Those aboard the Whisper are in a somber mood after losing two of their number, and nearly losing several more in the short battle with the merrow. Turvy, the small, hairy, svirfneblin becomes even more feral with the loss of his twin sister to a merrow harpoon. Finding the darkest corner of the cargo deck, Turvy curls into a ball and is found either weeping or snarling the rest of the day.
Despite how long it seems, in ship’s time, it is just coming up on late afternoon when Crab discovers that her eyes are not playing tricks, and she is really seeing something out there in the darkness. A tiny point of light in the distance, above the horizon, if there was one. “What is that,” she asks, pointing? A small speck of light, an unusual blue, very far away, is moving slightly, back and forth, rising upwards almost imperceptibly slowly. The pale blue light is to port, and seems a great distance away, even to Tammuz’ sharp eyes. “Wish we had a telescope,” Baern says, and then has to explain what this is to the captain. “It lets you see in total darkness,” Brorb asks in his bubbling voice? Baern’s eyes widen and he shakes his head, “No, I guess not. A telescope would be a useless, very expensive toy down here.”
The ship approaches the nearest point, and for just a second, Crab and Tammuz both see what looks like a dwarven face reflected in some running water; bush white hair and beard, broad face outlined in a blue glow from something strange. “Buppido has never seen a glow like that, oh no he has not,” the little derro says looking at the light suspiciously. “Lights are a lure. Either they are looking to be spotted, or they don’t care,” captain Brorb remarks, “either way, I don’t like it.” However, having given his word to the high priest, he steers the Whisper towards the large stalagmite. Coming closer, you can see it is rough rock with water streaming down in rivulets here and there. Furling the sails, the ship slows not far from shore, and the anchor is lowered quietly into the water.
The kuo toa stay aboard the ship, with Turvy, who sulks below decks, and the rest climb down onto the rough stone. Looking at the slippery rock, and the distance of the figure climbing, the company decides they don’t want to climb up and risk falling, especially since it might be a trap. Baern goes over to a strong stream of water running down the rock. He sniffs it, tastes it, “This is good water, not that lake stuff,” he says taking a drink. Instead of climbing up to seek out the light moving far above, barrels are brought down from the ship and refilled. Everyone fills their waterskins as well.
“Hail the ship,” a voice rings in Baern’s head, “Surface dwellers? What brings you here? Looking for the tomb? I am Cross Rockledge. You can reply to this message.” Baern relays the message to the others, “We seek the surface. What tomb? We saw your light.” After a moment, the voice responds, “Let me come down.” The light seems to move out from the rock until it is over the ship, and then slowly descends. “Feather fall,” Baern says, “used that to escape Velkynvelve.” When the light is just above the mast, it stops, “Permission to come aboard?” The captain looks at the company, and they nod. “Permission granted.” Crossbows are raised as the company makes a circle around the spot where they dwarf will touchdown.
The dwarf, armed and armored, touches down onto the deck with his iron boots clumping down. “I am Cross Rockledge,” he introduces himself. “I am surprised to see so many fellow faces of surface folk,” he smiles. “Nice to hear the surface tongue too.” Baern steps forward, “What brings you down here, and do you know the way out,” he asks hopefully? Cross shakes his head, “No, earth collapsed, and I was trapped down here. I was far above here looking for the tomb of Brysis Khaem the sorceress. The ground shook, and I wound up down here.” He pauses, “Then I found the first tomb. Plundered it, and found some clues about others, and I’ve been collecting what I may.” Nodding Baern asks, “How long have you been down here?” Cross sighs, “Almost ten years. Ten lonely years. Most things down here just want to eat you, and if they talk, they use that weird tongue of theirs,” he turns to the derro and svirfneblin,” no offense meant.”
“I’ve been talking to myself and no one else for a long time,” Cross says, and he begins asking questions of the company and their plans. “I found a partially burned book with references to a tomb of an elf sorceress from a floating city. When the city fell, centuries ago, the tomb was rumored to wind up somewhere near the Darklake. I thought this was it, but it seems to be a tomb or something to some weird fox faced people. Arms, legs, tall, dark skin, long nose, long ears.” Baern cocks his head, “Busy tail?” Cross shakes his head, “Not a fox then,” Baern says flatly. Cross shrugs, “They walk on two legs, use spears and stuff.” After a meal and conversation, “You are welcome to stay, but we’re exhausted. We need to rest before going in,” Tammuz says. Cross nods, “I thank you.”
Watches are set, and the rest period passes by mostly uneventfully. A deep rumble reverberates nearby, and the sounds of rocks falling can be hear, but not close by during the third hour of Vorkath’s watch. He does not bother to wake anyone, as he sits with Sarith on the dark deck. Cross wakes and sits with them, keeping them company. The three talk in low voices until it is time to wake the rest. A quick, hot breakfast, and the company follows Cross up the stalagmite. He retraces his steps from the day before easily, leading the company past areas he had difficulty with. A little more than an hour later, they find a wide ledge with an arched tunnel that leads fiteen feet in to a smooth stone door. All around the lintel are strange hieroglyphs that mostly feature fox faced beings. “Any read this shit,” Baern asks, but no one can.
