Session 38: Giant Ants and a Trapped Treasure Chest

 

The adventurers finish fighting the giant ants and find a room with a sleeping trap before looping back to the magical flame room that they encountered earlier.

This write up is from Kay's notes from our September 4, 2024 session. Since our group is scattered around the country, we used Discord for our voice communication and Roll20 for our virtual tabletop. Thanks to JoJo for the screen shot.

Continued from: Skeletons & Ants

Date: May 23, 3517

Location: Mouth of Doom, Level 2

3:10 PM
We were midway down a north-south oriented hallway; at the north end, the hallway turned to the west, and at the south end, it turned to the east. There were three giant rats to the north of our position, and two live giant ants and one dead giant ant at the south end of the hallway where it turns east.

Breena cast frostbite on the closest live giant ant, covering it with frost.

Sinis cast acid splash on a giant rat and killed it. The third giant ant grabbed the dead ant and hauled it away down the southern hallway to the east, out of sight. Elron used two magic stones in his sling on a giant rat and killed it. Parahelia used her longsword on the remaining rat and killed it, and hit the closest live giant ant for minor damage with her spiritual hammer. Blaze moved her flaming sphere into the same ant for more fire damage.

Lark held his position at the northern side, covering our rear. Breena moved toward the south. Sinis moved south to the closest giant ant and cast acid splash for more minor damage. Artie moved south toward the same ant and hit it with fire bolt. The ants started retreating east along the southern hallway as our group followed.

Elron put two more stones in his sling and prepared to fling them. Blaze moved her flaming sphere into the closest ant, scorching it, then moved down to the hallway to get a better line of sight on it. Sinis came running and cast acid splash on the same ant, but hit the wall instead of the ant. Artie was waiting for a target as he moved to the south.

Blaze had positioned the flaming sphere to the back of the closest giant ant to catch both ants, but now the closest ant decided to get away from it by going back west into our group, and grabbed Sinis in its mandibles, biting him. Artie cast fire bolt on it, but missed.

Elron moved south to the corner and cast produce flame at the ant’s leg. Blaze moved the flaming sphere into its back.

The ant slumped down and released Sinis.

Lark moved down to the southern end of the hallway. Sinis jumped back away from the now dead ant. Elron stood ready with his sling, waiting for another target.

Parahelia moved closer to the last live ant that had moved to the east end of the hallway and around the corner to the south, and moved her spiritual hammer to the south of the ant. 

Blaze moved the flaming sphere to the east end of the eastern hallway where it turned south, and hit the last live ant with it. Breena moved forward as well.

Elron, Parahelia, Breena, and Artie moved forward to the east end of the hall where it turned south. The last giant ant moved toward us into the flaming sphere for more damage. Elron moved toward it, hit it with his sling with his first shot, but missed with his second. Parahelia moved her spiritual hammer behind it and moved past it; hit it with the hammer.

Blaze hit it with her flaming sphere again and it died.

Finally! These things are tough.

We all passed by the charbroiled corpse and continued on to the southern end of the hall, then turned west into another east-west corridor. A short distance later, we found a T-intersection to the south and another giant ant, dead, at its entrance. This is where the other ant had stashed it. There was a door on the west wall further down; Lark headed for it and called Artie to come unlock it. While Artie was working on the door, Blaze was working on healing Sinis, and Lark was continuing down the hallway to the southern end, where he found a square hole in the ceiling.

Artie was able to unlock the door quickly, and Lark came back to open it; on the other side was a small hallway like a foyer or vestibule with a door at the west end. Lark checked it out; it was quiet and not locked, so he opened it. Beyond was a large room with a 10-ft by 10-ft carpet in the middle of the floor, and candles in wall sconces on all of the walls. Lark stepped into the room and the candles all ignited on their own, illuminating the room.

Breena and Blaze stepped into the room, and Lark walked over to the west side of the room.

3:40 PM
Elron rolled up the carpet and found that there was a trap door under it.

