SESSION 36D: CRYPT OF WEBS

January 24th, 2009
The 19th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Being tethered to the Banewarrens – effectively limiting their actions east of Oldtown – was becoming completely untenable. Their affairs in the Banewarrens required them to seek out Alchestrin’s tomb, but the Necropolis was well out of the range.

To solve the problem once and for all, Ranthir spent the next couple of hours tracking down several scrolls which described the arcane creation of a small missive token that would allow its holder to communicate a brief message directly to his ears… no matter the distance between them.

In short order, Ranthir was able to give one of these tokens to Kalerecent. If Kalerecent’s guard upon the Banewarrens were disturbed, he could instantly summon them.

“Oh, good,” Dominic said. “And we’ll only be a quick half hour away. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Tee shrugged. “That’s no worse than what we were doing before.”

“The only other option,” Ranthir said, “Is for us to camp in the Banewarrens until the green-haired hag comes out.”

That didn’t sound like much fun. And there were too many other things demanding their attention…

CRYPT OF WEBS

It was only a couple of hours before dusk and the sun was already low in the sky, but they felt they had already wasted enough time. They headed to the Necropolis, aware that they would need to finish their work there before darkness fell.

Once they had reached Darklock Hill, Dominic used his connection with the gods to fixate upon Alchestrin’s sigil and locate its nearest occurrence. He led them to a crudely built crypt with thick walls built from heavy stone slabs. Elestra recognized that these slabs were, in fact, repurposed stone sarsens. Several of them had the distinctive – yet heavily worn – sigil of Alchestrin worked into them.

On one side of the crypt there was a badly rusted iron door. It was, in fact, rusted shut. Tee and Agnarr were able to pry out the hinges and lever out the door with a minimal amount of fuss and noise. On the other side there was a flight of gloom-shrouded stairs leading down about twenty feet.

Tee led the way into a long entry hall strewn with rubbled stone from the broken walls and ceiling. Thick cobwebs were strung from the walls, although there was a more or less clear path to the heavy door of stone that hung half-open – its bottom smashed apart – at the far end of the hall. Four open arches led off form the hall, two to the left and two to the right.

Choosing at random, Tee headed towards the first arch on the left. It opened into a small burial chamber, with an upright sarcophagus standing against the far wall. The sarcophagus itself had been smashed apart. The corpse of its former inhabitant lay on the floor in the middle of the chamber – thick webs seeming to manacle the dried husk to the walls. The chest of the corpse appeared to have been ripped open.

Tee quickly inspected the corpse, but found little of interest. (Perhaps if she had recognized the damage to its chest as an exit wound they might have had some warning of what was to come.) She turned back to the others to report, but spotted movement in the webs of the opposite room. Acting on pure instinct, she whipped out her dragon pistol and fired.

The shot harmlessly blasted away a patch of web, but a moment later a carpet of large, reddish spiders poured out of the room. In the entry hall, Agnarr, whirling towards the spot Tee had shot, was suddenly covered in the things – they bit him repeatedly, sending a rush of painful venom into his bulging veins.

With a roar of rage and a mighty cry, Agnarr swung his flaming sword through the spiders, using the flat of his blade to crush those crawling up his legs.

Elestra, thinking quickly, dropped a ball of magical flame into the middle of the spiders, but they swarmed away from it and over the top of the others – biting at every bit of exposed flesh they could find.

Dominic ran for it, heading back up the stairs and escaping the worst of it. But by the time Agnarr was able to scatter the swaming mass, Ranthir had been badly hurt – the painful, fist-sized welts leaving him gasping for breath.

But when Elestra laid her hands on him and sent a burst of healing energy into his body, Ranthir screamed in pain and collapsed.

Dominic, who was coming back down into the crypt after hearing the all-clear from Agnarr, heard the scream and hurried down the last few steps. “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Elestra knelt next to Ranthir, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. But her further ministrations only made things worse. Even the slightest touch of positive energy raised vicious welts and gaping wounds on the unconscious mage.

But even as she was focusing on Ranthir’s dilemma, Elestra was using the back of her mind to guide her flaming sphere into one of the other web-choked crypts.

As the webs began to burn, a web-wrapped mummy stumbled through the crypt’s arch and attacked Tee from behind. Agnarr charged the sudden foe, shoving Tee out of the way, even as a second web mummy emerged into the entry hall.

Agnarr made quick work of his first foe: His sword cleaved the mummy’s chest in twain. But no sooner had the top half of the mummy fallen to one side than more of the crypt spiders began to pour out of the severed torso. Tee, in a panic, fired at the already dismembered corpse. This had little effect, but Agnarr – thinking quickly – plunged his blade into the mass and used it to create a sudden pyre.

