Session 0025: Can't Shake It

The Heretic continue to search the chamber, paying extra attention to the Fresco along the room's northwall. Lilly remained in her rat wildshape and sniffed about the room first before searching the fresco. The northern wall of the chamber was entirely consumed by the massive stone fresco, an astonishing masterpiece of ancient craftsmanship. The fresco depicted a towering, rugged mountain, its jagged peaks rising toward an imagined sky beyond the chamber’s ceiling. Every crag and crevice was rendered with precision, the artist capturing the raw majesty of nature's chaos frozen in stone.   The mountain's face was hollowed out, revealing an intricate network of caverns that delved into its depths. Within these carved tunnels, tiny figures of dwarves had been sculpted, their postures and tools frozen mid-action. Some dwarves mined with pickaxes, their beards flowing like stone rivers, while others worked at anvils or hauled carts filled with ore. The attention to detail was exquisite—tiny hammers, chisels, and even veins of ore were visible if one looked closely. The figures seemed alive, as if they might continue their labor at any moment.   Behind the mountain, radiant rays of sunlight fanned out, carved in sharp relief to create a sense of brilliance and motion. The rays extended outward to the fresco’s edges, their grooves catching the dim light of the chamber and making them appear to shimmer faintly. The interplay of light and shadow lent the entire scene an ethereal quality, as though the sun itself blessed the dwarves’ industrious efforts.   At the mountain’s base, the fresco transitioned into a lush valley, the stone etched with trees, rivers, and patches of farmland that seemed impossibly small but brimming with life. Even the leaves on the trees and the ripples in the water were detailed, creating the illusion of movement within the static image. Tiny houses clustered in the valley, their chimneys curling faint wisps of smoke carved in subtle, swirling lines.   The craftsmanship was not limited to the wall alone. The fresco extended seamlessly into the floor, where the large, recessed stone tub sat beneath it, its edges adorned with carvings of winding vines and blooming flowers. These natural motifs seemed to grow upward into the mountain itself, uniting the fresco with the chamber’s architecture. The tub’s basin was smooth and polished, but faint lines etched along its surface formed symbols of ancient, forgotten script—runes that seemed to hum faintly with a magic that had long since gone dormant.   After a few minutes of searching, Lilly is able to discern that there is some sort of hairline seam that follows the edges of a chiseled Dwarf seen at the bottom of the mountain in the fresco. She squeaks in delight, urging Dorian to notice her discovery. He looks at what she's found, and manages to pluck the Dwarf out of the scene. As he does, he notices that not only does the Dwarf figure pop out, but a bottom part below it also is part of this piece -- it appears like a key.   Pocketing the key, Dorian leaves the tub basin, Lilly-rat hopping onto his shoulder as he does. Lev follows them towards the door. They turn to find out what Cathlynn is doing. Instead of the "normal" Cathlynn, they see Cathlynn quickly transforming into a tree before their eyes. See Session 0025: Cathlynn's Journey for more detail.   Everyone with the exception of Cathlynn leaves the chamber to further explore the maze. Following the hallways to the south, Lilly-rat scouts ahead. She finds a closed door with the distant din of conversation and dining coming from within; a hallway to its south reveals a large polygonal chamber with many tall columns , whose unseen residents seem to speak to one another in some unknown language. Lilly feels that this language is Ogre in nature, but not sure, and the scene makes her very nervous. Lilly-rat runs squeaking from this chamber and attempts to hide underneath Dorian's hair, making an obvious show that she is afraid of the southern chamber. Taking her hint, Lev and Dorian decide to go down the western end of the long hallway that led them to this area before going throug the door with the noise coming from behind it. Lilly-rat explores the chamber found at its end, and sees five very talls columns that are made of blackened bones of various parts, shapes, sizes and from different species. The tops of the columns disappear into the darkness to she is unable to discern exactly how high they go. Two alcoves shoulder the chamber, one to the north and one to the east. In each alcove, two very strange creatures seem to be at rest. These creatures seems to have the lower body half that resembles a jellyfish and they seem to be floating in water just the same as a jellyfish, even though they are clearly in mid-air. The top half of their bodies are capped with a large brain with a parrot's beak attached to its frontal cortex area. The party decides to retreat and instead go back to the door they heard conversation coming from and try their luck there. Lilly-rat wild shapes back into her Halfling form as they approach said door, and The Heretic enter the room, finding the door unlocked.   Within, the party finds that the only item within the chamber is an armor / weapon stand. While there is no armor, there is a longsword without a scabbard sitting against the stand. The crew quickly realizes that the sounds of conversation are coming from 4 different narrow airshafts built into the ceiling. Dorian believes that these sounds are likely coming from The Portal pub above, since the pub sits above this dungeon complex. There is a small alcove in the south-eastern part of the room where Lev sees two spy holes that look out into a corrider lined with some sort of bas-relief statues. The spy holes are part of the inside of a secret door that can be easily seen from this side of the door.   Before deciding to leave through the secret door, the party decides that Dorian should have the longsword on the stand. Dorian picks up the longsword and places it on a back strap. However, three seconds later, the longsword disappears from his back and reappears in his right hand. Dorian experiments for a few minutes, trying to set the longsword back onto the stand or down onto the ground, but the longsword always returns to his hand. The Heretic feel that the longsword must be cursed in some way. Resignedly, Dorian continues on with the longsword in hand, as it seems he has no other choice.   