Session 25: Down to Level Two

The party reaches the second level and after a detour to a room where the floor was covered with magical flames, finds themselves back on the path Talila had taken.

This write up is from Kay's notes from our March 6, 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 and Stairs

Date: May 19, 3517

7 AM
Castle Calaelen
We have an after breakfast discussion. Blaze pointed out the two doors at the front stairs we haven’t gone through yet, and read the notes we got from Talila’s group and the Castle’s former owner on what they found that we haven’t yet. Talila’s notes included a set of stairs that turned into a ramp, sliding down, and a room with a statue of a man/dragon with bat insignia in front of a pool. The bat came alive and when they smashed it, it went back to the statue. There was a handprint on a wall that when someone touched it, their wizard turned to dust. There was a white corridor that if someone walked the length they would be lost forever.

9 AM
Back at the Mouth of Doom at the base of the front stairs. It smells musty with faint rot. We know that the doors with the hand and goat head symbols over them have pit traps in front of them. We figured Artie could unlock the doors with mage hand, open them, and then Lark’s ladder would have a lip to brace against so we could walk across.

So, at the hand door, Artie unlocked it with mage hand, but would not open. The pit hadn’t been tripped yet. Suddenly at the north end of the room a voice called out, “You stand at the … Rappan Athuk... yada yada;” We’ve heard this speech every time someone stands near the north door. Blaze, the closest to the north, looked over, spotted a zombie, and yelled a warning to the others.

The zombie moved toward the group, and Blaze cast flaming sphere next to it, moved it into the zombie, doing minor damage, as the zombie actually dodged it. Elron moved back and used a sling with a magic stone for an impressive amount of damage. Beneddar cast toll the dead for even more impressive damage. The zombie went down and stayed down. The zombie looked like a relatively well-preserved man in adventurer’s garb, maybe newly dead and turned. So, we may need to worry about a necromancer on this trip.

Back at the door, Blaze levitated herself over the pit trap, and tried shoving the door open (hinges on other side). No joy. Sinis can’t transform the wood, but he can shrink the door to half-size. The door pulled away from the hinges and fell forward onto the pit, but didn’t trip the trap. There was a stone wall behind the door. Lark put his ladder across, listened to the stone, figured out that the stone was solid, not a wall, but it’s hollow underneath.  The door returned to full size, opening and falling into the pit.

Lark used his ladder to go down to the bottom of the pit while we kept the trap open with the full-sized door. Breena went down into the pit looking for a secret door, found it, but couldn’t open it. Artie went down and found that it was locked with no traps. He then figured out how to open it. Breena suggested climbing out and using mage hand to open it. Elron went down to open it with strength and succeeded. We saw a 5-ft-wide tunnel that goes straight to the west for 20 ft and then turned left/south. Elron went back and closed the door behind him, but did not latch it. 

We tried the same tactics on the goat’s head door, and found the same thing; behind the door was solid stone, but this one didn’t have a tunnel at the bottom of the pit. So off we go, through the door at the bottom of the hand door, with Breena leading.

We followed the passage for 20 ft to the west, turned south for 20 ft, turned west for about 60 ft, to the foot of stairs going up. The stairs brought us up to the area we’ve already mapped. It’s the north-south hallway that leads to the rooms with the gelatinous cube and skeletons. Elron checked the walls for secret doors on the way.

Breena went north along the hallway to the secret door that leads to the gelatinous cube room; we found the skeleton still there, but no sign of the cube there now.

We went back to the snake statues room, where Lark proceeded to decapitate one of the statues for a souvenir, and then smashed the other statue real good.  

We went back to the stair landing with the chalk on the wall saying “THE DEMON’S GULLET” and put a rope around the base of one of the statues and used it to go down the stairs carefully, one at a time. Elron went down first; when he came to the bottom of the stairs and stepped on the second to the last step, the stairs tilted 45 degrees, and turned into a ramp. He slid to the bottom, safely with the rope.

At the bottom of the stairs the air was cooler, drier, with more dust and cobwebs. The ceiling is also lower, only 10 feet high, instead of the 12-foot clearance on the first level.

The others slid down using the rope. A short distance north was a T-intersection with a side passage going east. Blaze suggested going down the east corridor first, so that nothing comes up behind us when we go north. Sinis and Breena followed her, and a portcullis slammed down after Blaze and Breena went past, with Sinis stuck on the near side. The rest of the group continued forward in the main north passage.

The portcullis was made of iron bars. Breena could almost squeeze between them, but not quite. Sinis cast a spell to change the iron to wood, one cubic ft per 10 minutes, so it could be chopped through by Lark.

While that was going on, Beneddar heard a buzzing sound coming from the north where Lark was.

Stirges. Again.

Luckily, Beneddar’s sleep spell has a 60-ft range, and that’s how far away they were. Elron moved down the hall toward the stirges.  Everyone else held their positions.

Sinis had completed his spell, moved to the T-intersection, and asked Lark to smash the wooden portcullis. Parahelia was closer and started chopping the wooden bars herself.

Beneddar ran up to the stirges; there were four sleeping at the junction of a diagonal passageway that headed northwest. Elron and Beneddar killed them before they could wake up.

Lark helped Parahelia break the wood. When Blaze went through the portcullis, she heard a click.

After some investigation, we found that whenever anyone was 20 feet away from it, the trap would unlock and would lock whenever someone moved close to it, almost as if it was taunting its victims.

Continuing down the east passageway, after a short dogleg, we found a locked door at the end. Artie used mage hand to unlock it. Listening at the door, there was no sound, or maybe a low rumble. Blaze listened and, as a connoisseur of flames, identified it as fire, maybe a large brazier. The door was not hot, but some light was seen under the door.

Blaze opened it, standing to one side. Inside was an octagonal room with doors on the east and south ends. The entire floor was solid flame, but it radiated no heat. It felt like magical flame, no fuel, no heat. Beneddar shot an arrow that landed on the floor and it caught fire, so it could burn things if they came in contact with it.

At the doorway, there was a 5-ft-wide ledge that Beneddar stepped onto, and used mage hand to try to open the far door; it was not locked but it was stuck. The south door was locked.

The floor was five feet below the lip of the door, and the flames were about two feet high.

Elron, looking past Beneddar at the edge, spotted a button on the wall. Elron asked Beneddar to move back and Elron pressed it with mage hand. The floor rumbled, there were vibrations, and a bridge extended half way across the room from our ledge. Another button was seen on the opposite wall next to the far door; mage hand pushed the button and another bridge extended from the far wall toward the center. Pushing the button again, the bridge retracted. Elron searched the south door but found no buttons.

11 AM
Elron tried to open the eastern door, succeeded, and we saw a passageway east with a T-intersection going south. We decided to continue along the north passage instead, and closed the doors after retracting the bridge.

Going down the north hallway, there was a door on the west wall. We found no traps but it was locked.

Artie worked on the lock.

11:20 AM
Finally unlocked, Lark opened the door.

The western alcove in this room was filled with a large stone statue of a man in armor riding a dragon. The man’s helmet (or possibly his head, it isn’t clear) was in the shape of a demonic-looking mountain goat with large curved horns. He carried a mace in his left hand and carried a shield with the device of a bat. There was a large, oval-shaped pool of water directly in front of the statue, apparently intended as a reflecting pool. The water in the pool was green and stagnant, covered in algae.

This looked like the room Talila had described. They’ve already looted this room.

 

Continued in Session 26 - Stone Bat and Gnolls