The Monstery of the Fire Opal was the adventure they left without finding the noted Fire Opal. There were multiple clues but they missed all of them. They did search the correct room but rolled poorly. The final goal was hidden behind a secret door. This is the reason why placing the end item behind a secret door is dangerous. Putting a bonus treasure behind a secret door is fine. But if you put the end goal behind a secret door there is a chance the players will never find it. The heroes cleared the second level of the dungeon of every creature but one and they found almost no treasure. In fact, they devalued the one item of treasure they did find by breaking it.
Session 7: Leaving the Monastery
Players: Marta the Chaste (cleric), Raeish Farstrider (Elven Fighter/Magic-User), Eathwund (Human Fighter), Lakima the Grey (Human Magic-User), Daen Shieldbreaker (Dwarven Fighter/NPC).
In the last session, the heroes had narrowly escaped a dead-end trap with a "fake" fire opal gem. They had just noticed a secret door held closed by iron spiked.
The heroes investigate the secret door and find that there are 3 iron spikes holding it closed. Raeish struggles and is unable to pull them from the wall but the sturdy dwarf Daen manages to do it without too much effort. Beyond is a 5 foot wide narrow passage. As they follow the passage they come across the remains of two monks who appear to have been eaten a long time ago. The passage ends in another secret door that exits into a storage area. Raeish finds several crates and opens them to fine ceremonial gear and robes. One of the crates is covered with what looks like yellow mold so they avoid it.
Continuing south they are ambushed by two more manes. During the fight, a young man dressed in dark-blue robes appears beside them and throws darts at the manes. They are surprised by his appearance but press the attack against the mane's first before dealing with the newcomer. After the manes are killed they stop to interrogate the man. He tells them he is Lakima (the grey) and says that he has been following them while invisible. He is a little vague about his reasons. Saying that he is interested in magic so that is why he was in the monastery. Raeish asks why he revealed himself now and not earlier and Lakima says that he wanted to be sure they were trustworthy first.
After some discussion, they decide to accept Lakima who explains to them that he is a magic-user. Marta decides to keep an eye on Lakima. They come to an area that is a maze of passages. In one intersection three more manes attack them but they are able to destroy the demons. Nearby they find a monk's room that was the scene of a battle, the door to the room hangs limply on one hinge. Raeish finds a lever in this room that opens a secret door. The door leads to a small ten-foot square room that is deserted. They decide to close the secret door and take a rest in the enclosed space that they believe has only one entrance through the secret door.
While resting Raeish studies the walls of the chamber and notices a protruding stone in the wall opposite the secret door. When the rest is over Marta casts Cure Light Wounds on Raeish and Daen the two most badly injured.
Raeish goes over and presses the stone he noticed. Another secret door opens. In the room beyond, they see the strange sight of a mane seated on a stool before a writing desk. It is scratching away in a book with an ink quill. They step in the room and the mane completely ignores them. Its dull grey eyes fixed on the pages in front of it.
Raeish spears the mane, and it steps up from the desk to defend itself. All five of the adventurers attack and bring it down. Lakima examines the book. It is a large volume, quite heavy. The ink is still wet on the open page. The writing is indecipherable to him but he surmises it is in Infernal. Lakima decides to take the book and he puts it in his backpack. Marta looks on with disapproval but holds his tongue for now.
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| The Infernal Monk |
The heroes head north through more corridors and find three more manes, each working alone in a cell writing in ink in books. The writings are all in the strange infernal language. The pages do not seem the same. One is even drawing diagrams on the page. They kill all of the manes and everyone except Marta slips a book in their pack.
The heroes backtrack and head south. Raeish is taking the lead and rushes ahead down a corridor when he triggers a pressure plate on the floor and three spears launch from the wall. One hits Raeish and he is badly wounded. The rest of the heroes arrive and Daen takes the lead carefully tapping the floor with the haft of his battleax. Two more traps are triggered. The hallway ends in a dead-end, but Lakima is certain that there must be a secret door and Raeish finds it. Beyond a short passage leads to a brightly lit shrine to evil. A blood-splattered altar sits in the center of a round chamber. Against the north wall are two piles of rubble from two broken statues. Daen steps over to the rubble to examine it and the piles form up into a pair of roughly human-shaped creatures made of rubble. The creatures cannot move but they do throw large stones and the heroes. They find their edged weapons are doing little damage but Marta’s mace is effective and the cleric smashes one of the creatures. The other is brought down by an attack from Raeish’s magic spear.
