Session 03: April 08, 2018

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead Rogues.

Players 

• Mersit Of The Raging Tree, catfolk swashbuckler/rogue ..... Aaron Collins
• Taarn, kellid barbarian ..... Mick Hodorek
• Ashen, elf bladebound magus ..... Mike Horrigan
• Rupert Silvermoon, elf wizard ..... Jonathan Hood
• Esdar (Dar) Aerril, half-elf cleric ..... Alex Nutall

We walk through a short passage to come upon murals and empty niches. The hall is strewn with skeletal remains that look to be crushed and bashed as if there was a battle. Rupert checks out the bones and they look humanoid (probably human) - (did he slip something into his pocket?). We surmise this was some kind of resting place that acted as a trap which the Tower Girls triggered (much like the yellow dust trap earlier). Looks like the TGs are clearing the way for us.

Up ahead we can see the faint sign of light coming from around a corner. Taarn leads the way ahead deeper into the Crow (Esdar lights up his axe). The barbarian moves towards the light source. At the corner he can just make out a hooded lantern sitting on the edge of a fountain in an adjacent room. Mersit says, "I got this". He puts away his ioun torch light and proceeds to stealthily creep across the room towards the lantern... At least he did this in his mind. The catfolk took one step around the corner and immediately clumsily cut a trip wire which then triggers a warning bell… oops.

Just as quickly, we see movement in the lantern room as two Tower Girls are alerted to our presence by the warning.

INISH

• Taarn (who doesn't seem himself) moves up around the corner and readies an attack.
• TG1: starts to pull out a weapon (or a scrunchie... hard to tell)
• TG2: Runs the opposite way out of the fountain room to the end of a hallway.
• Esdar casts Joy just for the fun of it.
• Mersit uses extra joy speed to catch up to TG1 and knocks her prone.
• Rupert moves up, rolls up his sleeves, pulls out meta magic rod to fire a lightning bolt at the rogues (deftly avoiding Mersit). The TGs are fried.

Loot: oil, smokestick, tanglefoot bags, leather studded armor, climbers kit, 2nd story harness, thieves tool, silk rope, hooded lantern 165 gp

In the Tower Girl's room we find two bedrolls and supplies for  camping (only missing marshmallows and nubile teenagers). It looks like the guards were advance lookouts. 
We notice that the fountain is still working (odd?). It is made in the image of a demon face (or devil) where water is continuously pouring out of it's mouth but never overflowing. Infinite Thassilonian water fountain? Rupert casts Detect Magic and it does emit faint conjuration magic from the entire fountain. Good enough for us we think as we re-fill our water skins.

We continue up the corridor until we come to a small side room which is filled with rubble. The only things of interest are a wooden crate and an amphora (a kind of jar with handles). Mersit checks the box for traps and doesn't find any so he opens it up. Inside he sees basic supplies (rations, rope, etc). The amphora is sealed but radiates magic. Rupert believes it to contain oil of slipperiness (+5 to CMD for escape checks).

We move on (T and M leading the way) to a large rectangular room with a stairway on the opposite side. We perception the fuck out of the room (especially for trip wires) but except for a lack of content (odd) we do not detect anything out of the ordinary. We gather at the top of the set of stairs and listen for danger but nothing triggers us.

Mersit & Taarn lead the way down the stairs. We come to a roughly square opening (50 x 50) with multiple hallways leading out: a southern corridor (this matches the path to take in the map); a larger north-east 20' opening and directly across a 10' corridor south-east. The room itself looks also to have be scoured clean. The map only had question marks for the eastern passages so we elect to go south (except for some nameless jerk on the team who wants to explore the mystery rooms). It's decided to further explore these sections of the Crow on our way out. However, as soon as Mersit steps about 10 feet into the room, we are ambushed (that damn bell). We see two hostile groups (one from the northeast corridor and one from the south corridor) threatening us.

