Flamerule 23
Flamerule 23, 1369: (new moon)
High = 50, Low = 30 No precipitation.
Wind gusting to 20 mph from the prevailing direction.
Partly cloudy, becoming darkly overcast towards evening.
The party travels up the side of Mt. Silvermane to their old
campsite.
Early Afternoon: As party is passing by a 30' cliff, a band of
Kobolds begins hurling rocks on their heads from the top. They
are swiftly entangled and slept by Dexter and Buffy, while Stewart
kills their leader with a rock. Maanamere rides around to the top
of the cliff to chase down the one stragler, but his horse gets
nailed by a snare set by the kobolds and bolts. The kobold
manages to get to the other side of a narrow ravine and is pushing
the log bridge over when Maanamere shoots him. Stewart and Devlin
chase down Maanamere's horse.
Hahrvee scrambles up the side of the cliff to join Maanamere and
they capture 5 kobolds for Buffy and Dexter to charm and kill the
rest. The bear eats well. Buffy charms one, named Frank, while
Devlin is away and the rest are bound and thrown in empty turkey
cages. The party collects 168cp, 156sp, 2 colored stones of
unknown value, and, at Darius' suggestion, the weapons of the
prisoners. (106XP)
100 roleplay xp to Stewart for constantly expressing his joy
over travelling with an ever growing menagerie.
The stones are 2 tiger eye pieces. The Kobold prisoners are:
Frank, 6 javelins
Fritz, 4 javelins, short sword
Frieda, small club, 8 darts
Franz, 4 javelins, small club
Phineas, 3 javelins, small club
The party arrives at the ruins near dusk. It seems unnaturally
quiet and dark in the area. A low mist is rolling down the
mountainside and swirling in strange patterns amoungst the stones.
It's cloudy overhead and no stars are coming out. As the party
aproaches the campsite, Mrap-Merap says that he has a bad feeling
about this as the party enters their old 2' fortification. While
Darius is translating this, 14 greyish skeletons, armed with
longswords and daggers, charge the party from the ruins.
Stewart manages to turn 3 and Devlin begins casting Protection
from Evil before five more skeletons who were buried under the
campsite spring up. These skeletons were painted grey and someone
had bolted iron band to their bones to make them tougher
(Maanamere and Henkles? did 10 points of damage to one without
destroying it). Three of them were armed with man-catchers. One
of the ones with longswords hit Devlin with three magic missiles,
interupting his spell! Dexter turned them before they could do
any more damage. (Ironicly, Devlin's Protection from Evil would
have had no effect on the Neutral Skeletons if it had been cast,
but it did provide a distraction so that Darius could cast Web.)
Darius webbed three more of the attackers before they reached the
party. Further blows were exchanged, but only one skeleton got in
a swing at a party member (Steve) before Devlin turned them all.
Henkles, who was deliberately using Sear to see how it would
behave, noticed no differences in performance between Sear and a
normal broadsword. Maanamere noted no damage bonus for his
longsword against undead while using Binky. Stewart saved a
grey-painted bone for later study. (1200xp)
While the party was cleaning up from the fight and making sure the
ground beneath their feet held no more surprises, the mist around
the ruins coalesced into an opaque wall circling the ruins, and
after a while the party became aware of a tower rising from the
center. The party prepared to enter the ward mist and discussed
options for guarding the riding animals and turkeys. It was
decided that the whole party would go in and Dexter charmed a
second Kobold, Fritz, so that Frank and Fritz could guard the
animals.
Any discussions with Devlin over the ethics of charmed kobold
slaves were deferred.
While they were giving Frank and Fritz their orders, the party
heard horrible screams coming from the mist. Stewart put together
a description of the Tower and its
arrival and sent it back to Silverymoon by CPU before they entered
the mist.
When they went in, they looked for the source and found what they
eventually decided was a ghoul, which had been sliced to ribbons.
The rangers found the tracks of five sets of booted feet and one
set of skeletal feet, which went back into the mist. Darius
suggested that the ghoul may have been killed by the ward-monsters
- magical creatures set to guard the ward by its creator. A
search of the body revealed a single, hollow glass ball, 1.5
inches across, which Stewart carefully wrapped and pocketted.
The party emerged from the ward-mist at the base of the
tower, a 100 foot tall obsidian cone, 80
feet across at the base, roughly 40 feet across at the base of the
dome which caps it. It appeared to be carved from a single, solid
mass of obsidian and had only two visible features as they
aproached it, a small window in the dome, and a solid looking,
iron-bound door at ground level, marked with the symbol of Shar
superimposed over the symbol of Selune. The symbols were painted
on. The purple-bordered, black circle of Shar was almost 2 feet
across.
Dexter, Henkles and Mrap-Merap circled the tower
looking for other openings or tracks, but found nothing. In the
mean time Stewart checked the door for traps. As soon as he got
back from circling the Tower, Henkles tried
the door. It was open, so he went in.
Ground Floor (80' external/60' internal diameter, 13' height) -
Henkles found a large empty room with a grand staircase leading
straight up to the next level, two columns carved to look like
Shar stood on either side of the staircase. The floor, stairs and
ceiling were buffed (not polished) obsidian, the walls were
covered with murals (this was true on all levels). The murals on
the ground level were depictions of the nightime construction of
the tower. Much magic was obviously
employed. There was an inscription on the stairs.
There weren't any monsters, so Henkles invited the party in.
Dexter bravely sent his dog up the stairs and the four (Caryatid)
columns came to life and attacked it. It escaped after one round
with one hit point. The party tried to engage a single column or
attack them in stone form, but a general fight broke out.
Stewarts morning star and several darts and arrows were shattered
on the columns hard skin. Hahrvee and Devlin decided this would
be a great time to try out the Belt Daggers of Doom and Might.
They, and the others engaged in melee discovered that knowing the
noise is coming isn't the same as hearing it. Henkles and
Maanamere spent most of the combat stunned, but so did some of the
columns. The front line fighters started to learn to adjust to
loud cries of "DOOM!" in combat.
1st Floor (73'/55' d., 12' h.) - The grand stairway continued
through an otherwise empty level. The murals on the walls were of
pilgrims coming to tower and praying
outside. Many of them are seen leaving tythes of gold and gems.
There were four more columns, identical to those below, flanking
the stairs on this level. Henkles decided this would be a great
time to try out his nifty new chisel on one of the columns,
Elizabeth Rose stepped up to watch. Sadly, the columns were
packed with explosives, and the resulting blast from the column
and the secondary blast from the adjacent column killed Elizabeth
Rose outright and put Devlin and Maanamere into a coma. Everyone
except Dexter, who was keeping his bear out of the way, and
Mrap-Merap, who started flying for the door the moment he saw the
chisel, was badly wounded. Afterwards, the party destroyed the
other two columns from a safe distance.
500XP, reluctantly, to Henkles for roleplaying. (I never get
to wipe out half the party with a single blow. Hmph.)
600XP, divided evenly, to Maanamere, Devlin and Iain, for
patiently sitting out the rest of the game without hurting
Jay.
In this and every room that followed, Stewart did his level best
to desecrate the tower. He liberally
sprinkled Moon-Knight urine and Selune Holy Water on everything
evocative of Shar that wasn't trying to kill him. How Selune
feels about her holy water being mixed with piss is best not
contemplated.
2nd Floor (66'/50' d., 11' h.) - At the top of the grand staircase
was a level completely cloaked in magical darkness. Henkles tried
going into it with his continual light button, but it didn't help.
Stewart gathered together as many buttons as he could and brought
them all at once. That was sufficient to illuminate the room,
including the 6 animated bugbear skeletons that were charging him.
After an initial panicked retreat, Stewart mustered enough courage
to return with Dexter and turn the skeletons.
The murals on this level depicted things being hidden cleverly -
hiding place withing hiding place within..., hiding in plain
sight, etc. Steve recognized one site where two bodies and a
chest were being buried as the Standing Stone that marks the
treaty between the elves and the humans in the Dales. (This event
was the start of the Dalereckoning calendar.) He and Dexter also
identified another hiding place as being in a hidden pass in the
Nether Mountains overlooking Silverymoon. Darius identified a
statue in another mural as a well-known landmark in Undermountain.
No one else paid much attention to the murals. (Details of these
three murals are at
http://www3.shore.net/~cloak/tower.html#Murals)
The wall of this chamber was also decorated, at ceiling height,
with silver chains. Dexter stood on Henkles (ignoring some
teritorial noises from Mrap-Merap) and managed to pull down 250'
of chain in short sections. There was also a beautiful crystal
chandelier in the center of the room, which Stewart badly blew his
appraisal roll on (never trust a halfling to look at something on
the ceiling) and valued at only 150gp. Darius was very insistent
that the party try to pull down the chandelier right away. But
Stewart managed to convince the party that they could much more
easily collect it on the way out.
100XP to Darius for knowing better.
