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Session 12, Crypt in the Desert!

Coins End 

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Session 12 – 2023-12-09

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==== Summary ====

They started this session with a description of how to get to the former Hyreed family estate. Geolain told them, "Head out through the Trades Ward heading west. Follow that west for about 10 to twelve miles. There will be some old stone pillars marking a really elaborate driveway going up off in the desert. Follow that for another 3 or 4 miles and you will arrive at the estate. Nobody really ever goes there. It's considered haunted. Nobody knows where all of the money came from but it was founded by an ancient wizard who kind of started the whole thing. Then there was a whole story about it burning. Nobody really knows what happened.". 

Everyone was rested up and spent the night and headed out the next morning, about an hour before dawn. They went out in groups of two. Oglesby and Brandy in the first group. Pyreece and Audra covered their armor and went out together. Elenor and Kipp followed up after that, disguising themselves as a couple window shopping. They all made it out of the western gates and met up on the road. They headed west, wrapping their faces in a scarf to help keep from drying out their skin. They passed very few people. They didn't feel like anyone paid them any special attention. 

They saw nobody and nothing in the desert until they found some very massive columns laying on the ground, having fallen over. They seemed to indicate an entry way of sorts. There was a path, almost a road itself, leading off and eventually up a hill. Northward, they could see remnants of buildings a few miles off. They headed that way. The terrain got a little more rocky. As the got to the bits of structures they'd spotted from the main road, they'd stepped between stone outcroppings which separated the levels of terrain up here. They'd climbing even higher as they did. A few hundred feet away, they could see a sort of pyramid still standing. Kipp kept an eye out for tracks but with the wind blowing across the desert, it was likely that any tracks made in the sand would vanish in short order. As they crested the last level, the could finally see the foundations of some of the buildings. There were several smaller buildings that appeared to be stables or servants quarters and/or guest houses. 

The whole place had a dark unhealthy look to it. There were blackened vines of some sort, that gripped the walls. They made it to a large building, or what was left of it. The walls had collapsed and they could see some blackened stones from the fire. Only the foundation, some columns that had toppled, and a couple of large statues remained. The statues were of the ancient fertility god of the Calim people. The building looked as if it were a large temple area but that didn't fit with the builder or owner being a wizard. Pyreece was crossing through the building when a large scorpion attacked. The claws missed but the stinger hit. She managed to deflect it so as not to be stung. Two more scorpions joined the attack. Kipp and Audra each hit a scorpion the same time as Pyreece took another hit from a claw. Kipp was also hit, one with a claw and again with the stinger. He was attacked by a second scorpion and hit again. 

Brandy attacked the scorpion that attacked Pyreece and killed it. Brandy took down another one on her second attack. Oglesby hit the last one but didn't kill it. Oglesby hit it again on his next round. Kipp took another hit from the stinger again. He started feeling the poison spreading within his body. He started to feel his joints and muscles getting tight. Audra moved around behind the last scorpion and killed it. Kipp drank a potion of neutralize poison and felt relief from the tightening as the poison was countered. Pyreece healed some of Kipps damage as well. They looked at the buildings around the rest of this level and decided that the building they were standing in now appeared to have been the main house or tower or something. The other buildings all appeared to support the main house either by serving to house the servants or stock of supplies or even possibly stables. Looking off to the northeast, they saw that the ground rose even higher and that there was something that looked dark like a cave or a dip under that level. They decided to check that area out so they moved over to it.

As they got close, they saw where the area was a cave opening with a large slab stone door closed in front of it. They moved up to it. Oglesby pulled the door open a little and Brandy moved up to help him. They got it opened enough for everyone to be able to enter. The air was foul and there were stone steps leading down into the darkness. Elenor moved up behind Oglesby with her lantern to shine some light on the stairs and the room ahead. Having found no traps. they moved up and in. They carefully made there way down the stairs. The place really stank so they had to cover their face as they fanned the air. The opened door helped to dissipate the odor. The steps descended about 60 feet and stopped in front of large iron doors with chains locking them and pentagrams inscribed on them. Pyreece examined the doors and decided the pentagrams seemed to be someone's idea of a warning or maybe a design that meant nothing, just art. Without knowing why it was placed there, she couldn't ascribe any meaning to them.

