Session 39 Recap

Chert, a 7th level dwarf

CocoVul, a 13th level Archontean magic-user

Julia, a 14th level Archontean cleric of Lucreon

Crown Prince Melnax, a 7th level elf

Bjorn, a 8th level Wiskin assassin

Susarra, a 10th level Archontean fighter (retainer)

Scylla, a 9th level Archontean ranger (retainer)

Provoked by Bjorn having lodged a dagger in the chest of their leader, the feasters attacked. CocoVul cast Confusion on three of them and Dimension Doored out of the melee on top of one of the stone tables while Crown Prince Melnax levitated to the ceiling and then cast Sleep on three feasters that had just run in from the eastern passage. Chert swung and missed at one of the feasters and then used the Rod of Lordly Might to cause two of the feasters to flee in Fear. After spending a moment retching due to the foul breath of the feaster he was fighting, Bjorn pressed the button on his Rudishva shield belt and performed a fighting retreat. Julia engaged a feaster in melee while one of the feasters ran to the large horn at the southern end of the chamber.

Bjorn ran up the wall using his Slippers of Spider Climbing and threw a Dagger of Poison at one of the feasters, but he was able to shrug off the effects of the poison. Feeling himself running out of air he deacfived his shield belt. CocoVul cast Magic Missile at the feaster leader while Crown Prince Melnax shot another with his bow. Scylla and Chert combined their attacks and dropped another of the madmen while Susarra drank a healing potion and Julia wounded another. Now of the feasters blew the horn, producing a horrible discordant noise which echoed and reverberated even after he stopped blowing, while the rest of the feasters engage the party in melee. Chert was overcome by the horrible breath of one of them while Julia was able to resist the breath of another; unfortunately as she gazed into the sparkling eyes of one of the feasters she found herself entranced, willing to lay down her life for his.

Crown Prince Melnax again fired his bow and Bjorn threw a javelin at a feaster, while CocoVul summoned an Invisible Stalker and instructed it to kill everyone in the room besides herself who was not wearing armor. Bjorn reactivated his shield and dropped onto the feaster leader, killing humbug also causing the shield belt to explode, dropping Chert and Julia and gravely wounding two of the feasters. Crown Prince Melnax levitated back down to ground level and used a Wand of Lightning to kill two feasters and severely wound a third. Bjorn stood up and found himself entranced by one of the feasters, while Scylla and Melnax applied healing potions to Julia and Chert, reviving them.

Scylla bloodied the last remaining feaster which Crown Prince Melnax finished off with his bow. The party had only a few seconds to catch their breath however, as a fifteen foot long course-white worm slithered into the chamber from a passage in the southeast, immediately swallowing one of the sleeping feasters whole. Scylla, Susarra, and Chert charged the beast, with Chert using the Rod of Lordly Might to drain life from the worm and add it to his own, while CocoVul hit it with a Lightning Bolt and Melnax tried to paralyze it, but was unable to. The worm bit Chert, knocking him unconscious while Bjorn finished it off with a laser pistol.

The party searched the pile of bones on the east side of the chamber, finding only a heqeti statue in bad repair at the bottom of the pile. They then retreated to the ingot room near the forge and spent the night to regain spells and heal.

Arising on the morning of Deuterios 9th the party returned to the feast hall, examine the cistern on the eastern wall and then turning their attention to the tunnel in the southeast part of the room that the giant worm had emerged from. Finding it flooded after a short way CocoVul used the Staff of the Frog to allow her to breath underwater and turned Invisible. After about thirty feet she saw tha the tunnel opened up into a pool in an apparently empty room that was not completely flooded. She brought the rest of the party through and they discovered that the room was full of a hallucinatory pollen that they had encountered in the Nether Reaches before. Chert, Scylla, and Julia all succumbed to the effects of the pollen, and the rest of the party stayed by the exits and the pool to make sure their besotted companions didn’t;t wander away or drown and settled down to wait out the effects. During the three hours the group waited for the pollen to wear off, multiple groups of giant bees came into the chamber but paid the party no mind, only stopping to drink water and then return the way they had come.

