The Thing in the Murder Pit (Session 330)

SESSION 330: The Thing in the Pit 

Going deeper, that is where one finds answers but they come at a cost.

 

Day 841 Continued (Green Dome): There was one place left to go. The basement. The black pit. The hole in the structure where slag had burnt out the lower plane and then melted deep into the earth and where the Cthedrak had her thralls mining for some lost and perhaps not destroyed artifact. Where our companion Dolec Da had been liberated from. Now, it was the unexplored inky abyss. Would answers be found?

 

Regrouping our troop made their way down from the upper level and then to the winding stairwell to the lower floor and excavation area below. Once more Bimbles stopped before getting.. anywhere really. They had no plan. Down the steps they went to the count of ten. Oh! Bimbles remembered that they had caused more than a little destruction last they were here. He quickly stopped Camillus. The stairs beyond the tenth step no longer existed. A twenty foot drop would have been the next step. Shining his light down the cleric saw a shattered human body dressed in robes and a pointy hat now ruined by brain matter. “Hey, there is a dead wizard down there…and I cannot see anything beyond into the pit”. Raul quickly chirped some directions, “Take my rope of climbing and get down there we are getting cramped just standing in this stairwell”. The two tanks descended and Bimbles then shone his light into the pit. Nothing could be seen but a retching voice that slithered through broken glass filled their heads. “Mortals. Bother me not as I enjoy a mandated break period. Lunch will come to an end soon and I will return to my duties. Take your treasure. Be gone and hope never to face me. This conversation ends”. Bimbles tried to make reply but nothing returned but a deep sense of foreboding. They grabbed the dead mage and made retreat to the ground level. 

Raul and Bimbles were at a loss and then they remembered they had a body to loot. Some stuff was found but most interestingly was a talisman. 

A black stone, perfectly round and of absolute blackness somehow set, maybe floating, into a triangular piece of curious metal that had long extensions, perhaps handle like, coming from both base points. Herbert, a bit of a gemologist if he doesn’t say so himself, was completely perplexed by the stone in the set without bezel. “It has no mounting it is just there…and of a blackness more absolute than the most perfect onyx. Inconceivable..”. Raul was intrigued but time was not their ally, he wrapped the item and stowed it away. It was around now that Bimbles called for problem resolution.

 

New plan time. 

Raul would under a cloak of invisibility, ocular super power (true seeing) and other protections would slink down from which previously came the vile voice. Sneaky, sneaky time for our little megadungeon explorer. Down into the basement he went. He came to the edge of the melted edge of the lower floor and looked into the abyss below. The abyss looked back at him. In one hand was a mighty battle axe. Affixed by heavy chain on the other arm dangled a huge ruby. That was the last thing he remembered.

 

Raul appeared next standing before Bimbles and Camillus clutching a wand to his chest. 

KaBooom!

The whole group were consumed by a conflagration. Raul had a sickening grin on his scorched face. The rest of the team were completely demoralized, what the hell is going on!?!

KaBooom!

Raul set off another blast. Herbert and Willy ran with the last slivers of life within their bodies back upstairs. 

Complete disarray.

“By CROM! You fool’s he’s possessed!”, screamed Skullcrusher. Being from the Dreamlands he knew a thing or two about evil spirits. Bimbles changed up his plan of trying to beat Raul into submission, “Camillus guard me. I must kick ass with the power of my Lord not my mace”. Camillus, ever the courageous warrior, stepped into Bizarro Raul. “By the power of Spinning Stars and Moons I compel you entity from the body of my companion!”, incanted the cleric. He was heard and answered a moment before a likely third and final fireball detonated. Raul collapsed to the ground. Camillus and Bimbles grabbed the now unconscious Raul and began dragging him away. 

“RETREAT!!”

Once more they fled the green dome. Back into the forest a good half mile from the entrance before they stopped. Raul was conscious again but could only remember a prison full of red mist. Bimbles and Skullcrusher moved to attend to the many injuries.

What the Gehenna are we going to do?

