This week the party started the final adventure of the heroic tier - "The Vampire in the Tower", their final battle with the tier's villain, the vampire Ctenmiir the Cursed. This one went well over, which I think is a good thing - I think the party had a lot of fun this week!
We started by finishing up the Dead Man's Dagger ritual with Elanath; the party was quick to leave afterward, making their 4-day trek to the tower and crossing the mire. There they found wyverns with zombie archer riders flying, scouting the region below - Vorgym bluffed their way past one, and they reached the tower to find a puzzle chamber guarding the entrance. They were presented with a slide puzzle with one missing tile, and hundreds of replacement tiles scattered through the chamber. There were also four pictographs under the puzzle - each representing a wizard's cantrip (though it took awhile for the party to figure this out). The tile puzzle was merely a red herring - the answer was to cast one of any of the mage's cantrips on the door, which would cause it to open.
After figuring this out, the party entered to find Lukash, the tower's spectral castellan, who explained to them some of the workings of the tower as well as some of its history. He also offered to provide them with "lodging", which he does by using an item called an Exodus Knife to carve out a doorway to a dimensional bedroom. They learned that they would have to kill two of Ctenmiir's lieutenants to advance to the next floor of the tower: Gokof, a hobgoblin totemist leading Ctenmiir's spiders in the tunnels; and Varrg, a hill giant kennel master in charge of tending to Ctenmiir's many hounds in the kennels past the tower's courtyard. These lieutenants had crystalline "keys" which, when used together, would shut down the lightning barrier blocking their ascension to the next level.
They headed into the tunnels first, finding a sarcophagus in which a great vampire had been sealed by a dwarven hero who sacrificed himself to seal the vampire in; this hero's name was lost, but it was clear from the inscriptions on the sarcophagus that he wielded an ancient dwarven warhammer known as Whelm. Passing through the tunnels, the party was ambushed by a pair of ropers and a number of umber ravagers - this encounter proved to be somewhat difficult, but they overcame. The next encounter was more difficult, as the party ran into Gokof - they defeated him easily, but found that defeating him threw his small army of spider minions into a rage, and they dealt 105 dmg to Cyrus in a single round. The spiders turned out to be the true boss of this encounter, but the party prevailed in the end, and recovered Gokof's key and spider totem, which had a valuable black pearl in its mouth.
Next, they returned to the main hall and slept in the room Lukash provided. Thereafter they headed into the courtyard, which seemed quite peaceful...until they ran into a roving pack of hounds. This pack, composed of hounds of ill omen, war hounds and howler dread hounds proved to be the end of Cyrus & Deckard, who both died in this difficult encounter. Deckard was saved by an unlikely rescuer, however...Lukash, who possessed Deckard's body in order to return him to life. The party then hauled Cyrus back to the main hall, and Lukash provided them with his dimensional bedroom again, temporarily killing Deckard again in the process by leaving his body. Cyrus was revived by Deckard's resurrection power, and the party seems to be back together again. Ctenmiir is now aware of their presence within the tower, however, and has advised them that they have 3 days before he attacks Falconia; he also implied that Lukash possibly has ulterior motives for possessing Deckard, which could be a problem later. They have hit level 10, however, which should be a vital extra level for the challenges ahead...
Oh, and we came up with a couple minigames...Chess and a card game called Liar's Tongue.
No comments:
Post a Comment