Session 9
Sanguis 20, 1181 EC
- Matt
- Huzn Erste, Dwarven Fury 3
- Denis, Cleric of Phanriel 3
- Meinard, Fighter 1
- Brooke
- Swanhild of Eldeskhur, Barbarian 2
- Mike
- Snak, Barbarian 1
- Gerrit, 0-level fighter
We picked up just after the party had paddled upriver on makeshift rafts far enough to spot the leg of the Etheri statue in the underground river. After Denis healed Swanhild with his last spell slot, Huzn and his henchmen left. Snak and Swanhild decided they wanted to explore further, but needed a proper boat.
The two of them went up to the surface and talked to the fishermen down at the docks (the same ones they’d talked to about the river monsters before) and this time Snak won them over with his rousing story of defeating the monsters. In fact they were so incredibly impressed that a teenage fisherman’s son named Gerrit signed up to be his apprentice, and fetched a homemade spear.
Swanhild purchased a small rowboat and the men carried it back to the Bent Wheel. This brought on a warning from Uwe the innkeeper. He reminded them that the staircase into the underworld was highly illegal, and that they would arouse suspicion by doing things like carrying a rowboat into his common room.
They promised to make it up to the innkeeper. Swanhild asked some more questions about Adan, the man she suspects is her father, and then they carried on with the boat.
Rowing upriver, the trio rounded the statue only to be shot at with a crossbow! They relentlessly rowed forward and leapt out onto a wooden dock hidden behind the statue. Luckily for the party, only one crossbow shot hit its mark, and that one grazed Snak for a single point of damage. Once on the dock, the barbarians charged at their attackers and quickly dispatched a group of four leather-armored men.
Gerrit even got a lucky kill, hurling his homemade spear.
After the fight, Team Huzn returned, paddling upriver on the corpse-raft from earlier.
The party, now 6 strong, explored the newly conquered beach. There was a rowboat docked, as well as supplies for the men here, but the party found no conclusive evidence of their allegiance.
A tunnel led away from the beach, and so the party began to explore it.
At the first junction, they came across a pillar with a black, glass orb on it, which smelled like lightning. Swanhild lassoed a rope around the pillar, and Snak pulled it over. The glass hit the floor and Snak decided to poke it with his axe, which earned him a shock. Luckily, due to his gloves and wooden axe handle (and a second minimum-damage roll against him) he wasn’t hurt much. In the end they threw a cloth over the orb in case of watching wizards, and left it alone.
The pillar, now knocked over, revealed a mechanism underneath it. With a little meddling, the party opened a hidden door to a staircase leading downward.
The party decided to try to secure the current level further before heading down.
Session 10
- Matt
- Huzn Erste, Dwarven Fury 3
- Denis, Cleric of Phanriel 3
- Meinard, Fighter 1
- Brooke
- Swanhild of Eldeskhur, Barbarian 2
- Mike
- Snak, Barbarian 1
- Gerrit, 0-level fighter
- Andzej
- Charr Untarskjur, Assassin 2
This session picked up exploring the mysterious cavern behind the Etheri statue’s leg.
The tunnel branch to the west hadn’t been checked, so the party explored down there and found a wall of heavy wood planks with a barred door. On the way, Meinard fell in a pit trap covered by cloth, but barely survived, still able to fight. The wall had a mysterious symbol carved in it: a circle made of stylized bones.
After listening, Snak decided to knock on the door, but swiftly replaced the bar after something shuffled up to the other side and began to scratch at the wall. Swanhild experimentally pushed the hand of one of the dead ambushers under the door, and it was swiftly grabbed and devoured by the unknown creature. The party decided this door was doing a great job keeping trouble away, and left.
Deciding this was enough scouting on the current level, the party then created a little fort around the hidden door they’d discovered by overturning the wooden bed frames. They left Denis and Meinard behind to watch their backs while the rest went downstairs.
At the bottom of the stairs they found something very strange.
A small, low-ceilinged cavern with a floor of mortared bricks and a door set in the floor. But the door was not a trapdoor, it looked like an ordinary front door of a house. Huzn tested the floor and found it hollow. Since it was surrounded by bedrock, he determined that this must be a building buried by one of the cataclysms, when the earth moved and reshaped itself freely, burying whole civilizations.
Opening the door, they found a rope ladder nailed to the bottom of the frame, and were able to climb down. As they suspected, it appeared to be a stone-brick house, embedded sideways in the stone. Searching the fireplace which now hung on a side wall, Huzn made another discovery: a small carved marking that matched the one on Swanhild’s necklace, and her father’s secret room. They removed a hidden brick and found some old dry food and a small leather-bound book. None of them could read the Rythan writing, but they took it in hopes of translating back in Priorsford.
At this point, a call from above from Meinard brought them back, and they met the mysterious Charr Unterskjur (who had just finished creating his new character). This character had been investigating a lead of his own.
Charr had witnessed guards belonging to Riele Horn exhuming the bodies of the two hung cultists from the Rythan graveyard. They’d taken those bodies down a secret staircase beneath a tree in the Truber Forest, and Charr had followed, ending up here.
With Charr now joining them, the party went back down to the sideways house. Most of the windows lead out into solid rock, but one opened to a small tunnel with a stream running down the middle, and there were many bootprints along its bank. The party followed.
Downstream they passed several small goblin-tunnels too small to fit through. Then they heard the sound of a man snoring loudly. Investigating, Snak found a small campsite with a man sleeping on a straw mattress.
The party decided to wake the man up.
“You here with fish or coins?”
The party was baffled by this comment at first, but then he said, “oh you brought a Dwarf instead,” and revealed a smile full of oversized fangs.
They suspected the man of being a cannibal, and Huzn threw an axe at him. The axe deflected off the man’s bare shoulder in a way that didn’t seem natural. His face began to change, and the party realized that he must be a lycanthrope, which they were ill-prepared to fight.
At the last second, Swanhild proceeded to boast and threaten the lycanthrope, which by a stroke of luck caused the man to pause and threaten her in return.
It immediately became clear that this werewolf demanded a toll to pass his tunnel, and Swanhild cleverly offered to bring him fresh human meat. This was compelling enough for him to take Huzn hostage and allow the rest of the party to drag down two of the bodies of the men they’d slain above.
Session 11
- He works for Riele Horn
- She has a base in an abandoned temple down here, where she does forbidden magic
- The guards usually enter via a tunnel under a tree in Truber Forest, the same way Charr had come in
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