Session 5: The Barrier Peaks Expedition 8/14/2015: The Library, a Lurker, and Cats

Name	Player	Race	Class	Present	Survived	Replaced
Blake	Carl	Human	Bard	N	Y	Y
Catherine Lastation	Chris	Human	Oracle	Y	Y	Y
Faolan Ironhand	Glen	Dwarf	Paladin	Y	Y	Y
Finger	John L.	Gnome	Rogue	Y	Y	Y
Goran Stonecrucher	Guest Player	Dwarf	Fighter	N/A	Y	Y
Halvar Gunnarson	Cory	Dwarf	Ranger	N	Y	Y
Menyw Daolg	Danielle	Elf	Fighter	Y	Y	Y
Ranold Winterhare	Tim (T.J.)	½ Elf	Magus	Y	Y	Y
Ruis	Johnunce	½ Drow	Magus	N	Y	Y
Thadious Bullskin	Mike K.	Human	Wizard	Y	Y	Y
Mrs. Page	Mike’s npc bard	½ Elf	Bard	N/A	Y	Y
The Homunculus	Mike’s critter		Critter	N/A	Y	Y

The party assembled before the door labeled “library”, ready for any trouble. Ranold stepped up to the door and employed the magic of his glove to see beyond. The glove’s magic revealed a large room with many desks in it and a few skeletons in line of sight, but other than that nothing else. So with a gentle push on the white panel, Ranold opened the door. As explorers searched the room they discovered six skeletons scattered throughout the room. In addition, there were a total of 24 desks, each with a little scrying device on them.

One of the skeletons they found was dressed in what appeared to be the ruins of a uniform, leaning up against a cabinet-like structure. A thorough search around the skeleton revealed the presence of a gray piece of leaden glass. All attempts to open the cabinet itself proved futile as whatever mechanism held it shut could not be accessed from the outside. Through the magic of his gloves and a simple light spell, Ranold peered into the cabinet, seeing scores of tiny crystal cubes. After a few more futile attempts to open the cabinet, the explorers turned their attention to the scrying devices on the desks. Closer examination revealed that these scrying devices were similar to the one they found in the Constable area where the first skeleton was found, although they had fewer controls and a small square opening on one side.

Menyw and Ranold divided the scrying devices into four groups of six and started to flip dials and switches. The first several attempts met with failure until at last Menyw seemed to find the right combination and turned one on. The screen quickly started to show pictures of various strange creatures (possibly outsiders?), each image only staying on the screen for a few moments before a new image appeared. Suddenly a list of the colors with writing appeared. Halvar’s helmet helped him translate the words on the screen for the group, allowing them to glean information.

The list seemed to have the colors in order of greatest to least in access. With this new knowledge and information, a plan was formed to test this theory. Suddenly, without warning, a map appeared. While it was only there for a few moments, they were able to glean a great deal of information. They were able to learn where they were compared to where the piece of map they had was. They were also able to find access to other sections of the fallen castle (they were starting to suspect this was some sort of sky castle). The adventurers learned more about where they were and about some of the rooms nearby them. They also acquired some knowledge of what the majority of the door colors were. The map then suddenly shifted to an area vastly different from where they currently were. According to their translator, the edges were ringed with places for the old cargo, some place called “the captain’s lounge”, a bar (which interested the dwarves), and what seemed to be a place for dancing. But then (as Catherine said) the magic smoke escaped and the item stopped working.

Not to be deterred, they looked to find another scrying device that worked. In a short while they found a one. Hoping to find themselves another map, they continued to mess with the dials and see what pictures came through, but according to Halvar, what writing did come up was stuff so technical and advanced that he had no clue what it was. After several minutes of information they could not understand, they chose to leave the library.

Now armed with at least a basic understanding of directions in the castle, they headed back to their entry point to try out one of the red panels they had seen earlier and to also test if the rating system they found worked as expected. Cautiously inserting the red leaden glass into the violet door near where they first entered, they were overjoyed to get their key back and have the door open. So they cautiously entered and applied the key to the red panel inside the room.  As before, the door opened, revealing the area where they had originally enter into when they began this perilous adventure. After thoroughly exploring and verifying this red door was identical on both sides, they took Ranold’s advice and went to go check the area labeled “medical”.

In route to the “medical” room, the party fell victim to a second Ceiling Lurker – the creature fell from the ceiling, trapping Catherine, Blake, Finger, Mrs. Page, Thaddeus, and Menyw. Quick action from the band’s heavy hitters on the outside destroyed the beast in record time and before it could cause serious harm. Upon reaching the area on their map where “medical” was shown, they were greeted by a voice that politely told them, according to Catherine and Halvar, “Please return tomorrow – today all personnel are absent. For emergencies, go to Med 1 or Med 2.”

Disregarding the voice, the explorers searched the room and in one of the desks found a yellow card, something they did not remember being on the list of colors. At that moment, an alarm sounded: loud and high-pitched and within moments one of the clockwork Sentry golems arrived. Thinking quickly, Catherine grabbed the yellow card they found, waved it between her and the creature, and said “inspection, we are inspecting the medical area.” Without any further aggressive response, the golem stopped and acknowledged their commands and left. Well after it was gone there was great rejoicing that the colored glass worked. Noticing that there were several other doors with yellow panels on them, the explorers chose to investigate this area further.

