Chapter the Seventh, Part the Second: Completing the Cast Dungeon or Why Does the Cockatrice Cross the Room?

While recuperating from their ordeal with the sahguin shaman, Tyrian and Ulmo, began humming then reciting an old riddle-rhyme from their childhoods:

Look to your corners and you will see Drouss and Pharthas in familiar skies,

Lady Luck and her love have longed to gaze into each other's eyes.

The Great Mother, ever vigilant of her children’s plight, peers upon her spawn,

The Young Sun with haughty eyes cast high, sees not the love that begins to dawn.

Days of dungeoneering works on the mind in odd ways.  Despite the danger to their sanity, they explored the other half of the dungeon, wading into the flooded chambers at each end.  Once entirely submerged, Grey found a dim green light emanating from a tunnel in the center of ceiling.  Tyrian scaled the rusty metal ladder, past increasingly verdant but alien foliage previously seen when the party had explored the cast of the Queen of the Wilds.  The chamber they entered was overgrown with lush, emerald foliage, a warm but sickly light emanating from the smooth surface 15 feet above their heads.  The stirrings of animals could be heard and Background Snakes slithered away into the foliage.  At opposite corners of the room, the roots of trees, creepers, and vines had been woven into stairs curving up.

The party took to the left stair, ascending into a chamber similar to the one they had exited, except that here an abhorrent collection of animals, somehow unnaturally mixed together, as if the Queen of the Wild in a moment madness had taken a mixing spoon and bowl to her servants.  The monsters many eyes swiveled madly as multiple snouts babbled maddeningly.  The cacophony confused Grey leaving him to growl at a nearby wall. Ulmo threw magical bolts at the disturbing beast as Tyrian hewed it with his blade.  It’s acidic spittle flew but Tyrian was able to dodge and then the gibbering mouther reached its end.  After the abomination fell, Ulmo spied a fist-size sphere of an unnatural purple gem stone, four notches oriented in the same direction where a deliberate blemish upon it’s surface.

The Spectator Key

Two exits were woven in the vegetation in the corners perpendicular to the corner our heroes had entered from.  These stairs brought them to a level much like the previous two, except in the ceiling above a tunnel stretched to a room above, red flames casting off shadows from above.  The brave trio climbed the ladder only to find a room whose walls were wreathed in flame, standing too close led to burns, and they heroes remembered that they had to run from room to room to avoid being burnt alive in the passageways connecting them.  As they plotted their next move, the giant but familiar flaming skull of Probably Grigor appeared.  As benign but unhelpful as before the demented undead indicated that more of his brethren awaited them.  Tyrian and Ulmo began making noise in attempt to draw the more malignant flame skulls into battle in the relative safety of the middle of the room. First two flaming skulls then five more came hurtling down the passageway sloping into the fiery reaches of these hell spawned chambers.  The flaming skulls fell to Ulmo’s spells and Tyrian’s sword in seconds, and the party ran to the next room, with Ulmo getting singed along the way.  The next room they ran to was occupied by a humongous flaming skull, big enough to swallow Probably Grigor whole, but too big to escape the confines of the room.  Suicidally brave the party faced the behemoth burning cranium, and when Tyrian nearly died from the flaming assault of the creature, his Mark of the Efreet flared, healed him, and vanished.  In the end their valor prevailed and the dust of the shattered skull fell upon them.  They exited the room only to find another trapdoor in the next chamber leading to an antechamber built of skull and bones.  They entered the adjacent room and climbed the long ladder through thousands of grinning skulls, on one of these levels they found a slim bar of the same purple stone as the orb.  This bar was rounded of edges and had a small bump at one end, a rune for “1” was inscribed deep within when it was held up to the torch light.  The end opposite this quarter orb slid firmly into place on the purple sphere.  They ascended from this chamber only to exit back to the dicing room.

Back in the dicing room, Tyrian cast the dice three times again to obtain four of a kind.  They were transported to a room of multi-colored tile, a voice spoke:

Use the number that unlocked this room, join all the colors and escape this doom.

Above each tile was a silver bar, flat with the wall, of the right size to fit into the sphere.  Tyrian attempted to break one from the wall without success.  Guessing that four lines could connect all the colored squares and based on Ulmo’s knowledge of numeracy they connected light blue (9, wind), brown (10, earth), blue (11, water), green (12, “wild”), red (13, fire), and black (0, death).  They walked four lines along the colored tiles to find one of the bars pop free and small notch at one end of the bar.  They reappeared in the dicing room.

Four of a Kind Challenge

Their next cast yielded three kings and two queens, and a vast sum of gold fell cascading from the ceiling.  The adventures marveled at their luck and set about gathering their loot, before casting the dice once more.  This time they obtained a series of four and reappeared in a room built of skulls and mortared by bones, hanging from a ladder in the ceiling was a tall, predatory, ebon skinned fighter who appeared to be a vampiric version of Uncle Morgrin’s secretary, S’sabis!  He held his attack when they called him by name and revealed that they had met him a thousand years from now.  Intrigued and convinced by their argument that without them he would not escape, S’sabis joined forces with our heroes.  However, Tyrian was not at ease with the thought of an elder vampire, free to walk the days under a dying sun, at the right hand of one of the most powerful men in New Roeblini City. They had to traverse two rooms of flame before climbing the heights of an overgrown arboretum some 80’ in height.  As they did so they were attacked by two sentient combinations of vine, root, leaf, and stalk.  One they slew as it descended the wall, the other they drove back mortally injured and dripping a putrid gore.  They found a wet cave opening to a pool, and breathless S’sabis was sent to investigate the dark waters.  He returned without finding a foe, but as the party swam the dark waters multiple tentacles attached to an abominable piscine came tearing through the waters.  It’s foul mucous stirred in the waters but our heroes were able to repel its attacks until S’sabis dominated the beast and it let them pass. They escaped the pool and climbed through a long slopped room of earth to a tall chamber of blowing winds, in which floated a pentagonal rod of gold with a small spherical profusion at one end.  They exited back to the dice room.

Their next cast brought them three of a kind and they were teleported to a room with three suspended platforms backed by the blackest patch of midnight.  On one of the platforms lay a slumbering cachectic cross between a panther and an octopus, a bell hanging from its neck.  The next platform a great ugly featherless chicken with a snake’s tail lay sleeping, it’s tail suspended above the last platform bearing a large chest.  Investigation of the platforms showed that they could be moved one at a time, but that moving chest would ring the bell and moving the displacer beast would drop the cockatrice’s tail on the chest.  Opposite where three cones of silence.  They moved the cockatrice then the displacer beast and finally the chest.  Expecting the chest to be their prize, Tyrian and Ulmo were surprised when it turned out to be a mimic and struck at them with great clawing hands.  It fell moments later to Tyrian’s blade but yielded up a golden triangular rod with a quarter orb at one end.  They reappeared in the dice room.

 

Three of a Kind Challenge

With Ulmo’s halfling luck they received four casts to reach all five of the same, but were unsuccessful.  The dicing table vanished replaced with a door with a half-sphere receptacle and four deep notches.  Using the riddle-rhyme of their youth and Ulmo’s knowledge of numeracy they aligned the prongs of the Spectator Key and were about to unlock the door when S’smuliss appeared.  He was temporally our of phase and alternative futures spun all about him.  He thanked them for saving him from being fooled by the Master’s of Truth and dying at the hands of Orb Worshippers, and had taken up a new mission of protecting the time stream. He warned them that they could wait to unlock this door until their own time but that it might be difficult to find a portal to accept the key.  He told them that if they opened the door now, Korlo, the boy they had saved would never have existed.  Tyrian and Ulmo weighed this council but believed that their mission to save a god and end the decay brought on by Pharthas’ death outweighed the existence of any mortal even themselves.  With their decision made, S’smuliss came more into phase and the door clicked open.

They found themselves leagues within the world, revealed to be hollow with floating, orb-like creatures with four eye stalks awakening throughout the global cavern space.  An elder spectator, named Ordus, welcomed the group and asked about the Aberration War.  He told them that his kind had come to this world during the Third of such wars and made it a Hiveworld.  He did not know who had put them to sleep but when the acts of the illithid on the surface was revealed he deduced that they had some how infiltrated and incapacitated the spectators in their home.  He rewarded the group with magical items for freeing them and S’smuliss transported them back to the future, outside the weathered ruins of the Monastery of the Masterminds, two bright sun’s in the sky.

Chapter the Fourth: Escape Through the Lowcitadel of Khavash

The brave party made ready their plans for escaping the city and returning to New Roeblini City with information about the Condraconacy's incursion into Roeblini territory. One-Eye Morgrin provided the doughty companions with the address of a ruined Godslayer Imperium villa, alleged to access the sewers and the Lowcitadel of Khavash, as well as sketches of these tunnels drawn by the eladrin explorer Yslir. The group avoided Condraconacy patrols reaching the broken manse by sunset, as they explored the invaded interior of the villa, they heard the stealthy approach of a large dragonborn patrol, led by the insidious voice of Captain Blackfang.

Ulmo found a set of doors hidden behind the rubble and the party quietly exited the star roofed hall, bracing the doors behind them. They found a twisted corridor in the same antique style of the shattered hall. A single door brought the hallway to stairs leading to dark tunnels below the villa. They explored the narrow corridors coming upon a moonbeam lit well, the guttural voices of the dragonborn echoing from above. As they waited in ambush the dragonborn soldiers were attacked by a hag residing in the pool and the two enemies clashed. The party snuck away in the melee coming to a stout wooden door, but would later return to this pool to find a large clear diamond.

The door had a great iron mask, coarsely painted in red. As they opened the door it spoke, "The key from the Goblin's Gate is three parts greed." These words made little sense until they found a portcullis barricaded gate blocking a bridge stretching to a tower disappearing into the depths. They could not force or open the mystical metal of the bars but looking at the goblin caricature door leading to this chamber they found slots for three gems. The brave band ventured back into the tunnels to find the gems necessary to open the gate. A greater urgency placed upon them after what they had overhead from the dragonborn guards at the well mouth, that more troops would be coming to search the tunnels.

The party backtracked coming upon the villa's familial crypts. In one of the funeral coffers they found a midnight opal. They explored further climbing stairs into the hill next to the razed mansion, finding an ancient temple to the Godslayer's dichotomous practices. The temple was home to a rare demonic shade whose lava-like sinews were only half of its dread arsenal, its shadow too was a fierce assailant. Only the combined mystical and martial of might Ulmo and Tyrian could put down this threat.

The temple's sacrificial altar opened into a pocket dimension caught somewhen between the Planes of Fire and Earth, now used as and Efreeti Rookery. Here they found Izael, an efreet youngling, a child with the undeveloped powers of a god. Floating in one of the miniature volcanos of the Rookery a fiery ruby lay waiting. However Izael was not so willing to relinquish his bauble and only some cajoling with treasure from Tyrian allowed the party to liberate the gem for their purposes.

Tyrian, Ulmo and their companions returned to the Goblin's Gate placing their acquired stones in the gate's receptacles, allowing them passage to the bridge spanning the void to a thin tower stretching into the depths. The tower contained a narrow stairway to an elevated platform, under which a hobgoblin mercenary and his goblin minions waited in ambush. The party engaged the humanoids in melee, only to have the hobgoblin trip a lever bringing the tower down. The collapse buried and slew Mara the Whiteshade while it destroyed the lower half of the undead paladin S'Smuliss. The few remaining goblins scurried down the hall.

The party pursued their escaping foes, catching all but one of them in the twisted tunnels of the Lowcitadel of Khavash. They finally came upon the last goblin clenched in the jaws of the black dragon named Constellation. The dragon told them of its curse, bound here as a guardian until four gems were inserted in its collar. Ulmo noted that one gem already lay clenched in the claws of the dragon, the party travelled back into the depths of the Lowcitadel to find the remainder of the gems necessary to unlock the curse collar. They found them spread through the ruins below the crippled tower as well as having to ascend to the level before the Goblin's Gate.

The gems unlocked Constellation's collar and then they used the chain to scale down to the sea caves below, granting access to the Khavash docks.

My Tomb of Horrors

We played a most heinous module call the Tomb of Horrors.  This adventure is legendary in Dungeons and Dragons gaming circles because of its incredible player character fatality rate.  Basically the adventurers delve into the crypt of a very evil living dead creature (called a lich) named Azerack, or as my four doughty and later fewer adventurers called him @$$-crack.  I played four high level explorers:

• The brilliant witch Vaeriel
• The holy priest Muril, servant of Wee Jas, goddess of Death and Magic
• The noble paladin and Heironius' Thunderous Fist, Ileis Adlund, and
• The dwarven dungeon- and wise-cracker Durgan, "I've seen this play, the dwarf dies first"

The first choice the adventurers faced were three passageways into the horrendous crypt, one was chosen after safely tripping the traps in the other two false passageways.  We discovered a poem of clues about the crypt which helped guide us through and narrowly missed jumping into a hole in space-time called a sphere of annihilation.  Vaeriel and Muril dispatched a mutant gargoyle with spells and Vaeriel wisely used arcane arts to obtain a valuable magical item for the dungeon. Durgan daringly defeated trap after trap as we explored deeper and deeper within the tom.  We came upon a creature that appeared to be Azerack, but turned out to be a facsimile, which we destroyed anyway.  Further exploration and the poem brought us down a trapdoor, into a mummy preparation room.  Here Vaeriel brilliantly coupled her and Muriel's spells to pump acid from one vat to another.  We drilled holes in the two vats with Muril's heat metal spell and then used a cylindrical wall of force as a pipe between the two.  Lastly Vaeriel used a Tenser's floating disk and the combined weight of the dwarf and paladin to act as a pump and push the acid to the other vat.  This allowed us to retrieve a piece of a key needed to get to Azerack's crypt.

From here we entered a room with mystical tapestries and a trembling floor, that spelled the undoing of brother Muril.  When he clutched a tapestry to prevent a fall, he unleashed green slime which devoured him in seconds.  We recovered a small of piece of him for later resurrection.  Saddened we travelled on finding the lich's funereal throne room, and using his crown and scepter we passed through the secret door behind the dais.  Below we found a false sarcophagus and under one of the statue guards we found a passageway to the undercrypt.  Here, after recovering some treasure of mystical and mundane value as well as some blatantly foolish trial and error, did we manage to rouse the demilich.  It husked Vaeriel's soul from her body and trapped it within the diamond in its right orbital socket.  Enraged, Sir Ileis did smite the foul undead into tiny little pieces.  We recovered the diamond with Vaeriel's soul and left behind the evils of the Tomb of Horrors.

Thus did Ileis and Durgan return to Vendare and at the Temple of Wee Jas get Muril resurrected.  They now seek a way to restore Vaeriel to body (or a clone thereof)...