DFE 10 Notes (Laura)

In this session our heroes found their way into the ominous Green Mountain. Please feel free to chime in with additions to this timeline, I had a low-grade migraine today and was less sharp than I could have been...

1) Before heading up Green Mountain, Wakinyan prepared for the journey with some shamanic rituals (one to make all our weapons holy, and another to get some vision whose result he didn't share with us.)

2) Jaicinteleq informed everyone that she had just received an artifact on loan from a foreign noble whose court lunologer had foreseen she would soon need it. She explained that the artifact can suppress all magic and psi within a large radius, but also drains fatigue from everyone in that radius, and after a long enough period of use, could also drain their life force and even kill them, so it's to be used sparingly. She says she has seen it used for hours at a time with no ill effect. Leonus wanted to test it, but after realizing we would catch either Namanda or Willa in its radius if we did, the party decided to refrain from doing this.

3) Jaicinteleq spoke to Eekam. He denied having the missing gem, but once Jaicinteleq explained to him that Namanda had the other two parts necessary to its functioning which would keep it from fetching its true value from other sellers, he agreed that he would talk to Namanda about it. She also invited Eekam to come to the Green Mountain and disarm traps for us in exchange for a chance to loot up there. Eekam was surprisingly reluctant, stating how dangerous the mountain is reputed to be, but eventually agreed on the condition that we agreed to bring him back as much nonmagical loot for him as we can normally carry--Namanda's key and any magic stuff will be for us. The party agreed to this.

4) Heading up the mountain, Jaicinteleq and Jaicinder scouted ahead and were swept down upon by a predatory flying beast. Loic alertly shot the beast with his crossbow, slightly injuring it and scaring it off.

5) As they neared the top of the cliff, a skaven leaned over and started throwing rocks at them. The party angled their shields and charged up, reaching the top without anyone being knocked off the path.

6) The skaven fled, and Loic successfully tracked it into an ambush, where 30 skaven with bows emerged from the trees to shoot at him. Jaicinteleq, following closely behind him and observing this in time, unleashed an emergency bowstorm and dropped nine of them before they could fire, causing the rest of them to break morale and flee without Loic actually taking any damage.

7) The party observed two possible entrances into the Green Mountain: a tunnel near the peak of the mountain, and a cave covered by a sheet of golden chainmail, behind which Jaicinteleq also sensed a tunnel. Wakinyan heard the squeaking of more skaven on the other side of the mountain. Jaicinteleq suggested luring them into a counterambush, but Rachel opined it would be better to simply charge and rout them, which the party agreed with.

8) The party split into two groups, with a war centaur leading the charge from either side. With Merkha and Ademar both employing Shock, it turned into a massacre with another dozen skaven slain and the rest fleeing madly.

9) Meanwhile, Deucalion climbed down to the cave behind the golden chainmail, where he met a Guru who said he was contemplating the mysteries of the Xendrik. Deucalion sat down beside him and began praying.

10) Wakinyan and Leonus captured one of the fleeing skaven and tied him up. Jaicinteleq spotted a strangle vine moving towards them and warned the party. Ademar tried to distract the vine by throwing skaven corpses at it, but it attacked anyway. Jaicinteleq used her druidic torc of Tangle to tangle up the vine and keep it from grabbing Wakinyan and Leonus, and everyone retreated with their captive.

11) Wakinyan noticed Deucalion was missing and because he had not messaged anyone else in the group where he was, became afraid he had been seized by a plant or skaven assassins or something. After running around yelling for a while, he eventually located him in the Guru's cave and informed the group, then shared some of the Guru's datura and started hallucinating because Wakinyan. Not sure whether Deucalion partook of the datura or not, but he did start getting visions about part of the forest where there was some kind of psionic hole. Wakinyan saw a vision of a tiny periku.

12) Although Eekam didn't recognize this kind of skaven, he was able to speak their language, so we questioned the captive. He said the king of the skaven in this area is named Zosa, that the skaven attacked us because they always try to kill anyone who comes up the side of the mountain, and there was nothing on top of the mountain but a "hole." Searching the prisoner, Eekam found a small green scarab in his pants with the Egyptian inscription of the pharaoh Akhentare on it.

13) Jaicinteleq joined the hallucinating PCs in the Guru's cave and asked the Guru about Namanda and the key we were looking for. He called Namanda "Ananda Na'ama" and said that Alasra, the sorceress, would be angry if we took something to give her, but agreed with Namanda's assessment that Alasra was not currently there. He said that we should ask the skaven king Zosa about the key, since he was always looking for the keys. Then Jaicinteleq asked him about the tunnel into the mountain. The Guru said there was no tunnel into the mountain from his cave and invited her to look around, but when she did, he became agitated and accused her of evil witchcraft.

14) Leonus and the rest of the party arrived at the Guru's house and the Guru admitted there was a tunnel in his cave after all, moving his rug to reveal a trapdoor. However he told Jaicinteleq to get out of his house, so she left. Eekam offered the Guru some of his drugs, which knocked him out. Eekam then stole the gold chainmail curtains.

15) Since Namanda had told the group not to take the first path into the Green Mountain that they found, but instead to keep searching for the best one, the party forged on, looking for the psionic hole Deucalion had seen in his vision. On the way, they found a woman with silvery-green hair who spoke to each of us in our own languages. Her name is Wennowil. Wakinyan perceived her as a gorgon with snakelike hair, but she dismissed this as part of his hallucinations.