The first door led to what looked like a laboratory for an alchemist all the materials needed within – except the chemicals. This annoyed Thaddeus: how could he craft stuff if he didn’t have chemicals. Having a choice of two additional yellow doors and a white door, they chose the yellow door further to the south.

Entering that room they discovered another clockwork golem repetitively mixing chemicals and testing samples through many vials on a work counter. The counters behind it contained many vials and containers they had seen before. The party chose the idea of using the yellow card and seeing if they could gain any information from the golem. They proceeded the asked the creature if he could identify several vials they had already in their possession. The golem confirmed that one set of vials was the ability to cure poison, another vial cured disease, and the final vials (with the mysterious symbols they had no clue about) cure some form of wasting poison, which is all they could glean through the translated response. As they attempted to pry more information from the golem, it threatened to call guards. Taking that as a hint, the adventurers quickly headed to the other yellow door leading out of the room on the north wall.

Opening that door revealed a rust-covered room with another yellow door on the far side. Concerned about the presence of rust creatures, the party chose to exit the alchemist golem’s room though a yellow door to the west. This brought them back to the main room they started in. Wanting to see what was through the yellow door on the other side of the rust room, they chose to go the way of white doors, working their way up and around the rust-filled room. Once past the rust-filled room, they found another yellow door. They opened that yellow door and found a storehouse of chemicals.

With a restrained the squeal of glee, Thaddeus quickly assessed the chemicals. Sadly, many of the chemicals present were no longer of value as they had spoiled. There was still enough that Thaddeus thought he could cobble together a few alchemist fires plus there were some other chemicals that bear further investigation, something he is not willing to do an unsecured area. Setting the chemicals he thought he could use away from the others, Thaddeus and the rest of the team exited room to move on. Ranold, however, was convinced that something of value could be learned in the rust-filled room and insisted that he be the one to investigate it as his gear was protected from rusting. So with a less than thrilled response from the team, he went in.

Nearly a quarter of the way in Ranold realized that what they thought was rust was really a deadly mold, so deadly that even a Paladin’s divine protection was no defense. As he turned to flee, the mold spewed clouds of its deadly spores. By shear heroic luck Ranold was able to leave the room without becoming infected. To insure that the spores would not spread to anyone else, Faolan (with a great deal of grumbling) was forced to use his very good brandy to wash the spores off Ranold. With that done the explorers made their way out of the medical section and, following the suggestion of the magic mouth in the medical section, they headed east to find ”Med 1 or Med 2,” which were on their map.

Knowing the locations they were looking for were east of their current position, the party headed that way, weapons ready. The area was dimly lit, limiting visibility for most of the explorers, but the sharp-eyed elves and deep-living dwarves were able to guide the way with few problems. With visibility limited, Ranold chooses to use his elixir of vision to improve his sight. As the group entered a wider space just outside the medical areas they were looking for, Halvar and Ranold suddenly heard a low growl, just as a pack of large, tentacle-endowed cats revealed themselves from the shadows and attacked.

Only by sheer luck did Ranold and Halvar spot them before the attack. Moving quicker than either Halvar or Ranold could act, the cats attacked. But the ambush did not help the tentacle cats as much as they hoped – their initial attacks did little damage and failed to incapacitate their foes. The creature’s lackluster opening attack gave the party a chance to respond, but the large cats were not exactly where they appeared to be. Ranold quickly identified them as displacer beasts. They were not unfamiliar but definitely different from those known to him, these beasts melted into the shadows much more easily. While the magus and the ranger readied their attacks, the creatures lashed out again at the heroes, but again only inflict minor injuries at best. The heroes gathered their mettle, but only Ranold inflicted an injury to a beast.

As the rest of the heroes recover from the shock of the creature’s ambush, the beasts pressed their assault. The press was much more effective, inflicting grievous wounds upon Faolan as well as additional wounds to the group’s warriors. Meanwhile the cat attacking the party from the back met with an unusually disturbing sight. Ruis’ weapon was able to find hit the beast without a doubt, Thaddeus chose this moment displayed his true mystical might and transformed Ruis into a hulking gorilla. The change lent more strength to the power of Ruis’ blows and extended his reach and he made short work of the rear attacker.

Faolan decided that standing shoulder to shoulder with a dwarf was better than shoulder to shoulder with an elf and opened a space between himself and Ranold. This exposed the weaker members of the explorers as the gap was large enough for one of the cats to attempt to get through. Fortunately, the combined efforts of Faolan and Ranold kept the cat from passing between them. Once Gorilla Ruis finished his opponent, he stepped forward to support the dwarves, his now greater reach allowing him to safely strike over their shoulders.

The battle Quickly turned to the adventurers’ favor. With Blake and Mrs. Page singing glories of the heroes, the team quickly sliced through the remaining cats. Ranold struck a devastating blow against the cat attempting the get past the line, removing it from the battlefield in a single stroke, then quickly turning his attention to the one directly in front of him. The cats themselves were having a rough go of this fight as the momentum of their ambush was gone and they failed to score any telling hits on the heroes and in less than half-a-minute the fight was over.

This is where we stopped for the night.

Time in the complex: 15 hours and 30 minutes.

3 hours and 30 minutes into the 2^nd day. Still on the first level.

Good night!