Session 20: Goodbye Gelver, Hello Gelatinous Cube
This is from Kay's notes from our December 27, 2023 session. Since our group is scattered around the country, we used Discord for our voice communication and Roll20 for our virtual tabletop.
Continued
from: Fighting
Bandits, Both Human & Orc
Date: May 15, 3517
10:40 AM
We were in the dungeon, after a fight with Tall Jack Rat’s
bandits. We won. Most
of the party was standing at the door in the east wall of the
hidden room.
Gelver now had a light source, and directions to the main stairs, and took the opportunity to leave the dungeon. Elron escorted Gelver to the main stairs to be safe and then rejoined the group and started looting bodies. Breena stayed at the T-intersection to guard our rear.
Blaze, Lark, Beneddar, and Parahelia were at the east door, set to open it. Blaze opened the door inward, and discovered it led to a hallway that went east and then turned north. Following the hallway, it turned northwest at an angle, then west, southwest, west, northwest, south – basically it zigzags with no apparent doors or intersections generally in the western direction. Finally, after turning south, the group came to a T-intersection to the east with a hallway ending in a wall; we checked for a door, and not finding one, continued along the hall to the south. Elron thought there was a secret door where we had checked. He found it, and called us back.
Blaze continued down the hallway to the south, just to check that nothing was coming toward us, and found a side passage with a 10-ft square alcove, and a dead end further south; continuing south in the hall there’s another T-intersection off to the east where she saw stairs going down about 10 feet to a narrow passage continuing on to the east.
Beneddar and Lark checked the walls in the side
hallway for
other doors. Lark said that the back wall of the 10-foot square
alcove sounded
hollow, but he could not find a secret door.
Back at the first T-intersection, Artie started to work on getting
the secret
door open.
While Artie worked on the door, Blaze used the time to heal Breena.
11:40 AM
Artie unlocked the door and stepped back, letting someone else
open the door.
Blaze opened the door towards us, and we found a passageway
between two rooms;
one to the north and one to the south. Beneddar looked to the
south and saw a
skeleton floating in the air at the far end of the room, with
debris around it.
It wasn’t moving. The southern room was empty and unusually clean,
like it’s
been swept. Beneddar also noticed there was a door behind the
skeleton in a
hallway going south.
Lark started to investigate the northern room.
There were
two hallways exiting the room, one on the north wall going east,
and one at the
southern wall going down an angled hallway to the southeast; Lark
took that one
and found a pair of boots and one metal gauntlet in front of a
door at a
Y-intersection; Lark checked that the boots were too small for his
feet. Lark
touched the door to see if it was locked, and his hand stuck to
the door.
Luckily, he was wearing leather gloves and pulled his hand out of
it; the glove
stuck to the door. Lark smacked the door with his sword which also
stuck to the
door. The rest of the group caught up to him.
Beneddar used mage hand to open the sticky door; it was
unlocked and
opened easily.
Blaze remembered something about a sticky door from her research on the Mouth of Doom.
Beneddar started timing the sword for when it
falls from the
door; 15 minutes go by, no joy. Breena and Artie went to the west
hallway while
they were waiting.
Looking into the room, we could see a chest on the north side with
a skeletal
hand lying on the floor near the door
Blaze tried to levitate the chest but it didn’t move; she put her
winter gear
gloves on, just in case. Artie, standing away from the doorway,
used mage
hand to pick the lock on the chest. No one was going to
enter the room.
Artie unlocked the chest and opened it; using mage hand to
feel around,
he felt something like coins; he started pulling them out and put
them in the
boots we found at the door.
It took 20 minutes, with mage hand, to
empty the
chest with the boots. The final tally was 500 gp and 1 sp.
Artie felt something else in the chest, that didn’t move. Elron
had a small
mirror that he gave to Beneddar, who used mage hand to
position the
mirror over the chest to look into it. At the bottom of the chest
were two
bolts that connected the chest to the floor.
Lark’s sword was still stuck to the door.
12:30 PM
Blaze
went south from the sticky room and found a hallway to the east
with a door at
the end. The door was unlocked and she opened and went through.
Suddenly a
portcullis came down in front of her, narrowly missing her. It
had a large hole
that looked familiar. She was back to the main stairs room, and
she had just come
out of the wolfs-head door.
Blaze stepped through the gap in the bars
and walked
across the floor north of the stairs. Suddenly a mouth appeared in
the stone
above the northern door which said, “You stand at the threshold of
the Rappan
Athuk, the Dungeon of Graves. Turn back, trespassers, for you will
find nothing
but your death in these dark halls.”
