Session 60 - October 2, 2016
As the team prepared to forge ahead in search of Armag's Tomb, Landon drank a potion to allow him to see anything invisible, and Tahjah cast to protect herself from negative energy effects. Amaya's spell of good hope was still in effect.
The group found themselves entering a narrow passage in which the floor was covered in loose stone, making it more challenging to move quietly. At the end of the passage was a chamber occupied by three statues on plinths standing in a row. Directly ahead of the party stood a pair of iron doors. A second pair of doors lay to their left. Tahjah scanned the statues for magical auras and found that all three carried some strong magic. While she did this, Landon went to investigate the nearest set of doors. He found them locked, as were the second set when he examined them. He also noticed something about the plinth of the center statue that caught his eye. His dwarven engineering skill told him that the plinth could be moved to reveal a compartment or opening. He enlisted San'Kari's help to shift it.
When Landon and San'Kari began lifting the statue, all three statues came to life and leaped down, the central one almost landing on top of San'Kari. Two of the statues faced San'Kari while the third turned on Landon. Garrick raced across the room to take on one of the statues nearest to San'Kari, while Landon focused his attention on the center statue so that he and San'Kari could enjoy the benefit of flanking it. The rest of the group waited, ready to step in with healing or aid if the three warriors had difficulty with their opponents.
Two figures clad in the robes of Black Sisters abruptly appeared in front of the far doors. One of them attempted to attack the nearest person, who happened to be Kara, but she failed to connect. Garrick rushed across the room to protect his wife and her bodyguard, raining blows on the Black Sister who had tried to attack Kara. His attack left the Black Sister shaken. Tahjah attempted to forbid the two Black Sisters from casting any spells but her magic had no effect on them. Kara then struck a powerful blow against the Sister who had tried to hit her, and Silverleaf flung two handfuls of flames at the same Sister. Meanwhile the center statue had hit San'Kari several times.
Cyst flew invisibly over to the center statue's plinth and tried to move it while the fighting was going on, but the imp wasn't strong enough to push the plinth aside.
The second Black Sister cast a spell, but no one observed any effect. The first Sister then issued a magical shout that deafened Garrick, Landon, and San'Kari. Garrick responded by pummeling her again. In the meantime San'Kari and Landon disposed of one of the statues, leaving only two to contend with. Tahjah again tried to prevent the Black Sisters from spellcasting but her second try was no more successful than the first.
Amaya chose to issue another battle cry to bolster her comrades. Silverleaf lobbed two more handfuls of flames at the Black Sister who had been shaken by Garrick's attacks. Then one of the Black Sisters summoned a swarming mass of black tentacles to fill the center of the chamber. Though the tentacles lashed out at everyone in the space they didn't manage to snare anyone in their grasp. Kara quickly reacted to herd Amaya out of the room and away from the tentacles. Untroubled by the presence of the tentacles, Silverleaf hurled more flames at the Sister he had been targeting. One of the Sister tried to cast another spell, but Tahjah had readied her own magic to dispel it and was able to counter it.
The tentacles lashed out again, this time grasping hold of Silverleaf, Kara, and the two remaining statues. Unable to break free and unwilling to risk losing a spell to the tentacles that gripped him, Silverleaf channeled positive energy to heal his companions of the wounds dealt by the statues and the Sisters' magic. Landon had abandoned fighting the statues to move close to one of the Black Sisters and stabbed her with his wounding dagger. Immediately after he did so her holy symbol began to glow brightly, searing into her flesh - and then her body exploded, showering the room with her remains. The other Sister had already fallen.
In addition to being splattered by remnants of the Black Sister, Silverleaf was paralyzed. San'Kari pulled him free of the tentacle's grasp, and Tahjah searched his scroll case for a scroll to free him of immobilization.
Once Silverleaf was free, Landon searched the body of the Black Sister who hadn't exploded, and he and Silverleaf determined the magical properties of the dagger, cloak, and two potions they found in her possession.
After the items were retrieved, Landon returned to examining the central statue's plinth while Garrick used his ability to see through doors to look at what lay beyond both sets of doors leading out of the chamber. The doors on the far side of the room let into an area with two narrow passageways leading away. The doors nearest the statues showed Garrick a long passage leading to a flight of steps and another door. He saw four boulders of varying sizes sitting near the doors through which he looked, and on the floor of the passage were four indentations that appeared to be about the same size as the boulders.