 

 

The C (clearing)-Team: Bimbles, Raul, Camillus, Sasha, Willy, Herbert, Skullcrusher & Azucar

 

ROLECALL 

Bimbles the High Priest of GSS (C10) 349007 xp +5% <400001> CRT 1d12/III

            +2 save to poison and internal body things; Double eat (gotta feed my baybay)

Raul the Voyager (MD9) 281339 xp +10% <360000> CRT 1d12/III

            Fezzi-Gig (Neut: XXXX) Sword

Serious wound: permanent loss of CHA -4, 

Removed one of his own nostrils.

 

            The Henchmen

Sasha Plasha the Warden (R7) 130426 xp +10% <200000> CRT 1d10/III

Missing three teeth

Camillus the Myrmidon (F6)  62068 <64001> +5% CRT 1d20/IV

Willy the Reformed Burglar (T6)  37275 <40000>10% CRT 1d14/II

            Agolloch the Eye of Purity (Lawful; XXXX) Sword

Herbert the Master Gnome Trickster (G4) 17464 xp <30000> +5% CRT 1d8/III 

Skull-Crusher the Hellebardier of Crom (A4) 10438 xp <12000> +5% CRT 1d8/III

Azucar the Elven Myrmidon Warlock (E6) 84319 xp <120000> +5% CRT 1d8/II

 

RESERVES

Elapsed Campaign Time

841 – C-Team (16.23 - 0703 The Doom of Cthedrak)

Domain Days

Gormandia: 2 (Start 838)

Bunnland:?

Join us for session Three-Hundred-and-Thirty-One when we ask the questions:

What is that Thing in the basement?

What is that Thing doing in the basement?

What are we going to do with the Thing in the basement?

Was it summoned by one of the two dead adventurers?

Was it bound and if it has escaped what can be done?

Tale of the Tape

Everything is not so mostly fine anymore and bound only to get worse, we were very close to a mass casualty event.

Unbeknownst to our gang help is nearby. Nara had flown to their basecamp.

KILLS

none

LOOT

Small assorted gems (10) 10gp each

Scroll: wall of ice, web, dispel magic, ventriloquism, detect magic

Travelling Spell Book: Magic missile, detect evil, detect invisibility, wizard lock

Mysterious Talisman

The Confines of the Flesh (Session 329)

SESSION 329: Rotting Ways 

This joint is really turning out to be a space-tomb

 

Day 840 Continued (16.23/0603): Bimbles made it a few steps before stopping, “Ah. I gotta  bad feelin’ about dis”. With that they did an about face and after a quick peak into the inky blackness of the stairs to the lower floor our brave hobos fell way back. About a third of a mile out the main door and into the forest. Here they setup their ‘Tiny Hut’, hunkered down and then the cleric called upon his deity for some divine guidance. 

During his commune he asked three questions. The outcome of which left him with mixed feelings.

            1) Is a divine caster occupying the Green Dome? – NO.

            2) Has the naga arisen from death? – NO.

            3) Was the cyclops chaotically aligned? – YES.

Bimbles and Raul reflected awhile on this before calling it a day. Better luck tomorrow becoming a common refrain.

 

Day 841 (Green Dome): Clear. Back into the green dome. It was redo time. But wait! Bimbles once more slowed things down. Before returning to the naga’s chamber upstairs they would check the two side chambers that were previously the Orc camp and slave storage. First, the slave storage. It was still a room filled with garbage, dirty pallets and bedrolls

strewn throughout the room, for enslaved workers. Across the corridor and into the Orc quarters. This did not seem to be much different but memory doesn’t always serve. They rolled in to search the chamber and stirred up a nest exceptionally hostile flying, blood sucking, electrical googly-eyed tadpole things.

 

Bimbles, Azucar and Camillus were swarmed. The lightly protected elf-berserker was quickly in trouble with a pair of the things stuck on his neck. Don’t worry fearless readers the creatures were defeated just before we lost another elf. The room and monsters offered nothing in measure of pay or knowledge. 

 

Now back up the stairs. Almost at the top were they. The smell was bad. As Bimbles was about to turn the final arc – Splooch. Yuck. He had stepped in a great mass of congealed and high oxidized bodily gunk. This was a lot of blood and perhaps other highly decomposed viscera. Oh and what a stink when his foot broke the ‘skin’ on the gunk. He was very close to turning around for a second time. Camillus gave him a shoulder pushing him up the last few steps. Their eyes came down on a portion of a human body. Missing from the chest up the opening sat at the edge of the top step. The gunk was obviously all the stuff that was inside this robust nearly half-man. The legs were armoured in metal and there was some plating around the portion. 