From here, the group leaves through the southeastern secret door. The emerge into a hallway that twelve 9-foot high, 4-foot wide, 3-inch deep door shaped recesses containg a bas=releif carving of a demon. In the center of the hall, a Humanoid skeleton lies on the floor , one of its thin arms pointing toward a bas-relief on the south wall. Dorian senses that the skeleton is pointing at the statue for a purpose, and thus examines the statue it's pointing towards for clues of a secret door or trigger of some sort. A few short minutes later, Dorian finds what he's looking for: a secret door behind one of the demon bas-reliefs. Lilly opens the door and begins to walk in. A few short feet in, the corrider gives way to a rough hewn stonepassage way that meanders southward. The party follows this tunnel for a short while, where it ends at a rectangular room which has a floor that seems to have settled or shifted in some way that leaves the westernmost end of the room about 5 feet lower the easternmost end. The room is very dark and they hear a distant sound of water dripping. They decide to retrace their steps and back out of this area, sensing danger larger than they can handle at this moment.   The party then explores the eastern end of the hallway of demonic bas-reliefs, following it far enough to realize that it connects to the area they were lowered down into from the pub. After this, they decide to retrace their steps back through the secret door in the aforementioned hallway, and take the long hallway down to the western end where the Grell inhabit. Taking a deep breath, Lev enters the room first, followed by the rest of the party, to confront the Grell head on. After 3 rounds of fighting, the party dispatches the Grell relatively easy, with a close call with Dorian. At one point, one Grell had paralyzed Dorian with one of its tentacles, making Dorian an easy target for the two Grell who decided to gang up on him to take him down. Luckily, between Lev's healing aid and Dorian's saving throw that ended the paralysis, he was able to survive the fight. While nothing of value was found within this chamber, Lilly made short shrift in harvesting body parts from the fallen Grell (two tentacles and 2 vials of poison). The party took a short rest here before proceeding back to the room with the three statues of Lankhmarian Lords.     Once they arrived in this room, The Heretic took the northernmost passageway out, following the corridor westewards until they reached a door. Dorian and Lilly both listened at the door and heard what sounded like several different convesations, all of a mundance and casual nature. Take a bold chance, Dorian opened the door and stepped through, finding that he was entering a throne dias from its eastern side. The dias overlooked a room where 9 vampires they encountered in the room of Lankhmarian Lords many hours before. One vampire was sitting on the throne; he looked surprised to see them, but quickly regained his composure, welcoming everyone in for a bit of food, wine, and rest.     Lilly cocks her head in confusion as she looks around the room, seeing the other vampires feasting upon pork, breads, and wine. Vampires don't eat food, do they? she thought to herself. Realizing the ruse, Lilly goes up to the vampire at the throne,kicks him in the shins, and pulls her dagger out, aiming it at the "vampire's" testicles. "You lied! You're not vampires! Vampires don't eat!". The "vampire" stammers through a few weak explanations, then knowing they've been figured out, shrugs his shoulders and says "you got us. We're not vampires, we're merely actors that get into character through what's called "method acting". We come down here to get into character. Our apologies, we were just trying to stay in character. Please do have some food and wine". The Heretic calm down and take the "vampires" up on their offer. After dining for awhile, the "vampires" invite the party to stay the night to rest and recuperate, assuring them that they've paid for their free passage and no harm will come to them. Dorian asks the "head vampire" what direction they might take when they depart. He shows the party that the northernmost door to this chamber leads out into a hall, and the the other doors are mere dormitories for the actors, and nothing lies of interest within those doors. He warns that the the last person who left through that door, perhaps 9 months ago, turn right down the hall, and hasn't been seen since. The Party notes his words and settles in for the evening, gaining a long, unaccosted rest.   The next day, presumably morning but since they're underground it is uncertain, The Heretic awaken to an empty room. The "vampires" might be rehearsing elsewhere. Leaving through the door suggested by the "head vampire" the party encounters an extremely long hall that has statues of 38 warrior-type humans at regular intervals. There are two rows of 19 statues, and the statues are facing one another, forming what reminds Dorian of a "guantlet". The crew makes a deliberate effort to avoid walking between these statues, for fear of activating something or animating the statues. The party decides to turn left , following the hall to a room with six columns. There is a passageway leading out of the room on its northeast corner and another in the southwestern corner. They decide to look into the northeastern passage first, following it around to a rectangular chamber. Here, they encounter three Carrior Crawlers feasting on the remains of a Dwarf. The party spends 4 rounds fighting the Carrior Crawlers before defeating them. Once again, Dorian becames their main focus; he nearly died in this battle. After the battle, Lilly and Dorian both spend time harvesting the crawlers, gathering their guts and their mucus to use as components in healing salves and poison applications, respectively. The Heretic also search the Dwarf's body, finding money and taking silver beads from his beard and the splint mail shirt from his body. They also take two daggers and a warhammer from his body as well. To the north of this rooms, lies another passageway. The party travels down its corridors for about 40 feet, at which point they encounter a purple fog that lingers in the passageway. They decide to retreat back to the room with six columns instead of testing their luck with the purple fog.   In this room, the party finds the six columns. They quickly notice that each column has a small slot which contains a gem of some sort. Each column has a gem, which they retrieve:

