Uktar 9
Uktar 9, 1369:
High = 35, Low = 15
Light precipitation (up to 1/2" rain or 1" snow) starting @ 3:40am
Wind gusting to 24 mph from the north.
Cloudy.
The party, now at full strength (?) returns to Undermountain, once
again determined to harass metal monsters. They entered via the
Yawning Portal and headed south towards the metal web.
They encountered a roving band of bugbears. The ususal subtle
interplay of interspecies diplomacy occured. The party collected
81cp, 117sp, 72ep, 41gp, 4 toals, 10 morningstars, and 20 hand
axes from the bodies.
1200xp to party for wanton killing
When they reached the former drow shrine, they discovered that
beside Stewart's "Selune rules!" graffiti, someone had carved
"Loviatar kicks moon maiden ass!". This bothered Stewart for some
reason and he attempted to erase the message with one of the
morningstars.
Naturally, the noise attracted monsters. In this case, a band of
goblins who had just intended to peek in and see what was up
before they went on their way. It didn't work out that way. They
were spotted and Cassie cast sleep, which eliminated some and
committed the others to a fight. The party realized that they
were carrying a struggling humanoid wrapped in an old rug and went
to the rescue. The humanoid turned out to be Gomsha, a female orc
whose band had been teleported from her mountain home into
Undermountain. Narthan managed to be the one who rescued her, for
which she was very grateful. Tongues were exchanged. One goblin
managed to flee and escaped by going through a curtain of
darkness.
220xp to party for killing or capturing 10 goblins and 2
goblin guards.
500xp roleplay bonus to Narthan for-ew, stop that
They questioned the prisoners to see what they were up to. The
first on wouldn't talk, so they gave him to Gomsha to kill. After
a while they asked her to speed it up so they could move on.
Questioning of later prisoners revealed that they had taken Gomsha
alive so that they could take her to a quiet room (they knew of a
few to the SE) and sacrifice her to Shar. Then Stewart killed
them. Gomsha helped.
155cp, 116sp, 61ep, 3gp, 4 5gp turquoise, and 1 5gp onyx were
collected from the bodies, of which 1gp, 8cp, 6sp, a short sword
and 4 javelins were given to Gomsha.
The party convinced Stewart that he'd done enough damage for one
room and they continued on to the metal web without further
incident.
Stewart started by climbing out to grab a cyan sack with purple
polka-dots. As before, the metal spiders came out to watch him,
but did not interfere with him grabbing one sack. Stewart
returned to the balcony and the sack was oppened, revealing 3
chardalyn, 2 Harbor Moons, a 7" iron bar, 1/2" thick at the base
tapering to a 1/4" thickness at the tip, which is capped with a
1/2" anealed steel ball (the lower two thirds are wire wrapped), a
Scroll (HM C, 4th lvl caster) 2) Cure Moderate Wounds 2)
Diminished Rite 2) Heal Light Wounds, and a black wool velvet full
circle cloak, embossed with a pattern of skulls with bats wings
along the edges. Scratched into the sides of the wand with elvish
characters were the words "Skrazragn" and "Grikzagn". Cassie used
the Glim Gauntlet to identify the bar/wand, scroll and cloak as
magical and the chardalyn as non-magical.
In the mean time, Gomsha climbed out on the cables to get a closer
look at a "big bug". She seemed quite adept at climbing. So the
party asked her to see if she could get another bag. She was up
for it so long as Narthan approved, so she headed out. The
spiders immediately got between her and any of the bags though, so
she returned.
At this point the party put their clever plan into action. Cassie
cast Minor Malison on as many of the spiders as she could. Then,
Dexter, Stewart and Narthan each cast chill metal at some of them.
Thing seemed to go well at first. Two of the spiders retreated
into their holes right away, and others seemed to be frosting up.
The priests started casting another round of chill spells, but
suddenly all the lights went out. The party could hear the
spiders rushing them (those with infravision could see it) so they
fled the room.
The spiders did not pursue the party beyond the doorway, so they
waited outside while Henkles lit a lantern and discussed what had
happened. The conclusion was reached that the spiders had the
ability to trigger a standard null-magic zone (as opposed to the
kind in the pillar room). These are characterized my headaches in
spellcasters and the permanent loss of all enchantments short of
an actual magic item. This meant that Stewarts light buttons had
all been dispelled.
After discussing their options, the party decided to call it a
day. They returned via the Yawning Portal, where Gomsha got a lot
of funny looks but no open hostility. They returned to Fair
Winds, where Gomsha started shacking up with Narthan.
Later that day, Henkles was walking back to the Yawning Portal to
listen for news of the Shining Sons when he heard an explosion in
the distance. By the time he got to the source, the warehouse
that had made the noise was mostly ruined, although the Watchful
Order of Magists and Protectors had the fire mostly under control.
When he reached the Portal all talk was about the explosion.
Henkles learned that it was but the latest in a recent series of
warehouse explosions - the 3rd this week. Opinions were widely
divergent as to the cause, as no one had any useful data, but
three opinions had more than two or three supporters. One was
that this is what comes of allowing mages to practice their foul
craft in the city and there's bound to be explosions and worse
with that lot messing about all the time. A second was that this
was the symptom of some underworld power struggle, probably
between the Red Sashes (a mysterious society in Waterdeep,
frequently associated with vigilanteism) and a new thieve's guild.
The third was that this was the Lord's doing - that they were
enforcing their strict ban on smoke powder in the city (apparently
they've been this heavy-handed about it at least once before).
Henkles had some soup and went home.