They scanned the rest of the chamber. Nothing looked super different and nothing immediately tried to kill them they proceeded into the foul (smelling) chamber stirring up clouds of flies. The chamber was about 50’ deep and nearly as wide. Along the northern wall was a nest of branches, leaves and torn cloth a low desk containing and the naga’s corpse. They team made their way into the chamber. Cthedrak’s has for some time been just a husk as the insides had long since been cleared out by the cleanup crew whom now used her as a shell to nest in. Our vibrations roused more than just clouds of flies. Out burst a half dozen 9’ long, 3’ high, many-legged, segmented worm-like things with tentacle ringed mouths. “Ahhh carrion crawlers”, yelled Herbert as he darted to the side of the chamber behind Skullcrusher whom screamed “By Crom I will squish you like the bugs you are!”. “We actually call them ‘carcass crawlers’ for copy right reasons”, pointed out Willy not currently controlled by Agolloch as these insect-things were really uninteresting. 

One-by-one hobos were paralyzed. Six of eight were down. Only Camillus and Bimbles were in the fight facing the last two crawlers…

With deep regret I must inform you that with the protection of heavy armor the two tanks were able to remove the final crawlers from the equation. After grabbing a breath Bimbles went about removing the paralytic condition from his companions he did not want to run into any more trouble. They finally got back to the work of searching the chamber. Raul was assigned the job of inspecting the carcass. He got himself a surprise.

                                        (Shouldn’t have stuck your arm in a dead snake-bitch Raul, ya twit)

Cthedrak’s final gift was a host of rot grubs that were now burrowing into Raul’s arm making haste for his heart. Bimbles rushed to his aid and cleansed the mega-dungeon explorer with a cure disease – praise Spinning Moons & Stars! In the end a bunch of gems were retrieved from the guts of the carrion crawlers. 

Back to work.

Next stop the basement. 

 

The C (clearing)-Team: Bimbles, Raul, Camillus, Sasha, Willy, Herbert, Skullcrusher & Azucar

 

ROLECALL 

Bimbles the High Priest of GSS (C10) 348268 xp +5% <400001> CRT 1d12/III

            +2 save to poison and internal body things; Double eat (gotta feed my baybay)

Raul the Voyager (MD9) 280600 xp +10% <360000> CRT 1d12/III

            Fezzi-Gig (Neut: XXXX) Sword

Serious wound: permanent loss of CHA -4, 

Removed one of his own nostrils.

 

            The Henchmen

Sasha Plasha the Warden (R7) 130057 xp +10% <200000> CRT 1d10/III

Missing three teeth

Camillus the Myrmidon (F6)  61699 <64001> +5% CRT 1d20/IV

Willy the Reformed Burglar (T6)  36906 <40000>10% CRT 1d14/II

            Agolloch the Eye of Purity (Lawful; XXXX) Sword

Herbert the Master Gnome Trickster (G4) 17095 xp <30000> +5% CRT 1d8/III 

Skull-Crusher the Hellebardier of Crom (A4) 10069 xp <12000> +5% CRT 1d8/III

Azucar the Elven Myrmidon Warlock (E6) 83950 xp <120000> +5% CRT 1d8/II

 

RESERVES

Elapsed Campaign Time

840 – C-Team (16.23/0603 The Doom of Cthedrak)

Join us for session Three-Hundred-and-Thirty when we ask the questions:

Who has been messing with our spaceship?

Will the basement answer our questions?

Will the basement be full of horrors?

Why was Cthedrak excavating below? 

Tale of the Tape

Everything is still mostly normal, everything is still mostly fine

KILLS

Volts (15)

Carrion Crawlers (6)

Rot Grubs (11)

LOOT

Gems (15): 2000 gp total value

Return to Snake Dome (Session 328)

SESSION 328: One Big Eye, Everything is Starting Out Just Great

It was time to reclaim the Spaceship hex, should be easy we killed everyone last year.

 

Day 838 (Gormandiaà15.22/0806): Clear. It was a nice early Spring day. Ding-We wrecked it for eight unfortunate hobos, “Bimbles. Raul. Assemble a team it is most urgent that we secure the lands around the spaceship it will become your monastery!”.

