The Aneman-Pirran Border Wars - Session 5

Why is it so much easier to write these reports in present tense, rather than past tense? I think it's because I take the notes in present and try to produce the reports in past. Anyway, let's try a different format for the recap this week.

~

The Party:

• David Van Stone, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Celestial Patron) - Former Aneman army officer.
• Van Darkholme, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Sentinel Patron) - Vigilante crime fighter and former Aneman city planner.
• Wellston Plumbago, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Great Old One Patron) - Rake, roustabout, and the world's only known Drow ambassador.

The party continued exploring the tomb. The pool of black, oily water was still entirely ablaze and slowly filling the octagonal chamber with thick smoke, so the trio quickly moved on to deeper areas (after Van suggested shooting more Eldritch Blasts into it and David suggested trying to put the fire out with massive quantities of mayonnaise from his Jug of Alchemy).

The underground complex was discovered to be large and varied. Some highlights of the trio's exploration:

• A room was discovered to be almost entirely filled with clay statues of snake-man warriors. The party left it largely unmolested, save for the discovery of a secret passage underneath a statue of a serpent god. The party did not enter the narrow crawlspace.
• A scroll of an ancient, poison-based variation on what was now a common combat spell was discovered in a sarcophagus. None of the Warlocks could cast it, but they keep it for later sale.
• The party discovered a collapsed tomb chamber, and thumping sounds from beyond the rubble were found to come from a large and furious mutated snake-man skeleton wielding a jagged khopesh. Seeing no treasure, the party resealed the tomb door and decided to leave that guy alone.
• The Warlocks realized that they could just fly everywhere, even inside the tomb, and mounted their brooms more or less permanently.
• A particularly old and crudely-made tomb was found to house a strange ooze full of skeletal snake-man remains and hundreds of mirror-polished bronze rings. The caustic pudding was blasted apart and harvested for alchemical reagents, and David collected the rings for later use or sale.
• The most ornate door in the octagonal chamber opened onto stairs leading to an arena, where an animated stone knight with a cobra-hooded face waited to attack. Unsurprisingly, the stone guardian was almost immediately blasted to pieces.
• Wellston, on the stone knight's rapid defeat: "No wonder this civilization died out."
• Beyond the stone cobra knight's arena, the party discovered what seemed like a broad and bottomless chasm with a narrow, bat-shit covered ledge running along the edge of the pit. Despite being able to permanently fly, they're pretty freaked out by the idea of slipping in the guano and falling into endless darkness.
• Partway along the ledge, they found a sturdily-made stone door with a heavy stone bar set across it--just like the trapped door near the entrance to the tomb. Rather than attempt to disarm or circumvent the trap, the trio hovered twenty feet away and obliterated the door with a barrage of Eldritch Blasts. A large stone hammer swung out toward the chasm as the stone crossbar crumbled away. The party considered the avoidance of this trap a sign of their wisdom and prudence.
• While digging for gold foil in the drain trap of a dry fountain, the party was attacked by a Skeleton Jelly. Well, approached is probably a better word. The blobby, idiot thing was repeatedly battered backwards by their attacks but remained unharmed, and the Warlocks flew out over the chasm to put some distance between themselves and the invulnerable creature. When it didn't hurl itself into the abyss in an attempt to reach them, they knocked it into the chasm themselves.
• Van was particularly alarmed that they didn't hear it hit the bottom.
• The party spotted a dangerous patch of dungeon barnacles covering the chasm-edge walkway further to the east, but opt to leave them alone.
• Van found some incredibly lifelike snake-man statues and concluded that some element of petrification might be lurking nearby. He then, unreleatedly, proceeded to mess with a statue that (first) dumped a bunch of gold out of a recess in the base and (second) puffed out caustic powder all over the party.
• The party found some magical stone eggs that have been spattered with old blood, but stuffed them into Van's bag of holding without identifying them, as David's miniature manticore familiar heard something scuttling in the tunnels behind them. When David chased after the noise, he saw beady, red eyes glowing in the dark. Whatever it is, it retreated into the southern tunnels.
• Van really wanted to keep exploring the area with the eggs, rather than chase down weird critters in the dark. He's very sad.
• The party headed south anyway and found a filthy room suffused with a continuous hissing noise and a nasty, eggy smell. They're grossed out and don't enter. They were so grossed out, in fact, that they slammed the stone door hard with a Thaumaturgy spell and David spent ten minutes spiking it semi-permanently closed.
• While he waited for David to finish sealing the door, Wellston spotted almost a dozen pairs of beady red eyes lurking at the edge of his darkvision and making noises like a small dog choking to death. He immediately cast Hunger of Hadar on the pack of critters. Van and David heard the noise and rushed to rejoin Wellston. Whatever was in the Hunger was obliterated...
• ...but Van spotted the serpentine form of a six-legged basilisk in an untarnished bronze helmet watching them from a large room to the west. Van warned the party of the creature's presence, and David immediately turned and blasted it.
• In the ensuing combat, Van surrounded himself with magical darkness, causing Wellston to be restricted to blindly firing into the chaos of combat. The creature nearly bit David in half before also nearly turning him into solid stone while casually slapping Wellston across the room with a flick of its tail. Van dismissed his magical darkness, allowing all three Warlocks to bring their power to bear on the creature, killing it.
• Van made a mighty--but entirely fruitless--attempt to harvest useful alchemical reagents from the basilisk's corpse. In the process of butchering the thing, Van discovered a similarly-untarnished bronze key wedged between the creature's helmet and neck. He pocketed it.
• While resting after the fight with the basilisk, a skeleton jelly appeared. The ensuing flurry of blasts battered it into a previously-unseen swinging blade trap, and the skeleton jelly was bounced back and forth like a pinball for several seconds before the entire trap mechanism collapsed out of the ceiling, burying it under a pile of rubble save for a single foot.
• The Warlocks took the opportunity to test out the creature's invulnerability, and found it to be proof against any kind of attack they could muster. They literally mummified the thing in all the rope they had, cleared a path through the rubble, and returned to Ironfork with their hired help.

Once back in town, the trio dumped the squirming Skeleton Jelly ropemummy in a horse trough to freeze solid overnight, gave their samples of black pudding to Eva for use in exotic alchemical concoctions, and made a request for something that could put out the massive, permanent fire they started in the octagonal chamber near the entrance to the dungeon.

Next time: Back into the tomb for further exploration, and perhaps the presentation of a solid block of ice-skeleton-jelly-ropemummy to the Archpriest?