Shackled 05 - Jzadurine Strikes Back Episode V
General Summary
Even I have to leave the material plane once in a while. So when happens I look to one of crew so you continue to get a sense of what is happening. This is an excerpt from the journal of Naldon Amakiir...
And then it starts moving around the room although it does not seem to be moving in an aggressive manner. It hops between two spots, as if it is trying to act something out. Skullgrin takes a leap of faith and feeds a ration to the Mimic. And the hungry creature is happy to get some food, and asks for another portion via gestures. Skullgrin begrudgingly feeds it another ration, after which the mimic tosses out a Key!
Eolas and Lysikor examine the key and recognize the symbol as the door next to the bunk room through the tunnel. The Symbol seems to be the Gnomish “J”. I (Naldon) remind everyone about Jenya’s Vision, about the Doors with teeth, then we wave at the mimic and go back through the tunnel to our main landing room.
We open and search that locked room, but find only a Tabard and one old blanket, which amazingly is dry. The Fellowship(aww, they call themselves "the fellowship") grabs the key and heads into the hallway through the west wall. Some of the guys head south, and then we hear a distant click and a yell from Graye, because he found a trap the fast way.
Back into the Depths
After the draining fights in Jzadirune we went back up to Cauldron, notified the guards about Ghelve’s demise, and the threat from the covered over passage. The guards then created a watch surrounding the store after removing the body of Keagen. We then rested that night as the guards watch over the Locksmith shop. We seven are all together now, and we decide to go back down to explore and try to figure out where the children are. Back In the mask room, we light torches and create magic light to examine everything possible. The Masks say their welcome/warning message, and we search the corridors and extra tunnels we found yesterday. These tunnels have been made between some of the rooms. Whatever made these tunnels must have been strong as it was able to tunnel through the stone walls and solid stone behind them. The tunnels were generally round with a 5' diameter, so all of us need to duck down to use them. Lysikor, Lars, and Eolas go through the open bunk room (the first room they entered south of the entry room) into the added tunnels and turn East, the way we did not go before. It is a short tunnel, and ends at a hole in the top, into another room. The rest of the companions follow and all seven of us climb up and explore this new area. It seems to be a medium sized room, with a gear door as an exit and a single chest sitting beside the door. So naturally, Eolas kicks it. The chest wakes up and cries out in pain! An almost familiar ‘ouch!!', but not quite in Common; or any other language any of us know. It is a Mimic!Jzadurine Strikes Back (Episode V)
Graye fell to the bottom of a pit, got hurt, and then as Eolas & Lars tried to get a rope down in there the whole bottom rotated 90 degrees, throwing Graye at the former side of the pit, And onto the Spikes, which stick out from the SIDES of this pit! After getting nice and personal with some spikes, Graye is pulled out of the pit by Eolas and Lars. Just me, jumping in for a bit of explaination. Those gnomes really know how to make a trap. Think of this pit as square hole with a large wooden crate with spikes on the sides. They stick out enough that you will get cut when you fall. But then the trap door shuts, and the pit then rotates up and down, so the spikes are now on the top and the bottom of the box, along with anything in there. It then swings back the other way to repeat the process with the opposite way so anybody in the pit can get a nice close inspection of the spikes there. ) Opening door closest to the trap, they stumble into another trap, and a miraculous dex save by Lars & Lysikor. After the trap, they learn to be more careful with just running around alone..er..who are we kidding. The very next door they open and go through, another trap door opens below the feet of Lars and Lysikor, but this time, these more dexterous group members are able to save themselves from falling in but end up on the opposite side of the trap. Skullgrin, not thinking (or doing what he believes is good reasoning) decides to jump the trap to get on the other side!! He actually makes the jump and the three of them explore a bit on that side of the trap. After a bit of exploring on that side of the trap, they find a lever that they randomly pull, because why not pull and touch random things in an old magical gnome enclave. This has the nice effect of locking one of the floor traps they had run into. After some more exploration, our crew decides to take a breather and rest for an hour.Kings Ransom
Resuming their search for the kids, they come across a room that looks like a throne room of some sort. The room is split into two, with the east side being about 10 feet lower then the west (larger) side. There is a small set of stairs to a landing which then splits into two sets of stairs each leading up to raised side with a throne. Upon the throne is an elderly sleep gnome. Upon getting to the landing, a face carved into the landing wall speaks the following:If you with an audience with the king, place your finest coin in my mouth.Skullgrin sighs, then pulls out a gold coin and puts it into the mouth as asked. The coin disappears, but nothing else happens. after some prodding by the others, he repeats the process which produces the same effect, absolutely nothing. The elderly gnome grunts a bit when the mouth speaks, but does not waken. The group moves past the mouth up to the throne, trying to get the sleeping gnomes attention. After determining that the gnome is an illusion, they proceed to search the throne. By some miracle, they find a secret compartment with a bunch of gold and two five inch steel rods, each with an engraved rune at one end and notches carved into the other. The runes on each of the rods match the runes seen on some of the doors. All the gold, except for two and the rods, are covered in a fine layer of dust. Exploring some more, we end up in an old museum / display room and then head east, into a small room with a Magic wall that is the map of Jzadirune. I turned around and looked North, as I checked our map from Ghelve, and noticed that wall was once a hallway. I went up to the wall, and fell right through an illusionary wall, and almost fell back into the trap Graye fell into earlier. Back to the Display room, and down South through a door with the gnomish “J”, and walked down the left turning stairway. These lead us to an auditorium/ theatre, and Skullgrin wandered out into the room we fought the darklings yesterday, AND he got Ambushed AGAIN! Four more darkling creatures battled us, were all defeated, and all four disappeared into bright lights and immolating flames. Skullgrin amazingly avoided the heat and flames from the creature he killed. Naldon's journal excerpt for this day ends here....
The Motley Crew
- Eolas (Human Cleric of St. Cuthbert)
- Lysikor Stickyfingers (Half-elf Rogue)
- Lars Dino (Woodelf Ranger)
- Naldon Amakiir (Eladrin Wizard)
- Ragnarock (Human Barbarian)
- Skullgrin Bonesnapper (Half-orc Fighter)
- Graye Damyrus (Tiefling Druid)
