder. It finds its mark and the Beholder screams in anger, "You will pay for that treachery!" Kyro fires again but fails to connect on the second arrow. The skeletons, zombies, and the Beholder advance to attack the party. The Beholder focuses its magical eye stalks and makes magical attacks on Arnd and Kyro. It first tries to attack Arnd, but the spell fails, as the stout little dwarf's blood gives him immunity to that particular attack. Kyro is next to be targeted, but thanks to being favored by the gods, is able to shrug off the spell. The Beholder once again focuses on Arnd, and this time is successful in its attack, causing Arnd to fall asleep. The creature launches once more spell at Kyro, but Kyro is able to resist once more. The skeletons come charging in and attack Kyro. While most miss in their attacks, one particular skeleton is able to get a grazing wound on the ranger. Some skeletons attack Feno, but naturally they all miss. Some skeletons attack Lhoss, causing some minor damage. Feno opts to try to clear a path, attacks and destroys a skeleton first, then a zombie shortly afterwards. The Beholder, sensing that Feno is currently the biggest threat, focuses its magical attacks on him. The first spell, a charm spell has no effect thanks to his elven blood. Unfortunately, the second spell, hits Feno full force. The second spell, a fear spell, causes him to look at the creature, quake in terror, and turn to flee from battle. Lhoss readies another magic missile spell, but a skeleton disrupts it with a successful strike on her. When Armatzi moves into the room to take action, the skeletons quake as if in pain and the Beholder speaks:

“You speak of righteousness and virtue, of light and purity. Your words are hollow and meaningless in my wrath. Your so-called holy relic may be a thorn in my side, but it is nothing compared to the fury that burns within me. I shall crush you beneath my gaze and tear you limb from limb with my disintegrating rays! I revel in the agony of your demise. Know this: you’ve invoked the wrath of Ibixibildo, and you shall pay dearly for your decisions. Your holy relic may give you strength, but it is nothing to the power that I wield. Prepare yourselves for annihilation! For your end is nigh, and there is no escape from the wrath of the beholder!”

Armatzi attempts to turn some of the undead army, but they resist due to the power of the beholder. Niki attempts to strike a nearby skeleton, but unfortunately misses on her attack. The beholder attacks Armatzi, causing him to writhe in pain. It then lifts him into the air and drops him to the ground causing him further damage. At this moment some forgotten knowledge is jogged back into his brain, forgotten after given from Sir Guy:

“Sir Guy urged Armatzi to do what he could not do and finish his task. And what was his task? Long ago, before he was usurped by his children, this temple was used by evil cultists to worship Narule, the god of the dead. The temple was built on a spacial weakening in the layers between other planes of this realm. Evil rites took place here and the bodies of sacrifices were thrown into the pit. Through these sacrifices the cultists called forth all manner of demons and unsavory creatures through the gate. The lawful order saw this temple as a great threat, and a small group of knights, and priests led by Sir Guy entered and battled the cultists and their undead minions. Sir Guy carried a powerful, gleaming white orb called the Fount of Law, created specifically to close the gate. Sadly, Sir Guy and his henchmen were betrayed, captured, and killed. The Fount of Law was hidden. The Fount of Law must be found and thrown into the pit to seal the gate!”

As Feno runs away into the next room full of demon statues terrified of the beholder, the group attempts the to attack and destroy some of the horde of skeletons, but instead causes minimal damage to them. Meanwhile, the portal in the back opens up, and three more undead appear...

Session 137 Afternoon of day 23 of Harvester

 Day 23 of Harvester, afternoon in the Barrow Maze

Jack the cat is a troll.  OK, not literally, but he's maybe possessed by one?  Ever since he got that Lesser Ring of Jack, he's become really snarky and kind of mean.  I don't know, maybe he was like that before and we didn't know because he couldn't speak common.  He certainly doesn't treat Niki with the respect she deserves.  I'm quite tempted to try to take the ring from him and re-bury it deep in the barrow maze again.  Sure, it gives him some great power, but he doesn't use that power responsibly.  I'm sure glad he's not my cat. Then again, I'm more of a dog person anyway.

