D&D Recap time....
26/9/205 - Discovering the Leg end
The party were successful in stopping the ritual but badly beaten and in need of a rest. They decided to head back to Sartuda’s Tower to recover but their path was blocked. A door they had failed to check earlier now had the Wraith they’d previously fought issuing orders to 8 of those powerful daper ghouls. The Wraith was very concerned with protecting a ‘resource’ that was stored in the room.
They also found another journal entry.
3/2 - 1455 DR
Shanta gave birth today. A boy. We named him Brandon. He has the curse mark.
KU
The party pulled back and decided to check the 2nd less evil feeling door that lead from the ritual chamber. Sir Hardwick was unable to budge the door but Vann gave it a shove and sent a barricade of chairs, tables and shelves flying. There was another room leading off of this room which contained a crumbling well, rubble had collapsed to the bottom and there was no sign of any water but the old bucket could be seen amongst the debris. A door in the well room lead back out onto the main corridor up some stairs from where the Wraith and Ghouls was gathered.
The party decided to re-apply the barricade and rest up in that sealed off room. Smudgkin decided to use his new powers of divination to find out what was in the room that the Wraith wanted guarded so badly. The answer was morlock captives. He recalled that the Wraith needed the to feed the Morlocks a potion which would take advantage of their cursed demonic bloodline to turn them into homunculi in the service of it’s master. The party had already disturbed the wraiths potion production so eliminating the morlocks would be a wise move to prevent further rituals starting up.
Once rested the party set out towards the morlock prison cells which now oddly seemed to be guarded by two humans. Sir Hardwick approached them and the humans turned and smiled, but then one of them lunged for Sir Hardwick who almost end up getting bitten, but was still overcome by the vile smell emitting from the man whose magical disguise began to drop to reveal him and his colleague to be a pair of super ghouls.
The party fared a bit better in battle this time around and the ghouls were quickly dispatched. Entil used his stone meld ability to move into the Morlock cell and kill all 4 of the chained up prisoners there were within.
Afterward they found another journal entry:
2/2 -1497 DR
Brandon died again today. This is his 7th time dying. This time to one of those Soul Metal monstrosities. He’s far too careless and becomes more reckless each time the curse brings him back. It won’t be long before he completely loses his mind. I’ve got to find a cure for this blasted curse.
Ulixes research is incomplete and I’m not sure if I’m capable of replicating his magic anyway. I’ll have to do this my own way, which means a returning to practicing necromancy. I’ll need many dead to experiment on. There’s apparently a large mausoleum on the far side of the city. We will set out in the morning and make our new home there.
KU
The party then made their way out to the great hallway where they first entered the underground labyrinth. The proceeded through the doorway at the very end of the hallway. They opened a door which led to a small room that was filled with barrels, but just as they entered the room they spotted that the lid on one of the barrels had just moved.
Vann lifted up and tipped over the barrel and the diminutive figure of a cowering goblin fell out on the floor.
It was Gwildor, the fidgety goblin that was prone to hallucinations that the party first met outside the Sanctum of Ponderous Death.
He’s hiding from a huge wolf he believed he saw and ran and got separated from the group of Hobgoblins he was with.
He’ll also be scared of an imaginary bear that he thinks the party are threatening him with.
He is a member of Agrid’s Warband of Hobgoblins.
Earlier this year he and his whole war band were sucked into this land when they were searching some ruins in the Marrati Desert.
Their warband was displaced from the old castle they were using as a headquarters by a highly organised army of Lizardfolk led by a lizard calling himself General Scales.
Agrid is obsessed with using magical artifacts to make himself more powerful.
Agrid strengthened his alliance with a human warrior named Fidalis and committed his forces to Fidalis’s cause in exchange for bringing his entire warband here to Ancient Tehóm with the promise of many powerful magical artifacts.
The main prize was a huge Obelisk made of pure Mytal. Small shards of this Obelisk had proved powerful in the past so the source was of immense value to Fidalis.
The Obelisk is capable of enhancing the combat abilities of the warband for limited periods of time.
Agrid recently found the spell forge and used a powerful magical item called the Polaris Gem that he found there to make himself even more fearsome and angry than before. His new goal is to get back to the Mavriki desert and challenge General Scales to single combat.
He is part of a team of Hobgoblins called Gemsquad that Agrid formed to search the dungeon for magical gems. Gwildor was more sort of a mascot.
He warned the party of the threat of black metal monsters that ooze out of the floors, walls and ceilings.
They then left Gwildor to continue hiding in his barrel.
The party then started to get close to an area where the severed hand seemed to be pointing with two fingers. They knew pointing with one finger meant that there was a nexus ritual taking place nearby, but they had yet to figure out what the 2 fingers were pointing at. The door the fingers were pointing to had the sound of large metal clanks coming from the other side so they decided to move on and soon found a door the fingers were pointing to that seemed to lead to a completely silent room. Opening the door revealed a small barren room with another door leading out of it. The hand was pointing frantically with two fingers at this door. Vann went to open the door, but then Smudgkin remembered to check the roof for Gricks. There were no gricks but the roof appeared to be covered in a slick black metal. Vann recalled Gwildor’s dire warning about metal monsters oozing out of the walls and ceilings and urged the party to run as black metal began to ooze down into the room and coalesce into the forms of two large heavily armed black knights who immediately sprung into action to guard whatever was stored in that next room.
These metal monstrosities proved very resistant to both physical attacks and fire, and they were even capable of parrying any melee attacks that struck them. It was a bloody battle but soon the knights were reduced to metal scrap.
The party continued into the room that hand was frantically pointing at and found a room with a small cage at the centre of the room, inside this cage was a squirming left leg.