I think I had better put a disclaimer in here - this write up contains spoilers for anyone who wishes to partake in this adventure. Please only read this if you do not wish to become a player in this adventure path as it will spoil your enjoyment.
The Pathfinders
Kazimir – Elf Fighter (absent)Moebius – Elf Conjurer
Nicolai Alamrys – Human Rogue
Tomas – Cleric
Zef – Human Ranger
From the Diary of Nicolai Alamrys (Day 8 – late afternoon)
Running from the creatures from beyond the grave has left me
feeling rather foolish. After suffering from two near-death experiences I am
finding I am becoming more and more nervous around strange creatures and beings
that want to do us harm, especially giant sized creepy crawlies that offer
poisonous bites and stings. I do not want to let my companions down but I am
feeling increasingly cowardly when faced with such antagonists. I just hope
that my other skills will allow me to keep such brave and trustworthy
companions at my side whilst we delve into the mysteries surrounding
Harrowstone and the town of Ravengro
I made my way back to Kendra’s house after the fright I’d
had with the skeletons. My more belligerent companions were able to easily
overcome the walking dead; Zef felled two with his deft bow-work and Kazimir
brought down the other with his glaive. To calm all of our nerves and to catch
up with events all round, we decided to head to the Laughing Demon. However, on
the way, I thought it may be prudent to take up my position as look-out in case
the statue desecrators returned, so I headed off into that part of town.
Zef and Moebius made it to the tavern, but Kazimir decided
to stay put and look after Kendra just in case any harm befell her. What with
that Gibbs fellow pushing his weight around and causing a couple of scenes, it
seemed like a good idea. Whilst at the tavern, an acolyte of Pharasma, and
another true friend of the professor turned up. He is named Tomas. I got to
meet him on my return to the tavern at around 9:15 .
In the meantime, Moebius and Zef had brought him up to date with the entire
goings on. Tomas told us that he would have made it earlier if it wasn’t for
his caravan being delayed by the dreadful weather. Anyway, it is good to have
another cleric in our party after Dukker had to return to his temple a few days
ago. We now number five, which is a goodly
number of investigators, but I myself would feel safer if we had perhaps
another who could wield a sword with more gusto than Moebius and I (although
Moebius is rather handy with those magical incantations of his).
It was Zef that relieved me from watching the statue and he also
made it his task to set a few footprint traps, just to see if we could capture
some tracks from the perpetrators of the violation. We left the tavern around midnight , collected Zef upon the way and headed
to our beds.
The Prison Ruins (Day 9)
I awoke quite early and proceeded to run through my
stretching routines. I felt pretty good actually; fully recovered from my bruising
experiences. We decided to head on up to the prison to reconnoitre, again
Kazimir elected to stay with Kendra (probably because he thought that maybe
there would be no fighting involved). We diverted our path via the statue to
check out Zef’s footprint traps, but the only tracks we saw there were for
small nocturnal animals. Moebius quickly called in at the Unfurling Scroll to
pick up a scroll that contained some Warding or Alarm spell.
We got to the ruins atop the hill quite quickly and in good
spirits despite the newly arrived clouds and subsequent downpour. Nothing
appeared different, but Tomas decided he wanted to see the runes around the
prison building for himself. He noted that it seemed to be part of a ritual,
but what kind of ritual he could not say. He cast a few more spells and made it
known that the place was heavily under the influence of the undead; there were
many signals given off, mainly below our feet and below the prison building.
Moebius tied his mule up just outside the main entrance.
The Office Block
Zef and I headed to the main door of the building and took a
peek inside. Beyond the fallen doors was a vestibule that measured around 10’
by 10’. Many doors led off from it. We decided to pick the first one on the
left hand side and Zef put his boot to it. On the other side was a long
corridor, ending in a door, with doors all along the right hand wall. All of
the doors down the corridor seemed to contain offices full of paperwork.
Moebius wanted to grab as much as possible for future reference, but we said
that we would grab them for him on the way out. We proceeded to the end of the
corridor, where we noticed that there were in fact two doors, the second
obscured as it was around a corner we could not see from the other end. As we opened
the first door, all the rest of the office doors behind us slammed shut in
turn; none could be opened when we tried them. The door that we had just opened
revealed a sanctum of calm, and a safe which was unfortunately beyond my skills
to open (there had to be a key around somewhere). We left the calming effect of
the room and entered the other door next to this one that we hadn’t spotted
when we first entered the corridor. This, however, only revealed a latrine.