After everyone in the party had regained their faculties the party took the southwest exit from the room which led south about a hundred feet before opening into an amazing chamber. The warm, brightly lit cavern hummed with the buzz of insects, including many of the giant bees, moving among a field of six foot tall yellow flowers. The cavern was over one hundred feet tall in places, and featured some worked areas on the south and north walls. A bright well lit landing in the south wall was sixty feet above the floor with two worked passages that the giant bees seemed to come and go from in the north wall being thirty feet above the floor of the cavern. Two ledges in the northeast and southeast corners of the room were forty and twenty feet above the floor respectively. The floor was relatively flat and covered in a thick layer of humus. The humidity of the atmosphere was palpable, the walls dripping with water. Along the edge of the cavern grew some other plants, albeit in smaller numbers, including some small alders, crepe myrtles, and chaste trees, plus numerous wild flowers. Occasionally a great gout of steam erupted from the ground at various points throughout the cavern. Th light in the chamber appeared to emanate from about a dozen spots on the walls and ceiling, and emulated sunlight so perfectly that at first the party assumed there were holes in the ceiling letting actual sunlight beam into the cavern. The pollen in the air was thick enough in this cavern to slightly obscure vision at a distance, making the further recesses of the cave hazy and somewhat indistinct.

Deciding to postpone dealing with the cavern for the moment, the part returned to the north and took the southeast exit out of the pool cavern. This passage winded for a short ways before intersecting a north-south passage. To the south was a worked passage, with a tangible warm breeze and a loud buzzing sound emanating from it. Taking the natural passage north, they passed a chamber to the east before finding a mostly empty chamber with only a broken clay urn lying on the floor surrounded by a sticky mass of honey. Bjorn ate some of the honey, finding it to be royal jelly. The party exited the chamber via a passage that sloped down to first the east and then the south. As they entered the next room Scylla triggered a t tripwire which released angry giant bees from a hidden wicker cage. Although the bees could only sting once before dying, once was enough for Scylla who succumbed to the poison. Julia revived her with Neutralize Poison and the other two bees were easily dispatched.

Continuing south and then east, the party found themselves at the northern entrance of the eastern hive of the giant bees. The ceiling was forty feet high and the chamber was of neatly worked and undecorated stone. The air was thick with bliss flower pollen and the drone of scores of bees. The hive itself was enormous, and composed of three huge combs attached to the ceiling and walls, each fifty feet wide and thirty feet tall, with five foot deep cells. The combs descended to within about ten feet from the floor. The upper twenty feet of each comb appeared to be devoted to honey storage, with the lower part being used for larval production.

As the party gawked at the sight before them a very large bee they presumed to be the queen entered from the western hive with a retinue of larger soldier bees. Scylla cast Speak With Animals and the party began to converse with the queen. She indicated that as long as the party did not try and take any honey or interfere with any of the bees as they went about their work that the bees would not attack them. Agreeing to this arrangement, the party went west into the western hive and then north, to the chamber in the east that the party had skipped earlier and which the bees described as the Chamber of the Bee Friend. Entering this chamber, Scylla activated another tripwire, causing a rockfall that wounded her, Chert, and Melnax. In response a tall, thin human man with black hair and a handsome face came out of the chamber and demanded to know what was going on. He wore only a loincloth, and his flesh was dirty and pocked with the scars of dozens of giant bee stings. The party apologized for their intrusion and the man, who introduced himself as Olaf, calmed down and seemed happy to have sentient company for a change. He invited the party into his cave and they followed him in.

A hammock was slung in the corner, and two dried bee husks were gently pinned to the wall. A striped cat that Olaf introduced as Lucia padded around the cave. Two decrepit clay urns held honey, which Olaf said the bees let him take in small amounts in exchange for keeping the cavern free of predators that might attack the bees or damage the yellow flowers, which were the source of the pollen hanging thick in the air, and which Olaf called Bliss Pollen. The party offered to escort Olaf out of the cavern, but he seemed reluctant to leave, the many years spent in the Bliss Pollen having warmed his mind such that he didn’t even really understand the concept of “outside” anymore. After a pleasant conversation the party took their leave and continued exploring.

Returning to the broken urn room they exited west and then went north for about 120 feet, eventually finding a room containing electric moss identical to that which they had encountered on their first trip to the Nether Reaches. Burning off the moss, they entered a room that contained a sloping passage that appeared to ascend to a new level. Graffiti on the wall stated in Mithric “This way to the citadel”.

