We arrive at the Keep at the break of dawn. There were no guards at the entrance to the underground, but we proceed inwards with caution anyway. As we advance, we notice that in several paths there are some sort of drawings on the floor that weren't there before. Examining it closer, myself and Ceteribus recognize the pattern as a Terror Rune, a magical trap activated on contact, with a fear inducing spell. Kralho is unable to bypass it, so we position ourselves at some distance, while Sora valiantly moves to activate the trap. When she touches the trap, it activates and it is then that we realize we greatly underestimated the trap's range.. It was able to affect everyone in the party except Ceteribus, so we start running around wildly in fear. At the same time, an alarm sounds throughout the area.
Luckily the fear effect passed quickly, and noone showed up to check on the alarm. As we advance back into the caves we find more Terror Runes, but this time Kralho is able to disable them. Back in the caves, we bypass the area where we had fought the rats and the gelatinous creature and move forward. After some time, we reach another large chamber, where we could hear some kind of insect noises, a lot of them. Kralho approaches with Stealth and is able to see about 20 giant insects of varying sizes. Unfortunately, his stealth abilities didn't seem to be enough to hide himself from the bugs and they began advancing on our positions. None of us is able to recognize them, but we immediately notice that they can burrow through the earth and stone of the caves.
There were a very large number of smaller ones and four much bigger ones. We get first move and Ceteribus starts up the battle by moving and getting himself falling into a pit trap... Luckily, since he is an eladrin, he uses his racial teleport ability to get out. We can't complain too much about our luck... We find two pits and the ones to fall in them are always the ones with teleport. The insects start surrounding our frontline and manage to get a few good hits in, despite suffering heavy losses. Most of the smaller ones were quicly killed, but the larger ones were much harder. They surround Sora and Chuck, who were the most obvious threats and cause some serious damage. They prove to be very resilient and the battle lasts for a while. We finally defeat them thanks to plenty of flanking maneuvers and effective power usage. We proceed towards their nest and find a corpse of a half-eaten goblin. The corpse had a pouch with some gold and a couple of potions of healing. We also find some gold and a chest in the nests. Inside the chest was some more gold and 5 amethysts.
We continue exploring the caves and in the last place we still hadn't checked we find a bronze double door, half covered in moss and fungi. Written on the door was the inscription "Stay out, really". Well, that decided it... What better incentive could we have in opening a door than a clear sign of danger... We definitely couldn't back out now. Kralho checks the door and finds out that it's neither trapped nor locked. Chuck, as the frontliner, opens the door while the rest assume battle positions, expecting trouble. The doors open into a small room with a large pool of dark waters and a small patch of land in the center of the pool. It looked as though this once served as a cistern. At first glance the room was empty, but we proceeded carefully anyway. It seemed there was something in the small island, but none of us would brave the dark waters without checking them first. So, we tie a rock to a rope and throw it into the waters to attempt to determine its depth.
Immediately after ther rock hits the waters, a great bubbling begins close to the margin and Sora and Chuck are hit by what seems to be large bubbles and both get dazed and weakened. Chuck is then hit by a large chunk of some slimy substance. At this time, we manage to see that the source of the attacks is a large mass advancing through the dark waters towards our positions. Chuck had been hit badly, so we retreat towards the door to recover and see we if we could flush out the creature. The creature kept advancing and when we finally get a glimpse of it, i recognize it as a Blue Slime, a gelatinous creature with tremorsense and strong acid attacks. The meleers approach the pool to attack the beast, but we quicly realize that they were taking way to much damage and dealing too few. The Slime seemed largely unnafected by our actions.
After a few rounds of battle, we start thinking of retreat, since this foe seemed too much for us to handle at the moment. However, after some good hits we notice that the slime has taken substancial damage and regain hope. At this point i use my daily power Curse of Dark Dream, which could force the slime to move towards us and leave the water, leaving it in a much more favorable position for our figthers. My spell hits, dealing a good chunk of damage, but im unable to force it to move. Apparently, it must have been immune to the charm side effect of the power. We continue hitting it as hard as we can and after a few tough rounds we manage to beat it down. A very tough battle... Whatever was in the small island had better be worth it.
With the slime gone, Kralho swims to the small island and finds several interesting things. Scattered around the island were the remains of several victims of the creature. Among the remains were a potion of healing, a pouch with gold, a magical Shield of Protection, a wooden message cylinder, and a small ornate chest. Quite the haul.. Kralho brings it all back to the shore and we examine the message cylinder first. It contained three scrolls. One of them was a map, with the location of Shadowfell Keep marked. Another one contained a message for Kalarel, signed by a Chief Krand of the Bloodreavers, who had heard of Kalarel's activities in the region and was offering to buy captured humanoids from him, to work as slave labor in a place called Thunderspire. The last scroll contained a message presumably for the carrier, with instructions to destroy the message tube if Kalarel wasn't interested in the offer. Most curious... Probably the message never reached Kalarel, or his response was not a positive one...
Finally we investigated the small chest. Inside it was a small stone in the shape of a rose petal, which was obviously emitting a magic aura. However, at first glance we can't identify what it is. Ceteribus decides to touch the stone to examine it better and as he does so, the stone emanates an orange coloured light and while he is holding it he feels somewhat smarter. We each try to touch the stone in turn, but it doesn't produce any effect for any of us. As the stone only reacted to Ceteribus, we decide he should carry it until we could discover more about it. In fact, while holding it, he gets the strange feeling he should investigate the small chest further, and as he does so, he finds a small golden ring engraved with a strange symbol. Something in his mind tells him that the symbol means "Heaven and Earth". Apparently, the stone was some kind of powerful artefact with the capability to communicate with it's wearer by placing thoughts in his mind. The ring was probably related to it, so Ceteribus carried it with him as well.
We were done investigating the caves now, so all that was left was to investigate the remainder of the Keep's first level. Tune in next time, as we battle the Undead haunting that area.
No comments:
Post a Comment