10/24/2013
Players
Cut Coutelaine
Glacier
Pritchard Hood
Bouvier des Flanders
Ja'Tubis
Roland, The Lord Zanzibar
Castelmoss the Elf
Hoagie Moldus
Enemies Slain
1 Floating, mesmerizing eye
4 Large zombie monsters (tiger, wyvern, griffin, cave bear)
A tribe of troglodytes (at least 20-30?)
Treasures Retrieved
A pile of treasure from the bottom of the cistern
Rewards
Each character received 2,953 g.p. and 1,684 exp.
An Account of Occurrences: An Encounter with the Suu, Intrigue Among the Bugbears, and Trouble In the Cistern
A journey to the Chateau. Ja'Tubis led the party down the Grand Stair to further explore aspects of the 5th and 6th levels. The party encountered several Suu accompanied by night goblins. The meeting occurred immediately off the Grand Staircase and a parley ensued. To show good faith Ja'Tubis gave them a magic ring, which the Suu accepted and used to turn one of their goblin servitors to stone. It was a brilliant move since the ring is very familiar to Ja'Tubis (who wore it himself for a long time), and now can use it as a vector for locate object — the Company may now track the Suu to their lair at leisure.
Continuing on the party opened a door distinguished by the bones scattered around it. Inside were a guard of night goblins and the voice
of the bugbear Gutclaw. Gutclaw asked us to slay her rival, "Fleshburn." Further inconclusive discussion occurred about the nature of the
Suu. The party left peacefully, promising to attack Fleshburn.
Next stop was the trophy room explored in the previous delve. Sadly, the bodies of the monstrous guardians the Company last defeated had
re-animated as zombies and the Company had to battle the tiger, wyvern, griffin, and cave bear again. The fight was frantic and was
concluded through Prichard's use of dispell magic which destroyed several of the zombie-monsters.
Ja'Tubis paced-out the trophy room so as to better capture the dimensions for his map, and the party proceeded through another door.
Stairs and more doors were discovered, including a set of doors leading to "The Stone Garden." Mirrors were deployed and the party ambled down the stairs only to discover - not a snake-haired woman, but a giant floating eyeball, the kind the night goblins refer to as mind eaters. A lightning bolt burst the eye and its mesmerizing power - and also impressed the neighboring night goblins so much they instantly surrendered.
A third parley began and the party was led to the night goblin "grandmother," the bugbear known as Smokethis.
Smokethis featured imp-like familiars on her shoulders; she eventually requested that we slay the lizard-folk located on the same level as a sign of alliance, while the party informed her that the other bugbears had put a price on her head. In pursuit of the aquatic tribe the Company was given a force of 16 goblins to fight for us and lead us to the lair.
The Company went there, with a slight detour at the threshold of "The Family Dining Hall," a large room wreathed in magical darkness and infested with some shadowy forms. The darkness proved resistant to dispell magic, so the party decided to return another day and pursue the lizards.
Following an underground aqueduct into a large water-filled chamber, the Company walked out upon a causeway and eventually joined in battle, surrounded by troglodytes emerging from the water and emitting a terrible stench…
[then I left for the train.]
From the book of Cut Coutelain
The battle was joined: One flank set Smoke-Hiss's goblins against a cadre of lesser troglodytes. Roland and the dwarves protected the spell-casters as they could in the center. A group of larger troglodytes further along the causeway was ambushed by a suddenly-visible halfling. There appeared to be dozens of oily, reptilian monsters crawling from the waters around the causeway. The combat was tense: one dwarf was dragged under water by the troglodytes' grappling hooks, while others were simply blanketed in odious opponents. The enemy had numbers, but they were mitigated by the magical soporifics Hoagie and Beauvoir summoned and the invigorating magics of Pritchard Hood.
Eventually, with the help of Ja's poisonous snakes, the company carved out enough space to rescue their submerged ally. The tide seemed to turn. Then trouble: An enormous trog barreled out of the shadows towards the halfling, leading a handful of bloodthirsty minions. Spells flew out of the perimeter darkness- the halfling was struck blind with magical light, and a cone of absolute silence surrounded the Company's most formidable spellcaster. Another Company mage attempted a great conflagration, but to no effect. Castelmoss cried out in fear, and collapsed to the ground in terror. Things looked grim.
Fate intervened: the overconfident troglodytes pressed their advantage, and their over-hasty attacks left several open to counterstrikes. Their gang-leaders fell, and the snakes continued their venomous handiwork. Momentum appeared to shift again: The halfling fell to the ground unconscious, and the ensorcelled snakes began to dive into the water and drown. The forces remaining were roughly equal in size, but the troglodytes did not anticipate the melee puissance manifested in Pritchard Hood, much less Ja'Tubis. They and Roland moved the line back, and were eventually joined by the dwarves. A splash in the water, a rippling shadow below its surface, and the air of Company victory suggested a fleeing enemy spellcaster. The remaining Troglodytes were dispatched under a hail of Glacier's arrows and goblin javelins.
The Company revived Cut with a magical draught, and Ja'Tubis discovered a great cache of coin and treasure below the surface of the water. The party weighed their wisdom against their avarice, and set to looting. Perhaps the lookouts relaxed somewhat as the last of the valuables were being hauled to the surface, or perhaps the unnatural stealth of their foes would never be detected, but the alarms came after the darkness itself reached out towards the Company. Insubstantial horrors moved through our numbers, devouring the inner being of goblins, weakening Company stalwarts. In the confusion, the Company lost track of Hoagie. Near all of the goblins fell, but the Company triumphed… only to see Hoagie being horribly transformed. His massive body seemed briefly to float on air, his eyes pools of deepest black, his skin fading into translucence and then into an unnatural, brackish hue. Flummoxed, the party guarded themselves against a possible attack only to be stayed by his raspy, guttural pronouncement: I… am… still… HOAGIE. The Company returned to the surface, flush with new wealth but unsure of the thing that returned with them.
From the accounts of Castelmoss the Elf
The fight ground on. Cut was surrounded by numerous Troglodytes, including a massive one. A Trog cleric was slashing in with spells from the darkness, including a Silence spell dropped on Pritchard. Ja dove into the water to help Thymli survive. The goblins managed to fend off their Trogs in the back but eight of them died. A Fear spell zapped Castelmoss and he was out for the combat, a whimpering fool. Roland and Pritchard managed to break through the lines to help Cut, who went down. Pritchard proved himself basically as good as a front-line or secondary fighter at this point.
We survived, with the Trog cleric and some others swimming away. Ja swam to the bottom and found a huge pile of scattered loot. In the midst of scooping this out, we were beset upon by a bunch of Shadows at all angles. One got Hoagy the 1st level Magic-User isolated and 'killed him'/'turned him into a shadow', but by miracle of his yea unstated special ability, he is now somehow half-shadow and still a PC.