After confirming that this set of passages connected with the room that they had originally encountered the electric moss in, the party knew they could no return to the surface by foot, and decided to tie up a few loose ends in the area they had been exploring for the past few days. Returning to the hall of pillars south of Zhorak’s Forge, they went back to the mine tunnel they had entered the hall from, and went south to where it opened into a worked Archontean era hallway. The hallway was seventy feet long at which it turned into a natural tunnel, and had two doors on the west wall with one on the east wall.

They opened the first door on the west wall, and saw an apparently unguarded pile of gold coins a short way down the passage. Chert cautiously stepped through the doorway and after only a few steps bounced off of a translucent substance which he quickly learned was a massive gelatinous cube. It attacked him again but missed, and CocoVul and Crown Prince Melnax hit it with multiple Magic Missiles with Chert finishing it off with a flaming Rod of Lordly Might.

The party next tried the door on the east wall. Beyond the door was a twenty foot by thirty foot Archontean era room, The walls covered with poorly-executed images of Archontean legionaries marching, advancing in line, and carousing. A thick layer of trash littered the floor with the exception of a ten foot diameter circle in the exact center of the chamber. This circle was completely clean of dust and debris, except for a dwarf-sized skeleton with arms outstretched towards an object in the center of the circle, a cylinder, about six inches in diameter and eighteen inches tall, made of a yellow metallic substance. A red light blinked on the top face of the cylinder. Tapping the object with a ten foot poll produced no obvious effect and the party decided to leave well enough alone and turn their attention to the remaining door on the west wall.

This door proved to be locked and Chert battered it open with the Rod of Lordly Might. A twenty foot long entrance hallway beyond was covered on wall and ceiling by quarter-round reliefs showing an Archontean polemarch personally leading legionaries against goblins, varumani, and heqeti. The commander wears an archaic hair style, with tight, neck-length ringlets. He wields a battle axe in one hand, and displays his baculus of authority in the other.

At the end of this short hallway was a twenty foot tall, thirty foot square room dominated by impressive sculptures. A life-sized statue of an ancient Archintean polemarch stood against the west wall, staring forward with a half-smile and open eyes. Although the face and bottom inch of his hair wre finely carved, the rest of the head was smooth, as if unfinished. The same was true of the body, which aside from the hands and shoes lacked any detail. The north and south walls features more of the quarter-round sculptures seen in the entrance hall. The center of the chamber contained a fifteen foot square platform. Four eight foot tall stone legionaries point their spears towards the center, where a sarcophagus was located. The sarcophagus was simple black basalt, with the Mithric inscription “Sulla” and an image of a battle axe. Resting on the sarcophagus was a polemarch’s helmet and cuirass, along with legionary greaves and arm guards. The workmanship of each piece was exceptional, and none of the set showed sign of rust or decay. An inscription in Mithric was carved on the wall to the right and left of the statue reading “Sulla Bellator, fiercest of the fierce, bravest of the brave, who always led from the front. Beloved by his men, admired by the archons, he gave his image and spirit to the Myrmex.”

CocoVul ritually cast Detect Magic, showing that all five statues and the armor on top of the sarcophagus were magic. The four central statues, which the party identified as Archontean animate constructs, did not animate when the party entered the chamber or when Chert began to pick up the armor. Looking at the armor and the statue of Sulla, Chert had an idea and began to dress the statue in the armor, which fit perfectly. As he placed the last piece on the statue, the large sarcophagus ground noisily north, exposing a shallow cavity underneath containing a skeleton and some treasure. The party had no time to examine their riches hover, for at the same time statue of Sulla animated and began to attack. Using the Bones of Jaken the Proud to keep the statue at bay the party gathered the treasure from the erstwhile hidden cavity and retreated out of the tomb. These included an archaic polemarch’s baculus, in ebony with silver chasings worth 1,500 gold pieces, a sunburst medallion in gold and platinum with the Archontean numeral “5” set out in small rubies worth 4,500 gp, and a large double-bladed axe featuring a maple haft carved with images of legionaries. Juli made a quick trip to town via the rug to have this last identified and found it to be Sulla’s Battle Axe, a weapon of medium enchantment, but especially effective against constructs and possessing a small chance of petrifying opponents when wielded by a fighter. Julia returned to the party and they discussed their next course of action.

R.I.P.:

Scylla, poisoned by an angry giant soldier bee [Revived with Neutralize Poison by Julia]

Foes defeated:

Eighteen chaotic feasters

One chaotic feaster leader

Three soldier bees

One giant gelatinous cube