But with his weapon thus preoccupied, Agnarr made an easy target for the second mummy – who clubbed him over the back of the head. As the barbarian fell, however, Tor moved to block it from attacking the others. As he shifted into position, the mummy brought both of its hands down on the kinght’s shoulders in a crushing blow. Tor could feel his spine compressing under the sheer force of the blow, but gritting his teeth he bore the pain and swung his sword strong.

The mummy’s head flew free… and spiders began to crawl out of its neckhole.

Tee, however, had retrieved a flask of oil from her bag of holding. She tossed it at the decapitated mummy’s corpse while Tor scooped up Agnarr’s sword and lit alight spiders and mummy alike.

SPIDER’S CRYPT

Now, however, the unconscious Agnarr was exhibiting the same symptoms as Ranthir. Any attempt to heal his wounds was backfiring.

However, Dominic – finally given the breathing room to give the afflicted a proper examination – was able to determine that the effect was being caused by the venom of the crypt spiders. Their mystical poison was creating an inversion of positive and negative energy, foully turning the life-touch of the gods to injurious pain.

Fortunately, Dominic knew a simple spell to suppress the effects of the venom. And the mystic properties of the poison were rapidly burning up in any case. It wouldn’t be long before those afflicted could be healed normally.

While Dominic was restoring Agnarr and Ranthir, Tee finished searching through the outer crypts. She found another corpse with its chest torn open (this one with a ruined shirt of mithril which had been torn asunder by the spiders) and in another sarcophagus she found a magical sword.

After much deliberation, however, they decided to leave these tombs (and their meager treasures) undisturbed. The strange, corpse-inhabiting spider swarms had already done enough to disturb the rest of those who had been buried here.

Tee therefore turned her attention to the door of broken stone at the end of the entry hall. Looking through it she could see an antechamber. A mosaic of glittering lapis lazuli depicting a bursting star had been worked into its floor. Twin statues with red gemstones in their eyes flanked a farther arch leading into the tomb beyond. Each of the statues was raising its right hand before it, as if to ward off trespassers. In the tomb itself she could see an iron sarcophagus worked in the likeness of a knight with a sword and shield laid upon its chest. Thick webs were draped from the sarcophagus, shrouding the far corners of the crypt in darkness.

Agnarr and Tor were able to wrench open the door. Convinced that the lapis lazuli floor was dangerous, Tee used her boots of levitation to reach the ceiling and pull herself across to the arch on the far side of the antechamber. Lowering herself to the floor there, she proceeded cautiously into the crypt on foot.

She had not gone far, however, when a gob of web suddenly flew through the air and clogged up the exit. Tee whirled to look at it, even as one massive, chitinous black leg descended from the ceiling above…

It was followed by seven more, encircling her completely. Looking up, Tee saw the bulbous, befanged body of the spider whose legs nearly filled the entire chamber. With a lurching leap, she narrowly dodged the venom-dripping fangs – each of which was nearly as long as her arm.

Seeing the spider descend, Agnarr leapt across the antechamber (barely clearing the lapis lazuli) and used his burning greatsword to quickly cut his way through the web.

But even as Agnarr came up on its flank, the spider continued its attack on Tee – its head jutting towards her again and again, until it finally succeeded in sinking its monstrous fangs into her flesh.

The saucer-sized puncture wounds alone might not have felled the elf, but the venom of the arachnic horror rushed to her brain and swallowed her in blackness. As she fell, the spider was free to turn its fury upon Agnarr.

But by now Tor, too, had leapt across the lapis lazuli and moved to flank the creature – catching it between the party’s warriors. Although their blades had difficulty cutting through the thing’s chitinous hide, and even though Tor was caught fast in another entangling gob of web, they were eventually able to hack the creature apart.

As Tor plucked his blade from the creature’s head (leaving it to collapse in a shuddering pile), Dominic uttered a short prayer to Vehthyl and – seeing that the floor of lapis lazuli was not, in fact, magical – walked across it bravely (crossing his fingers in the hope that there would be no mundane traps). Using his skills as a healer, he was able to apply his curative spells to Tee in a way which avoided triggering the inversive properties of the spider’s venom and soon had her on her feet again.

FALSE CRYPT

Barely sparing the spider’s corpse a glance, Tee quickly turned her attention to the iron sarcophagus. With the help of Agnarr and Tor she was able to leverage it open, revealing the undisturbed corpse of a knight. The knight wore fine chain of elven make. Upon his chest a sword of fine craftsmanship was laid under a shield bearing the heraldry that both Tee and Tor recognized as belonging to the Knights of the Golden Cross.

“It’s not possible that the Knights would have had anything to do with Alchestrin or the Banewarrens,” Tor said.

Tee frowned. While the others replaced the lid of the sarcophagus (not wishing to disturb the rest of a knight), Tee began a scouring search of the small crypt that lasted for the better part of an hour.

