Session 43: Demons and Books
The adventurers finish their fight against minions of pestilence and then return to Zelcor’s Ferry.
This write up is from Kay's notes from our November 13, 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 Kay for the screen shot.
Continued from: The Fountain of Pestilence
Date: May 25, 3517
Location: Mouth of Doom, Level 3
2 PM
The group was strung out in three separate rooms and
a connecting
hallway. Elron, Artie and Parahelia were in a room with bookcases
and a cabinet,
apparently where scribes copied texts; Elron was stuffing books
and scrolls
into his bag. Blaze and Breena were moving back toward the hallway
after
finding a Fountain of Pestilence to the east out of which were
emerging giant
eggs breaking open into demons; Sinis was in the hallway.
Blaze yelled out a warning, “Run for your lives – there are demons!” Sinis objected, opting to face them and fight, not having seen them yet.
Elron, Sinis and Breena started running for the
hallway and Artie
opted to hide. Three of the four demons teleported. One demon
appeared in front
of Parahelia. It was
rather small,
hobbit-sized, and looking diseased. Parahelia attacked with her
longsword and
cast spiritual weapon; both damaged it. A second demon
teleported in
front of Blaze and bit her, hurting her but fortunately not
causing infection.
Blaze cast a chaos bolt of thunder but missed. Someone
heard splashing
in the distance, it sounded like more were coming.
The fourth demon teleported to the base of the stairs we came down. Sinis cast blur on himself. The demon at the stairs cast gust of wind, 60-ft-long, 10-ft-wide at Elron, pinning him against the wall. Breena and Rocky got out of the way and cast thunderwave on demons 2 and 3, killing one and wounding the other. Artie cast fire bolt on the demon Breena wounded. Parahelia struck the same one with her longsword, killing it, and moved south toward the stairs. Blaze cast another chaos bolt on the demon at the stairs, but missed.
Two zombies climbed out of the toxic pool in the scribe’s room.
Elron moved out of the wind effect, and used
his sling twice
to kill the demon, looking smug. Breena ran into the room with the
stairs. Artie
moved toward the group after closing the door to the scribes’
room. Parahelia stood
near the hall and heard staggering feet at the door.
Blaze moved to the stairs and told people, “Let’s go. I can’t heal
while we’re
fighting. Get back to the castle with the books while we can.”
A giant rat approached out of the toxic stream on the northeast side of the room – the same stream we found zombies drinking out of, the last time we were here. There appeared to be more rats behind it.
Elron moved toward the stairs and stopped to
loot the dead
demon’s bodies. They had nothing on them, but their eyes looked
like tigers-eye
gemstones. Elron the Greedy used his dagger to cut them out while
the rest of
us moved toward the stairs.
Breena was waited for Artie to get back from the scribes’ room and
stood at the
door. Artie heard lots of feet coming and closed the door, telling
us that
there was something on the other side.
Parahelia moved toward the stairs. Blaze moved up the stairs to
guard our
forward progress.
Sinis heard a splashing from the liquid in the
tunnel. Artie
heard zombies pounding on the door and hid.
Elron got one eye out; it was a tiger eye and worth quite a bit.
While Breena and Artie were climbing up to Blaze, Parahelia stood
at the north
door listening to the zombies that were pounding on the door.
Elron got another eye.
Artie caught up to Blaze.
Parahelia held her position, and the zombies stopped pounding at the door; now we heard nothing. As Elron was working on another eye, two more demons arrived.
Giant rats began pouring into the room from the northeast corner’s toxic pool. Sinis asked Parahelia to move and she retreated. Breena cast mage armor on herself. Artie, standing on the stairs, cast fire bolt over Elron’s head and hit and killed the lead rat.
Parahelia moved to the stairs, Blessed herself, Elron, and Breena and moved her spiritual hammer to the rats, 20 of them by current count. Blaze moved up the stairs to shoot over the heads of the group. Elron shot a sling stone at a giant rat, killing it, and his second stone on the next rat killed that one, too.
The fifth demon opened the door for the zombies. Elron, Sinis, Breena and Rocky, and Artie went up the stairs.
The first zombie moved into the room through the north door. Parahelia moved up the stairs and hit the zombie with spiritual hammer, it was half knocked down, and the spiritual hammer’s time expired. Blaze ran up the stairs, with Elron providing the rear guard.
The group encountered no opposition on their way up the stairs, out of the Mouth of Doom and on to Castle Calaelen.
5:20 PM
Back at the castle. Sinis cast detect magic on everything.
We have 3 blue
scrolls, one red scroll, 4 tigers-eyes (500gp each), ten books,
and an empty
potion bottle.
The blue scrolls: cleric magic – cure wounds
Red scroll: lesser restoration. Blaze takes it to replace the one she used last time.
Empty potion bottle – worth about 2 cp.
Books:
- Mystical Diagnostics (Blaze begins reading it)
- Introversions of Toxins (Blaze will read next)
- Orminiod’s Essays on Medicine (Artie begins reading it)
- Kariloodian’s Second Treatise on Anatomy
- Modr’s Incomprehensilium
- Yraric’s Surgical Guidelines
- Jamalli’s Robusto (Elron began reading and detected contact poison on its pages)
- Thryn’s Book of Medicines
- Kormon’s Catalogue of Internal Organs
- Redrallion’s Investigations into Natural Philosophy (Sinis is reading)
We elected not to dedicate down time to study the books. We estimated that it would take about two weeks to read through a single book in the evenings.
May 26,
3517,
Saturday, 6AM
We headed into town to sell our loot. We stored the books in
our booby-trapped
library, and all agreed not to mention it to anyone in town. We
know that the
necromancer wants to buy any books or healing scrolls we come
across, but we’re
finding them too useful to ourselves.
9 AM
In Zelcor’s Ferry, Elron sold the tigers-eye gemstones for
2,000 gp. Each
of us got 333 gp, 3 sp, 3 cp. Blaze and Breena converted some of
their gold pieces
to gemstones. Blaze got 4 flawed diamonds, and Breena picked up a
few 250 gp
rubies.
10 AM
Blaze, Breena, and Artie spent an hour at the inn trying to pick
up rumors, to
no avail. Elron bought half-plate armor.
Thinking back to the Fountain of Pestilence, it seemed to be a former temple, desecrated. The statue had its left hand broken off, just like the zombie clerics. It may have been a gateway to disease leaking through from another dimension. Blaze recalled her Discovery concerning Orcus; that he has 3 temples in the Rappan Athuk dungeon and that all 3 temples have to be destroyed for anyone to have a chance to defeat him. Not all the experience or knowledge to do that will be found in the dungeon proper. So that means that there may be something to be found in the Mouth of Doom or elsewhere.
We recalled that there was a left handprint carved in stone on the wall next to the bookcase, like the one Lark used to teleport to another room.
Continued in Session 44 - Teleport Rooms
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