The ‘C’ for clearing, not chumps as Biff suggested, team was assembled along with a small support crew.

They needed to travel about six miles passing past the toppled remains of the long forgotten king, Zaphisdreal the Magnificent, the last ruler of the Skeldrene Dynasty before it collapsed into Chaos and barbarism two Cycles previous. 

If we had a real sense of our geographical location we would know that we kinda lived in an interior region of the low North. That would explain the remnant snows that slowed travels. Along with the fact that troops and a couple of wagons were part of the expedition. The first day was gobbled up by travel and camp establishment in the sub-hex adjacent to the previously decimated Orcish, Festering Sore Clan, well-hidden village in the box canon.

 

Day 839 (15.22/0806à16.23/0304/0303àCamp): Drizzle. Spring brought constant showers this day. The group had been directed to pass by the orc lair before re-securing the spaceship. Ding-We had assured them that they had totally cleared the place and it was totally just a perfunctory endevour – guaranteed. 

Well. Not for the first or last time Peg-Leg was going to be wrong. Thye mob approached the box canyon via the western arm. The drizzle sorta obfuscated things. Willy was sent ahead to stealth scope the canyon. He was confused by what he saw. A hundred or so sheep penned just outside the canyon and an abundance of grape vines just within. Deeper within he could see a red glow but couldn’t define it until he caught sight of a gigantic arm wielding a man-sized wooden spoon. A huge cauldron sat upon embers slow cooking some sort of stew. He reported back to the crew. Bimbles had an idea. They scaled the side of the canyon to be above (~40’) the narrow entrance to the box canyon. The cleric yelled some stuff that eventually elicited a response once they repositioned themselves within line of sight for the stew cooker. 

Lumbering out came a cyclops of a strong twenty feet in height, “Nuthin bu mutton. Nuthin bu. You tell me you gots sump tin udder meat for me. Maybe you trade me little guy for two sheep?”. The hulk one-eyed Herbert hungrily. 

The hulk seemed friendly enough once you got past his willingness to eat our gnome. Raul and Bimbles were a little off balance with the circumstance. They ended up trading all the salted  meat the group had on hand along with two-hundred golden coins for a pair of sheep. “Hmm not bad. Def naut mutton. Yum”, the cyclops wandered back into the darkness of the box canyon. The team leaders didn’t rightly know what to do next. 

“Gonna take a little while to make a nice lamb stew”, came from Raul.

“Hmm. Your right… Back to camp! Lamb stew night!”, directed Bimbles as he turned towards camp. “I ain’t in a rush. Don’t want to strain anything working too hard”. 

Raul was not inclined to disagree.

That night the support crew presented a hearty potato, carrot and lamb stew to the assembled group. Steve’s special spices were missed but the red-wine broth helped alleviate that shortcoming. 

 

Day 840 (15.22à16.23/0403/0503/0603): Clear. The drizzle had stopped. Bimbles and Raul didn’t have a plan for the cyclops so they would travel along the northern boundary, and clear of monsters as required, of the hex to the spaceship. As they worked their way through the rolling hills an orc day camp was discovered as they crested the saddle of a non-particular hill. The foul beastmen were hunkered down in an extra shady col between hills. The orcs were doing their best to avoid the bright spring daylight. Things would turn very fatal for them in just a few moments. Digging through the corpses they found a better haul of coin than expected. Sasha felt that the orcs had been up to something the gold had been precisely stowed in two sacks. “It doesn’t take them long to get back to evil endeavours once you take the pressure off them”, offered Azucar. This seemed reasonable. The recently cleared bugbear lair was in the local vicinity. “They are the same everywhere. Moar murder’in is needed by Crom”, was Skullcrusher’s observation. “Yes kill! Kill! Kill”, shouted Willy’s underworked sword Agolloch. 

They pressed on to the obvious green dome of the spaceship that was less than a mile that way.

Along the way Sasha noted some large tracks associated with a pair of huge ass prints. Here interpretation was that two very large bipedal entities had taken a sit down against a couple of now broken trees and had a snack. Raul inquired if they were cyclops or regular giant tracks. The ranger could not say for sure, the previous days rain had mucked up the already not super fresh tracks. The info was filed away for future consideration and then the march continued to the presumed spaceship.

