Wiki of The Dungeoneering Crew

Session 0 / Part 4, The Sea Hag and tower, Test Over!

Paldegora

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Session 0 – 2022-11-19

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Well, the meeting of the Adventurer’s Guild is over and it’s getting late but I think there is still time to finish the story of how the Company Clandestine came together. Of how their first mission ended.

The party was standing in a chamber, in a cave they had escaped into from the Gnolls outside. They had moved further into the cave and found a room with a pool of water. At the center of the pool of water was a whirlpool. There was a broken bridge that led over it. Eryn had tied off and handed the other end of the rope to X'or. She then jumped the gap in the broken bridge. Upon landing on the other side, red eyes appeared in the darkness and then she saw the skeletons behind those eyes. They were moving toward her. In an instant, she called back to the others, “oops, coming back!”. Cal-El, who was on the southern side of the pool, moved quickly back around it to a point just beyond the base of the bridge. Eryn turned to jump back, passing beyond the shield wall known as X'or. The whirlpool began to glow a greenish hue and from the center popped up a creature that looked quite ghastly. It said something about adding them to her stew and that's when they were able to see the bodies and bones and such, in the water. It sort of looked like a disgusting stew.

They all felt something invading their minds but pushed it out, all except Symon. Symon felt much weaker as he lost 4 strength points. He was very scared after that. The skeletons went north of the broken bridge simply walked across, using a stepping stone to aid in the crossing. They approached X'or and Cal-El attacking them. They each took some hits, The fought back, Eryn took one round to attack the one on X'or. The swords were hurting them but not as much as they would flesh. Angelique turned two of them leaving the rest of the company three skeletons and the ghastly creature to take care of. Symon managed to get an attack off with his slingshot and said something about his dad having told him about such creatures, “She's a Sea Hag!” he said, trembling. Upon hearing that, Eryn shifted her attention to the Sea Hag while X'or pushed the skeleton attacking him off into the water. It was quickly pulled into the whirlpool along with the two that Angelique had turned. The battle continued for another round or so with the Sea Hag being pelted by everyone who could fire at it but Cal-El and X'or, who were fighting directly against the two remaining skeletons. The Sea hag finally fell and as she did, so did the skeletons. The water pulled them out of sight and then cleared up. It no longer look like a putrid and disgusting stew.

Angelique had one more remaining healing she could do and gave the points to X'or. Eryn move to jump the bridge. Fortunately, she was still tied off and X'or held the other end as this time, she missed. She plunged into the water and was almost immediately pulled into the whirlpool. X'or and Cal-El worked to pull her back while she also tried to climb the rope to pull herself out. She made it back safely. Cal-El took the path the skeletons took to get across which proved very easy. The rest of the company followed. They made their way through the cave and to an exist to the surface. Upon exiting, they saw a tower up a little rise some 100 feet or so away. They decided that to move forward at this point would not be a good idea. They were all too damaged and needed healing. They also needed spells back. They went back into the cave and picked a place that felt secure enough and rested.

After resting, the company exited the cave again and began to carefully make their way to the tower. In front of the tower, there was a round-smooth-closed door. About 20 feet up the wall, above the door was a window. On the front of the door was a set of three locks placed around a triangle and above it was written, “Don't be mad, two out of three aint bad.”. Surmising that maybe only two locks had to be picked, Eryn unlock the top right lock, then moved on to the southern lock. She had a hard time with it and move to the east lock. That one opened easily. Upon completing it, they heard a whirring sound and the locks reset. After much trial and error, Symon suggested that maybe pressing the center triangle while unlocking it would allow it to hold and then complete. It did depress after the first lock was picked. When the second lock was picked, the triangle was forced back out and the locks reset again. They then worked a pattern while pressing in on the triangle. The pattern that worked was picking the top left lock and pressing the triangle then picking the top right lock. With that the triangle continued in and the stone broke into three sections that pulled away from the center exposing a hallway about 20 feet long.

Eryn moved to the door at the other end of this hallway and opened it. On the other side of the door was a large room with four torches lighting the room and on the north, south, east and western part of the room were four chests. There was a pattern in the center of the room made up of differently shaded stones that formed into four arrows pointing from the center towards each chest. There was a center circle that these arrows led from. Eryn spotted a scroll on the floor and picked it up and read it.

Eryn carefully opened the chest to the north and found a scroll case. She took it out and checked the scroll. It was something appearing to be like a magical scroll. Eryn was able to recognize that much as she had acquired those before this adventure, though she couldn't read it. She passed it on to Symon. In the next chest to the east, she found a potion and a rusty metal helmet with leather straps. She gave the potion to Angelique and when she removed the helmet, she found that it wasn't rusty, as she had first thought, but instead was just dirty. As the dirt fell away, it actually turned out to be in fairly good shape. She hadn't checked for secret compartments inside the chests so she checked this chest for one, then the chest to the north. Neither had secret compartments that she could find. She moved to the southern chest. They found it empty. Upon checking the inside for secret compartments, she found a false bottom and opened it. Within, she found two scroll cases and a 100gps ruby. She gave the ruby to whoever holds these things and the scroll cases to Symon. The first one had two scrolls more in line with a priest than and arcane practitioner. He gave those to Angelique and she identified them as healing spells. The other case had an identify scroll, I think. Eryn opened the western chest and found nothing. Searched for secret compartments and found none.

This didn't seem to hold the gold that they were looking for. They decided to try and determine how the circle and arrows were to be used if at all. They finally determined that maybe each arrow, pointing to a chest, should be stood on by the person most like the items found within the chests. Symon stood on the northern arrow as that chest is where the magic missile scroll was. X'or took the eastern one as that’s where the potion and helmet were. Angelique stood on the southern one as that’s where the healing scrolls were found. Eryn stood on the western one as that chest was empty, like it was cleaned out. Cal-El stood in the center. With that lineup, a door opened in the northeast wall exposing a staircase. They ascended the stair case to the next level.

The room before them was much like the one below except there were no chests and in the center was a dais. On the dais was a scale. It rested in the center and contained equal amounts of gold on each plate, balancing it. Eryn moved into the room and moved to the dais. She carefully checked it for traps before stepping on it. She then carefully checked the scale for a trap. She couldn't find anything. Angelique suggested that we stand on the same spots as we did in the room below to see if that had any effect. That didn't seem to cause anything to happen. Symon mentioned taking a coin off of the scale to see what would happen. Eryn suggested just moving the scale should be enough, without removing anything. She stepped up to the scale and using her dagger, tipped it slightly to one side. As-soon-as the movement began, a creature appeared in the room, seemingly fading into existence. As that happened, assuming the worst thing that could happen was happening, Eryn knocked over the scale sending the scale and the gold scattering onto the floor. It appeared as a floating creature with a big eyeball that fired out a beam at Eryn. She managed to dodge the attack and with that, the fight was on. It didn't last long as Angelique hit its eye, blinding it. This sent it scurrying around the room, bouncing off walls, until it managed to run out of the window.

The company collected the gold and as they finished, they found themselves standing outside of the wagon behind Three Points Inn with Bernard. There were other groups there who appeared to be much worse off for the experience. Bernard congratulated the company and gave them a scroll to present to Eustace. They returned to Eustace in the Inn and presented him with the scroll. He presented each member of the company with medallions indicating their membership in the Adventurer's Guild of Paldegora. Then he invited them to sit down as he told them that he already had a mission for them. He presented them with a letter from Allistar Finch, Esq. He is the Grand Guild Master Executor of the Adventurers Guild of Paldegora, at Seaspire, The Emerald Coast. The letter was sent to Eustace Mycoyle and read as follows.