Session 4 - Ruins of Keldyrion
General Summary
Digby throws his spear at the Ogre hitting for a 17C puncture critical, sending it plunging straight thru its chest, severing one of the arteries, and sentencing it to a twitching death in 9 rounds. What a start to the day!
It is 2.30 am and we decide to head towards the sound of fighting and round a house to face a chaotic seen with some villagers being attacked by four Orcs. Sai Kyo and Baka miss the first Orc badly and he hardly notices their existence. This is humbling for Sai Kyo, but business as usual for Baka. Digby continues his stunning (literally) start to the day hitting the second Orc for a 34E slash critical, hitting it on the forearm, giving it an additional 6 hits, 3 hits per round and stunning it for 2 rounds. Brovar hits his Orc with a 14B crush critical, an extra 3 hits and initiative. Lilrie attacks next her morning star spoiling the Orc’s fun with a 17B puncture critical, an additional 6 hits and forcing it to parry next round. Tripp then hits with his long sword giving him a 19E crush, and extra 6 hits, shattering his hip and stunning him for 3 rounds.
Next round, a pissed off Sai Kyo goes all out, and smashes the Orc in front of him with a double palm strike to the nose, pushing it into his brain (226 total, for 34 hits and 2 E criticals). Honour redeemed!! The unstoppable Digby hits his Orc for a 32E crush critical, killing it instantly in a crimson spray. Brovar gets in on the game to with a 11A blow to head, and since the orc is not wearing a helmet it is killed instantly. Not to be left out, Lilrie smashes her morning star catching the Orc in the arm pit ripping into its rib cage and displaying its internal organs as if for a medical exam. The villagers thank us quickly and then go to tend to their burning buildings.
Our quick search of the corpses reveals nothing of value and we push on to Petra’s arriving after about an hour. They welcome us in, tend to our wounds, and give us some food. Petra arrives and we give her the pestle. She is very grateful, and is not worried about retribution from Emerin Wash. We tell them about the orcs attacking and some of the elves grab weapons and head off to Calatan to help.
Petra supplies us with food for the journey to Effa and explains again that Ecaeris is elven and could be up to 200 years old. We ask what she looks like and are told that she is slightly taller than a human, and has long white hair, but Petra has not seen her for decades. Petra told Sirenna the same information so presumably she went to Effa .
It is 400 miles to Marinsholme and if we make 40 miles a day on horseback it will take 10 days or so. After a day to allow our bodies to heal, we set off for Effa at a steady pace, careful not to overtax the horses. Baka vows to train every day with the short sword to back up the veritable thesaurus of harsh words at her disposal. Lilrie will look for herbs during the journey.
The weather is okay and water is easy to find. We don’t push the horses and Lilrie finds Arkasu during one of the stops. Towards the end of the third day we see a village and head towards it. It has a small smithy so Digby buys a spear and we also buy another 12 arrows for 30 bronze (3 silver) and spend the night close to the village.
We move off in the morning and after a few more days, as we look for a place to camp, we see a hill where we see the ruins of an old building. We head there and set up camp. The ruins of the walls seem to bend in a curve so we think it may have been a chapel. As we get closer we hear some moaning and can see that it has no roof and that the stonework is in a fashion which we don’t recognize and which may be pre-Great Cleansing of Ellios . There is a central pillar which may have been for a set of double doors. Close to the pillar is a large stone with an exquisitely carved face that has an anguished expression. Baka does not recognize the style of building or the face with her demon/devil lore. Embedded in one of the eye sockets is a grappling iron with a rope attached and the rope goes off into the building.
As Sai Kyo starts to enter, followed by the rest and he can see a figure on all fours wrapped in vines, with some kind of hole in the ground close by. It seems to be struggling against the vines. Tripp goes in up the left-hand wall and sees that there is something not right about the body. He calls out to everyone to stop. In a moment he senses that it is a zombie since he can see flesh hanging off the face and the rest of the body. He suspects it was once a man. The zombie is probably the same age as the rope and the grappling hook. The shredded end of the rope goes down into the hole and it seems that it was used to get down into the hole.
Baka cuts some of the vine with no problem and Brovar thinks he can see a leather scroll tube tucked into the ruined clothes. We hack the zombie to pieces and take the leather tube. Tripp checks it for traps and doesn’t find any. There are scraps of paper inside, written in the Common Tongue. One piece seems to be a roughly drawn map, of the local area. The paper is new so must have been a copy. Ruins of Keldyrion is written on the side and Mirror of Keldyrion is written on another scrap of paper, half disintegrated. We have not heard of this name before.
To the north there seems to be the remains of a pillar by the apse. There are no hidden places or writing apart from the hole in the middle where an old grating has been broken. We pick up the grappling iron and tie it to the end of the 50-foot rope and drop that into the hole. Letting the rope out we can see that the hole is about 35 feet deep.
Bereft of common sense and ignoring the survival instinct inherited from our ancestors, we plan to go down the hole the next day, so set up camp for the night. We set watches, taking it in turns to keep an eye on both the hole and the surrounding countryside. We prepare our pack with a day’s food and any useful tools and prepare to go down the hole. Baka takes the special cloak that we found in Emerin’s cave. Tripp rappels down the hole and lights a torch as he gets to the bottom. The ground feels a little unstable. As he is going down there is a light coming from one word written in the common script four times, “këzëng”, with diaeresis over each of the “e”s. At the bottom he can see that he is standing on a huge pile of bones about 10-foot high! The room is 15 feet square. There are iron bars to the west, partly open doors to the north and east, and a closed one to the south with a torch in a bracket in the North-East corner.
