Session 56 & 57: Oda-iger DLC Expansion

While they converse in the tavern, Suvulaan mentions that Ruthstin took her on a mission to Ceneza to fight an oblex. Arran mentions that Vica once had sex with that oblex. They also tell her about the aboleth. She mentions that she once saw the lizardfolk performing sacrifices. They threatened her not to tell anyone about it and she never went back since. Cho and Suvulaan continue drinking and talking while the others retire to the inn. Nan leaves her pseudodragon behind to spy. When Suvulaan eventually leaves the tavern, the dragon follows and sees her leaving the town and going to sleep in a hammock inside a tree.

In the morning, Cho wakes up with a hangover. The barkeep gives him an awful-tasting drink that shakes him awake. They decide to return to the ruins to investigate the altar. The ruins seem unchanged since yesterday. They look around more thoroughly and find a pressure plate. Nan pushes it, causing the floor to open below them. They fall down into a pile of bones, weapons, and armour. The bones seem to belong to the ancient giant dragonborn they know from Oda-iger, as well as tabaxi. Grombrin inspects the pile of equipment for valuable materials, but it’s only mundane steel.

A long hallway leads out from here, filled with more signs of battle. They follow it and arrive in a large room with a summoning circle carved into the floor. To be safe, Nan dispels the circle, to unknown effect. There are four stone doors in the walls, like in the ones in Oda-iger. Grombrin tries to open one of them. An explosion of fire bursts out of it, but Grombrin is unfazed. He inspects the stonework and figures that there is only solid stone behind this one. Arran inspects another door and puts silver coins into the slits, which opens it.

In the room beyond are a wooden door engraved with cosmological symbols, a door surrounded by moss, and a broken-down door. Behind the broken door is a mould-covered room containing many ruined scrolls and a dragonborn skeleton. Arran finds a longsword under the mouldy parchment. Grombrin deems it similar in design to the magic sword he got in Oda-iger and identifies it as a moon-touched sword. Grombrin then activates his divine senses and feels that the moss has a strong unholy presence. Cho chops at the moss with his glaive, which causes it to howl out while eyes appear all over it.

The moss emits a psychic blast that staggers the group and lashes out at them with acidic tendrils. A white demon then bursts through the door, swinging wildly with its claws. Cho and Grombrin weather the brunt of the attacks while Nan casts a blight spell on the moss, but it is not a true plant and is only mildly injured. Grombrin tries to banish the demon. He feels the spell failing, but the demon disappears anyways. Vojta heals the injured while Arran and Cho strike at the moss, tearing it to pieces with a flurry of chops and stabs. As the moss disintegrates, what appeared to be a door turns out to be a rectangle of smooth black stone embedded in the wall.

Grombrin warns the others that the demon may not be gone. A blast of freezing light then shoots at him from the ceiling, blinding him. They hear movement above them but can’t see anything. Vojta turns into an earth elemental and with his tremorsense feels the outline of a creature crawling on the ceiling. He blindly punches at it and hits something invisible. It retaliates with another blast of freezing light, cracking his stone body. Cho slashes at the creature’s position and embeds his glaive right into its flank, breaking its invisibility. The moment she sees it, Nan shoots it with a radiant blast, blowing a hole in its chest. It falls from the ceiling and becomes impaled on Cho’s glaive.

Arran inspects the black slab, but staggers back in shock. He warns that it’s full of Var’s influence. Nan asks what Var is, and they explain that it’s the demon lord imprisoned at the Spike. Nan observes that the white monster was a lunar devil, an intelligent secretive creature that mainly kills by ambushing vulnerable targets. They are associated with the demon lord of isolation. Grombrin relates that the current demon lord of isolation is Ra’ab, who is the enemy of Ho’od, Var’s successor. Arran still feels confident that the door is linked to Var. Nan also says that the moss creature was an alkilith, which are made by demon lords to transport demonic armies into other realms. She thinks the portal will stay intact even with the creature dead. They wonder if the ancient tabaxi summoned demons to fight against the ancient dragonborn. Nan tries to dispel the portal, but it is too powerful and releases an explosion that blows them back.

They decide to reconsider the portal later and take a short rest inside Nan’s ring. Cho stays behind to meditate while the others go to the hallway behind the wooden door. It branches to multiple other doors. Behind one of them is a room with a large rack of scroll cases. Most are empty, except at the far end. Nan notices arcane sigils on the wooden ends of the scrolls, which she figures are magical wards that will detonate when the scrolls are taken. There is also a desk with burned paper, which Arran figures is the result of someone destroying the scrolls. Behind an empty part of the scroll rack, Arran sees a panel in the wall. Grombrin smashes the rack to clear the way and Arran opens the panel, finding a mechanism. When he tries to operate it, he sets off the flame trap on the other side of the wall and hears Cho swearing.

Grombrin inspects the other wall and finds an irregularity that seems like a hidden door. He doesn’t see the mechanism to open it, so he magically folds open the wall, demolishing the mechanisms beyond. It leads into a small hallway made of natural rock rather than worked walls. He heads further inside and finds a small cavern containing a large dragonborn in plate armour. His divine senses recognise it as undead.