 

Sneaking up nothing looked interesting. All was intact. No noticeable tracks. 

They closed in on the large entry door. I did not want to open. 

“It worked so good last time..”,  Bimbles lamented. 

Raul recited an incantation and the enormous copper door opened shortly after an arcane knock. 

They were greeted by the lingering smell of rot fouled old air. The first inner chamber was, on the northern wall, bound by the curved interior surface of the dome, that formed the wall and ceiling. Both were constructed of a strange, translucent green stone that allowed filtered light to enter through the walls. The interior walls and floor of the dome were, in contrast to the outer shell, fashioned from a shiny black, stone-like material, closely resembling obsidian, that was absent of seams or any indication of tooling. The now very well dead orcs had set up a temporary shelter within the entrance hall; a rough framework of branches covered in animal hides – a dome within the dome. 

The shelter could have been more dilapidated but to Bimbles and Raul nothing rung as being different than they had left it months ago. 

No life beyond the many flies spawned from the carcasses. 

They moved through the chamber to the next door across the way. 

ZAP! 

Everyone except the rearguard had walked into a glyph and got themselves a good electrical jolt and then they found that this door did not want to open. Another incantation was required – knock. 

The door was opened and they were greeted by the buzz of awakened flies and definitely stale air with just a hint of decay.

The entrance hall was 20’ tall allowing the extending corridor to be bathed in sickly green light. Two doors of beaten copper, stood beyond. 

The floor between was littered with small bits of stone a well disturbed layer of dust and many, many dead flies.

Beyond, a corridor starts out ten feet wide, swooping gracefully out into a “Y” shape. At the end of each branch the walls double back in, forming open staircases; the one on the eastern wall descends down into darkness, the one on the western wall ascends up to the level above. 

 

It was way too much of a mess for Sasha or Raul to make heads or tails of any of the tracks. 

“Whoa up!”

Bimbles put a hand on Camillus’s shoulder before they progressed through the doorway. Another glyph was hidden from the normal eye but not divine sight. After detecting the trap the cleric spoke secret and powerful words granted from his deity. The glyph shattered like glass and then dissolved into vapour. The two tanks rolled in and past the doors. Bimbles was compelled to check the upper deck. As he and the fighter began ascending the winding stairwell he quietly hoped that the naga was well rotted and nothing else ‘snakey’ was slithering about.

The smell of rot was increasing with each step. 

 

The C (clearing)-Team: Bimbles, Raul, Camillus, Sasha, Willy, Herbert, Skullcrusher & Azucar

 

ROLECALL 

Bimbles the High Priest of GSS (C10) 348268 xp +5% <400001> CRT 1d12/III

            +2 save to poison and internal body things; Double eat (gotta feed my baybay)

Raul the Voyager (MD9) 280600 xp +10% <360000> CRT 1d12/III

            Fezzi-Gig (Neut: XXXX) Sword

Serious wound: permanent loss of CHA -4, 

Removed one of his own nostrils.

 

            The Henchmen

Sasha Plasha the Warden (R7) 130057 xp +10% <200000> CRT 1d10/III

Missing three teeth

Camillus the Myrmidon (F6)  61699 <64001> +5% CRT 1d20/IV

Willy the Reformed Burglar (T6)  36906 <40000>10% CRT 1d14/II

            Agolloch the Eye of Purity (Lawful; XXXX) Sword

Herbert the Master Gnome Trickster (G4) 17095 xp <30000> +5% CRT 1d8/III 

Skull-Crusher the Hellebardier of Crom (A4) 10069 xp <12000> +5% CRT 1d8/III

Azucar the Elven Myrmidon Warlock (E6) 83950 xp <120000> +5% CRT 1d8/II

 

RESERVES

Elapsed Campaign Time

838 - Gormandia

Join us for session Three-Hundred-and-Twenty-Nine when we ask the questions:

Should we evict the cyclops?

How do you evict a cyclops?

What were those orcs up to so early in the season and so close to our lands?

Has someone been messing with our spaceship?

Has the naga resurrected or arisen? 

Tale of the Tape

Everything is normal, everything is fine

KILLS

Orcs (17)

Orc reavers (2)

Orc Warband Commander

LOOT

2,000 golden sheckles