Episode 56: Into the Amber Temple

Foraging some pine and fashioning some wooden rails to support the amber sarcophagus containing Xarlamin, the party dragged and labored their way to the top of the road. As the narrow passage opened onto a plateau, the found a massive temple carved into the cliff face. Six massive statues in ceremonial robes stood stoically across the facade of the structure, and before it, the party soon noticed some hunched figures moving aimlessly through the rubble before the temple. More of the restless dead wearing similar vestments embroidered with yellow runes set upon them calling forth yet more of them maddening spirits. The party fighting bravely through their fear, the undead were dispatched allowing the chilled and vigorously shaken heroes a chance to inspect the temple more closely and seek shelter in a nearby cave.

Without Xarlamin’s arcane shelter, the cold and exposure prevented a true rest, but the party pushed onward. Examining the temple they found the entire structure to be covered in elaborately carved amber, but there appeared to be no way in. Neither searching for clues in the rubble, nor attempting magical means to open the doors were turned up anything more that illuminating a rune similar to the engraving within the accursed Crown of Neferon. Nestor consulted the foul tempered Jenkins to learn more of this place, but the grumpy skull only shared his outrage that the party would bring him to a place of the dead like this. He revealed that the temple had been a stronghold of The Fangs of the Veil before the war, but now only the mindless dead followers of the long since fallen cult wandered the frozen wastes of the mountain seeking access to their former powers.

Exhausted of options and chilled to the bone, Vin determined that the Crown was their last option to attempt to access the temple. He steeled his mind and slipped the crown onto his head. Lurching through space he found himself once again in the accursed halls that haunted his dreams. But now more familiar with the dizzying effect of the powerful magic, he maintained his composure long enough to ask The King In Yellow a few questions.

The dark force answered enigmatically, but suggested that great power and the opportunity to join forces with the King lie within the temple. And ominously before vins grip on their otherworldly vision faded, he warned Vin that within the temple awaits “two of six”.

As Vin’s jaundiced reverie gripped him, the heroes saw the amber coating of the temple refract the magical glow surrounding Vin, and the great doors of the temple magically split open. With a sigh seeming to draw the outside air into the darkness behind the doors, the temple stood open to them as Vin’s consciousness slid back to this world.

Cautiously venturing into the sepulchral darkness, the party found the temple’s interior similarly paneled in thick amber. Entering the main chamber they stood a top a raised area overlooking a large dark chamber. At the far end an arcane ripple of blackish purple energy crackled on the floor at the foot of a massive statue. As they searched the entry area, they quickly found a side chamber where a single lantern still burned faintly atop a massive war table still covered in ancient maps of the Northern Plains. Judging from the markings and array of miniature army tokens, they surmised this to be remnants dating back to the Great War.

Exploring further they were soon set upon by guardian skulls that hovered in the air and barraged the hero’s with explosions of fire over and over as the party attempted to find shelter enough to mount a counter attack. Battered and burnt, the guardians were felled, but the maps of the war room were destroyed in the conflagration.