Campaign Journal 35 - Battle in the Noble Tombs

We last left our heroes camped for the night in the entryway to the Ruby Knight's Tomb...

July 26, Friday - The Noble Tombs.

The party woke after a sound sleep in the entryway to the Ruby Knight's Tomb when the sentry, Niam, heard sounds of an approaching boat. As he watched from the shadows, another boat appeared from the other (main) entry passage and docked across the cavern at the Noble Tombs docks. Three men in robes that looked like priests (confirmed as such by the captive Farrin) got off the boat and disappeared into the far passages. After a little while, they returned to the docks, noticed the party, and the characters attacked...

The nearest point between the two docks was about 35 feet apart, and as the characters watched, the older of the three enemy clerics pulled a glass globe from his belt pouch and smashed it on the floor. In the air above the spot where he smashed the globe, a glowing shimmering ball of energy appeared. From the ball spewed a number of winged creatures...

Battle at the Noble Tombs docks

In response, Malachy dove into the water to swim across and close the distance, and Thalmyr cast Find Steed in order to summon a large enough fish to drag her across the water to the far docks. As this was happening, the remaining characters drew bows and cast spells...

As Malachy swam and Thalmyr was dragged through the water by a giant fish, the flying demons attacked, striking with small halberds and flicking fiery motes of arcane energy from those same halberds. The ensuing fight had the party realize that the glowing globe was a demon-spawner which would keep bringing more demons into the conflict until something stopped it. Hoping that the answer to the problem would be killing the cleric that opened the rift, the party focused their attentions on that target, soon bringing him down. The rift closed, and the remaining demons were dispatched (although a few escaped, flying south down the main entry passage). A second cleric was killed and the last one ran away, heading east into a side passage.

Showdown

With Mal and Thalmyr now on the far side, the party uses the magical boat to assemble on the Noble Tombs side of the cavern. They skip exploring the main noble tombs area, following the fleeing cleric into the east passage. A few minor burials are plundered, and a shrine is discovered. The iconography in the shrine is to some sort of rodent god. Just beyond the shrine is an iron-work gridded barrier blocking the way forward, but the door in the barrier is open...

Forging ahead, the party descends a slope into a large cavern. The cavern is very rugged, and is filled with stalagmites, stalactites, and broken rock formations. A little bit ahead there are snarling, growling, and rending sounds. Approaching, the party sees a trio of six-legged rats munching on the now-dead body of the fleeing cleric. The plague rats turn to regard the party, and attack...

Plague Rats

The party is able to defeat the rats, and pause to regroup after the fight. They notice that one of the three now-dead rats is soaking wet. At the far end of the chamber is a pool of water. Exploring the pool, Malachy notices that there is an underwater passage out the far side of the pool. A simple breath-holding of a few seconds duration is enough to allow a person to dip under the intervening underwater area and come up into another dry passage ten feet or so on the other side.

Plague Rats closeup

The group navigates the pool and follows the passage to another rugged rock-filled chamber a short ways down the passage. While exploring the chamber, another plague rat sneaks up on the party from beneath a rocky outcropping and latches onto Farrin's leg. With a howl of anguish, Farrin is dragged down into a hole under the rocky outcropping and is gone. Screams of pain persist for a moment and then are silent...

Recovering from the shock of the death of Farrin, the party moves on into the next passage, and emerges into a chamber filled with noxious glowing green slime pits...

Next - The Slime Pits and into the Traniskan wilds...

GM Commentary - The players treated the events of this session with a degree of urgency, and that made for a good session for me. I know that given the time to do so, they would have loved to take the time to loot all of the tombs in this area, and it would have been very lucrative for them to have done so. Given the threat of alerted guards, more demons and any number of other threats, they elected to keep moving forward. Which made for a good session, I think...

XP for this session was a hefty 1,800 for each of the 5 characters present, accounting for a few evil clerics, a host of flying demons, and three plague rats...