Anyway, after that strange cat magically appeared, caused mayhem, and then disappeared again, we continued to explore this latest area of the Barrow Maze.  Moving north from the pit we'd found (things that fell in disappeared at about 10 feet down, so we don't know how deep it actually is, and have no interest in finding out), there was a midden pile in the corner of the room. Thankfully, the smell isn't much different from the rest of the Barrow Maze, although nowhere down here smells pleasant.  Arnd was checking the rest of the floor for stability when he heard a somewhat familiar growl from behind a half-closed door. As one might expect, it is more of the ravenous (un)dead like we'd fought off earlier.  Nasty critters!  There were only two this time, so I wasn't worried. First, they swung at Arnd since he was in the front of our group, but they missed him completely.  Armatzi attempted to use his gauntlet to "Turn Undead" but it didn't have any apparent effect.  Lhoss used her "spider climb" ability, gaining a back-stab advantage that allowed her to destroy one of the attackers.  Arnd tried to hit the one that attacked him, but he missed, so Feno stepped up and slaughtered it before it could do anything else.

Upon looking into the room the monsters had come from, we found the bodies of two unfortunate adventurers that the undead had been devouring.  It was obviously much too late for us to do anything to help them since they are both mangled and one is completely missing his face.  Despite not being able to identify the (probably) human men, Armatzi was moved to perform funeral rites on them.  He first asked Niki for proper herbs, but she didn't have anything fresh so I offered to let him use my sage that I always carry.  It was sufficient for his needs, so I helped him to arrange the bodies while the others searched the backpacks we found with the deceased men.  They found a fairly large amount of stuff and Niki cast "Detect Magic" on it, finding that only a crossbow was magical.  Unfortunately, nobody in our group uses a crossbow, but I ended up with a nice footman's mace, Armatzi added to his supply of writing materials, and Lhoss packed up the unused bandages they'd had. Everything else was packed up to be sold in Orlane at loot.  Once Armatzi cast his blessing spell on the bodies to consign them to the grace of St. Cuthbert, we placed them in a pair of empty burial alcoves out in the hallway and continued down the passageway to the west.

There was a door in the passageway that seemed to have been warped by moisture, and when Arnd tried to open it, he accidentally smashed it in. The room revealed was full of alcoves which most of us decided to search while Feno guarded the damaged doorway and Armatzi tried to concentrate enough to regain his spells, but he ended up feeling too frazzled for it to work. We did find a bit of treasure in the alcoves but before we could complete our search, Feno let the rest of us know that he heard voices approaching. As is to be expected, we quickly determined that the newcomers were not friendlies since they were talking about gaining a source of power and about undead servants. We extinguished our light sources to avoid letting our presence be known too soon and Lhoss considered using her spider climb ability to crawl out and spy on them but changed her mind since it was too likely that she'd be spotted and then be at a disadvantage.  Niki used her "Stone Shaping" spell to open a passageway between the room we were in and the previous room that we'd found the dead men in since our hope was that we could then send half our group behind the bad guys in a pincer move and have them surrounded. Feno held the damaged door in place so they couldn't get in while Lhoss, Arnd and I tried to sneak out the other door. 

I don't know if we weren't quiet enough or if they were just that aware of their surroundings, but what turned out to be a group of zombies under the thrall of four Necromancers of Set were not surprised by our attempted ambush.  My arrow, which should have pierced the chest of one of the Necromancers, was deflected harmlessly by a spell and then Arnd, Niki and Lhoss all missed hitting the zombies they were attacking.  Fortunately, of their return attack, only Arnd was hit while Niki and Lhoss were both unharmed. Armatzi tried to cast "Turn Undead" but was unsuccessful, possibly because the Necromancers were right there to reinforce their control. 

Admittedly, there was rather a lot of ineffectual fighting between us and the zombies until Feno stepped out and obliterated a zombie with a single blow, which shocked the Necromancers because of his strength and speed. They decided to enter the fight then, to their ultimate destruction. One attacked Niki and one attacked me, but both of them missed, followed by Feno expressing his contempt by smashing to paste the one that had attacked Niki.  I managed to kill the one that had attacked me, and the third one committed suicide, calling out, "My life for Set," as he died.  Feno finished off the final Necromancer with little effort and we focused on cleaning up the zombies that were left.  

It wasn't as quick and easy as I would have liked and Armatzi for some crazy reason tried to attack with a water creation spell (which was completely ineffective in doing any damage, although it may have helped with the smell a tiny bit) before we finally eliminated the scourge. One bright spot was when Armatzi cast "Cure light wounds" on Lhoss and managed to fully restore her health. Best casting ever!

The zombies were typical zombies and had no valuables on them but the Necromancer corpses had platinum, daggers and a staff on them. As we finished looting, a disembodied voice proclaimed pride in the dead Necromancers, which absolutely disgusted me since they'd been pretty pathetic and the one even had killed himself rather than fight for his standards! My goddess, Merikka, would never find pride in such a thing. Sympathy for a damaged mind maybe, but never pride.

