Session 11: The Ayes Eyes Have It (6/26/22)

Pulyana 25, 1423.

Within the ritual chamber, they discover a number of animated, crawling hands that dutifully light and snuff out candles around a summoning pentagram. At each of the five points is an unlit fire-bowl which the hands seem to be ignoring. There's a platform set into the wall on which there is a collection of old wooden anatomical dummies, of bipeds and quadrupeds. One of them is actually cast in stone, a dog with a blank collar. Bjork mends the collar, and a name appears in reverse, but in a language the PCs cannot currently understand. They find a crudely painted map on the bottom of the platform, beneath the dolls, and it appears to be of the present region, denoting the tower of old Smite-Eyes in a spiral, as well as a location deeper in the Tzarswald, southeast of Svodnikha, where a 'key' symbol is marked.

Nebel'shoy and Aldren move into another chamber, a ghastly laboratory full of cells, bone-piles, and a gruesome collection of limbs and heads of different creatures suspended from rusted hooks on the walls and ceilings. Bjork and Mockleg note a concealed door in the previous area, and they find an infirmary where various stitched abominations are laid out. Bjork begins to saw off their heads to be safe. Rucia joins his half-elf and forest gnome companion in the laboratory, and uses detect magic, realizing that the humanoid victim in the stocks is actually radiating necromancy! It shakes and shudders, and comes to life, and it's not the only thing in the room...several of the piles of bones and limbs stand up and begin to assault the party, one of which is a minotaur! To make matters worse, one of the cell doors opens and a snake-like skeleton with a skull at its end assaults Aldren nearby. The other PCs make their way towards the ensuing clamor to join in the battle.

The creatures in the stocks is unable to wrench itself free at first, despite its raging, but it does get there. fortunately the PCs have destroyed all the skeletons by the time it is rampaging, but not before taking some damage from the bone-snake, and thus they eventually take down the fleshy abomination. They search the corpses and cells to find several treasure chests, a vat of acid and a basin full of brains and other organs. Bjork and Mockleg begin trying to dig out the collapses stairway in the south of the chamber, while the others head up the stairway to the east. Inside is a bed-chamber and study which contains several named tomes: Abomination: Flesh and Bone Grafting for the Initiate (E. Petrenko); Encyclopedia and Taxonomicon of  Sentient Species, volumes 5 (Karnovya) and 6 (Thault) (Pendulum Press, Nekester, 861); and Opening the Old Wounds of the World (Stasia Vlasov). Rucia also finds a number of sheafs of diagrams and other papers signed off by a Borya Mikhailovich, which he takes upon his person. Andren finds some scholarly clothes in a chest, and strangest of all, Nebol'shoy finds a featureless black rectangle on the floor beneath the bed...

With the paladin holding him, the gnome reaches into the rectangle and feels a death-like cold sucking at his arm. He removes it but takes some necrotic damage. After conferring with Mockleg about the tomes, Rucia decides to throw them down into the black rectangle. Aldren looks over some of the other implements in the bed-chamber, and in a jar of eyeballs, notices that one is animated and staring at him and the others. Even when he shakes the jar, it re-emerges to stare. He covers up the jar, and they leave the chamber behind. Bjork has used his pickaxe to clear up rubble leading to the hill-top, and he hosts Nebol'shoy through. Rucia returns to the ritual chamber to destroy the crawling hands before the party joins their short companion on the hilltop. It is night-time, somewhat crisp and cold and there's a small amount of late autumn snowfall on the Deepwood Barrows.

PCs: Aldren, Bjork, Nebol'shoy, Rucia

Session 10: King Mushroom's Arrival and Departure (6/5/22)

Pulyana 24, 1423.

The PCs walk it back down the opposing tunnel to find a sloped passaged leading deeper into the hill, and then decide to finish exploring ahead of where they were ambushed by the fungus-things. They find a skeletal corpse impaled by two dozen short bladed weapons, with some cryptic warning in code splayed out on the rock next to it. Aldren claims two of the daggers which seem to have an unusual magnetic attraction to one another, and Rucia takes a ring from the corpse's finger, which is brass, set with a jet and a swirling, unusual quality about it. Bjork takes out a bunch of the blades to mend later for sale. They head back and down the slope, to find an area with a boulder that has a small pool and a blind albino salamander sloshing about. Nebol speaks to the creature but it knows little else but 'hunger' and 'home', and 'strange shapes'.

They find a weak cavern wall which has collapsed into a proper tomb beneath the hill, but before they explore it they had back to a side tunnel full of fungus. Nebel and Bjork begin to clear out the area, but it's slow going, while Aldren sneaks down another tunnel to find a cavern containing six cairns, one of which has a skeletal arm sticking out of it. There's also a large, throbbing mushroom inside. Aldren heads back to gather the others, and they re-enter the cairn chamber. Bjork breaks off the skeletal arm and pokes the giant mushroom, which angers it, and a combat ensues. The fungal creature slams Rucia hard several times and poisons him, but its spore attacks don't pan out and its warning spores are useless since the PCs have already slain the lesser fungus creatures. The paladin finishes it off in a blaze of divine damage and the PCs set about digging up the cairns, each of which (besides the one with the skeletal arm) contains a tribute or token for whoever was meant to be buried there: a withered animal organ on a cord, a pair of bone cuff-links, a leather gauntlet with nail-spikes, a feather that is magical animated to tickle those it touches, and a dagger made of shadow-stuff. They dig up the last cairn and its indeed a dwarf skeleton.



The PCs next head into the tomb chamber, and are ambushed by a trio of undead with the ability to drain their life totals. The battle is grim, but the heroes eventually win out, and search the chamber to find a pair of silver scales and some coins. The sarcophagus up the stairs is empty, but they learn that it once belonged to Efka Deznovya, a Blood Count known as 'The Balancer' for his brutal means of settling disputes among his people. The group uses the chamber for a long rest, and luckily remain undisturbed, though Rucia notices some weirdness with the ring he took from the corpse earlier.

Pulyana 25, 1423. 

Before embarking further into the tomb proper, the PCs return to the fungal tunnel and Bjork and Nebel spend a few hours cleaning it out. At the end of the tunnel they find what looks like a seed pod or womb covered in a fungal film, and inside it contains 8 waxy mushrooms with red caps, in a sort of natural planter or incubator. Nebel digs out six of the stalks, realizing that they could be used as potential reagants for potions. After Rucia forces the stone door to the tomb open, they enter and find a study chamber which looks as if it was ransacked. Rucia finds some scales very similar to his own and his rage begins to build...they next head towards a foyer area and a rotting storeroom, in which they find the corpse of one 'Forna Grazilda', a note written from him to his 'Auntie', and a diamond-studded set of brass knuckles.

It turns out that this old tomb was being used as a hideout for the Brothers Dimm, the local enigmatic thieves' guild, until some rampaging undead, lead by an intelligent leader, assaulted it and took it over for their own ends. Forna was unable to flee in time, but sent ahead some of the other guildmembers to the city of Arkany. The PCs then find a barracks, with a trapped chest that has a map of local Dimm hideouts, including this one and a larger chapter located in Arkany. They manage to smash open the last door in the foyer and find a recreational room, in which they discover a bag of tin, copper, silver and gold candle holders, and two stoppered urns of elderberry jam, one of which makes Nebol quite ill! The next door leads to a proper ritual chamber...



PCs: Aldren, Bjork, Nebol'shoy, Rucia