Lilrie lights the torch in the wall bracket and we can see corridors beyond the bars and doors. We pull the bones away and Brovar leads the party thru the door to the North and we notice that all the walls are made of compacted bones. The corridor is 5 feet wide and heads 15 feet to a stone door that is firmly locked. The door used to be trapped but the trap was sprung a long time ago. Brovar opens the door into a circular room which has one fancy sarcophagus at the far end and three smaller coffins on each side. We can also see a figure on the ground which is wearing similar clothes to the zombie we saw aboveground. We are immediately attacked by two skeletons holding short swords and a slowly shuffling zombie. Sai kyo attacks first and just hit it for 1 damage. Brovar takes on the zombie, hitting it for a 17D puncture with his sword, but no additional damage. He also flails with his mace but may as well have been holding a flower for all the good it does. Meanwhile Tripp and Lilrie go up the sides of the room behind the coffins looking to move into position for a sneak attack.
The skeleton attacks Sai kyo missing him completely. The other skeleton closes in on Digby, and he attacks it with his battle axe fumbling badly, stunning himself and unable to parry for 2 rounds. The zombie misses Brovar. Baka draws her short sword as she sees that she will not be able to stun the undead with a spell.
Next round Sai kyo strikes the skeleton for a 17C crush doing an additional 1 damage. Brovar misses the zombie with his sword but connects with his mace for a 12B crush for four extra hits forcing it to parry next round. They miss Brovar and Sai kyo but hit Digby for 2 damage.
Brovar knocks the zombie to the ground with a 18D crush critical from his mace and Sai kyo just hits the skeleton for 4A and an extra 5 damage. Baka misses and the skeleton in front of Sai kyo is down so cannot attack. The other skeleton attacks Digby hitting him for 11C puncture, doing an additional 5 hits and stunning him for another round. Lilrie hits a skeleton with a 17C crush critical and an extra 3 hits. Brovar fumbles but follows thru and gives himself one damage. Finally Sai kyo finishes it off with a 7B and an extra 2 hits.
As we take a breath and the zombie and skeletons start to slowly come back together so we dice them into small pieces and spread them over the room. The whole room, apart from the floor is made of intricately interwoven bones including the vaulted ceilings. Two of the coffins have open lids which is probably where the skeletons came from. There is a shriven corpse next to the larger, elaborate stone sarcophagus and a lock pick hanging out of the lock in the sarcophagus. Next to the corpse there is a bag containing three crowbars, 20 pitons and a hammer which we take with us. On the foot of the sarcophagus, there is a word “shusi” engraved, in a script similar to “këzëng”. Close to it there is a 12-inch-high crystalline flask, stoppered and sealed with wax. It contains a dark liquid. There is a tap in the sarcophagus as you might see at the bottom of a beer barrel.
There are two A-frames and a block and tackle that presumably they were going to use to lift the lid of the sarcophagus. Tripp checks for traps and finds one and is able to disarm recovering a needle with a suspicious yellow paste. We start pulling the lid off and as it comes up, we see that the lid has many metal spikes in it and we can see that they go to the bottom of the coffin. We suspect that someone was put in here and killed by the spikes as the lid was put on. This is the source of the blood that came out of the bottom tap.
We go back and thru the East door off the main room, where Brovar finds a skeleton with clothing similar to the zombies. Brovar is followed by Sai kyo, Tripp, Baka, Lilrie and Digby. Brovar stops at a rotted skeleton with similar dirty clothing to the other two figures. Ahead in the corridor is a pit with some nasty green substance at the bottom, maybe acid. There are scarred legs sticking out of the acid. The corridor turns to the North, and to the right there is an opening lit by a steady, eerie glow. The walls look climbable to Tripp and even the rest of us should be able to make it. We tie a rope around Tripp and he climbs across to the right with no problem, finding the source of the light, a blue fungus. He hammers a spike into the wall and attaches a rope for the others. Tripp can see that the corridor extends to the left and right to further doors. Brovar and Lilrie follow him across.
5A strike by Sai Kyo on the zombie that is coming from the South, with another 6 hits and forcing it to parry next round. The zombie fights back hitting Sai kyo’s weapon arm for an 8D stunning him for the next round and giving another 5 hits. Brovar runs to help but Sai kyo is really pissed off by being hit, and unleashes a 28E strike for an additional 7 hits dropping the zombie. We hackup the zombie and throw it in the acid, but it is so vile that Sai kyo vomits copiously feeling very nauseous and operating at minus 10 for all activities.
The others come across and Tripp checks for traps in the door to the North and finding none, unlocks it. Brovar opens the door. It is similar to the other larger room we found, but with only one small coffin on each side of the large one. This time the large sarcophagus has the is engraved with the word “lawku”. We take the flask and back out of the room.
We go South and Tripp checks the door for traps again and unlocks it. Brovar leads us in again and it is the same layout at the room to the North. This time the engraving at the foot of the large sarcophagus says “mëlmo” and we take the flask as before.
Heading towards the East we carefully pick our way past the cobwebs and fungus. Tripp checks for traps but is not sure and eventually opens the door. In the process he somehow manages to fall into the room where he is attacked by a zombie taking 10 damage, making him feel nauseous. Tripp attacks with his long sword for 22E slashes the tendons and crushing the bones in its arms, a blow that would have stunned any living foe. The zombie barely notices the damage and attacks again giving Tripp another 13 damage. He hits back giving it a 12C puncture taking the head off. We drop this body in the acid pit as well, just to be on the safe side. This room is similar to the others in this corridor and we take the stoppered flask again. This time the word on the large Sarcophagus is “wënzhayisawch”.
By this time we have been down here about 4 or 5 hours and we decide to take a rest. Lilrie heals Sai kyo for 8 hits recovered and then does Digby (3) and Tripp (8). After resting she will get her spell points back.
Report Date
27 Dec 2020
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