Session 4

Date: 1/28/2018

Attending: Jake, Dave, Wes, Aaron

Absent: Justin –ill, Joey - vacation

Start Time: 8:40 p.m.

Action resumes where we left off, with the party having just closed the door onto the wasp nest area. In spite of the cramped surroundings, a miles long hall only 4 feet wide and 7 feet tall, the party camps for the night against the door. The night passes uneventfully, and in the morning Norris passes around healing spells.

Soromir, feeling a sense of peace while being healed, asks Norris once again who he worships. Elianor the Comforter is the answer, a locally known god with a small following from the area where Mornsteading (his home town) lies.

The party makes the long trek back to the ruined temple, Jace entertaining them with humorous impersonations of Ular along the way. After about 3 hours of walking, the party arrives at the basement of the ruined temple. The grub continues mindlessly rooting around the room.

After a short rest, they decide to split the party: Khalo, Oranthal, Old Jarl, and Born-Under-Red-Sky will stay behind in the basement while Soromir, Jace, Osbert, Norris, and Ostar explore the caverns through the hole in the pantry wall.

The forward group heads out. Soromir, having some knowledge of underground complexes, or dungeoneering if you will, determines that these passages were originally cut by lava. Water has seeped down from the island above and created stalactites and stalagmites here and there. The walls are wet, and as they proceed begin to be covered by moss and lichen. They realize that the growth is luminescent, and cancel Ostar’s Light Spell, choosing to continue in the pale greenish light of the moss.

They come to an intersection and choose the left corridor, Osbert scraping moss off of the wall in an arrow shape to indicate where they came from. More travel leads to another fork in the path and again they choose the left option.

This time, after curving to the left, the passage opens up into a small gallery, fifty feet by sixty, riddled with stalagmites 4 to 10 feet tall. The group splits into two to explore. Soromir, Norris, and Jace head to the left while Osbert and Ostar move off to the right.

Suddenly a small figure drops out of the darkness above and lands on Soromir’s back. It wraps tentacle like arms around his throat and begins throttling the hexblade. The party convenes and is able to kill the small monstrous humanoid, but not before Soromir is choked almost to death. Once dead, Soromir stomps the creature’s head flat in a fit of pique.

Finding that the way dead-ends in the gallery, the group heads back to the last intersection and chooses the other unexplored path.  They walk for some time, noticing that the tunnel slopes steadily downward and that the air gets noticeably warmer. Once again they come to a fork in the path and choose the left option. Now the tunnel climbs upward a bit, and the path widens noticeably until it is about 20 feet wide. The lichen is thicker there and carpets the ground. Here and there mushrooms grow from the floor, some as big around and tall as a man. Osbert harvests some into the Djinn’s Useful Sack. Then Osbert accidentally nudges a purple capped mushroom, which emits a violet cloud of spores into the air. Osbert and Soromir accidently inhale. Immediately they feel clumsy (Dex damage) and move like the world is slowed (effect as per spell slow). Fortunately after consulting with Norris the slow effect wears off after a few minutes. They still feel clumsy though.

Carefully threading their way past other purple capped mushrooms, they come to a huge cavern. Mushrooms with stalks fifteen feet in diameter grow 40 feet high, and the air has a moist musty flavor. Standing at the edge of this cavern the party (under Osbert’s lead) chooses to slowly and cautiously back off and return the way they came rather than enter the mushroom forest.

Heading back to the last intersection, they continue heading downwards on the unexplored path. After about 15 minutes of walking they come to a corpse. A human in black leather armor (the same as the cultist outside of the ruined temple basement) lies on the ground. His rib cage has been split open and the internal viscera removed. A quick search reveals he has nothing of value, not even a pouch on his belt. Osbert examines his boots, trying to figure out if he got lost and wandered aimlessly but was unable to tell. The party moved on, continuing down the tunnel.

10 minutes later they are set upon by 5 rats the size of dogs who tear into their flesh with wild frenzy. They party defeats the rodents, but many have been bitten by the filthy mouthed creatures. Norris inspects the wounds and notes that they are not clean, expressing a concern about infection. Having traveled for about 5 hours all told, the group decides to return to the basement and check in with the other group. They journey back is uneventful, and they arrive an additional 5 hours later.

End of Session

300 XP; 50 to Wes for blogging