Lark, feeling the bond between himself and the magic sword,
realized that he
could summon the sword to his hand and did so. On the other hand,
his glove was
still stuck to the door.
Beneddar, who had followed Blaze out to the main stairs room,
turned southwest
to the next alcove. As he approached the door with the hand over
it, he activated
a pit trap in front of the door. He quickly cast feather fall and drifted to the floor of the pit. At the
bottom, he
found a secret door on the west wall of the pit, 10 feet down from
the level of
the main floor. Beneddar pulled himself out of the pit. We all
went back to the
door that would put us south of the floating skeleton in the other
room.
Beneddar approached the skeleton from the north
and caught
light shimmering just in front of it, and realized that it was
embedded in a
gelatinous cube. It was so transparent we didn’t see it, until he
pointed it
out and it started to move towards him.
Elron had gone around to the back of the skeleton through the
other door and
found himself behind the cube moving away from him.
He cast produce
flame
and ducked back behind the door and closed it as the flame sizzled
on the cube
and went out.
The gelatinous cube was 10 x 10 x 10-ft and so transparent it was
difficult to
see. Blaze stepped forward from the north, cast witch bolt
and hit the
cube, doing damage, barely missing Parahelia who was standing in
front of her
to one side. Sinis used which bolt on the cube, too,
missing Parahelia
from the other side, and hit it, doing very little damage. Artie
moved up and
cast fire bolt, but missed.
Parahelia very wisely started moving back, away from between two sustained lightning bolts and away from the cube which was moving forward towards the party. Beneddar moved back and used Toll the Dead for a surprising amount of damage.
The cube moved forward towards Artie and a
pseudopod lashed
out at him, hitting him, doing a large amount of acid damage; he
was seriously
hurt.
Elron came through the door from behind it and cast ensnaring
strike and
dread ambusher, causing significant damage to the cube.
Blaze continued
her sustained witch bolt for more damage; Lark came
forward with his
sword and swung twice and killed the cube. After the cube died,
the embedded skeleton
began moving to attack Lark. Lark riposted and shattered the
skeleton,
scattering the bones all over the room.
Inside the cube, we found a suit of mail, a spearhead, 5 arrows,
40 gp and a
diamond.
Blaze started healing Artie from the acid damage, and Parahelia added her healing, bringing him back up to almost normal.
We went back to the bandits’ hideout and spent
time
gathering up the loot and searching the bandits’ bodies and room.
In the room,
we found that one of the barrels used to hold up the tabletop was
filled with
loot.
In all, it came to over 800 pounds of loot.
Blaze pointed out that if we left the bodies here, the next time
we come in here,
we may end up fighting scavengers that have been attracted to
them. The
scavengers around here so far have been giant ants, giant rats,
giant
centipedes, and giant leeches. She suggested we put the bodies in
one of the
pits that has re-set itself. That way, if scavengers follow the
scent trail,
they’ll fall into the pit which will then re-set. Beneddar and
Elron think it’s
a great idea, so we do.
Blaze can levitate an object up to 500 lbs., so we dumped most of
the loot in a
chest and tied a rope around it, to carry it out of the dungeon
like a balloon.
Once outside, we redistributed the weight.
On the way out, Breena summoned Rocky again and sent him out of the dungeon first to see if it’s all clear, then we made our way back to the castle where we sorted the loot before heading into town to sell and buy. Sinis pointed out that the 100 gp diamond can be cut into two 50 gp diamonds to be used as spell components, and there’s a jeweler in town that can do that.
2:00 PM
Back at the castle, sorting loot and counting coins. Breena called
dibs on the
crossbow bolts. Elron assured her that he’s been holding them back
for our
armory.
Lark begins making a collapsible bridge for going over pits.
Blaze went back through the research to find what she remembered about a sticky room; it was information that Talila and Cato gave us: “Entering from the Mouth of Doom, they followed the left wall; there were 6 doors. Stay away from door with hand over it; they went through door… Rappan Athuk… go through sticky door… in South found rooms with bones and skeletons sticking out of wall… stairway going down defended by cobras, downstairs turned into a ramp, they slid down it; at bottom went to room with statue of man/dragon with pool, searched the pool with sword and bat insignia on statue, turned into bat, pieces went back to statue… killed gnolls with gold, potions, and weapons.
Another stair down, 2 doors: 1) healing, 2) keep out (check, true); to right, found rooms and looted, found handprint on wall, touched it and the wizard in their party disintegrated to dust; they came back out and got ambushed by Captain Felrara/deputies.”
This is the area we are going through now, and it’s invaluable to know what’s up ahead!
Continued in Session 21: Gnolls Attack!
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