We decided to investigate the junkyard to see if we could find the entrance to the smuggler’s tunnel. We parked the horses up top and I almost died on the way down. Aether was the last to climb down and chose to reveal herself at the end of her descent. We asked Aether a bunch of questions and got answers. We found the entrance to the smuggler’s tunnel.
It was there that we discovered the secret door to the catacombs, and it was guarded by a sinspawn. We tried to negotiate with the sinspawn and were not successful. We decided to attack the sinspawn. Blew our surprise attack. Aether recommended Rho grapple. I greased, Rho grappled, everyone else managed to move past the sinspawn without incurring any attacks of opportunity. We moved past it into a kidney-shaped room on the right and set up for an attack, but the sinspawn died before we could do so.
We started to explore. (Thank goodness for Rho’s glowing halo!) The rough-hewn entrance led to a storage room. Ancient and well crafted. Wooden door to the north. Locked. Twinkletoes picked the lock and we discovered a hallway heading north. We took the hallway. It turned 90º to the west (L) and then 90º again to the north (R). The hallway continued on straight ahead (N) to a room. Rho could see a statue in the room straight ahead. Another dark hallway branched off to the right.
Choosing to investigate the statue room first, we found a closed door to the north (ahead) and an open hallway to the west (R). In that room was a statue of a tall and beautiful but enraged-looking woman (Alaznist, runelord of wrath) holding a large tome with an image of a seven pointed star on the cover in her left hand (part of the statue) and a real ranseur in her right hand. Looted the ranseur but set it aside for later pick-up ’cause it was awful bulky to carry.
The next room, down the open hallway to the west, was round. There was a 5′ round well set into the center of the floor and a single passage on the opposite side of where we entered. The well was filled with what appeared to be fresh clear water, but was surrounded by actual skulls (as if deliberately placed there). We were so intrigued by the well that we forgot that
UP IS ALSO A DIRECTION!
ALWAYS ALSO LOOK UP!
If we *had* looked up then we would’ve certainly seen the vargouille before it attacked us. It was super nasty, but we managed to defeat it. We followed the passage on the opposite side of the room and found that it led to yet another round room. This one only served as the beginning of a set of stairs leading up, but those were all blocked by rubble.
Doubling back, we returned to the statue room and chose to investigate the long and dark passageway we’d found in the hallway to the south (L) from whence we’d come (best to be sure that nothing nefarious could sneak up from behind and surprise us before we headed any deeper into the catacombs).
We headed south (L) into the hallway and then east (L) into the long and dark passage. It opened up into an angled room with an altar on the left and an unlit brazier on the right. I went to light the brazier but Aether recoiled at the mention of fire, so I lit up the brazier itself using the Light cantrip. We found that the altar included a small stone basin (most likely used for blood sacrifices?) that was partially filled with filthy water. A set of large, floor-to-ceiling double doors (very sturdy) led off to the southeast (ahead). The doors were unlocked. Rho switched off his halo and then pushed the door on the left open by a crack so he could peek in. Fiona squatted between his legs so she could peek in too. We were immediately struck by a sense of intense cold and great evil within. Our peeking went undetected by anything that might be in there. It felt like if there WAS a “big bad” in the catacombs then it was almost certainly in there, so we decided to back away and check out the rest of the catacombs and then come back to this room once we’d finished clearing the rest of the place.
Fiona picked the lock in the door on the north side of the statue room and we all slipped undetected into what appeared to’ve been originally designed as a large jail. Single occupant sized cells lined the walls. We entered onto a rickety wooden platform situated at a height just above the cells. Across the room and below us were two sinspawn engaged in conversation. We planned a surprise attack with Rho and Aether sneaking down for male, me hanging back up near the door, and Fiona staying up top to range. Fiona, Aether, and I got into position, but Rho slipped and tumbled noisily down the steps and landed in a heap on the floor. The fight went really well after that though, and we were able to dispatch the two sinspawn without much trouble (we’re gettin’ better, y’all). A thorough search of that room turned up nothing of interest, so we moved on.
Heading east, we came upon a small torture chamber. A long hallway on the opposite side of the room beckoned, but there was a door on the wall to the south (R) so we checked that out first and discovered that it was an office or records room of some sort, long-forgotten, with smashed furniture and three closet doors along the wall opposite the door. Peering into the closets, we were all disturbed to find some seriously disfigured skeletons and were quick to discern that these were the sad remains of those who’d been tortured here, and that the torture must’ve been both physical and magical in nature. A thorough search of this room yielded a magical scroll, but I was unable to determine anything more specific about it than that.