INISH

• TG: a bunch of cross-bolts fires into the room and one has the audacity to hit Mersit ("Meow!").
• M - mythic fleet charges south and kills TG1 outright then disarms TG2 (drops short sword).
• Esdar - recalls Call Lightning (delay of game penalty) on TG3; moves up and evokes Trident sea bullshit. He also goes on and on about questioning a prisoner.
• Rupert - Moves up and throws down a fireball to the group to the east. Kaboom!  The hallway explodes in a fiery blast. There is one survivor. One sizzled survivor.
  
• Ashen - moves up and readies an attack.
• Taarn. Fleet charges in south next to Mersit and fucking destroys TG2 (coating the left side of M with blood and guts in the process). Then the barbarian pivots to fucking destroy TG3 in an explosion of goo (coating the right side of M with blood and guts in the process... Meow!").
• M: wipes the gore from his eyes then runs up to the north east corridor. He can see TG4 60 feet away and what looks to be bunks (barracks?)
• Esdar - moves up to also see TG4 but can't call lightning to hit her because of a bad angle.
•  Rupert - moves up to get a better view of his victims and contemplate the next violent spell to use.
• Ashen - moves up to the others; with a free action he upgrades his sword (to +3) then uses a mythic point to throw the bastard sword. He strikes TG4 squarely in the back as she was desperately trying to open a door ("She had a gun!"). The Tower Girl drops down unconscious while the sword begins to pull itself out to return back to Ashen.
• A Wererat (with donkey rats) opens the door and starts to take in the scene (blood covered catfolk; threatening wizard and cleric; flying sword; dead TG). Ashen shouts out, "Gives us the Shard!" but this confuses the WRat. Esdar follows up: "Leave here - all others are dead!" WRat: "What!" (she's so dead)
• Mersit moves up and mythic chargse to the door. He targets the WRat's legs and knocks her prone. Filthy rat.
• Esdar steps up and casts Lightning Lord targeting the WRat and the two DRats. The WRat is knocked unconscious while the DRats get hit with some nice electrical damage.
• Rupert clears his throat then Magic Missiles one of DRats... again and again... It does not react well to magic missiles... It is dead...
• Ashen catches his sword and moves into the barracks to check for any other enemies - he doesn't see any off the bat.
• Taarn trudges up to see what he can kill.
• DRat: jumps over WRat's body and cowardly tries to attack Mersit but misses
• TG4: stirs
• Mersit: Skewers the DRat with his cutlass then still upset over dealing with these filthy vermin, he finishes off the prone Tower Girl at his feet (the back stabbed one) for good measure.

After we clean up and wipe off the gore from our weapons, we take a look around. There are two rooms in this area: a larger barrack-type area with bunk beds and various stolen items; the smaller room (where the WRat emerged from) is a bit of a pigsty full of weird smells like rat shit and lavender. Mersit no like… We are reminded of our not-so-proud experiences in suspect tavern WCs and of "not getting out of our armor in time" moments. With a shudder we search around and uncover a few items of interest.

We find what looks like some items of Thassilonian origin: a brass platter (plate?) worth about 100gp and a basin appraised at about 250gp according to Ashen. In the barracks we uncover more packed up Thassilonian items with estimated worth of about 900gp. We pack it all into Taarn's hole.

We then loot and search the bodies and uncover:

• Masterwork studded leather
• Light crossbow
• Masterwork short short
• 150 GP

Finally, Esdar (having given up any pretense to question the prisoner) goes over to the WRat to "relieve her of the curse" by slitting the tower girl's throat while she was bound and helpless... a real hero. He should have his sea license revoked.

…
We move back towards the south-east corridor and take a gander. We see that it goes on for a bit in that direction until it comes to a door. We decide to not follow this path for now but to continue south (as per the map). The southern hallway eventually opens up to a kitchen/cafeteria type room with tables and plates (a mess hall?). In a nearby alcove we see a statue of a woman holding a ranseur. Rupert and Ashen recognize her as "Alaznist" who was the last Runelord of Wrath. We decide to not shove her into Taarn's hole.

The corridor continues turning eastward past another room to the north. The room appears empty so we bypass it for now. We come to a set of stairs and we continue downward on our way. At the bottom of the stairs, we see a hallway leading to a great big stone door (at an odd angle - kinda northwest to the corridor). Rupert tells us he detects no magic emanating from the door and Mersit does not detect any traps. Safe as safe could be. 

