Session 11: At the Dungeons of Madness

The group finds a button where the altar used to be and pushes it. The floor collapses into an underground room. They continue down a sloping hallway. Thorim rolls down to conserve energy but regrets it when he realises the length of the tunnel. Eventually a room is reached with stone slabs on the walls. Two have depictions of battlefields, two of craftsmen, one of a training soldier, and one of a king with an artefact. Vojta sees scorch marks around the battlefield slabs and holds a torch to them to see what would happen. This causes fire to burst from the slab that almost roasts the whole group. The group tries pushing, striking, and casting spells at several of the slabs, to no effect. Ahrm and Thorim pull on one of the craftsman slabs until it opens just a crack, revealing mechanisms beyond, which may have been damaged by their pulling. Vica eventually looks closely and finds some hidden buttons on the slab of the training soldier. Pressing them opens the slab like a door, revealing a tunnel.

The group rests before progressing, but is interrupted by the black dragonborn Gyrraleth. He threatens them to stop interfering with his plans. Vica and Thorim attack him, but are swatted aside by magically-enhanced strikes. Vojta transforms and attacks, but when he touches Gyrraleth, their divine auras clash and cause a time stop, freezing all except Gyrraleth, whose god is the most powerful. Gyrraleth muses about how Cerebarieth, the god of fundamental natural laws, was imprisoned by the other six gods for being too powerful, and how he will soon be freed regardless of Etreath’s attempts to stop it. He cuts the tendons on Arran’s hand, paralyses Ahrm by stabbing him in the neck, then pulls off and tosses away Vica’s amulet. He then warns the group one more time to stop interfering, before leaving, causing them to unfreeze.

With her amulet gone, Vica trembles violently and transforms into a spiked, demonic form of herself. Vojta tackles Demon Vica while Ahrm and Arran cure their crippling injuries with Sazyr’s charm. Vica escapes Vojta’s grasp, cloaking the room in darkness and binding Vojta to the ground with a magical attack. Ahrm, Thorim, and Arran can do little to the invisible Vica, so Thorim opens his keg and releases Fir. Fir’s intoxicating fumes wreak havoc on the group, stunning and confusing several of them, but it soon bounces into action to protect its creator. Unbothered by the darkness, Fir envelops Vica, dealing massive damage with its acidic body. Her magical darkness drops due to broken concentration, and can’t be recast due to Fir’s confusion, allowing Ahrm to jump in and punch Vica unconscious. She is tied up and the amulet is put back around her neck, which turns her back into her normal form.

Arran and Thorim steal Vica’s gold out of spite for being deceived, which she’s instantly outraged about when she wakes up. She doesn’t remember what she did in her demon form, so Ahrm interrogates her about her condition. She reveals that she was born a half-demon, who was gravely discriminated against until she found an amulet in the woods that turned her into a normal tabaxi while worn. Soon after finding it, her village was attacked by demons in service to her father, Ti’ireth, who was searching for her. She eluded him, but now that her amulet was temporarily removed, the demons might be coming after her again.

The group rests and eventually unties Vica. Ahrm is reluctant, due to the new developments, but the group agrees to continue into the dungeon, as not to abandon the rockbacks’ request. Down the hallway is a new room with a tapestry of a mine, and carvings of a sword, a bow, a heavenly landscape, and a hellish one. Vica is bickering with Arran to return her gold, when Ahrm steps on a plate that triggers a magical rune of fear, forcing the group to stick to the walls in order to avoid it. This causes blades to spring from grooves in the walls to assault them. Ahrm smashes the fear rune, ending the effect but causing a force explosion. Vojta heals the group, while Arran finds buttons on several of the carvings. The sword carving leads to a hallway, the bow carving triggers a narrowly-avoided arrow trap, and the hellish carving leads to an entrance filled with magical darkness.

They prod the magical darkness with a staff but feel nothing inside. They enter the new hallway to find a training room with two undead dragonborn skeletons inside. One of them shanks Arran while the other pickaxes Ahrm like the rock he is, but the group soon overwhelms and dismantles them. They find some crates with oversized weapons and take the most valuable ones. In the next room they fight another skeleton with a scythe, who bottlenecks them at the entrance and stuns them with psychic attacks, until Thorim jumps on its back to distract it, and Vojta turns into an ox and crushes it against the wall. Ahrm wraps the magic scythe in cloth and takes it with him. Arran tries to take the skeleton’s cloak, but the cloak strangles him and tries to abduct him to another plane, which he narrowly escapes.

In the next room is a lever, which opens a door in another room. They also find a lot more loot, including a map of part of the dungeon, a strongbox seemingly filled with very fine sand, a bronze horn, a magic wand, and three bottles filled with an amber liquid, swirling mist, and a floating toenail. They also find a satchel that they assume to be a bag of holding, until Vica gets sucked inside of it, revealing it to be a bag of devouring. She is almost consumed, but narrowly escapes by tearing the bag apart. The group notes from the map that there is another room adjacent to this one, but they can find no passage.

The group backtracks to find the newly opened door. When Thorim enters, he is possessed by a ghost and attacks his allies. Several other ghosts appear, one of which possesses Vojta, and another curses Ahrm, turning him twenty years older. Ahrm fights Thorim, but the ghost keeps Thorim fighting beyond his normal capacity, and Ahrm is knocked out. Vica knocks out Thorim and destroys one of the free-floating ghosts with her planar attack, but is knocked out in turn, leaving Arran to face both possessed Vojta and the final ghost. Arran is almost torn apart by Vojta but stops him with his shield spell, then makes a desperate flaming swing that takes down both Vojta and the final ghost.

The group recovers from the fight and searches on, finding an old military map of the southern valley, a book on potion making, and a bottle of possibly-valuable ink. They know from the dungeon map that there must be a room behind one of the walls, but they can find no way to access it. A sword-wielding ghost appears and threatens the group in old draconic. They try to de-escalate, but the ghost blows on a horn, summoning more ghosts. The group is overwhelmed and flees from the room, causing the ghosts to disappear. They discuss whether to go elsewhere or to go back in with a better plan of attack.