Journal of Rollo Lavius 1

Entry #177 - Under the Temple

(G177 27/09/2013 Fri via Roll20 - JF, AP(GM))

DAY 207 continued... (4 Marpenoth)(October)

[Rollo here again, dear reader]

So down the stairs we went. An arrow was shot at Shump, who was taking the lead, but it missed. Shump then went down the stairs and killed another of the Shadowguards.

As we all came down a sort of Earth Elemental attacked us, hiding in the wall and striking out at us. I killed another shadowguard. The elemental was a tough opponent but eventually we killed it too and it crumpled into the wall.

We looted the guards that we had killed and searched the room. There were five doorways down here. The first door lead to a sort of library. Jiggles disabled an alarm trap and we tried another door. It lead along a corridor too another door which in turn lead to another room and another five doors! I started to sketch it all out in my journal to keep track.

In here were two more shadowguards which Shump made short work of. Then some mad bint with snakes came out of a sort of black portal in the west wall and attacked us. The snakes seemed to say 'Sharse' and the mad woman cried,

'Mistra is a sham religion!'.

I tried 'Parley?', but she wasn't having it.

This was a tough fight because the snakes were semi-corpreal and difficult to hit and the Mad Woman cast darkness which we didn't really have a defence against. She also cast Stun spells which were most annoying. Shump killed the first of the four snakes though and Sylvia kept him well healed with Cure Serious spells.

I didn't mess about and summoned up my usual gang of crocodiles to fight the snakes and one by one we managed to kill them, stumbling around in the dark. I used my healing nut on myself. Eventually we found the Woman in the dark and killed her.

We healed up after that, using up almost all of Sylvia's magic.

We opened up the southern doors. The first room had three beds and chests in it, the second was full of barrels, plates and food. The third seemed to be a torture chamber which contained three headless corpses, clothes etc.

Jiggles opened a chest and we found papers belonging to Amnic Bassalt, the bookseller, and those of men called Duncan and Kennywick.

The northern doors lead to the same room, where the Mad Woman had resided. There was a desk here, with three letters on it. One to Shark Redbeard, asking for tax breaks. The second to Zenderos, a hardware chap. The third to Starweaver Bestra, making mention of our friend TB.

We stripped this room of loot and then checked out the mysterious black/purple portal to the west. We decided to leave it for a while and went back and checked the doors in the first room. Us adventurous types like to check every door, you know, and make sure nothing is going to catch us in the rear!

The first door was a toilet, the next was a bed chamber where whoever lived there like to keep heads. There were eight in total. The inhabitant had left a journal too, about how he hated Mystra and loved the true one. The room was that of Fembrys.

In a cabinet there was a taxidermist's set.

There was a door in here which we eventually hacked and bashed down. A dusty wardrobe, robes, a desk.

Back to an earlier corridor then, and we followed it down to what looked like a sewer entrance. Not wanting to get wet just yet I lead us back to the magic portal thingy and had another look at it.

After standing and pondering it for a while I guessed it was a mere illusion and stuck my hand through it. When nothing happened I stepped through. Right enough it lead to a large chamber where there was two large black pillars with a big stack of skeletons. The bones were all stacked up against a sinister looking obsidian altar.

This seemed to be proof of what was happening to the people that came to the temple. They were not being taken 'up-river', rather, they were being murdered here. I estimated there to be about fifty bodies, with no soft tissues at all, as if the flesh had all vanished or been misted away.

Between the pillars was what looked like a 'Curtain of Gloom'. I warned the others to avoid it.

Jiggles had a rummage around behind the altar and found a locked secret compartment, which she raided for treasure.

There was another door in this chamber which lead to a very long corridor and terminated in another door. This lead to a sort of sewer area. On the other side of a wide sewer river were some cells, set back into the wall, with two shadow guards stationed in front of them. Shump head over and killed one of them.

While this was happening a grumpy looking Waterman came up from the sewer tunnel to the south waving a spear. Just as things were getting complicated a big tentacled monster rose from the water and started attacking us! This was going to be another decent scrap, I could see that, so I rushed over to help Shump. One of the guards tried to push me into the water but I managed to prevent him. A tentacle grabbed Shump and started to drag him in. I killed the guard and Shump broke free of the tentacles.

It seemed like the perfect time for it now, so I summoned another batch of crocodiles and sicked them on the sewer monster.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the girls were engaged in fighting with the Waterman. The crocs, once in the water, made quick work of the monster and thrashed and bit it to death. Lavinia was badly injured, but Jiggles and Sylvia wounded the waterman enough to make him jump in the water and swim off as fast as he could.

We got our breath back and took stock of our situation...