A Thread Unraveled
March 27, 2019
The group spends most of a tenday studying something. Hang, Tyrel, Jinn, and Maldar all studied books, learning new skills. Dorn spent time training, teaching, and learning new ideas with the guards.
The Midsummer festival started and was nearly over by the time the group was ready to get together and do something. They had talked, had meals together and more but were busy resting and doing their own things. Maldar tracked and took care of some enchantments they got through Gregorivych. They picked all of them up and had to decide what to do. Jinn brought up his wife's necklace again and that decided it. Hang cast Locate Object and determined that it was 800 feet down. Not knowing where else to start, they went to the cisterns. Maldar was able to see a door down belor and when lowered to it, opened it into some hallways. They found a passage and went in the direction of the pendant, although were still several hundred feet above it. They found a central chamber that had a stair pattern in the floor but no stairs. That is, until the level was pulled and stairs formed from the pattern.
Down, down, down, and down. Turning and Turning. After a hundred feet down, a door with elven that said Waterfall entrance eventually comes into sight but the group skips it and keeps going. For a long time. It ends in another door with no writing. Going into it, there is a winged devil, waiting to attack! Had it been only Maldar, it would not have ended well for him. But between Dorn's strong attacks and Tyrel's ability to cause fear, the devil was soon dispatched. They find a series of stones with numbers in infernal. After staring at them for a while, and realizing that it is a combination, they try a few but Jinn is at a loss at how long it will take to figure out the correct one. That's when Tyrel says, "try 15 5 9 3." Jinn rolls his eyes but does . . . and it works. They all stare and wonder but are curious about the cavern beyond. It's huge and as they enter, they see light behind a giant stone column. Maldar goes up cautiously and sees a man looking at a gate formed from some stone in the cavern.
"Ah, Maldar. About time. Give me the stone. I have waited long enough."
"What stone?"
"The one from Uilken."
"I don't have it."
"Where is it?"
"In my house."
The figure mutters some words of power and Maldar is back in his house, knowing he only has twenty heartbeats before magic will take him back. He rushes to the box, gets the pouch from Uilken, and then finds himself back in the cavern.
"Is that it," the figure asks.
"Yes."
"Give it to me and go."
"We can go?"
"Yes."
Maldar does. In this time, though, Chandi had come forward and shown Jinn that Jinn's wife's pendant was part of the portal. As the man turns back with the pouch, mutters more words of power to open the strings binding the pouch, and taking another similar looking pendant out, it joins the other three and the stone portal starts getting energy pushed into it. The man says more and more words of power, shaping the energy. Jinn has seen enough. Maldar may be content to let it happen, but Jinn didn't want to find out the spell burns out his wife's pendant. He goes and grabs it, interrupting the spell.
"Very well," the man says. "The hard way."
Several blue insect like creatures are there and it's a fight. The man ignores the party, trying to cast his spell, even going so far as to take the pendent back from Jinn. But Jinn takes it back again. The illusion over the man finally drops, revealing a rakshasa. He dominates Dorn and forces Dorn to attack his friends. The rest do well against the insect like creatures and soon the fight is taken to the rakshasa. He can't prevail against all of them and goes into the portal and leaves, leaving behind the other pendants.
The group rests there, planning their next move.
3500 xp
GM Notes
- Maldar's player seemed content to the let the rakshasa finish the spell. That only would have opened a portal to Hell.
- This finished the thread with several story points. The rakshasa had impersonated Arakus and started them on the path to recover all of the elemental keys, so he could open the portal to Hell. While he got away, it's unlikely he will be a threat any time soon.
- It all took much longer than I hoped but for a session back after a break, it went well.
BACK
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.