Marpenoth 12
Marpenoth 12, 1369:
First thing in the morning, the party ate a quick breakfast,
gathered their equipment and headed over to The Yawning Portal.
They left the bear and the wagon at home. Mrap-M'rap decided to
stay at home, commenting to Darius that he never went into
Undermountain with first-timers.
Outside the tavern, a small man in an alley caught Maanamere's
attention and called him over. The man was completely covered in
rags and a worn cloak to hide his features. He explained that his
name was Xubux and he was afflicted with a horrible disease and
that he arranged to buy medicine from someone who set up shop in a
particular Undermountain once every ten days. He needed someone
to bring a coffer of spice down to this person in exchange for his
medicine and wanted Maanamere to do it because his usual courier
was missing. Maanamere agreed. When he took the coffer, he
noticed that his hands were a horrible orangish-yellow with spots
and that he seemed very thin.
As advertised, the Portal was a large tavern filled with rough
types that had a 30' wide hole in the middle leading down into
Undermountain by means of a block-and-tackle arrangement. They
asked for passage down and paid the standard fee of 1gp per person
per trip (one way). There was some speculation and gambling as to
their chances and Maanamere bet 8gp and Stewart 16sp at 5 to 4
against that they would emerge after at least 3 hours with all
party members alive and walking. After that they were all lowered
down.
In the first corridor they entered, the party spotted a secret
door. On openning it, they found a single room. Immediately, an
empty suit of armor walked up to them from a corner of the room
and offered them the brass ring on its finger.
Maanamere took it and also a brass key he
found on the floor.
The party followed the directions Maanamere had been given and
found a room whos doorway had been blocked up to waist height by a
folding barrier. Inside the room was a cloaked figure and two
bugbears armed with blunderbusses. They confirmed that he was
Xylianthaxarlin, the salesman they were looking for, and traded
the coffer - which appeared to contain nutmeg
- for a leather packet of medicine.
They discussed what else he had to offer and might be interested
in. Stewart mentioned that he was looking for Oil of Sharpness.
Dexter sold him the snake poison they had collected on Eleint 11
for 5gp. He mentioned that he was usually willing to pay 3-5
times the surface rate for rare herbs and spices, and that he had
spices of the Underdark for sale. Stewart purchased 1gp worth of
dungwort, sparnak and dried bluevein to bring back to Rarchnarorg.
He also had an assortment of poisons and some minor potions for
sale. The potions were a few Minor Healing Potions (less
powerfull than normal Healing Potions) for 100gp ea., a Cure
Paralysis Potion, which he sold to Steve for 5mp (he recognized
the nationality of the coins), and a Recovery Potion (I have no
idea what this does) for 150gp. He said that he usually had a few
of the Minor Healing Potions in stock.
The party returned to the shield room below The Yawning Portal and
Maanamere went up and delivered the medicine.
200xp to party for letting Maanamere play a Domino's driver
On their second pass through the first junction room (the
anti-magic room which is the first place that corridors branch out
from after the shield room), the party found a gold piece on the
floor and replaced it with a copper piece.
After that, they had Dexter perform the actions from his vision.
When he did this a panel opened up in the SE wall revealing the
lever (that he pumped) and a series of five huge stone wheels set
into the wall so that only part of the edge was visible, each with
a series of (dwarfish) numbers (0 - 9) set in the edge. When
Dexter started pumping, the rightmost wheel started spinning.
When Dexter had pumped it up to what seemed to be full speed, the
flagstones beneath his feet started flipping over to reveal their
white undersides in a line that ran down the south corridor.
Also, the second wheel started advancing by what looked to be one
number after each rotation of the rightmost wheel, and a full
rotation of that wheel advanced the third wheel. The party
surmised that this was some kind of timer and guessed that the
white path would go away when the timer ran out. They headed down
the south corridor, following the white trail.
They spotted a goblin in the corridor bending over something. he
ran away. When the party went to investigate, they found a single
gold coin on the floor. When Stewart picked it up, it burst into
flame, burning Stewart badly. He was forced to drop the coin and
it slowly burnt through the floor. So far as the party knows it's
still going. I have no recollection about what happened to the
goblin, but I know this party, so...
5xp to party for shooting a goblin in the back
The next interesting place the trail led AFAL was a room where two
ghouls were beating an improvised drum made from a round shield
with hide stretched over it. They turned the ghouls and found a
gold-plated key in the drum.
The next scenic discovery was a long room lined on both sides with
thrones, each with a corpse sitting in it. The ceiling glowed
purple and each throne glowed yellow. The bodies seem to have
been thouroghly stripped. When the party entered the room, a
disembodied voice cried out "Doom! Doom takes us all!" This
happened again as the party was about to leave. When the party
passed the first pair of thrones, the corpse on the left yelled
"Ogglin!", then the one five down from it yelled the same thing,
followed by the one five down from it and so on.
The trail led to the south exit of that room which was a 20' wide
corridor that ran for 40' before ending in the entrance to another
room. That end of the corridor was mostly blocked by thick spider
webs. The floor of the corridor was lit with alternating 10' long
bands of purple and green glow (4 bands in all). Each band ran
from one wall of the corridor to the other. When the party began
advancing down the corridor, they noticed that it made them glow
very faintly. When they reached the end of the corridor, they
looked through the webs and found a large room containing a
massive statue of a spider on a raised platform with an altar
between its two front legs. The statue was guarded by four elven
women with jet black skin. The women were armed with black
swords, daggers and small crossbows and wearing black chain mail.