We don't see an obvious way in. In appears to need sheer brute strength to open so we all look at the barbarian. Taarn goes to open the door as we stand back since he tends to sweat profusely while performing feats of strength. At first, even Taarn has difficulty with the door (more from the angle I think) but with Mersit's aid, he is able to open it up. The door seems to be on a some kind of spring making it more difficult. He holds the door open as we rush inside. 

The room within was also oddly shaped like a spear head with the pointy end facing east - a really bizarre layout. We could see four columns and three other doors in the room. A massive door on the western wall made of some silvery metal covered in burning eye images and runes (on each door). Rubert and Taarn recognize the doors as made of siccatite - one of the sky metals. The rune symbols are that of Wrath and Rupert also detects that the doors are  magically radiating faint evocation and a heat and/or cold effect. On the walls and floor are the remains of some large mosaic display - chipped away by time presumably (maybe scavenged?).

The doors we are interested in though (according to the map) are the eastern doors: one northeast and the other southeast. They both appear to open to the same area judging from the map so we randomly decide to open the northern door. We clear our throats and "ahem" loudly while nodding our heads to the north door for Taarn to do the deed. The doors are again of a large stone type and look quite heavy. The mighty Kellid tries to open the door and after a long while of watching his manly, rippling biceps strain with intent... he is successful in getting the northern door open (Esdar thought he could have done it faster but when we let him try he only gets a hernia).

If the other room was weird, this one takes it to the next level (though we were a little more prepared thanks to the map). We find ourselves in an X-shaped room as if four short corridors converged together to form the X. The door we came through opened up to the northwest "leg" of the room; the south door led to the southwest "leg". We can see the northeast hallway was open while a curtain covered the southeast section. There are several pieces of modern furniture mixed in with Thassilonian pieces and decorations. There is also a squarish area between the northeast and southeast sections that match a secret area highlighted on the map.

R.O.U.S.

Suddenly, two donkey rats (most unusual) then come out of nowhere to attack. I should clarify that these must have been suicidal DRats because their lives are now to be measured in seconds. Six seconds to be exact.

INISH

• Taarn: moves up and stabs one of the DRats; knocking it down - never to rise.
• Ashen steps forward and slices the other DRat. It also never moves again.

Mersit finds what looks to be the way into the secret section. He notices that it looked to have been trapped but already triggered some time in the past (Natalya?). After feeling around with his delicate but firm furry palms, the catfolk finds a way to open the door. It reveals a small chamber (10' x 5') whose most distinctive feature is the skeletal remains of some human on the ground. The corpse is draped in some fine rich apparel and it's fingers appear broken - as if a shard pried from it's hand... Also visible is a very good looking rapier in an expensive scabbard, a nice backpack and some adventuring gear. Rupert almost bowls over Ashen and Mersit to get a better look at the stuff. He casts detect magic and many items emit magical energy! 

Magic:

• +2 Mithral chain shirt (Mersit) - donates +2 chain shirt to the hole
• +1 Rapier Mithral
• Amulet in the image of an eagle 
• 20 Gems worth about 500gp gems (thanks Ashen)
• 250 gp
• 87 pp
• Leather pouch
• Silk rope

Rupert recognizes the amulet as the Pendant of the Souk - a symbol of office to identify the market bazaar prince in Magnimar. He surmises the skeleton is that of Nazir Calmaram who disappeared some time ago (26 years earlier) and was never heard of again. The wizard then identifies the pendant's magical properties: +5 appraise, cast identify once per day, +2 to disbelieve illusion, and glows warm in the presence of illusions. 

It's an eeeluzion!

We haggle and trade some of the items; Rupert being very interested in the pendant and places it around neck. And with good timing. Almost immediately upon leaving the secret chamber, the amulet starts to heat up - indicating some illusion nearby that we were unaware of. The elf searches around but he cannot pinpoint the illusion. The rest of us try to find it as well but can't find/feel/see/hear anything not real. Finally Esdar says he can see that there is an illusionary wall in the southern "leg" and that beyond it is the shaft where the tower girl accidentally fell off.