Beneath the plinth, Landon found a compartment containing a large box. Inside the box were seven large pearls, each worth up to a thousand gold pieces. All of the pearls radiated a magical aura to Tahjah's sight, the same aura for all but each pearl had a stronger aura than the last. Further examination revealed these to be items known as 'pathway pearls', which could transport a single individual and a certain amount of items to a specific location the bearer was familiar with. The party members each took one of the pearls.
When they had distributed the pearls, the group proceeded through the doors closest to where the statues had stood. Landon moved forward to check the passage for traps. He recognized that the floor panels were mounted on pivots designed to drop an unwary person into a pit or chasm. But placing the boulders in the indentations might lock the floor panels so they would remain stable. After attempting to move the smallest boulder unsuccessfully himself, Landon left the task to San'Kari. But despite San'Kari's exceptional strength, he found moving the round, smooth boulders a challenge. More than once he lost his grip and the boulder rolled backward, crashing into him. As he moved toward the larger boulders the danger increased. A boulder rolling back toward the doors threatened to hit everyone in the party. Finally, as he prepared to maneuver the biggest boulder into its indentation, San'Kari took a bottle of universal solvent from his pack and handed it to Silverleaf, then drew out a pot of sovereign glue and covered his hands with the sticky stuff so he could maintain his grip on the boulder and push it into place. Once he had succeeded, Silverleaf used the solvent to release San’Kari’s hands from the stone.
With the floor now stable, the party moved toward the stairs at the opposite end of the passageway. Garrick viewed through the next door, seeing an empty chamber lined with columns made of fused iron weapons. In the center of the chamber stood a large horizontal wheel. The chamber floor was also covered with iron. But he saw no creatures or obvious dangers. Landon opened the door, and he and Garrick entered the iron room. As soon as they stepped inside, a sheet of ice a foot thick covered the entire room, cutting them off from their companions. Garrick immediately began to suffer the effect of extreme cold, but Landon was immune to such discomfort.
Garrick created a campfire, though it did little to protect him from the cold. Landon began to examine the wheel, while outside San'Kari started to chop his way through the thick ice with his greataxe. Landon found that when he turned the wheel he could feel a spring tightening under the floor. Garrick left his campfire to examine a small door in the wall near the door through which they had entered the iron room. His sight showed him little beyond it, as the passageway or room on the other side was hidden by fog, though he could tell that the door had been unused for a very long time. The door wasn't locked, and Garrick opened it and went into the room.
As soon as he stepped into the foggy room, Garrick found himself face to face with a very large, spiny, spider-like creature. He had no idea what it was, other than some variety of daemon. Garrick immediately tumbled out of the room to get away from the daemon, and it followed him out into the iron chamber. As it emerged from the side room, Landon was struck by an aura that rendered him almost mindless.
San'Kari at that moment smashed through the last of the ice and stepped into the iron room. As he did so Amaya granted him the ability to better withstand some threats, and the daemon's aura had no effect on him. San'Kari approached the daemon and inflicted a very deep gash on it with his axe. The daemon moved to attack Landon, who was able to fight back despite his feebleminded state. Kara also moved into the iron room, but suffered the same fate as Landon. Silverleaf said a prayer to Sarenrae to grant his comrades greater fighting prowess and determination, but he was unable to discover what manner of creature the daemon was and declined to enter the room it stood in himself. Tahjah also decided to get no closer to it. They waited outside the door and watched as San'Kari's axe chopped the daemon to pieces.
After the daemon fell, Tahjah and Silverleaf determined that a powerful healing spell would restore Landon's and Kara's wits. The daemon's ability had also affected Cyst, and once his own intelligence had been restored Landon realized that the effect of the daemon's ability would have faded after a time. When he knew that Cyst would eventually recover, he told his companions not to expend any more of their magic on the imp. He busied himself by cutting open the daemon, finding in its abdomen an enchanted chain shirt, which the party members decided would best suit Amaya once it had been cleaned of the daemon's digestive juices.
Loot:
+2 keen dagger
cloak of resistance +1
2 potions of barkskin
7 pathway pearls
+1 glamered chain shirt
Kingmaker #9
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