Tammuz steps forward, and begins checking for traps. Cross assists, and the two of them find two traps, a pressure plate on the stone in front of the door, and another on the ceiling, some sort of blade trap. “DON’T STEP ON THIS STONE,” he says evenly, forcefully pointing it out. He manages to disarm the blade trap in the ceiling. Cross picks the lock on the door, and it is pushed open revealing a short hall and dusty stairs leading down.
Everyone steps carefully over the stone, and into the hallway. The steps lead downward sixty feet to a landing, and then look like they turn left and go down again. Tammuz and Cross lead off, checking for traps and finding none. Reaching the landing, the stairs go down another sixty feet and hallway stretches out ahead. At the end of the hallways is a closed door. No traps are found, and the door does not seem to have a lock. Tammuz opens it.
Two spear wielding, jackal faced creatures bark, “RORFLUG CRON DOKRAT!!” This makes sense to no one, and the creatures attack. Crab draws Dawnbringer, and sunlight fills the area, making the two creatures yelp in shock and dismay. She cuts it, the sword singing to her, “Die undead creature,” and there is an extra bright flash of radiant light from the sword as it strikes. Vorkath follows it up with his great sword, Tammuz tries a spell, but the creature shrugs it off. Obie punches it twice in quick succession, hitting both times, Baern drops to one knee, and fires his crossbow between Obie’s legs, striking the other warrior. Arrayed in a semi-circle around the opened door, the two undead creatures only get on strike in, on Vorkath, but he shrugs off the poison on the spear tip, and cuts the creature down with his greatsword. It is over quickly, and the two undead creatures lie broken and hacked on the floor.
The room where the two undead waited seems to be a cloak room. There are pegs on the opposite wall, and to the right of the door as you go through, is a full length mirror in an oval frame. Everything is covered with a thick layer of dust. “They must have been standing a long time,” Cross says pointing to the two pairs of foot sprints on either side of the door that are dust free. Baern investigates the mirror, it is hanging by wire, and there is nothing behind but old cobwebs and dust bunnies.
A rough cave-like store room is off to one side, with remnants of crates and barrels, all long rotted. An arch leads to another room, “The fuck is that,” Vorkath says pointing to three shallow pools, perhaps three feet wide? The first is filled with a green liquid, the second bright red, and the last looks like clear water. That one looks perhaps two feet deep. Crab detects magic, and all three radiate magic. The first radiates necromancy, and the further two evocation magic. The fluid seems to be moving, although there is no sign of inlet or outflow. “That can’t be good,” Baern offers staring at the liquids. No one disagrees. Everyone looks at Vorkath, “Throw something in?” The goliath grins, “Sounds good.” Obie picks up a rock from the corner and hands it to him. Everyone retreats to the other end of the cloak room. Vorkath tosses the rock into the green pool.
WHOOSH!
The room fills with clouds of green vapor, and the acrid smell is nearly overpowering, even far away. The green clouds seep into the cloak room, but seem heavier than the air, and when they reach the group, it is ankle high mist. “Better wait,” coughs Eldeth. A half an hour later, the mist is gone. Obie tears the head off one of the undead, and moving to the door, tosses it into the red pool.”
WHUMP!
Flames fill the room and a blast of super heated air fills the cloak room. It gets uncomfortably hot, but not dangerously so. The flames do burn off the rest of the poisonous green vapors. Vorkath tosses the other head into the clear pool
WHISH!
Frost fills the room, and the hot air is replaced by icy cold. “Can we step over, do you think,” Baern asks? Obie steps over the green pool, then red to stand in the hallway on the east wall. “Looks like,” he grins. Obie tosses a rope and with Vorkath on one end, and Obie on the other, everyone cross quickly without incident. Vorkath hops over and watches as the door is checked for traps. It is not, and like the other doors, it has no lock. Tammuz pulls it open.
A large open space, tall black columns leading up to a ceiling out of sight for all but himself. “Ninety foot ceilings,” he says. A statue of a kneeling, jackal faced figure, fifty feet tall is at the top end of the room where the wall curves behind it. A circular depression in front of the statue glows with red embers that match the glowing red eyes of the statue. The company moves in, Tammuz checking around the statue and the depression with the glowing red embers. There is no smoke, but heat comes off the embers. He avoids touching the bowl or the statue, and slowly the group moves to the door just south of the entrance they used
There are no traps, and the door opens easily. Inside are desks, beds, chairs and footlockers for three. It seems like an acolytes or student room. The furniture and cloth is old and rotted, but after a thorough search finds a small statute of a jackal worth 750gp, and 10 10gp assorted gemstones. The group follows the south wall to the first door. Tammuz finds no traps, no lock, and door swings open revealing a small cube shaped room with a stone pedestal holding a brazier of magical, red-violet flames. “Nope,” he says as Crab detects necromancy magic from the brazier. The door is closed, and they move to the door across the hall. The door opens easily revealing a small altar with a golden bird statue with outstretched wings. The idol radiates necromancy, and the door is closed. The door across the hall looks like a torture room with manacles attached to the wall, and a table of rotted things, it is hard to say what they might have been. The final door opens revealing a small platinum statue that looks like a phoenix, with the wings down, forming a cup below the bird’s belly. It radiates evocation magic.