Oglesby picked the lock and they were able to open the door. Pyreece raised her holy symbol and opened the door. They moved into the next area with Pyreece entering first. She didn't see a wire in her path that suddenly whipped off into the distance. Further checking showed it to be a snare designed to grab the occupant by the feet and hang them, upsidedown in the air. She had only barely managed to avoid it. There were stairs going up off to each side of this chamber. The stench was still pretty bad. There were some bones piled on the floor against the southern wall. Oglesby started up the northern stairs with Elenor providing light from her lantern. Within the room were two wooden caskets, a stone casket, and a few urns. Brandy followed them up and looked around, spying three urns that were very decorative. Brandy pulled the lid off of the first urn and peered down into it, finding it full of ashes. She took her sword and stirred the contents but found nothing in it. Pyreece stayed away from the obvious desecration. 

After searching all of the urns Brandy found nothing but ashes in them. Looking in the wooden casket, Brandy stirred it up as well and found nothing but bones. The other wooden casket seemed to have already been disturbed. The stone casket appeared to be sealed. Oglesby noticed it looked like it had been opened before. The bones had been stirred around but there were some scroll tubes that he passed on to Elenor. She carefully removed the scrolls and found a Hold Portal spell and a Mirror Image spell. They searched for more hidden compartments and found none. They went back out and crossed the chamber to the other side where there was another room like the one they had just searched. This one had two urns, three wooden caskets, and one large stone casket. One of the wooden caskets was open and empty. They all looked like they had been opened before. There were bones scattered on the floor. They used the same searching routine in here. The urns were filled with ashes and nothing else. The caskets had bones that were already searched through. In one of the wooden coffins, they found a ring. In the stone casket, there was nothing at all. Elenor got the sense that the ring might well be magical. Also, where she had touched the ring, her fingers were wet.

They exited that room and moved further down the chamber where they found two more chambers off the north and south walls, much like the last two. There was also an opening at the end of this hallway leading into another section. They searched the north chamber first. It had four coffins and three urns and a pile of bones in the floor on it's southwest wall. Brandy searched the urns using her sophisticated stirring technique, not taught in most adventuring schools. She found nothing but ashes. She searched each of the coffins. She found one that didn't appear to have been messed with. That corpse, had an amulet and a couple of rings. The rings did not appear to be special. Elenor seemed to think the amulet might have had some sort of magical property to it. In the southern chamber, they found two wooden caskets, two stone coffins, and three urns. While searching it, Elenor felt something on her hip. She looked over at it and found a large venomous snake had reached up, bit her, and was hanging on. She screamed and everyone rushed into action. Within a moment, they had killed that snake and a second one that had attacked. 

They returned to searching the coffin where the snakes were. They had made a nest there but there was nothing else. They searched the rest of that room and found a weird little hat that seemed to be in reasonably good condition. They backed out of that room and continued down the hallway to the opening and made their way into the next chamber. The found some bones on the southeastern wall. There were also stairs in the back of the chamber leading up. Oglesby and Brandy moved over to check the bones. While looking at them, they felt this sort of coldness surrounding them. As they recognized the feeling of doom, they were set upon by three entities, Shadows.  Brandy was hit and not only did she take physical damage, but felt suddenly weaker, losing one point of strength.

The shadows attacked again and Oglesby took a hit this time, also suffering a one point strength loss. Pyreece attempted to turn them but failed, miserably. They scoffed at her god. After the first round, another creature approached from the level above, moving down the stairs. It was humanoid but other than that, it's head was a bunch of tentacles. If made a sickly sounding gurgle as it approached. It wore, what was once, fine clothing, now torn and rotten. Where it should have had arms, it now bore tentacles. There was something glittering underneath it's left armpit. The new creature grabbed Brandy with it's tentacle, lifted her up, and slung her across the room against the wall. She took one more point of strength damage as-well-as one point of constitution damage as well as physical damage. They killed the shadows while Brandy fired on the crypt thing. After killing their shadow, Audra and Pyreece turned their attention to the crypt thing. 

The crypt thing attacked Pyreece missing her. The remaining shadow was dispatched by Kipp. All attention turned to the crypt thing. Audra, Brandy, and Pyreece hit it back to back with Brandy also hitting with her second attack. Oglesby hit it with a sling stone. The crypt thing hit Audra twice, doing a massive 7 damage. She took a strength and constitution drain as well as some damage. Kipp hit it. Brandy hit it next followed by several misses by the rest of the cast. Elenor hit it and damaged it. Oglesby followed up with the death blow. It finally collapsed. As it collapsed, the pigeon egg sized diamond fell from it. Brandy picked it up. They finished searching the remainder of the crypt and found three magical weapons, each plus one. Both Audra and Kipp got long swords while Brady got a short sword.

Exp's total 667 which was 606 plus 10% of 61

Start the recorder!