Perplexed by this turn of events, we returned to the door we
entered the corridor by. Zef and I were ahead, whilst Moebius, sensing a loss
of clues held within the paperwork, with Tomas looking out for him, tried to
open the office doors. Zef kicked open the first door on the right within the vestibule.
This caused the door opposite to slam shut, closing Moebius and Tomas within.
As the door shut, a burning head thrust through the door making us jump out of
our skins. It rapidly retreated back into the door however. We then heard three
raps on the door and Tomas’s voice calling that they were OK and did we see
anything come through the door? Zef and I replied that we had spotted the same
as the others. To reunite the party, Zef tried to cut through the rotten wooden
door, but as his sword bit into the wood, it stuck fast and he could not remove
it. Tomas worked out that this was a simple Hold Portal spell, and that it
would dissipate soon. True enough, the sword eventually came free and upon
rechecking, the office doors became unlocked again. Moebius, not wanting to
lose his paperwork, asked for time to move it from the offices into the calm
room. Zef and I agreed and used that time to remove the door that was held from
its hinges so that it would not block our escape in future.
The Cold Auditorium
The doors on the right hand side of the vestibule didn’t
really present us with too many problems. The first door opened up to a short
corridor ending in a locked solid metal door at the other end.
The second door opened into an auditorium with many benches
inside and a grille at the far end behind which we assumed the prisoners were
held whilst being questioned. Zef entered and felt the temperature suddenly
drop. Icicles began to form on the furniture as soon as he entered the room. He
got out of their quickly sensing it was not a nice place to be. As the others
were still unloading the paperwork, I decided to kill the time by removing the
door to this room too.
The last door from the vestibule
We did not really want to leave any of the doors unexplored,
but we decided that the metal door could be left for a time whilst we explored
the rest of this level of the prison building. We popped open the last door of
the vestibule (the one opposite the main entrance door) to reveal another
corridor with doors down the right hand side. The first door led down some
stairs a little way before becoming choked with collapsed masonry (possibly an
effect of the collapse the Warden caused all those years ago?). The second door
opened onto some steps leading upwards. I carefully made my way up the wooden
stairs and could make out in the gloom of the collapsed ceiling that there were
several rooms up there. We decided to come back to explore these as the upper
storey did not look like it could take the combined weight of our party. The
third door revealed a small cupboard filled with cleaning equipment.
Giant Spiders
Making our way back to the beginning of the corridor again,
we opened the first door on the left. This revealed corridors leading off in a
couple of directions and several other doors. The first side door we came to
revealed a collapse door leading into a room full of cobwebs. I didn’t like the
look of this so edged backwards a bit. Tomas strode straight in and was
instantly pounced upon by three huge spiders, each with an abdomen the size of
a large pumpkin, and fangs dripping with venom. Tomas staggered back under the
onslaught which gave Zef enough room to shoot one of the spiders a couple of
times. Moebius cast his acid spell, but it just bounced harmlessly off the
wall. Whilst the ranger and cleric busied themselves with two of the spiders,
the injured third one made its way towards Moebius and me. Moebius cast his
bright light spell and all of the arachnids were suddenly dazed. Zef and Tomas
easily finished off their opponents but it took me quite a while to destroy the
third with my rapier.
Tomas recognised the room as a small temple to Pharasma, so
he set about cleaning it up. Moebius helped him with a few cantrips and the
brooms and mops from the store room back in the previous corridor. Inside a
small wooden cabinet Tomas found a few potions of healing, a wand of healing
(which he kept himself) and a scroll which he passed to Moebius. This went some
way towards stopping the sorceror griping about not being able to study the
papers from the offices.
Manacles
Whilst the other two of our party tidied up the small temple
to Pharasma, Zef and I went to try another of the doors. The one opposite led
into what looked like a torture chamber; manacles, ropes and chains littered
the floor. Zef strode into to see what he could find but upon entering, a pair
of manacles rose into the air and darted towards him. One cuff managed to grasp
onto Zef’s wrist and lock shut. Zef grabbed the other cuff with his free hand
and backed out of the room.
We went back into the small temple to see if Moebius could
open them after my lock picking skills were found to be useless as there were
no locks on them! Acid seemed to roll off of the rusting metal clasps, but a
vial of Holy water saw the manacles sizzle and drop to the floor.
We decided to return to the induction chamber to take
another look but all we could find this time were more rusting manacles.
Luckily none of them came to life when we entered the room this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment