SESSION 32 October 29th 216 Party head downstairs in Nightfang Spire to find dozens of eyetree carvings. Only one is magical but the party decide to destroy all of them and learn that the real eyetree was obscured magically. The group explores the level while Alex goes about destroying all of the doors. "Troll, smash!" Behind one particularly well locked door the group finds a religious tapestry of significant quality depicting Asherons flight through hell. Korvath says the tapestry appears to have religious significance for the cult of Ashardalon. The group continues their search of the building and in an empty room Swiftwind disappears into a gated pit trap. Alex attempts to catch Swiftwind and falls through as the floor tilts and the door pushes him down. The doors are not openable from below. Korvath tries to force it from above and also falls victim to the trap. The party have now seen all 3 different modes of operation. Murgen stands outside the room and trips trap with his pole arm. Herunaro prepares to barricade the door open with a wall of ice. Far below, Swiftwind falls into a pile of ash before getting swept into a living inferno. Magical barriers burn away rapidly. Alex sweeps down and the elemental quickly engulfs him as well. Alex grabs Korvath and Swiftwind and take off to get out of the room. The elemental grabs the three and goes along for the ride. So the three party members and the elder fire elemental go careening through the tunnels with their magical protections burning away as they get pounded by the merciless fire lord. Alex mentally warns Jaenelle of the party member's imminent arrival with fire elemental and to get the door open and stand back. The door to the pit is opened but Alex times his entry wrong. He gets through on the second try and above ground Swiftwind's magic crumbles leaving him badly singed. Korvath and Alex are both bruised beyond belief. Magical spells fly in all directions but no avail. The elemental resists them all. Alex finally grabs everyone within reach (including the elemental) and teleports into the ocean. The Fire elemental resists and remains behind. Jaenelle, Herunaro, and Murgen swiftly depart rather than fight the elemental alone. The fire elemental is left to wreck havoc on the tower. October 30th 216 Party spends next day or two in Dibs. A few items get sold. Jaenelle's attempt to sell the tapestry of Ashardalon's flight to a "good" church fails. She does convince a cult of fire that they would like the tapestry but the church does not have the financial resources to buy the tapestry... Despite the tapestry's workmanship, the group is hampered by the obscure and ominous meaning of the work. When Jaenelle finally moves on to the more brutal cults she is attacked by the Church of Hextor when they attempt to seize the tapestry without paying for it. Jaenelle manages to turn the table on the priests and gets away with the tapestry and the Hextorite's high priest. The party spends some time questioning the captured priest. Finding the priest both stupid and violent the group eventually decides to polymorph him into a bivalve and dump the clam-priest in harbor. Herunaro, in a fit of petty cruelty, magically crafts the clam shell so it is embossed with the holy symbol of Heironius upon it. On the way back from the harbor the group runs into a pickpocket. The thief walks off with Jaenelle's broach and no one the wiser. Fortunately for Jaenelle and the party Jaenelle is able to magically track the thief and they quickly apprehend the street kid and magically transform him into an Urchin. They place the urchin in the bucket just vacated by the priest and begin to psychicly interrogate him. The urcnin/sea-urchin turns out to know more about Dibs than the party so they spend some time getting briefed by him. The group gets a lot of information on the various factions in the city. Urchin had been forced to steal by gangs that required a "take" of several silver a day and kept the urchin's sister hostage in a brothel. Party made deal to free sister and return the boy to human form if the boy would use his gang connections to barter goods for them. The boy helps the group ditch their remaining gear and the party helps boy pay his sister's way out of the brothel. Sister is a few years older than the boy, Swiftwind is disappointed. "18? Isn't that pretty old for a prostitute." Both the boy and girl went with the group when the group returned to the tribesmen school. (The farther from Dibs, the better.) November 2nd 216 Party left the kids in the care of the school and went back to tower for some high power tactical warfare. On the top floor of the tower the group catches a group of vampires and shadows by surprise and blasts the undead to dust in the attack. After that, the group was able to clear the top level of the tower with no problem. On the next level the group found signs that the fire elemental was dismissed or sent back down the chute. The group discovered some secret rooms they had missed before and looted them. Through the process of mindless destruction the group eventually checked the entire floor for secret doors. The last room to be explored contained a large 5 foot diameter metal tube covered with a large airlock mechanism. (The tube was approximately 5.6419' in diameter for those that care.) The top of the airlock is ritualistically engraved and shows a mass of fangs and arms in a maelstrom of chaos. The group throw some exploratory fireballs before deciding to explore the tube in more depth. The group design an complex mechanism that a gaseous vampire could pass through one way but not the other. And they convince Swiftwind to anchor it on the way down. This event will go down in history as the battle with the Habitrail Vampire. The group is successful in drawing out a vampire, but the vampire has half a dozen arms and legs and seems made of several vampires blended together in a huge mass. This "swiss-army vampire" quickly cuts the ropes binding Swiftwind to the group and mentally dominate Swiftwind to come join them. Unable to lob attack spells at it due to Swiftwind's presence the party resorts to physical violence. Battle is swift and furious. Korvath flamestrikes the vampire and Swiftwind is almost engulfed, but the vampire is destroyed just in time. The vampire filter then proves the perfect tool for drawing the gaseous vampire up into the sun at the top of the metal tube. At the bottom of the tube is three feet of raw sewage. Alex fishes out a pile of coins and several destroyed items but eventually the remaining coinage is not worth the stench. Downstairs was a level filled with temple history and religious murals. Each room seems to be based on a period of Ashardalon's life. There is a nursery drawn with the pictures of baby dragons eating one another - it is filled with ghouls. There is a room based on maturity and power where there are morhg's disguised as sages. Party pretty much flames and trashes through everything. The one room of evocative beauty is the shrine to Ashardalon's death. The meditation pool and glass etchings are chillingly evocative. When lights are placed in the right place the dragon etchings reflect off the pool and appear to be flying around the ceiling. The mausoleum itself is filled with the images of fiery dragon images darting about the ceiling. The great glass sculpture (a thousand pounds of etched glass) has tiny hidden dragon etchings as well as a great dragon that gets reflected onto the image of followers killing themselves. Basically the imagery is like a spectral dragon celebrating in the death of its followers. The final room had war in heaven, dying gods, war, and destruction on earth. Even the least educated members of the group see references to the war. Also in a room partially buried behind a garbage heap there are childlike sketches of the party defeating undead. Signs indicate that there were previous art works that have been destroyed. People decide Gulthias must be a crappy artist. The group does find a magical dagger in the wreckage. Apparently being used a palate knife. (Only detected because of the crystal in its hilt. Knife did not appear remarkable otherwise, more like a gaudy paper opener.) November 3rd 216 Party spends some time down while items are identified. The gaudy dagger turns out to be ghost touch. Korvath conducts some divination spells to learn more about the key to Gulthias' lair. November 4th 216 The party spend some time searching outside the keep. They are still puzzling over prophecy. Alex believes that the prophecy pertains to the moon and that the mooncalf had part of the key. The group looks for the remains of the Mooncalf but only find a scrap of wing. Searching in the area it fell the group find a nest of field mice. Alex digs them out and Herunaro polymorphs one into a halfman. They catch the naked halfman and Jaenelle beguiles him and reads his memories. The area was terrorized by dire rats. There was a famine, a flood, and the fieldmouse was having an affair. The party decide to take fieldmouse along for amusement. (One scenario - Gulthias, "let me call the children of the night... A halfman what type of joke is this? You there, go away... Why can't I affect you with my magic?" (Animals are immune to the mind control powers of a vampire.)) Party burrows straight through the tower to the habitrail. There has been some activity in the area. Group decides to go down stairs. Party quickly descends to the level of the endless urns. While proceeding Alex goes on a binge of destruction shattering urn after urn. The noise draws some nearby mohgr and battle is joined. During the fight Swiftwind and Korvath are paralyzed as the party is engaged on two fronts. But the party somehow manages the two front battle with only a couple people standing. Herunaro has to engage in melee several times since there are so few fighters standing. The party systematically continue destroying any eye-trees and doors that they find. Finally they come to a set of huge 2 foot thick door the Alex can not easily destroy. Alex stubbornly bashes away for the several minutes it takes to get through. The hole reveals a huge inferno on the other side. A battle rages between the party and the fire elemental but the elemental proves no match for Korvath's magical wardings and the party is able to destroy him from a safe distance. The party continue exploring and find not one but two chutes leading hundreds of feet beneath the earth. Unwilling to tackles an unknown area without more information Herunaro conjures several celestial servants and orders them to explore the chutes and report back a minute later. Of the three archons only one returned and it told only of a small room with double doors. One of the other Archons had teleported to the other side but connection was lost immediately afterwards. The party heads home to rest for a night and to convert some treasure into money. During the night Alex is plagued with a powerful vision of a ruin to the north-east of the continent. In his dreams he sees an ancient city admist great devastation and hears a telepathic voice call "come, I awaken!." SESSION END evening of November 4th 216B NEXT TIME : The end of the psionic warrior? EXPERIENCE TOTALS (Session 32) ----------------- Korvath Alex Herunaro Swiftwind Jaenelle Murgen 62321 66209 63488 65445 65145 30323