SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE ERRANT SWINE – PT 3, 3/14/17

The Heroes:

-          Ecna Lubma: dwarf priest

-          Gruntbelly: dwarf magician

-          Kane: human warrior

-          Mathias: jotun

The heroes press on into the fey shrine as they try to find Delia’s friends who were attacked by the skinless fey creatures called the “bloody bones”.  They enter a circular room with a red glowing dome set into the floor and 3 doors.  They go through the eastern door and enter a chamber lined with columns and are immediately attacked by two animated skeletons, which they fight and destroy.  They press onward and find a passage leading under the room with the red dome and find another circular chamber whose surfaces seem to have a mirror-like surface and which has 3 gem shards that glow with a bright red light laying upon the floor.  A golden bowl floats in the center of the room, empty.  Mathias and Gruntbelly enter.  The jotun bats one of the shards against the wall of the room to see what would happen and it hits the wall and lands on the floor with no other effect.  He then tries to hit another one (attempting to get the bowl out of the overlapping glow of the shards) and his axe goes right through it, dispelling the illusion but triggering a trap that causes the bowl to explode in a flash of light and heat.  The dwarf and joten are burned a bit, but avoid being blinded by quickly covering their eyes.  They decide to leave the room and rest for a bit, though Gruntbelly seems reluctant to leave what he believes to be Chaos Shards (pieces of a fey gem created by the Fey Lords in the Troll Wars, according to legend) in the room.  Mathias watches the dwarf, suspicious of his interest in the shards.

During the night, Gruntbelly hears a sound, rouses everyone, goes to investigate, but then a horrific tiny demon materializes in the midst of the group and starts attacking.  The heroes manage to destroy the demon, which explodes in a bloody, gory mess against the wall.  The heroes finish their rest and resume their inspection of the mirror room. Gruntbelly determines the 2^nd shard is also an illusion and the first one that Mathias hit is real, so he picks it up and leaves the room.  Kane shoots the illusory shard with an arrow which triggers the light/heat trap again, but everyone had cleared the room.  The golden bowl falls to the ground and changes into a battered, cheap metal bow.

The heroes return to the circular room with the red dome and proceed through the southern door which has a hallway leading to another chamber, but is blocked by a large statue of an elven maiden that animates and moves to block the heroes progress.  Mathias attempts speaking to it in Trollish and the statue immediately attacks.  The fight is difficult and Delia falls in battle  and dies from her wounds. They destroy the statue and recover a magical coin that it had around its neck.  What it does is not yet known. The heroes decide to not proceed into the next chamber, which has strange eyeball creatures clinging to the walls, and back up in to the dome room. 

After working on Delia for a few minutes to try and revive her, Mathias spots a tattoo on her neck that matches the tattoo they saw on Candace Dreen, the merchant’s possessed daughter, and that matched the symbol sewn on the robes they found in the Moore House.  Thinking this to be a sign of possession, they check each other for similar tattoos but are clean.  Kane tells the rest that the green sword that warns of nearby demon presences is vibrating when the southern door is approached but stops when he moves away from it.

After considering their options, they decide to try the western door, which Delia claimed the bloody bones attacked her party.  They find a chamber with two more elven statues that do not animate when they enter.  The wall on the western end of the room as collapsed and beyond it stretches a dark natural cavern.  Mathias takes a look inside, hears sounds coming from the southern end of the caves, backs up and finds that 3 troglodytes spotted him and are now poised at the collapsed wall, bloody teeth bared, ready to fight.

End of session.