They search the chamber carefully certain that there must be something interesting here. Nothing is found. Marta does a blessing at the altar in an attempt to remove any evil. And with Daen’s help and a few hammers they break the altar apart. They search one final unchecked passage that leads down a few steps to a carving on the wall of a demon. They do not find anything. Certain they have checked everywhere they go over a plan of action. They are certain the orange opal they found earlier is not the fire opal. It is just an ordinary opal. Lakima suggests to Daen that maybe there is something hidden in the opal. Daen agrees to try and break it apart and he does manage to break it in two but there is nothing inside and now the opal is just about worthless.
With seemingly no inhabitants left in this part of the dungeon, Raeish goes over areas they checked before to see if he can find anything suspicious but to no avail. After two hours of searching, they decide to call it quits and leave the dungeon.
They exit to the swamp and signal for Hamish to come to pick them up. The evening is approaching. Hamish arrives and is surprised to see Lakima and not Gaeleath or Manny. He asks after the halfling woman and they inform him that she did not make it out. Hamish questions them about their adventures and they tell him of fighting the dragon and show him the dragon head. He is impressed. He rubs his hands together and says, “So you must have quite a haul of treasure then? Right?” His comment is met with stony silence.
Back at Hamish’s cottage, they set up camp. During the night during Daen’s watch, he hears some suspicious whistles. He wakes everyone up and they ready their weapons in the darkness. Four lizardfolk leap out of the reeds silently but are met with a surprise attack. One of the lizardfolk drops from Marta’s attack and the rest are put to sleep by Lakima.
Marta drags the dead lizardfolk away to a pit and tosses it in. Meanwhile, Raeish drags the sleeping Lizardfolk away telling Marta he will leave them in the open nearby. But instead, Raeish kills them and then tosses them in the bog.
The next day dawns with some mist but soon they are out of the moors and on the wilderness road. The sun burns away the mist. They meet a boy named Chert leading a wagon of logs to Edgerton to sell to a charcoaler. They decide to escort the slightly nervous boy into Edgerton.
In Edgerton the heroes go back to the Sign of the Dancing Dragon inn and settle in. Lakima buys a round of drinks for everyone at the table. They begin telling the story of their adventure in the monastery. When they get to the part about the dragon a few patrons look at the heroes skeptically. Then Daen dumps the dragon’s head out onto the table. Several barmaids shriek and run out of the room. The owner, Morton Bray, comes to the table and demands to know what is going on. But he is impressed by the dragon head and the stories. He is also impressed by the growing crowd around the table in the common room. He pays for the hero's drinks for the rest of the evening.
After telling the tale a few times through, and improving it with each telling the heroes tire. Raeish suggests to Morton that he should buy the dragon head for the Inn. But Morton is uninterested. The inn sign shows a happy, dancing dragon, not a beheaded evil dragon. Another patron suggests they get it mounted and he knows just the guy to do it. The local leads them to the poor quarter of the town, an area called Mirdton, to the shop of a taxidermist named Wyston Ridley. Wyston is impressed by the dragon head and agrees to mount it. Before he can name a price Raeish drops 100 gold coins on the table and tells him to be sure to use gold and ivory trim on the mounting.
The Crypt of St. Bethesda
It is late and the man who led them to Mirdton had left some time ago so they make their own way back toward the Market common. Heading down an unfamiliar street they hear a man cry out in pain. They are not sure which direction the scream came from so they continue on. Rounding a corner into the next street they see a large, boarded-up church and in the alley, a body slumped near the wall. They approach and check the body and see strange lavender worms wriggling around on the body near still steaming acid burns. The worms leave a trail across the street and into an open sewer grate.
As they stand there pondering what happened Raeish drops down into the grate. Several members of the Town Watch approach and shout out for them to halt in the name of the watch and drop their weapons. After a moment's indecision, they all follow Raeish into the sewers.
The sewer grate leads directly into a room cluttered with debris. They figure from the church pews and chairs that they are in the crypt of the abandoned church above. Two passages lead off from the chamber. One leads to a storeroom full of wood boxes of moldy hardtack and empty barrels of wine. Raeish searches about and finds a loose set of stones behind one barrel. Pushing the stones out of the way he finds a crawlway through to a corridor.
The corridor heads east passed a pair of doors. The first door opens into a room choked with enormous spider webs. Raeish splashes some oil in the room and throws in a lit torch. They hear the roar of flames and a chittering noise. Reopening the door causes smoke to pour into the hallway. Beyond they see charred spider webs and a burnt giant spider. They close the door to prevent the smoke from spreading.
