Had everybody again this week, which is good =) We picked up right where we left off, with the party facing Vagra'kon and his minions.
This encounter proved to be fairly simple, as despite some early hits, the hobgoblins and their ogre pet were unable to penetrate Erik's defenses for most of the fight, and at Vagra'kon's instruction they were attempting to kill him off then pick off the others. This strategy did not succeed, and in the end the hobgoblins were slain. The party collected what loot they could (including a new set of chainmail for Aludiana) and returned to Cairnmoor to tell Mayor Lundgrave what they'd discovered.
They returned with Vagra'kon's head to prove he was dead, and were given a fine reward of 500 gold pieces and a room in the Misty Morning Inn. They questioned whether the hobgoblins were really involved with the warlocks as a result of Grugamug's lack of knowledge of any warlocks, and Lundgrave responded by suggesting that the typical goblins were largely ostracized by Vagra'kon. Satisfied, the party headed off to the inn to check out their room. Iados' paranoia continued to strengthen in this session, as he Arcana-checked the bag the gold was given to them in and became convinced it was speaking to him.
After some discussion on the wisdom of sleeping with a thief & lecher like Reed, the party finally settled down for the night. The next morning, the party found that Smolkin had arrived in town. He explained to them he had a big job in line for them, but he wanted them to do him a favor first - to check on his friend, the gravekeeper of the Cairnmoor graveyard. After being hesitant to give them any details, Smolkin was convinced to explain to them that he was originally the Cairnmoor graveyard's gravekeeper, and that this friend, Lazlow "Laz" Dirgwyn, was his apprentice. He'd been speaking regularly to Laz through correspondence, but recently the letters had stopped - between this and the troubles Cairnmoor had been going through recently, Smolkin was quite worried. The party agreed, and set off for the graveyard.
Upon arriving in the graveyard, the party first checked Laz's cottage, which they found to be choked with cobwebs and spiderwebs. They found a journal within, but had to escape quickly with it when Iados lit his lantern in the highly-flammable conditions of the cottage, causing it to quickly be set ablaze. They read through the journal, discovering that Laz had found a lost tomb while digging a fresh grave. Further entries in broken Elven suggested that there was an entrance of some kind in the mausoleum, and that Laz had decided to take care of the "young one" he had found.
Armed with this knowledge, the party headed into the graveyard - and their first encounter. They spotted a number of small amalgamations of dead matter known as tomb motes, and moved to attack - they quickly discovered that hidden within the open graves were deathjump spiders, who leaped upon them and attacked as soon as they drew close. The spiders managed to knock Iados prone, and immediately leapt upon him to feed. Most of the encounter was spent with the spiders attacking Iados & ignoring the rest of the party. In the end, the beasts were defeated, and the party moved into the mausoleum.
Inside the mausoleum, they discovered a movable sarcophagus, and descended into the tomb. They were immediately greeted by a trio of zombies covered in spider webs, and a particularly mobile gargoyle - an ambush spider eventually added himself to the encounter, sneaking through the webs to get the drop on Erik. This second encounter didn't prove to be terribly difficult, save for the fear factor of the zombies turning out to be walking egg sacs filled with spider swarms, and the gargoyle's devastating hits it made coming out of stone form. They proved to be no match for the party, however, and were defeated in what ended up being a fairly long fight.
After this fight, the party spotted a number of treasures in the room's dark fountain, a piece of Drow architecture. Reed dunked his hand in to scoop out the treasures, and immediately found himself infected with a pair of diseases - filth fever and skinrot. The party then discovered that the water was a cocktail of deadly diseases, and any sort of interaction with it would surely lead to infection. Reed seemed to have trouble grasping this concept, and moved his canteen to scoop out some water - Iados, attempting to stop him, knocked the canteen straight into the water. This made Reed awfully mad, as this was his great-great grandfather's prized canteen. Fortunately, Gwenn was able to clean it with prestidigitation, which (hopefully) cleansed the diseases from it. We stopped there for the night.
The party really seems to be getting a handle on how to handle combat, and with the exception of the Sir Cairnstone encounter and the encounter with the evistros, they haven't found themselves in any great jeopardy. In this tomb, however, they may find that will all change soon...we'll see what happens next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment