Session 24: Stirges and Stairs

The party finishes off the stirges and finds a stairway down.

This write up is from Kay's notes from our February 21, 2024 session. Since our group is scattered around the country, we used Discord for our voice communication and Roll20 for our virtual tabletop. Credits to Jojo for the screen shots.

Continued from: Stirges!

Date: May 18, 3517

10:40 AM
In the Mouth of Doom.

The adventurers were still fighting in the room with the stirges’ nests. Lark, Blaze, Breena and Elron were in the room with the nests. Beneddar, Sinis, Artie and Parahelia were outside, in the room with the pools, guarding our rear.

Breena shot a stirge in front of her with her crossbow, killing it. Elron cast produce flame, aimed it at a stirge across the room in the northwest corner, missed it, but hit the nest behind it, setting it on fire. Blaze moved back into the middle of the room, away from the various fires, and moved her flaming sphere into one of the stirges, killing it. Lark, feeling the heat from the burning nests, stepped back and swung his sword at a stirge in the northwest corner of the room, killing it. Breena cast dragon’s breath on herself, moved to the NW corner, and flamed another nest.

Sinis and Artie moved to the door to guard our rear.

The stirges still left alive counter-attacked; one attached to Blaze, and began draining her blood. Another stirge flew by Lark who batted it out of the air. The last stirge in the NW corner flew behind Lark while he was distracted with the other stirge, but his armor prevented it from biting him. A sleeping stirge was awakened by the fire and attached itself to Elron, who killed it. Blaze tried hitting the stirge on her with her quarterstaff, but was unable to make it let go as it drained her blood.

Elron missed his stirge with his sword but managed a self-inflicted wound on his left lower leg. Blaze finally killed the stirge on her with her quarterstaff.

Meanwhile, in the outer room, Artie was watching the pools as Parahelia and Sinis were holding their positions.

Beneddar aimed his crossbow into the nest room, hit and killed the stirge attacking Lark

Everyone in the nest room retreated into the outer room to let the nests burn; the smoke was carried away from this room by a draft toward the main door.

Blaze spent most of an hour healing Breena, Lark, Elron, Sinis and Blaze herself. Blaze also consulted her map and pointed out that there should be a mirror-image room, identical to the nest room, on the southwest side of this room. Elron searched for a secret door to it; Lark searched for a hidden door on the outside in the hallway, and noticed two kobolds in the hallway farther to the west. “Come here!” he yelled at them. They reacted to his invitation by running back toward the stair room. Turning back to the wall, Lark ascertained that it was solid rock with no passage or compartment inside.

11:40 AM
While the search continued, Blaze took the opportunity to check out the hallway to the south from the outer door. The hallway turned to the west a short distance away and then south again.

Elron, standing next to the southernmost pool in the room, noticed that there was no stirge poop next to it, unlike the others.

Blaze came back to the pool room to get others to come with her down the hallway. Lark accompanied her and checked the walls for hidden doors. He found a hollow wall, which corresponded to the rat room on Blaze’s map. Moving southward, Lark checked the western wall of the hallway and found it was at least 10 feet of solid stone.

Elron searched the stirge room and found a burned scroll case of leather with ash in it and a silver mirror. The mirror was scorched, but looked like it could be cleaned up. Beneddar also searched the nest room and found a small necklace of jade beads, also scorched. Artie found a single silver piece.

Blaze and Lark came to the end of the hallway. At the southern end the ceiling had collapsed into rubble. Lark said the ceiling was too unstable and they should stay away from it. They returned to the rest of the group.

The group started moving west down the hallway toward the stair room. Beneddar thought he saw something and wandered off on the north hallway where the 4 bandits had been, past the Y-intersection. He had forgotten the pit trap and tripped it again.  He managed to save himself and avoided falling in.