We finally finished going through all the alcoves we'd been searching before Set's wimps interrupted us and decided to head back to town. That is when we remembered a slight problem.  In that room we'd gone through that had all the holes in the floor, the portcullis had been triggered and dropped down, blocking our exit. We tried to lift it, since we'd done that successfully before, but it seemed to be locked in place somehow. Even my companions using their superior elven eyesight couldn't see any way to release it.

Suddenly, Feno remembered that there was a piece of paper in the bottom of one of the floor holes and decided he wanted to see what it said.  Lhoss looked in the hole that had appeared green and discovered that was because it had a quantity of green slime at the bottom of it, so she quickly backed away from that hole. Feno found the correct hole but didn't want to risk putting his hand down inside it.  Using a bit of ingenuity, we put a blob of sap from my kindling onto the end of a piece of rope and were able to snare the paper without endangering anyone.  The paper read, "First Up, then Down" which Lhoss interpreted as instructions for opening the portcullis.  She bravely reached into the hole that held the lever that had triggered the portcullis dropping in the first place, grabbed the lever and followed the directions.  She pulled the lever upward and then when it made a clanking noise, she pushed it back down.  To everyone's relief and joy, the portcullis noisily raised itself back up and we were free to go on our way. Thinking about it now, I know we were extremely lucky that it worked, but I kind of think that there is some sort of diety or power of the dungeon, a master perhaps, that is watching over us as we bumble along and helping to keep us going, even against great odds.

Session 136: Puzzles and Traps

It is day 23 of Harvester and we (Feno, Arnd, Armatzi, Niki, Kyro and Lhoss {me}) find ourselves presented with ten holes containing various things and a wriggling thought that this must be a puzzle to be solved. Armatzi has some wild theories about what each hole must mean, but Feno is a man with a plan! As the rest of us cower in a doorway, Feno uses an unlit torch to flip the lever set down in the northwesternmost cavity. Immediately, holes open in the eastern wall and shoot out black and yellow darts. One hits Feno and he slumps down to the ground, paralyzed. I spring into action to rescue my fellow Elf by pulling out the dart. I feel a numb tingling start to spread from my hand up my arm and drop the dart, which disappears. Feno regains consciousness pretty quickly and I examine the wall to see the holes where the darts had originated. Once I spot the holes, I begin to search the room to see if there is another wall that might also be concealing darts. Feno offers to join, so I point out the holes and he nods and starts searching. Armatzi wants to help as well, so I point out the holes, but he can't see them. Jack poofs into existence on Armatzi's shoulder, cuffs him on his ear, then disappears. Niki joins and with a little time and squinting is able to find them. Armatzi squints and strains, but is still unable to see what is plain to all us Elves. I turn to Feno and huff in Elvish "If I woke up tomorrow with human eyes, I would pluck them out and trade with a pig." He nodded with a wry grin (clearly he thought it was the most humorous thing he'd ever heard). It's a very good joke, even better in Elvish. And it rhymes.

At any rate, we do not find any other dart holes in the room; they seem to only come from the east wall. Armatzi decides he wants to flip the other switch in a hole. This time, all of us but Kyro surround Armatzi with shields as he triggers the second lever. With a loud *clunk* the portcullis drops. It does not rise with a reverse flip. Shoot, we've just trapped ourselves. I check the door to the east for traps and don't find any, so we can at least move on from this room. As Armatzi opens the door, we look back to see Kyro attempting to fish the metal circle out of one of the holes. With a bit of finagling, and some help from Armatzi, they lift the circlet out. To their horror, there is an unholy symbol of Nerull engraved upon it. A putrid smell fills their nostrils as the rotting skull appears to animate, frightening Kyro into dropping it back into the hole. Armatzi brandishes his holy symbol and sprinkles holy water on the artifact, but this is not enough! He breaks out a sacred incantation and douses the thing in more holy water. This seems to be sufficient as a cloud of gray smoke rises and then turns white. It seems the evil has bin dispelled. After such unlucky encounters, we all agree to move on from this room.

Arnd is the first through the door and begins to probe with his ten-foot pole. He calls out that he has found more burial alcoves and a pile of rubble. While the rest of us get to work looting the alcoves, Arnd and Feno examine the rubble piles. A swarm of giant rats emerges and scurries away. We don't pursue them. Arnd explores further north in the room and discovers a bottomless (question mark?) pit. Meanwhile, our noisy efforts have attracted a group of ravenous dead. We destroy them with little fanfare and push them into the pit. Curiously, they just disappear into an inky darkness about ten feet down and make no sound of hitting the bottom. This may be more than simply a bottomless pit; regardless, it is a danger to be avoided.