The next-door opens into a cave of stalactites and stalagmites. The walls are roughly hewn stone. A pair of low, narrow passages head south. Daen crosses the chamber and a pair of ghouls leap out and attack him. There is a brief exchange of blows and then Marta steps forward and rebukes the ghouls who turn to flee into the tunnels. One ghoul is killed before it can flee. Raeish chases the other into the tunnels crawling on his hands and knees. He traps the ghoul and stabs it repeatedly with his spear killing it. They find two exits from the tunnels that come up in a small, courtyard graveyard.
They go back to the corridor and head north. They find a cunningly made stone door that opens out into the corridor. Opening the door they see an enormous garbage pile. Fresh garbage falls out of openings in the ceiling onto the growing piles. They turn about and continue to the east. The corridor ends in a door leading to a cleaner looking room that contains an enormous altar. On top of the altar is a sigil. Marta examines it and tells them it is the symbol of St. Bethesda. A patron saint of healing the sick. Lakima examines the altar and finds the top is hinged. Flipping it up he finds a knob underneath that can be depressed. He does so and it clicks and stays in the lowered position. They do not note that anything happened. They do a quick search of the room and Raeish finds a secret door to the north behind a frayed, moth-eaten tapestry.
To the north is an intersection of passages with the statue of a matronly woman in robles standing in the center of the passage. Marta tells them that this is St. Bethesda. Meanwhile, Raeish is pointing down the east passage. They can just make out a large chamber, an ornate sarcophagus, and a trail of lavender colored worms leading to it.
The heroes make a plan quietly and then silently stalk into the chamber. They encircle the sarcophagus. It is a beautiful ornate coffin made of expensive wood with silver brackets. Gems are inlaid into the lid of the coffin. Daen lifts the lid of the coffin and they look inside. A corpse with clearly life-ending open wounds lies in the coffin. Lavender worms can be seen moving about in the open wounds. Suddenly, the things eyes open and it sits straight up in the coffin.
Not surprised everyone attacks, Daen chops it with his ax, Marta strikes it with his mace, Eathwund hits it with his magic shortsword, Lakima strikes it with two darts, and Raeish stabs it with his spear. Everyone hits the creature in a flurry of blows opening up more wounds in its chest and neck. More worms pour out of the open wounds. The creature hisses at them and worms pour out of its mouth. Then it strikes back at Daen, Raeish, and Eathwund. Tentacles of worms pour out of its open wounds and one from its mouth. Daen and Raeish are both take hits but for little damage. The worms also leave acid stains on their clothes and they hurriedly have to back out of the battle to take off the burning clothes.
The remaining heroes attack again but miss and the creature makes another attack. This time it misses them. When they attack it again they strike it multiple times and it collapses in a heap of worms. They tilt the coffin up and dump the body and the worms on the floor. Just before they are about to hack the gems out of the coffin Daen and Lakima stop them. They think the coffin is magical and worth a lot of gold. They settle the coffin back down and begin to discuss how to move it. Marta looks it over and sees sigils of St. Bethesda on it. He suggests they look to return it to the church but his suggestion is not received well.
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| Sarcophagus of the Wormwraith |
They decide to leave the coffin for later and continue exploring the crypts. To the north, they stop at a door. Peering inside they see a clean camp, with a fire (smoke going up through some holes in the ceiling) and several pallets of blankets. A man snores noisily while sitting atop a wooden chest. They sneak up on the man and Raeish puts his spear to the man’s throat. He motions to the others asking if he should kill the man. Marta shakes his head sternly. They wake the man up with Raeish’s spear at his throat. The man, who tells them his name is Hayes, claims to be minding his own business. The trunk holds only his laundry he says. They threaten him but the man sticks to his story until Lakima casts Charm Person on him. Then Hayes tells his good friend Lakima that this is the hideout for a group of thieves. The rest of the thieves are out on a heist. The chest holds their treasure but the thief's leader, whom he calls Reimer, has the only key. Hayes tells them they should wait. His friends will be back soon.
The heroes set up a trap with Hayes in the far corner, the fighters by the door that Hayes tells them leads to an abandoned shop. He also helpfully tells them that the other two doors lead to traps that the thieves set up. After waiting for an hour they hear the noise of several men approaching. The men are not trying to be quiet. They are talking loudly and laughing. As they open the door both Lakima and Raeish hit them with Sleep spells. All of the thieves fall to the floor asleep. Hayes asks his friend Lakima what is going on, as the others tie up the thieves. They find a bag of loot on one man and a key on another. The key fits the lock in the chest and inside is another haul of stolen goods. The heroes have a brief discussion about what to do with the loot. Finally, they decide to take the untraceable coins and bring the rest, along with the gang members to the City Watch. They agree to return later for the ornate sarcophagus.
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