A Mysterious Errand

Session 9

After recovering Kenesh and (some of) his dignity, we took stock of our location and discovered that we were about a day or two from the border of Empyrea.   When the Party decided to go that direction, Brynn bade them farewell, explaining that he had reasons not to return to Empyrea. He went back into the cave to head back to Afrya.   The rest of the Party turned north.   After a few hours’ travel, we heard the sounds of a woman in distress and rushed to give aid.   We found a woman fighting another giant scorpion and joined that fight.   Shortly thereafter, the black cat also joined the fight and the scorpion was defeated.   The woman introduced herself as Mishara and said she was expecting us. She told us she is a priestess of Istus, the Damarani Goddess of Fate.   Mishara led us to the border of Empyrea, and an Inn a few miles outside the walls called the Doomy Inn, where the party would have free room and board in appreciation for saving her life.   There she told us that Istus had foreseen our coming and that the Goddess had told her that the Party had the ability to find an object that could stop a terrible calamity from coming to pass.   We agreed to help her and got some rest before setting out.   That night Carric accidentally turned into a bear. It was awesome.   After we got them sorted out, Mishara explained, over breakfast, that we would all be given a Potion of Teleportation, which would take us to the location of the object we had to find.   Kenesh said he was pretty sure there’s no such thing as a Potion of Teleportation, but no one seemed to believe him.   We all took the potion and found ourselves in a small canyon beside a flowing stream that led to a green valley with two hills standing side-by-side in the middle of it.   The stream was flowing out from under one of the hills and a little further on we could see a cave in the side of it with three mounts standing outside.   Thrunk decided to see if the stream could be followed underground and he found out it could.   We followed him under the hill into a cave system beneath it and then followed it to dry land.   There we found two goblins, Sunu and Gorshun, who appeared to be terrified of us.   They told us that they had been hiding in this part of the cave for days after their clan was attacked by three people and most of their number killed.   They said their attackers had proceeded into the “tomb” beyond the caves and told us that there was an entrance to the tomb nearby.   After climbing up a wall into a very small passage, we found our way to a hole in the ceiling of a man-made tomb past the caves.   We found nothing alive or even undead in the tomb, though we searched a lot of it. We did find several coffins and standing sarcophagi that appeared to have been broken open from the inside, and lots of bones on the ground.   We eventually found a chamber where the wall had been knocked down from the goblin cave on the other side.   We also found a room where a table had been set up and books and papers were strewn about, giving the impression that someone had recently been using the space to research how to open a door we had yet to find.   After this we went down a long, steep staircase to find a door that had been beaten off its hinges.