They were starting to attack the party.
The party was able to defeat the drow, and the two giant spiders
that where hiding on the ceiling, but Stewart was knocked
unconscious with Drow Sleep Poison (TM). The party searched the
bodies thouroughly, but they had no purses. They took the 4 sets
of +1 drow chain mail and +1 drow short swords, as well as 4
daggers, 4 pistol crossbows and 28 crossbow darts coated with Drow
Sleep Poison (TM). They gave the room a quick search and
discovered a large sliding (up) panel in the back of the altar and
another, smaller panel (locked, keyhole visible) in the dias. The
group decided to leave these for later and continued after the
trail.
3465xp to party for elves & bugs
Shortly after that the party came around a corner and was attacked
by 3 Ogres. The party killed two and the third fled through a
curtain of darkness. They collected 7gp and 5 toals from the
bodies.
675xp to party for ogres
Many twists and turns later, the white trail went into a trap door
in the middle of a room painted strange colors. The room had a
curious combination lock made up of 6 faces that all had to be
oriented the same way, but turning a some faces caused others to
turn themselves. The party studied the lock and came up with the
most efficient solution.
300xp to Henkles (for Jay) for minimum solution
200xp to party for group portion of effort
The trap door opened to reveal a ladder going down into another
room 20 feet below. Maanamere refused to climb down because he
was afraid of heights. Cassie cast charm person on him to get him
to climb down.
400xp to Maanamere for consistently roleplaying vertigo and
charm
150xp to Cassie for roleplaying
The trail led to a room that had been flooded. Some party members
swam across the room (there was a stairway descending into the
room on either side) and they secured a rope going across the room
which allowed the others to cross. They left the rope there for
their return.
After a series of stairways up and down, the party found a room
full of stirges. I don't think they got a scratch from them.
1225xp to party for stirges
As the party was walking towards a door at the end of a corridor,
it burst open and a bunch of wet hobgoblins that seemed to glow
faintly came charging at them. AFAL fought them back with a sleep
spell and managed to repel the initial rush, Henkles used Ylgoth
to slit some throats so people could increase their resistance.
During the initial fight, they noticed that the hobgoblins were
exceptionally hard to hit.
The hobgoblins retreated into the door they came through. The
party pursued them through a room with a wire that eventually led
to a bell in a later room and into a room where a wooden barricade
had been built across the center of the room. The hobgoblins and
some wet reinforcements from the next room were taking up pikes
and crossbows behind the barricade. The party took up positions
in the previous room with archers peeking around the doorway.
Narthandarkanas made two daring attempts at catching the baricade
with a grappling hook to pull it over while under fire. While he
didn't suceed, he did give Darius a chance to step out of hiding
and cast Snilloc's Snowball Swarm while the hobgoblins were
reloading. The few hobgoblins who survived the spell fell back
out of the room.
400xp to Narthan for clever tactics under fire
AFAL pursued the remaining hobgoblins through a common room into a
large sleeping chamber that was packed with well over 40 wet
hobgoblins, being led from the rear by a large wet bugbear.
Cassie cast scare into the center of the room, which took the
fight out of the majority of the hobgoblins while Steve blinded
the bugbear, who stumbled out of sight. The few remaining
unscared hobgoblins near the doorway held off the party for a
while. The first two hobgoblins the party faced had just consumed
heroism potions, so they were unexpectedly tough, but they
eventually fell. When it became clear that the party would
eventually push into the room, someone ordered the scared
hobgobllins to retreat out a door at the end of a 20' corridor on
the opposite side of the room. The few unscared hobgoblins from
the rear squeezed past them and tried to cover the retreat, but
eventually fell. The party pursued the last of the hobgoblins and
finished them off.
5040xp to party for soggy hobgoblins, some heroism potions and
a blinded bugbear
The white trail followed the 20' corridor into an even larger
sleeping chamber dominated by a large fountain that seemed to be
glowing very slightly. The trail circled the fountain several
times, reversing direction once and then led through the fountain
and straight across the room into a wall. Maanamere tried
following the trail and as soon as he went through the fountain
(submerging himself fully) part of the floor began dropping away
under the trail, creating a stairway going down. Unfortunately,
at about the same time the party heard the aproach of the clacking
sound of flagstones flipping over in rapid succession.
Everyone huried through the fountain as the portion of the trail
that was turning itself back over sped around them and they chased
it down the stairs. They ran after it through a rush of rooms and
corridors, losing ground all the way, but eventually lost to much
time to breaking open doors and lost it. They managed to work
their way back to the stairs without too many wrong turns and
headed up the stairs just as they were raising back up again.
At this point, everyone decided that since Stewart was still
unconcious, it was probably time to head home for the day. On the
way out, they searched the hobgoblins, collecting 632cp, 21sp,
223ep, 26gp, 2 toals, 2pp, 3 Sembian Steel Pieces and 1 shiny
brass button. After that they returned to the drow room without
incident and took the other three bodies with them to confuse any
reinforcements that might arrive. When they got to the shield
room below the Yawning Portal, they decided they couldn't take the
remaining drow into the city, so they slit her throat and went up.
The cost of getting back up was taken from the electrum they got
from the hobgoblins. Maanamere and Stewart lost their bets
because Stewart was not able to walk out.
Stewart woke up a few hours later.