3rd Floor (59'/45' d., 10' h.) - The murals on this level were of
humans and goblins sneaking into/out of places or past enemies
under cover of darkness. The stairs up from this level were a
spiral staircase with no rails. Stepping on a step caused a
handful of spikes to spring up in the floor. Stewart managed to
determine that something would also cause the stairway to start
spinning people off onto the spikes, but the trigger condition was
never identified. Stewart and Hahrvee climbed up to the next
level.
4th Floor (52'/40' d., 9' h.) - The murals on this level were of
Shar triumphing over Selune and other lesser dieties. The room
contained 4 statues of burly fighter types, a window facing west
and a large collection of coffers and large and small chests. A
search of the chests eventually revealed a body and
two notes that indicated
that the tower had previously been looted. In the mean time,
however, Stewart and Hahrvee learned that the statues were
animated and began harassing them.
They tried tying ropes around them, but they resisted. They tried
having the bear knock them over from below, but they wacked it
back. They tried distracting individual ones, but that didn't
work to well either. Henkles came up to help, skipping the top
few steps out of paranoia. Darius, Dexter and Steve followed his
lead. Eventually, the party learned how to harass the statues
enough that a fight broke out. Darius managed to do some decent
magic missile damage and give himself a seemingly permanent
squeeky voice. After that he seemed to go mad and started
franticly setting his blanket on fire. The statues were
eventually defeated, but Hahrvee was knocked unconcious and
Henkles was knocked into a coma.
After they had defeated the statues, the party finished searching
the room and found a secret door. Dexter managed to bring Hahrvee
back around. The party decided to leave the bear and the bodies
below. Stewart released the other pigeon he had brought in with
him through the window, carrying an updated report for his
superiors.
5th Floor (45'/35' d., 8' h.) - This level was another single
round room, this time with a 6' symbol of Shar on the floor and
mural storylines of people coming to grief (lost love, lost
children, impending death by hanging), praying to Shar and
becoming blissfully forgetful. Stewart entered this room before
the rest of the party and managed to set off a trap that sealed
him in and filled the room with gas before anyone could join him.
HE managed to undo the trap less than five minutes later and was
hardly bothered by the gas. In the mean time he also set off a
magical trap on the symbol of Shar, but managed to shrug it off
like a true Selune'-boy.
Top Floor (38'/30' d., 6' h. walls, 15' h. at center of dome) - At
last the party made it to the uppermost floor. This was a domed
room with the window they had seen from outside above the
entrance. In the center were a dark altar with a quartz panel in
the top, and an animated giant snake skeleton with a fanged human
skull. The obligatory murals depicted Shar reigning triumphantly
from her dark palace in Hades, commanding legions of fiends,
passing judgement over the damned, etc. Hahrvee cast the party's
last offensive spell - color spray - at the snake thing, which
stunned it long enough for the party to smash it to bits.
After destroying the snake-thing, the party started to examine the
altar. Under the quartz face was a deck of diviners cards, with
The Tower and The Hermit turned face up and sidwase to obscure the
rest of the deck. Darius cast detect magic on the deck. When he
woke up, his first words were "I want". A heated discussion about
giving Wild Mages magic items that they specialize in began, but
they were interupted by a swarm of stirges which started coming in
the window.
The party frantically spiked a blanket over the window opening,
preventing all but 6 from getting in. They managed to kill the 6
Stirges, with help from Mrap-Merap, who felt that flying
rat-things were clearly in his area of specialty. The party
suffered no important injuries during that battle.
As Mrap-Merap was finishing off his Stirge on the altar, a jeweled
cup appeared, filled with gems and trinkets, some of them magical
(description.
The party carefully collected them for later study. After that
Stewart gave Dexter the ward token and told the rest of the party
to head downstairs ahead of him, in case smashing the alter and
taking the deck destroyed the tower.
They headed down to the 3rd floor and collected the fallen. They
had to wait for Stewart there because the skeletons he had turned
blocked their way.
Stewart smashed the quartz and cut away the cover of the cushion
the deck was sitting on so he could lift it out without touching
it and carefully wrapped it up so that its configuration would not
be disturbed. He then hurried downstairs to join the others. The
party left the tower without further
incident and without remembering Darius's chandelier.
The party emerged from the ward to a chaos of kobolds and turkeys.
Frank and Fritz had apparently decided to feed "big lizard" and
had offered it 10 turkeys and Phineas. It wasn't clear how many
turkeys Roscoe actually ate before going to sleep (for a good long
while), but only 4 were seen running loose and none were recovered
(except as bear food). In the mean time, Frank had run off.
As the dawn of the 24th began, the party moved the camp away from
the tower and resolved to sleep through the day.
250XP to Dexter for emerging from the Tower without a scratch.
