Zoom 2024-01-23 21:00

Zoom 23/1/24 (and 9/1/24)
In the previous Zoom session: The party clears out the first level of the Blue Tower, which is defended by 4 (Umar type) giants: We kill two, but a mage and archer escape to a higher floor. Before escaping, the mage activated something that caused an alarming noise to come from the tower entrance, so Garaf wizard-locked the front doors. The tower has been ransacked, with books and other paperwork strewn about.
In this session, we decide to go up the North staircase, which has its first exit at the 4th level. We investigate. Two giants are rifling through books in a library – shaking them open to see if anything falls out. Our fighters attack – one giant is killed, the other is knocked unconscious, bound then brought back to consciousness and interrogated (enhanced with ESP.) We learn:
*They were	looking for two bits of loose paper with ‘squiggly writing’	concealed in the books.
*They should	shout up the stairs to ‘the boss’ if they find them
*Gives numbers	of ‘his mates’ on the various floors, but stops when he gets	near the floor with ‘the boss’.
*He is	frightened of saying anything about his boss. Honestly believes it	is more than his life is worth to give information about his boss	(or his boss’s boss).
*Claims his boss	will ‘bring him back’ if he dies.
*Has a tattoo of	a single claw on his back. (His thoughts are of pride and ambition.)	We cut out the tattoo from his dead colleague as a grisly souvenir.
*His boss’s	bosses are 2 Humans, a Dwarf and a Dark Elf. They killed the Blue	Wizard.
*His boss is a	Hobbit who likes the warm/fire and “doesn’t like the cold”
*The bodies of	the defenders have been taken to the cold store, except for a few	the boss kept for his own use.
We search the rest of the 4th level – a level for training apprentices. We dispatch our captive giant. The body of the other giant glows blue with Possession magic for a few minutes.
We decide to continue up the north staircase, but a blue arrow appears directing us downwards. We decide to take the hint and go down to the first level, where another arrow (re)directs us to the East staircase and up to the 3th level, and into the cold store. There are a large number of bodies – mainly guards and apprentices, which have all had their throats slit regardless of what other fatal wounds they have.
A human steps out of the shadows – he is an apprentice named Sholar. He had managed to hide in the cold store, and has activated a ‘Bring Help’ item (sort of like an hourglass, which he broke to activate), not knowing what it would do. He is rather disappointed at the result! (ie us)
He notes that the body of the Master of the Apprentices is missing from the cold store. It could be that the body was taken by the boss, or that the Master has survived like he did.
We ask about the noise at the front door – he says that it sounds like the ‘tower closing’. Apparently the stone can close around the front door, but it is quite noisy. The loud ‘crack’ that we heard was probably the magic mouth stone that we left being crushed – poor thing!
Party to send questions to Sholar for Darrell to answer before next session