July 22, Monday [day 9, cont.] - To Spider Haunt.
The rest of the day's journey passed uneventfully, with the party camped just short of the location known as Spider Haunt.
During the night, Arian was again woken with intense pain in his left arm. The blue scales now extended down to his wrist, and across the back of his hand. It would no longer be easy to hide the, under clothing, short of wearing long sleeves and gloves. It was also apparent that the fingers on his left hand had become longer, thinner, and more claw-like. Arian found that by concentrating, he could extend (or retract) claws from those fingers.
July 23, Tuesday [day 10] - Spider Haunt, Broken Bridge and Waterfall Hole.
The day's hike proceeded mostly without incident, although the party was attacked by a trio of phase spiders at one point.
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| Phase spiders hunting intruders |
The fight was short but bloody.
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| The intruders fight back |
The party arrives at Waterfall Hole and succeeds in finding the secret way that is supposed to lead to the Tombs. Like in the Silver Swords journal, the party sees a ghostly monkey-like figure perched in a ledge, which then darts behind a rocky outcropping and disappears. The small hole leading onward is behind the outcropping.
They decide to camp here and continue on in the morning.
During the night, it was Badric the Cleric's turn to have a strange dream: You have a difficult night with horrible dreams of death and decay. You stand on a battlefield with your kinsmen, fighting hosts of orcs and goblins, and many that you know are wounded and fall around you. You call on the healing power of Maurig, your god, the god of life, but instead of seeing your friends healed and restored to health and vitality, they decay before your eyes, flesh peeling back from their bodies, bones exposed, organs melting away as you watch. Maggots erupt from their corpses and swarm toward you. You watch in horror as the maggots swarm up your legs and burrow into your flesh. You feel the agony as they disappear into your body, and you can feel them burrowing through you, seeking your heart. You call on Maurig's power to heal yourself, but instead your flesh begins to melt off your body, exposing your own innards... You wake, shaking, in a cold sweat...
Badric prays in the morning, as usual, but is unable to find a connection to his god (and in game turns does not regain any spell slots). Melior the Druid has the same issue.
July 24, Wednesday [day 11] - The Tombs of the Alberneth.
After the better part of a day's walking and crawling through small and difficult tunnels, the party finds the passage blocked by a small pile of loosely piled rocks, from which a dagger hilt protrudes. Guessing that this was left as a marker, the party moves the rocks out of the way and finds a small opening that emerges into a small cavern. Parts of the walls and floors have obviously been worked, and there are burial niches carved into the walls. Several other similar caverns are explored. In the last cavern, the tunnel onward is blocked by a locked metal-bar door set into a grid of metal bars. Thirty feet beyond, a similar door can be seen. In between, the floor is covered with what Duncan the wizard identifies as protection glyphs and sigils.
Opening the doors and proceeding on, the party emerged into a large finished chamber. A bronze colored metal ball, approximately two feet in diameter, hung from the center of the ceiling 20 feet above.
Several giant spiders attacked the party, and then a large monstrosity lurched into the room from a side passage.
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| Giant spiders and a flesh golem |
The creature was a flesh golem, and proved to be a formidable foe. It had a low armor class, and thus was easy to hit, but it had a lot of hit points, and could be healed by lightning periodically pulsing out of the metal ball hanging from the ceiling. Before realizing that lightning healed the construct rather than dealing it damage, Arian cast lightning bolt on it (his most powerful spell), rolled very high for the amount of (not!) damage, and was shocked to learn that he had just healed it of most of its damage.
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| The flesh golem |
Investigating the immediate area, a passage was found that broke out of the old tomb passages and entered what were obviously ancient dwarven chambers...
Next - The Tombs of the Alberneth - into the Dwarves Tombs.
GM Commentary - It was probably around the end of this session, having taken a few sessions to get here, and then most of a session to play out a very small part of one small section of the Tombs, that I realized (with certainty) what I had already suspected - that I had prepared way more material for this than we would want to use. It was seeming at this point that we could spend the rest of the campaign down here. Whether the campaign lasted weeks, months or perhaps even years. This wouldn't become obvious to the players, yet.
Not wanting to spend the rest of forever down in this part of the Underdark, some shortcuts and abbreviations would need to be made. Unfortunately, fairly radically truncating this story arc would have its own issues. But that's commentary for a later time...
XP for this session was 1,050 per character. This was a combination of combat, per diems and story goals.