But, in the end, she found nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Elestra said. “Why would Lord Zavere send us here?”

“I think I have the answer,” Ranthir said, coming back down the stairs from above. “The stones on which Alchestrin’s sigil is marked are stone sarsens – originally designed as part of a stone circle. They must have been scavenged to build the walls of this crypt.”

“Then how are we going to find the actual crypt?” Tee asked. “Would there be any records kept?”

“I don’t know.”

But now the sun was getting low in the sky. If they were going to escape the Necropolis before night fell, they would have to leave now. Uncertain of what their next action should be, they headed for the gate.

Running the Campaign: Missing the Obvious – Campaign Journal: Session 37A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 35C: AMBUSH IN THE BANEWARRENS

January 5th, 2009
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

JEVICCA AWAITS

When they returned to the Ghostly Minstrel late that night, they found Jevicca drinking in the common room. They greeted her with friendly cheer and, a short while later, went up to Elestra’s room.

Once they had reached that (relatively) secure privacy, they turned quickly to the business before them: They told her about the warding generator, the sealing properties of the walls, and the presence of the bone-ring wearers who were apparently responsible for breaching the Banewarrens.

Jevicca inspected the ring they had given her. “There are binding magicks, warding magicks, and geas magicks at work here. But they are all intertwined and well obscured. May I take this with me to have it properly studied?”

“Sure,” Tee said. “I’ve got plenty of them.”

“I wouldn’t recommend trying any of them on.”

“Yeah, we figured that out for ourselves.”

Jevicca paid each of them the 1,000 gold pieces she had promised. Then she made them a new offer: “The Inverted Pyramid wants the Banewarrens sealed.”

“I don’t know if we can do that,” Ranthir said. “It would take me weeks to work out how to repair the warding generator… if it’s possible at all.”

“I’ll see if I can get help from the Pyramid for that,” Jevicca said. “But the important thing is the creature that penetrated the inner door. If she’s still inside, she could break the seals again and escape – leaving the Banewarrens open behind her.”

Jevicca offered each of them a payment of 2,000 gold pieces or a custom-made mage-touched item worth twice that much if they could track down and remove or kill the invader. After a brief discussion, they agreed. (In many ways it was an easy decision: They wanted the Banewarrens closed just as much as the Inverted Pyramid did. They might as well get paid for doing it.)

Jevicca had also been busy researching. She was able to tell them of three significant historical efforts to penetrate the Banewarrens: Alchestrin, a former Lord of Castle Shard, studied the Banewarrens extensively. He was almost certainly the most knowledgable person in the modern era when it came to the subject.

Sokalahn was a powerful sorcerer of pre-history who spent years or possibly even decades attempting to breach the wards around the Banewarrens. In the casting of a powerful ritual towards that end he met with a spectacular failure – great energies were spun forth which twisted into pools and eddies called the Pits of Insanity. “These pools of pure chaos,” Jevicca said, “Were scattered throughout the subterranean areas around the city, playing havoc with physical laws and magical powers.”

Elestra shuddered.

“Ghul also made many attempts, few of which were documented – but all of which failed. He eventually came to believe that the secret of overcoming the magical wards might lie with the arts of chaositech.”

AMBUSH IN THE BANEWARRENS

They returned to the Banewarrens to renew the spell of alarming they had placed on the door. On the way, they realized they had become careless: The Ghostly Minstrel lay outside the range of the spell, and yet they had gone there several times that day. At the thought, their hearts became ill at ease.

Fortunately, Kalerecent greeted them cheerfully in the excavated antechamber.

“Is everything all right?”

“All has been quiet here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why? Has the alarm been triggered?”

“Err… No. Not at all.”

And, in fact, it had not. With their fears temporarily allayed, they headed down into the Banewarrens themselves. Ranthir cast a new alarm on the sealed door and they began chatting idly about their affairs: They decided to go to Mahdoth’s Asylum the next day to follow-up on the letter Ranthir had received. They considered different ways of fulfilling Jevicca’s new assignment. (“We should just lay siege here. She has to come out eventually.”) They also considered what should be done about the chaos temple in Oldtown and the other two temples they knew of in the Temple District.

And then Tee’s sharp ears caught it: “My friends! To arms! To arms!”

“There’s something wrong!” Tee took off running down the hall.

Agnarr and the freshly boot-enhanced Tor both passed her easily in the race out of the Banewarrens. Coming back up the tunnel leading to the antechamber, however, they came up short in front of a wall of seemingly impenetrable darkness. A few moments later, the others caught up to them. Even Tee’s elven vision couldn’t penetrate its unnatural depths. And everything beyond it was eerily silent.

