Posted: 25 April 2021 (reading time: 4 minutes; 747 words)
Recap by Arash Shahangian
The party enters the warehouse without issue. After finding a trap door leading to descending stairs, they enter an underground cavern-dungeon and discover an ogre with a deformed face and left arm playing with bones as if they were toys. The party barely sneaks by the distracted ogre and goes into another area. On a table in the middle of the room they find a letter stabbed into a table. There are many entries in the letter like a ledger, all crossed out except for 2 entries: “One girl, blood pool” and “One girl, Yuki, Ashen Forest”. In a nearby area, they see four men sitting in prayer and chanting around an obelisk covered in runes with horrific declarations of death and destruction in Abyssal carved into it.
So engrossed were they in their chanting that they didn’t notice as the party snuck by them to a set of double doors and down a hall. Down another hall was where, finally, that the party was discovered by two guards who cried out “Intruders!” (or something like that). Battle ensued along that cramped hallway, led by Leguza and Greunthrn. Belnirith made the first kill, but was immediately taken down, being the first to nearly die and being quickly saved by Vyshka. Norsk’Mænth and Hrafn entered a side room containing a bloody altar and 2 large mastiffs with red eyes dripping with blood. Behind them was the cult priest who was taken off-guard by their arrival and was taken down, but Hrafn also went down and would have died were it not for the healing hands of Vyshka, the cleric of Thor. Hrafn, seized by the beauty of the wood elf, made another unsuccessful attempt to flirt with her.
After many failed attempts to open the chest that was found in the priest’s room, Belnirith had the delayed, if not embarrassingly obvious, realization that the priest may have had a key for the chest, which she did find along with his divine focus. It was a solid gold (un)holy symbol of a major demon in the shape of a human heart, worth 220gp-260gp, as Leguza later assessed. In the chest was a scroll containing an unidentified spell of arcane magic and a potion of Greater Healing. In another room, empty, the party found 12gp, two potions of Healing, a ring, and an old shirt. The ring and the potion of Greater Healing were claimed by Leguza, and the other potions were given to Gruenthrn and Belnirith. Belnirith also took the (un)holy symbol and scroll.
Deeper into the dungeon was a large cavern containing two large pools of bubbling blood. Over the center pool was an iron cage containing Hallgerd, the blacksmith Ketilbjorn’s missing daughter, who screamed “Help me!” upon the party’s entry. Beside the other pool were 10 dretch demons, each in a cage, each emanating unholy terror. The sight of them was so horrifying that it instilled intense Dread in Hrafn, who was Spooked for four minutes, while the rest of the party collected Hallgerd from the cage. Despite Vyshka’s protesting, other members of the party launched into ranged assaults on the dretches, swiftly ending their short time on the Material Plane.
Having found their quarry, the party turned to leave the dungeon. On the way back, they discovered the four chanting cultists had fled. Hallgerd wanted to leave post-haste and was very afraid for her friend, Jarngerd. She was also quite bothered by the party delaying their exit to examine the obelisk and the old, broken, defaced 10’ statue of a bearded man with a hat and 2 swords. Belnirith identified him as Kalum Mockingbird, founder of the Blüstrom Witch Hunters, which made her cringe a little bit.
The party returned Hallgerd to her tearful, grateful father, then returned to the warehouse to track the remaining cultists. The party discovered footprints in the snow leading towards the edge of the city to a side gate with a guard in front. The guard first denied having seen the cultists, but made it clear he would accept a bribe. Leguza offered him 2sp and he told them the cultists passed through this gate an hour and a half ago. The tracks revealed they were heading towards the direction of Ashen Forest. The party went in pursuit, walking for hours with no sign of them, but on their trail. At midnight, they took a long rest, intending to resume their pursuit in the morning…
TO BE CONTINUED…
Filed under