• Malachite thumbnail size

• Blue Quartz thumbnail size

• Emerald raw 43mm

• Lapis Lazuli thumbnail size

• Blood Stone thumbnail size

• Black Pearl

  Following this, Lilly follows the corridor to the southwest only long enough to see that the corridor wraps around to the east. As she is alone in this exploration, she stops and quickly rejoins the rest of the group. From there, the party decides to go back into the long hall with the 38 warrior statues. The spot a corrider leading off to the south, a door further east in the hallway, also on the southside, a door on the northside, and the corridor ending with a set of double doors.   First, Dorian looks to the southern corrider, which ends after 40 feet with a door on its western side. He decides to open it. Just as he swings the door open, he catches a glimpse of someone's heels walking quickly away from the door towards the back of the small 10 x 10 room found within. The room contains no contents at all, and when Dorian opens the door fully, he finds no one within. Suspecting a trap, Dorian throws a copper piece into the room, against the back wall. The copper piece bounces from the wall to the floor with no unusual activity. Still suspicious, Dorian dares not set a foot in the room and returns to the party. From there, they decide to explore the northern doorway. Lev is the first to open this door, after listening at its entrance and hearing nothing. Opening the door, Lev too sees the heels of someone just ahead as they turn a corner. He goes further into the room, followed by the rest of the party. He tells everyone of what he sees, and they party tries to move ahead quickly to find who this person is. With every turn down a twisting corrider ahead, they find that they always encounter just the edge of the individuals heels as they turn a corner just ahead of them. Lev stops and asks Zephyr to fly ahead invisibly to see if he can spot who it is, feeling if they don't know that they're being followed or observed, perhaps they'll stop long enough to be seen. Lev was right; Zephyr reports that he sees two individuals standing in a passageway ahead just around a corner, a man and a woman. Both individuals stand still and expressionless, and both are transparent. The appear as ghosts or apparitions, in Zephyr's opinion. The party then moves forward to perhaps catch these two since they are standing still. However, just as the party turns the corner, yet again, they are seen turning the corner in a bend in the passageway ahead, with only their heels being seen. Once again, the party heads forward to see where this ghostly couple might be leading them. Once more corner turns into a 30 x 30 square room. In the center of the room, there is a an eight foot statue of a four armed fish monster stands in the middle of the room, facing north. Its webbed hands clutch an ornate, 1 foot square stone box with a lid and a keyhole. The creature's body looks very much like a Human form, except that it has scales instead of skin. Floating in a slowly circulating disk 15 feet above this creature's head, extending 10 feet in diameter is what appears to be green colored liquid droplets that appear to be in a zero gravity suspense. Lillyis the first to step into the room, careful to avoid walking underneath this acidic looking "cloud". As she hugs the walls around the room, she looks for secret panels or doors, finding none. Lev decides to go for it and approach the statue to inspect the box. Wincing, he looks up at the cloud expecting a rainfall to shower onto his head, however nothing happens. As he gets closer to the box, he sees the keyhole in the box more clearly, noticing that it appears to have a lead-colored edging to the keyhole. Dorian realizes that the Dwarven Key from the fresco may belong to this box, and he walks over to Lev, following the exact path that Lev took, and hands him the key, retreating back to "safety" against the wall immediately after. Lev tries the key and it successfully opens the box. He opens the lid, and within, finds the box also to be lined with lead. Insie the boxi is a dry, withered heart sitting upon a small wooden pedastal. The party debates whether they should take the heart, ultimately voting to leave it where it is.   From here, The Heretic retrace their steps back out into the hall with the warrior statues, this time, trying the southernmost door. This door opens easily with no traps, and leads them to a 30x 40 rectangular weapon storage room. Lev casts Detect Magic and finds a pulse of magic coming underneath a door to the south. This door has a hand axe embedded into the door. Cobwebs enshroud several rows of weapon racks, many of which have collapsed under their own weight. The party spends some time sorting through these weapons, adding a few choice weapons to their own inventories.