The Saturday Game 1/5/19 – Lizards on a Bridge
A tiefling bard enters the room and sets out a tip jar. She begins to recount the recent adventures punctuating the tale with the occasional bagpipe interlude.
We spot a secret door leading down to a tunnel. The architecture is Dark Elvish in nature. We inspect a magical backpack we discovered earlier. It is a Heward’s Handy Haversack and contains a bale of straw which is strongly magical, dried meat, waterskins, some caltrops and two coils of rope. After an extended discussion of the immense value of the spell “Identify,” our Luchador agrees to add it to his repertoire.
As if scales are lifted from our eyes, we realize the woman we previously rescued has been accompanying us all along. We address her and she tells us she was part of an expedition that was sent to find magical weapons, artifacts and bones of the King to be used in a fearsome ritual of necromancy by the Vanguard of Seratas, employers of Xeron. The woman’s name is Lyra and she has an ability to navigate complex devices. Good to know for the future! The distrustful Paper Merchant makes an insight check to assess that Lyra has spoken truthfully.
We discover that the room we rested in is in fact the Burial Chamber of the Forgotten King. After much discussion, the Cleric consecrates the ground and we bury the remains of the man we killed in the chamber above. We move down the tunnel and noting parallel scrape marks on the floor which could have been made by a heavily weighted litter. About 300 feet down the tunnel, we enter a large circular chamber suffused with a dim blue light. Surrounding the room is a one-foot ledge with a steep drop off in the center. The litter marks disappear over the edge. Looking down, we see glowing blue moss at the bottom.
The astute Druid notices an impression in the wall and discovers two bodies, that of a halfling male shot through with arrows, and a female goblin with a surprised expression. The male clutches a scroll written in Yuan-ti, the language of the snake people. Using ropes, we make it to the bottom of this chamber where we see a depression in the floor which contains a pyramid device with a crystal emitting a strange light. After experimentation and discussion of what the device could be, the Luchador recklessly touches the crystal and… disappears! One by one, we each touch the crystal and reappear in a large glittering cavern where a tunnel leads to the northeast.
The floor shows the scrape marks still leading away for several miles. We travel more than a day until the tunnel widens into an enormous cavern. The scrape marks continue across a bridge that traverses a vast underground ocean. At the end of the bridge to the left appears a port city. We make our way cautiously across the bridge. At the halfway point, four lizard men arise from the water and ambush us with two in front and two behind the party. Three hundred feet away in the water, we see a huge three-eyed monster. The Luchador jumps off the bridge and swims towards the monster. The Monk follows him. The Druid shakes off a spell effect and disappears. Sorcerer misty steps. The Warlock and Paper Merchant fall under a sort of charm spell. Druid kills one. Sorcerer kills another. The uncharmed party members defeat the other two. Meanwhile, the Luchador and Monk see the monster they were swimming toward fade from sight.
We reconnoiter the party on the bridge and continue towards Pearl, a city in the Underdark inhabited by dark elves, halflings and humans. The litter marks we have followed disappear here in the docks of the city. We make our way to the Spicy Unicorn Pub in the dodgy part of town for rest and sustenance. The Paper Merchant goes forth to transact business and trades gems for pearls as reagents for identify spells. The Luchador identifies a figurine that can turn into an eight-foot-long serpent when thrown on the ground. The Luchador also finds a friend in the tavern who tells him about a dangerous job that may require our services. As a group, we feel much more experienced having survived the journey and the level 4 milestone is reached. The party has no way back so we must proceed through the Underdark, domain of the dark elves and Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders.
The song ends… for now.