Back at the stair room, the group talked about going through the door with the hand symbol over it.  We knew there was a pit trap here, because Beneddar tripped it on our last visit. Lark assembled his ladder for crossing pits, but there was no lip that he could brace it against. After a short discussion, the decision was made to go through the wolf’s head door to the north and come around to open the hand door from the opposite side.

The wolf door had a portcullis trap but we made a hole in the side during a previous visit, and all of us could step through it.  Beneddar went first and found a leather glove on the floor next to a door (the sticky door), it was Lark’s glove that had stuck to the doorknob, apparently the sticky part wears off. Beneddar picked it up with mage hand, just in case.

Beyond the door was the intersection of three hallways, and we took the hall to the south; at the southern end was a T-intersection with a hallway to the east/west.

We turned west and found ourselves in a rectangular room with an opening to the north which led to the room where we killed the gelatinous cube.

The room to the south was 20 feet wide at the north and south ends, and 40 feet long on the east and west sides. There was a door in the southern wall and an open space on the west wall leading into another room. This room had parts of skeletons sticking out of the walls, including one arm and hand clutching a sword. The adjoining room to the west was empty. Clearly this was the room Talila and Cato told us about.

Beneddar tried mage hand on the south door and found it locked. Artie checked for traps while everyone else moved out of the room just in case. Lark smashed the hand with the sword, breaking it and the sword clattered to the floor.

Artie picked the lock and stepped back as Lark opened the door.

On the other side of the door was a passageway 35-ft long with another door at the south end. Lark went down to the south door and found it unlocked. Beneddar looked for secret doors along the walls but didn’t find any. Lark opened the door and found an octagonal room with two large snake statues made of metal on pedestals flanking stairs going down at the south end of the room.

The statue on the west side of the stairs seems to be damaged. Beneddar and Lark entered the room first, followed by Blaze and Elron. As Beneddar and Lark neared the statues, the one on the east side attacked. The snake was 12 feet long and lunged towards Lark. Beneddar cast Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, which did nothing to the clockwork construct. The snake bit Lark, severely injuring him as it injected poison.

Lark later said that he tended to be resistant to poison, but it was pretty strong stuff.

Lark “killed” the construct with a riposte.



Parahelia and Elron both cast healing wounds on Lark. Unfortunately, Blaze can’t use another healing kit on someone she’s already healed with one, before a long rest on the part of the patient.

12:30 PM
The southern end of the room had stairs going down into the darkness. The info Talila and Cato gave us said there were stairs down guarded by cobras. Blaze cast light on the ball she got in town and rolled it down the stairs to illuminate the area. The ball rolled down the stairs, bounced against a far wall and stopped on a landing. There was a passage to the east from there. Elron descended to the bottom of the stairs.

Someone had written “THE DEMON’S GULLET” in chalk on the wall.

Elron looked around the corner to the east and saw there were stairs down going north from the landing. He picked up the ball and told the group what he saw. Blaze pointed out that the info from T&C said there are stairs down that turn into a slide. The landing here is about 10-ft by 20-ft; the stairs go 30 feet to the north around the corner, and there is another hallway 50 ft below. They roped Blaze up to go down the stairs; the stairs are slippery as ice. Levitating herself, she moved down to the lower level. There’s a hallway going north with a door in the west wall ahead, and a cross hallway going east. It was noticeably colder down there, drier, dustier, and the ceiling was lower.

Meanwhile, Beneddar and Lark looked for secret doors in the hall above. Lark tapped on the floor and said there was a passage below, but the walls are solid on this level. They concluded that there was no way to get to it from the hall.

We decided to go back to the castle and take the rest of the day off and recover; Lark especially needed a long rest to recover from the poison.

3 PM
Back at Castle Calaelen.

We asked Talila and Cato for confirmation of what we found. So, the two snake statues were what they were talking about and not a nest of cobras as we had interpreted their info to mean. We need to review the rest of their information before going back. Blaze re-packed her bag with additional healer’s kits.

Continued in Session 25: Down to Level Two