16) We had a productive conversation with Wennowil. We asked her about Namanda and the key and she agreed with the Guru, we need to ask Zoza. Merkha asked about the scarab and she said there were three scarabs of Akhentare, one green, one white and one brown,  and that he had come here to guard something long ago. She agreed to let us use her entrance to the mountain on the condition that we not harm any of the skaven except for any who directly attack us. The party was generally amenable to this. She also left her magic owl with us. Jaicinteleq asked the owl's name and Wennowil said Jaicinteleq should give her her own, so Jaicinteleq called her Shalanas.

17) Loic and Jaicinteleq checked out a third possible entrance, the passage we had spied near the top of the peak. Although we found a domed room beyond the passage, we were unable to find an immediate way into the mountain from there.

18) Merkha and Wakinyan investigated a broken pillar piece, concluding that the pillar it came from must have been immense (hundreds of feet tall.) Merkha had never seen the style before but can now positively ID this architecture style if he ever sees it again. Anne the geologer thinks the stone was probably worked 150,000 years ago.

19) The party found another cave with a woven metal screen that looked like there was something behind it, which radiated lots of magic.

20) Before we could explore it very much, though, another unit of skaven attacked, this one with a mage. We shouted to them that we wanted a cease-fire, had talked to Wennowil, and now wanted to talk to Zoza about the keys. They stopped fighting immediately, Eekam said it was when we mentioned the keys that they all stopped short. The mage said to meet them in the guard room under the Guru's house and they would take us to meet the king.

21) We asked Deucalion if he still wanted to find the psionic hole and he said no. So the party split in two, with one group going through the unconscious Guru's trap door and the second group going through Wennowil's passage, just in case the skaven ambushed or captured them and they needed help from another direction.

22) Team Guru met the skaven, who led them through some tunnels--very slowly, since they stopped to search each area they passed through. They released their prisoner, who demanded his scarab stone back. Merkha initially resisted, but then decided to give it back to him and ask Eekam to steal it again later. However, then they saw the skaven run over and start using the stone to gamble with other skaven, who had a second stone of the same kind. Deucalion resisted the suggestion to use telekinesis to skew the dice rolls in the party's favor, so Wakinyan played a luck card and won them both in a game of chance. The second scarab was white and said in Egyptian, "I am the second key."

23) Meanwhile Team Wennowil went down her passage and discovered a bolted door that led to a stairway down into colder air. They rebolted the door and searched the rubble in the room they were in, finding two chests. Jaicinteleq was able to pick the lock on one, revealing bolts of cloth including one silver and another gold. She searched the bolts but didn't find anything inside them.

24) Team Guru followed the skaven and encountered a mummy-like figure who called himself the Doorman, who Leonus and Wakinyan parlayed with. He says he has been bound to this place since time immemorial by "His high priest" and further identified "Him" as "He who came down from the mountain." This accompanied a super Nahuatl-sounding name which none of our PCs recognized. Wakinyan asked the Doorman's name, which he said he had forgotten, and then offered to try and find it for him again, for which the Doorman was grateful. The Doorman said that he had served long enough and would like to die now, and asked Wakinyan to speak to the High Priest and ask him to use the "power of the Little Mace" to let him die.

25) Then Team Guru was led through a magical hall of bells. They found some unusual shelves, a piece of wood with two Z shapes carved on it, and a color wheel. Leonus rang one of the bells and disappeared. After Deucalion got a clue by psionically contacting Leonus, Jaicinteleq found him in the bolted stairwell and released him.

26) Eekam informed Team Guru that an oval depression they had found looked like a match for the scarab stones. Merkha put the first scarab stone into the depression and also vanished, leaving the stones behind. Wakinyan picked them up.

27) The two groups converged on a large cluttered room full of debris and magic items. There was also a gate there that looked like one from the teleport machine we had earlier found in the park. Other things we found included a dais with a throne, a yellow and black stone, a fountain made of a strange purple stone Anne had never seen before (she took a chip of the purple stone,) a giant woody mushroom Loic ID's as hallucinogenic, and a large crystal globe with an alien life form trapped inside it.

28) Jaicinteleq gave Eekam the gold and silver cloth she had found, which he was very excited about. Eekam then found a golden staff in the large cluttered room, and then sat on the throne, causing the circlet on top to come off and turn into a tiara on his head, which he said felt like it was protecting him somehow.

29) Meanwhile, Wakinyan was trying to communicate with the alien creature in the globe, who clearly wanted to be set free; Leonus was examining the sphere to determine how best to open it, and decided upon the expedient of having Ademar drive a piton into a weak spot with a sledgehammer. This was accomplished and the creature freed, with some minor electrical damage to all from the broken sphere. The creature seemed to be trying to lead us to a particular spot in the room. Jaicinteleq followed and found a twined stone and metal rod there which radiated strong magic. She offered it to the creature, but it just touched everyone's hand and left. Searching the rod, the party found some carvings which Kakra's native guide could read-- they come from the Kemi language and say "what comes down from the mountain destroyer."

30) The skaven guide, getting fed up with all these delays, gave us a third scarab if we would just get a move on. The third one was brown and said "I am the third key." We made a beeline for the stairs, but Kakra spotted three small depressions in the wall on our way down the stairs which fit the three scarabs. Entering them there, a door opened and there we found Merkha, conversing in Egyptian with some serpentine spirits of Sobek.

31) We learned that this place is Akhentare's tomb. The Sobek people are guarding it to prevent any evil from escaping. They said there had been some evil here great enough that even the god Set, who Akhentare worshipped, had wanted it contained.

32) The party decided to meet with the skaven king Zoza first, and return later to the Pharaoh's tomb if we felt it wise.

And there we broke off for the day, planning to meet Zoza at the beginning of next session and discuss the matter of the Keys with him.

Game on!

Laura