13A:Play/12 Largely Undisturbed

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Starring: 📜Elistheren, 🌲 Qistis, 📚 Annalana, 🐾 Kaelon
Guest Starring: No NPCs
Challenge: Urns; Skeleton priest and warriors; Magical trap;
Location: Under the Gazebo, in a dungeon dedicated to the Lich King
Date Played: 2017 May 09

Stairwell into Darkness

📚 Annalana: The huge door in front of us has the face of a man with one eye, and the other eye is sewn shut. (Lich King.) The carving is excessively decorated. In the corner there is a basically mummified body. Kaelon explores the body, finding a magic item, a magic belt. Girdle of Oaths. All magic belts increase recoveries. You can give yourself an unlimited bonus recovery and for each one you have to make a big oath. Annalana kicks the door and the one eye on the sculpture lights up dark red, “Name the Lord of Death” and enter. Steinar speaks “Wizard King” and the door swings open.

Steinar: I'm a little foggy on the details of how we got here. I was thinking of a great story that hasn't come up in a long time. It involves a cat that eats the moon. It's a bit more of a fairy-tale, but still tickles my fancy.

The group snaps me to attention in front of a huge door. The image is obviously of the aspect of the Lich King. That guy really doesn't seem to like me much, but I'm not totally sure why. There is a puzzle where we have to say his original name. That is lost to history, but "Wizard King" does ring a bell. I try it and the door opens. Annalana lets me know I'm not totally useless.

Beyond the Door

📚 Annalana: A small room with stairs beyond. At the bottom of the stairs is a room with large and small urns. On the opposite side of the room there are two statues, pointing at us. Annalana insists on shooting an urn to test for traps. Elis insists that she shoots the oldest, most decrepit and she does. The urn shatters, revealing a skeletal priest and five skeletal guardians. During the battle Annalana gets badly wounded and an urn flies out and hits her, hurting her even more. Elis used his faith, shaped it into a spear and killed the priest with it.

Steinar: Elistheren wants to carefully explore this room. The group has been getting along well for the last five minutes, so something had to have had been done to break this harmony; Annalana shoots a urn and awakens a swarm of undead. They are generally easy enough to take care of, though a lot of damage happens in this room. Elistheren won't stop crying.

Exploring the room after combat

📚 Annalana: Annalana stands in the middle of the room, enjoying her cloak. Steinar notices gems in the eyes of the statues but ignores them, however Kaelon notices the gems and heads over… and it turns out that the gem is actually a good false gem made of glass. Everyone begins to bicker intensely while Kaelon slips away, into the next room.

Steinar: There are two more statues of the Lich King here. Something seems off about them. There is a sort of magical hum in the background. Kaelon slipped ahead to escape the arguments between Annalana and Elistheren. He lets us know there are a bunch of traps ahead. The humming finally clicks for me, and I realize it is part of one of the more deadly traps that tries to get us stuck in the room. I disable it and we make a mad dash for the other end of the hallway.

Room with Slabs

📚 Annalana: Kaelon explored this area first. When we arrive, Annalana examines a broken door as a clue to get into the other rooms. Each door rotated around the center, and they had “live wires” running into them, though magical. Steinar learns that the statues in the other room are powering the doors in this room. In this room when you cross halfway the doors open and magical attacks go off. Steinar does a ritual to disable the doors, allowing us to run the gauntlet to get through the room. With the one trap disabled, we run through the room while bolts of magical energy fly out at us.

Steinar: Normally we would have been ambushed and outnumbered here, but we just get hit with some necromantic rays. They do more than tickle, but for the most part we leave unscathed.

Bone Room

📚 Annalana: Annalana goes into the room made of bone work (instead of stonework). The floor is uneven due to the bones. As we approach our light sources do not penetrate the lanterns in the shadows. “That’s weird”, says Steinar. The Elf Queen is known to have slain the white dragon and captured the green by the Elf Queen. On the altar there is a single green dragon scale. Annalana picks it up while Elis complains that finger oil will ruin it. Kaelon mentions that there is fresh blood on the altar, coursing through carved channels in the altar. From other rooms we begin to hear chanting, similar to Steinar’s chant of endings with a tinge of Elis’ spirits of the righteous. From one of the rooms is a wight with a tessellated pattern of the Lich King.

Steinar: Wait... I know this chanting...

There is also a lot of blood. It's coming from nowhere. Out of an alter.

Oh god, oh god! Have to stop all of the bleeding! Something bad is happening and it is calling upon evil spirits of yore to do it.