Blaze went back into the foyer to wait while they checked for traps. Sinis and Artie were out in the main hallway guarding our rear, so Lark came out to get Artie to check out the trap door for, well, traps.

Artie said it’s not trapped or locked. Blaze and Artie waited in the foyer while Elron opened it on its hinged side, so anything coming out would go in the opposite direction. He saw a compartment, maybe a room, beneath. Breena suddenly fell asleep; Parahelia and Elron yawned, feeling a wave of sleepiness pass over them.

Elron looked down into a 10 x 10 ft room and saw a treasure chest, about 2 ft. x 1.5 ft. x 1 ft. but no ladder. Blaze tried casting dispel magic on the area, but nothing happened.

Elron moved Breena and the carpet out to the foyer, but she didn’t wake up.

Lark came into the room but seemed to be immune to the sleep spell. We put Blaze’s quarterstaff in the doorframe, tied a rope to it, then Lark and Elron lowered it to the bottom of the room beneath. Elron climbed down and attached the rope to the chest, then looked around the room. He noticed a barely visible cabinet against a wall in the room, small, and the color matched the stonework. Lark started pulling the chest up, but Elron yelled, no; he didn’t want to get stuck down there without means to climb out.

Elron checked for traps on the cabinet. Finding none, he opened it and found that inside was a small velvet cushion with a pearl sitting on it. Elron put the pearl in a small bag, without touching it. Then he put the cushion and pearl into his pack. Not finding anything else, he climbed back up. Lark stepped back, still angry about being yelled at, so Elron pulled it up himself.

It had been more than 10 minutes and Breena was still asleep, so Blaze used dispel magic on her, and she woke up. Artie checked the chest for traps. Everyone felt woozy and we noticed that the candles were dimming. Lark opened the door to the hallway and the (relatively) fresh air cleared heads. Lark yelled at people to get out. Elron and Artie moved the chest out to the main hallway. It was not locked.

Elron opened it from the hinged side in the hall. It’s full of money in various coins. Total haul: 1,000 cp, 207 sp, 201 gp, and one spinel about 10 gp in value. (Everyone would be getting about 40 gp each, but we also have other loot to include later).  

Lark went back down to the end of the corridor to the south and studied the square hole in the ceiling. His dwarven abilities told him it goes up 50 ft. and then there’s a passage going east, sideways; it goes up to about 10 ft below the first level. Lark looked for traps but did not find any.

Blaze, the mapmaker, recalled that, on the first level, there is a 10-foot-square pit near the room where we found Gelver, and at the bottom of the pit there was a hole on the west side. She checked her maps and determined that the hole should connect up with this tunnel. She speculated that we could use that as an alternative way to access this level; we’d need a rope ladder though.

Lark went back up to the north end of the hall at the T-intersection and turned west following the hallway. At the west end was a door, where Lark heard a rumble like a hiss. It’s a steel-reinforced door. Lark called for Artie; it’s shut, but not locked.

Lark opened the door; it was the flame floor room we found before, near the entrance to the Demon’s Gullet. It’s an octagonal room with short walls on the north, south, east, and west sides that have 5-ft by 10-ft stone platforms at the doorsills. There are doors on the east, west, and south sides at the platforms. The floor is 5 feet lower than the door level; there are two-foot-high flames on the floor, and the flames are 3 feet lower than the door, but no heat seems to be coming off the flames. Lark threw a wad of paper onto the floor and it caught fire.

Blaze stepped through the door onto the stone platform and pressed a button on the wall; a bridge extended to the center of the room. Artie went to the end of the bridge, and discovered his mage hand won’t reach to the button on the far side wall; so he took Blaze’s quarterstaff with the mage hand and pushed the button on the other side with the staff, extending the other bridge to connect with the near one. Lark and Artie walked across the bridge to the other side and Artie opened the western door. Artie went back to the center of the bridge and cast mage hand and unlocked the door on the south wall; he succeeded on his second try.

We levitated Lark and used mage hand to push him to the south door and platform. He opened it and we could see through the door, there’s a 5-foot-wide corridor to the south.   

Continued in Session 39: Sarcophagi