We must’ve let our guard down, shaken as we were by what we’d just discovered, as we left that room and its adjacent torture chamber to explore further. That’d explain the way we waltzed, Thunderfists’s halo ablaze, right into bigass room with a bunch of rotted-wooden-slat-covered pits in the floor and a huge, drooling, mutated Koruvus staring straight at us from the far side of the chamber with a dagger in his left hand, a sword in his right hand, and an extra arm comin’ out of the side of his neck all Trogdor style holding a wicked-looking axe.
Flanking him was the obviously advantageous option, but Koruvus was backed into a corner and damn near surrounded by those rickety pits which made it impossible for more than one of us to get near enough to strike him, much less flank him. Then, as if the situation wasn’t bad enough, dude lets loose with the nastiest steam of bloody and bilious acidic vomit directly at Aether, Fiona, and Rho. Aether and Fiona dodged and only ended up with a bit on their clothes but Rho wasn’t so lucky and took a pretty full hit from the nasty stuff. With Rho howling in pain, the other two writhing in disgust, and a rickety wood covered pit between Koruvus and me, I grabbed my whip and lashed out at Koruvus’s ankles. The whip wrapped tight around Koruvus’s lower legs, the yank pulled his feet right out from under him, the pull dragged him onto the rotted wood covering the pit in the floor, the wood gave way, Koruvus plummeted and landed atop a zombie, and his fall killed them both! I prestidigitate-cleaned the three others, Aether healed Rho, and then we popped the tops off of all of the other pits and killed the zombies who’d been hiding down there from our safe distance up above before abseiling down to loot Koruvus’s body. I took his +1 sword and silver dagger and we packed away the axe.
We headed down a long hallway to the south, in the middle of which (on the left) we found another short hallway which led to yet another stone spiral staircase (this one leading down) which was blocked up with dirt and rubble much like the one we’d come across before. We backtracked and returned to the long hallway and continued south. The hallway ended with a door, and the door led to the most curious room we’d yet discovered.
The room was a perfect red sphere about 20′ in diameter and its walls flashed and flickered with indecipherable runes. Stranger still, the natural laws of gravity stopped at the room’s entrance. A bottle of wine, a spellbook, and the maggoty corpse of a raven floated about therein. I was equal parts fascinated to float and hesitant to enter, but Aether (annoyed by my ambivalence) solved all that by pushing me into the room and it turned out to be absolutely fuckin’ awesome! How I’d never even thought of casting a permanent levitation spell on an entire room before I don’t even know, but if I ever own a house then I’m definitely havin’ one of these!
Having completely explored every other section, there was nothing for it but to finally go back and check out that one last scary room (I was relieved to see on our way back that the ranseur was still where we’d left it). The two great doors were still unlocked, all was still silent within, and we could still sense deep cold and great evil within, but this time we entered. The room was the size and shape of a small, vaulted chapel. There was a large round pool of water set into the middle of the floor, this one with a ring of tall, sharp-looking spikes topped with skulls. Beyond that there was a raised platform with steps leading up from both the left and the right. At the center of that platform stood an ominous-looking triangular altar.
We were almost immediately set upon by the winged demon Erylium; a nasty little quasit wearing a diamond tiara and a wispy black dress. Her diminutive size alone would’ve made her difficult to hit, but toss agile flight, invisibility at will, *and* the ability to summon sinspawn into the mix and it was soon clear that we had our work cut out for us. Rho nearly saved the day by leaping up and grabbing her, but he biffed his landing and ended up standing ankle deep in the bright water in the altar at the back of the room. He howled – at first in pain and then in anger – as a deep red darkness infused his features and he began to slip into a blind rage.
I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I do remember that it was Aether who took charge. We somehow managed to knock Rho from what I now realize Aether had identified as a runewell. In the process we somehow killed Erylium. I do remember Aether instructing us to drip blood into the runewell, causing yet another sinspawn to rise from within. We killed that sinspawn and the runewell ceased glowing. I now understand that Aether 1) somehow knew that we needed to exhaust the runewell’s sinspawn spawning ability, and 2) somehow knew how to do that. I’ll have to ask her about this later.
We took a breather to heal up as best we could, and in doing so noted that the stars on Rho’s robe indicated that it was already nighttime out in the world. Exhausted, and certain now that we’d cleared the place of every last possible danger, we curled up and slept right there on the floor.