They fidgeted, unsure of what they should do. Tor was skilled in the arts of blind-fighting – having practiced his swordcraft on many moonless nights – but without any idea of what might lay within the darkness it didn’t seem wise to go rushing in. (Although Agnarr firmly endorsed the “rushing in with both eyes shut” plan.)

Then Tee heard heavy footsteps approaching them from out of the darkness… but as those footsteps emerged into the passage, there was still nothing to be seen. Tee whipped her dragon pistol up and fired.

The shot missed.

A blue-skinned ogre with dark runes etched across its temples appeared out of thin air, swinging its massive sword. It caught Tee flat-footed and sent her stumbling backwards down the passage.

Dominic was completely exhausted by this point (it had been an impossibly long day), but he somehow dredged up the strength to draw once more upon his divine power and let it flow into Tor. Tor was gleeful to feel himself grow in the same way that he had seen Agnarr do so many times before, and even before the transformation was complete his sword had lashed out, striking the ogre with two quick blows.

Dazed and surprised, the ogre raised his sword to parry and cried out—“Yuinthu! They’re stronger than we thought! I need—“

And then Tor, with one last plunging thrust of his blade, killed the creature.

The ogre fell.

And the darkness fell with it.

To one side of the antechamber, another half-leonid creature crouched – seemingly shocked by the sudden return of the light. She had a slightly different countenance than the others they had fought, but was clearly of similar nature.

And to the other side of the chamber stood a tall, purplish-skinned humanoid with a mouth of frothing tentacles and slitted, milky-white eyes.

Ranthir recognized this latter creature as a “flayer” from vague references in ancient texts – and something about “feasting upon the brains of the living”.

“Don’t let it eat your brains!” Ranthir cried out in warning.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Dominic muttered.

Tee moved forward to get a better shot at the betentacled creature, but as she moved into the antechamber two huge spiders dropped from the ceiling.

“Look up! Why do we never look up when it matters?!” Tor cursed in frustration.

Tee, for her part, barely managed to roll backwards down the tunnel – although she still received a nasty, slashing cut that burned painfully from the spider’s venom.

“Yuinthu!” the leonid cried. “We need to get out of here!” She bounded forward, leaping through the air and landing atop Tor – all of her claws raking painfully into this chest while her jaws sank deep into his shoulder. Her claws dug into his flesh as she bunched her legs and leapt back into the room, sending Tor staggering backwards.

While Tor was still trying to recover, Yuinthu – with a strange and alien gait – shambled forward and laid his hands upon the leonid. The leonid, in turn, laid her paws upon the ogre and the spiders both reached forth claws to touch the sphinx—

And they vanished.

RANTHIR AND THE DREAMING APOTHECARY

Dominic rushed to Kalerecent’s side, finding the knight still breathing shallowly. With a burst of holy energy, he got him back on his feet.

“You drove them off?”

“More or less,” Tee said.

“The ogre appeared out of thin air.”

“They disappeared that way, too.”

Ranthir had detected a slight aura of planar magic in the flayer’s escape spell. He suggested that they might be able to trace their teleport and proposed that they ask Jevicca to do it for them…

… which is when they realized they had no way of contacting her.

Knowing that Jevicca had contacts with the Dreaming Apothecary (because she had given their token to Elestra), Ranthir took the Apothecary’s token from Elestra and raced back to the Ghostly Minstrel. When he failed to find Jevicca in the common room there, he headed up to his room and placed the token under this pillow. In his excitement it took him some time to drift off to sleep, but he finally managed it.

When he awoke to find the representative of the Dreaming Apothecary in his room – dressed in cloth-of-gold and with her long, blond locks drifting through the air – and explained that he was trying to contact Jevicca.

The representative of the Dreaming Apothecary was unamused. “We are not a messenger service.”

Ranthir rapidly backpedaled, instead placing an order for a magical headband that would aid his arcane researches and making arrangements for payment.

The representative agreed to the commission, but then she raised her finger. “However, for your impudence, tonight your dreams shall be plagued with discontent. Do not forget this lesson, mage. We are not to be trifled with.”

The room was instantly swallowed in blackness and Ranthir felt himself thrown heavily backwards into his bed.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself standing upon a crowded street at high noon. But there was something wrong with the faces of the people around him – they seemed indistinct, blurred, warped. His eyes could neither focus on them nor ignore them. The entire scene was deeply unsettling…

And then there were gasps of fear and cries of terror. His head snapped up. The surface of the sun was… festering. Green and black sores were spreading across its surface like cancerous growths. The sun was dying. And then a whisper, like a long-dead voice snatched by the wind, caught at his ear—

“…an age of endless night has come…”

He lurched awake to find himself in his own bed once again.

Running the Campaign: Ambushing Your Timelines – Campaign Journal: Session 36A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index