“Put something in it,” Baern says? “Pee in it,” Vorkath grins? Folks are not sure if he is serious or not, but he proves he is serious by peeing into the cupped wings. He feels a wash of energy go past him, but he seems unaffected. “Going to pee in the gold one,” Tammuz asks? “Yi,” comes the goliath’s reply. Moving back towards the room with the golden bird, Vorkath pees onto the statue. A wave of necrotic energy flows over him, but this time, it clings to him, slowing him, making him feel a little weird. (Cursed)
The rest of the area is explored, and eventually, the group returns to the little room with the phoenix statue. “Maybe put gold in?” Before anyone can react, Vorkath takes out a gold piece, drops it into the cupped wings, and disappears with a BAMF! of displaced air.
Vorkath appears in a dark hallway, there is a smell of death, old but very present off to his left. Stepping up to an intersection, web and bones litter the room to the north, and to the south is a small alcove with a door. “Oh shit,” Crab says in the quiet after Vorkath disappears. After a moment, Crab calls out, “VORKATH!!” Hearing the muffled cry, Vorkath yells back, “YEH!” Baern steps up to the idol, and places a copper piece into the cupped wings. Nothing happens, he tries a silver with the same result. Reluctantly, he tries a gold piece, and appears in the deserted hallway. He can hear Vorkath clomping around to his left in the room that smells of spiders and old death. One by one the others place gold pieces into the wings and are teleported to the hallway where Baern waits. Vorkath moves past the bones and webs into an empty rectangular door in the north wall. As he approaches it, he pauses as a sense of dread washes over him.
The company catches up, and Crab also feels overpowering evil coming through the closed door. “Oh fuck this,” she says. “You feel that?” Only Vorkath nods. Tammuz checks the door and pulls it open. The jackal headed statue radiates an evil palpable to everyone who looks on it. This figure is seated cross-legged with a stone bowl in its lap. The circular depression in front of it is filled with glowing embers much brighter than the outer temple. The glowing eyes radiate hate and spite, and it is impossible to hold their gaze.
“Let’s pull it down,” Baern says, “throw a rope around it and pull it into the fire?” The discussion goes back and forth, but no one wants to get any closer to the thing. Eventually, they back away and close the door. Back out in the hallway, there are two doors. The one down the hall leads to an empty room, dusty and pieces of the roof have fallen some time in the distant past. The other door leads to a room where some long rotted shovels lie amid rubble. An excavation has been started in the south wall. The tunnel branches at once, the right tunnel has a spider spell, not that old, so the group heads the other way.
The company finds themselves in a prison. The overseers’ office is first, and inside a bit of loot is found: a carved bone statuette of water dragon 500gp, a gold music box 200gp, a pair of engraved bone dice 25gp, a gold bracelet 150gp and 8 gold pieces. Below this is a room with weird tiles on the floor that they leave alone at first. “Not walking on those,” Baern says flatly.
Moving down they find a huge torture chamber with a selection of old, but well made torture implements. Buppido makes no secret of inspecting them, and then one by one, putting them into his pack. Past this are rows of cells, all contain bones of long dead things, only half of them humanoid in shape. A guardroom has nothing of value, everything has long ago rotted to uselessness.
Returning to the room with the strange tile floor, they carefully avoid the tiles and move to the opening on the far wall. This leads to a room that looks like it is actively being used. It is mostly dust free and the furniture and bedding, spider themed, all looks in good repair. A white bathtub sits in the far corner, a desk and chair are in a space on the north wall, and the bulk of the room is taken up with a very large bed covered with a blanket featuring a huge spider. The large carpet on the floor depicting a larger spider in red. A small chest sits to the north side, and a larger one to the south. Tammuz approaches the smaller chest. As soon as he gets close, three blue-white spiders the size of ponies appear in the room and attack.
Each spider appears with a buzzing sound and take bites at Vorkath, Obie and Crab. Vorkath is bit, but he poison fails to make a dent on his goliath constitution. Spiders pop in and out of reality, but their poison fails to claim a single victim, and in short order the three spiders become corpses. Tammuz tries to remove a poison sac from one spider, but it winds up being punctures, blue fluid leaking out. The second one is removed successfully.
A clicking noise sounds from the hallway, as something large, with way too many legs approaches. A monstrosity, a female torso, beautiful and strange clad in red on the body of a huge spider. Her hands end in long claws, and she seems not to be pleased to see the company. Her eyes widen at the sight of three dead phase spider and then narrow with fury at the company, especially at Tammuz holding a spider’s poison sac.
Disclaimer: The DM totally did not throw this encounter into the adventure, just because he planned this for an in person one-shot two campaigns previously, where the party decided NOT to investigate, and sent in the army. I prepped all week, even BOUGHT this map set just for them. What do they do? The ranger sensed the undead in the area, and the party ran away. Our in game session was seven hours of off the cuff, not what I had planned, total DM chaos.