12 June 2004
We are playing orphans of a failing orphanage (being closed by the local authorities). We are on a quest to go along with a priest of Arus to find something out about a Temple of Daewyr. The orphans have some useful knowledge with regards to this. We begin outside of the Temple. The priest is hella tight about finding traps and such.
Jay - Glenn
Joel - Timmy
Neil - Bernie
Dave - Randy
The temple has a storage room on the left. There is a meeting room on the right. The place is junked. There is some sort of entryway on the back wall. There's an altar on the left. The storage room has some hangers. The meeting room has a black board on the far wall.
The plot moves along. Almost like magick!
The priesty dude goes through the passageway. It's dark. We light a lantern.
The back room (being under the hillside) has no windows. Ick - cobwebs. There are rooms off to the sides. Straight ahead there "is a big old nasty probably bathtub or something." It's a basin, with stairs into it, quite nasty actually. The floor has designs of spirals, circles, and such, both painted and carved.
The priest discovers a circle that opens up somehow.
Glenn suggests that the basin has the switch, as he pushes Timmy in. The back left room is an office. The NPC takes 12 consecutive turns. The priest points at the lip of the basin and says "Wait, right there." Timmy goes over there, from in the basin.
All of a sudden, a grinding sound happens. Out of the circle, a stone spiral staircase opens up. Some of us hear the sounds of guttural things echo from behind. Glenn recognizes that the voices are orcish, and tells the others. Glenn casts Light on his dagger and the youngin' heads down the stairs.
The orcs burst though just as we head down the stairs. The priest is casting something, hopefully nasty and orc-unfriendly. Glenn trips on the way down.
From above the priest screams in pain. The stairs begin to descend into the ground. Bernie jumps back up into the room and swipes at an orc. The orc winces. Another orc whacks Bernie, felling him with a falchion. The priest dives at the stairs, missed grabbing a felled Bernie, and falls down the stairs headfirst, all the way down, and under the stone stairwell, just in time to be squished completely. Timmy does not miss the opportunity to stick it up someone's ass, as he send Glenn unconscious from the anal probe.
Randy scopes the priest for items. There's a robe and good-looking bracers.
At the bottom, there's three lever back behind the stairway. Behind us, there are two hallways.
They wake Glenn.
Neil (moose-eared): "Why does my ass hurt?" "You fell down the stairs." "Wait, what stairs?" (a la The Whole Ten Yards)
The left pathway turns right, then left. As Timmy taps along, we hear a rumble. A wall behind us begins to close. Randy and Glenn continue along to the left of the remaining walls.
Randy falls though the solid floor. Oops. Splash.
Glenn goes to open the levers. The left one does nothing. The middle one sends a nasty spear though Glenn.
Congratulations, all of the orphans are dead.
We are heading out to Dinas Felin. Tang Zhen is going to the monastery to meditate for a bit. Apparently he needs to be reminded that he is a nobody.
As the rest of us head back to Dinas Felin, it begins to rain.
Apparently, we catch up with old friends: Corla, the Governor, and Sir Brannigan. We report how far down the fire was when it started.
Corla says "Hey, how did Cassandra escape down from Tre Glyn?"
We tell of what we know.
Sir Brannigan has turned completely pale at this point in the discussion. "I swear it wasn't my fault." He tells about how some "hippie-chick"
(Delyra on Dunbarton: "No, I've been cleaning you whether you like it or not.")
Pheldran accuses Sir Brannigan of being intentional deceitful. Delyra defends his honor.
Some talk about some time ago and some thing changing the road, with reference to the ghosts and such. There was mention of Geshlin Reaper, the mayor of Tre Glyn. He had lived there since before Tre Glyn was Tre Glyn.
Corla has heard of some kids that like to dare each other about ghosts.
Food is here (at the tavern).
Sir Brannigan bitches about need for money, having fired some help, and possibly going into dragon slaying. Delyra makes a comment about her virgin ears. This brings attention to the alcoholic beverage that is taken from her.
We decide to look into the haunted road and our lead in Tre Glyn.
The next day, down at Tre Glyn, we see a lot of construction.
We go to the Outside Inn (where we had the skunked ale). We mention that we are here to see the mayor. We are told that he can follow up along the farm road to his manor. He apparently has the money necessary to rebuild the entire town - useful just in time for the tourist season.
We decide to head over to Geshlin Reaper's. Tam knocks on the door. A little kid opens the door. The kid call for his dad, Geshlin. Reaper is tense during the time that we are asking about something. When we finally get to the point - asking about ghosts - he relaxes.
He told us that the road followed the river almost all the way down. A section east of here, people had been getting freaked about seeing strange things. Once this became commonly known, folks started coming this way instead of around the spur. This built up his land into a town inadvertently, thus building up his riches.
We head east. Then north along the spooky road. About an hour into the trek north, a spooky noise is heard. N-Guuk tries to sneak around to find the source of the noise. It is revealed by Pheldran that it was his Ghost Sound.
For Dunbarton, and for a split second, everything goes black.
N-Guuk then feels for a moment that he can't breathe.
We notice that there is some stonework just off of the road. It turns out to be a very dilapidated building. Delyra freaks out about her head coming off. Pheldran begins to Detect Undead. There are four of them, and at least one of them are strong. I eventually see that they enveloping Delyra, N-Guuk, and Dunbarton as the four comes towards me.
Dunbarton imagines that he's running down a corridor. N-Guuk imagines running down a stairway, jostling someone out of the way. Delyra imagines stabbing an orc. These thoughts are shared aloud amongst the party.
Pheldran submits willingly to the fourth ghost and imagines a gruesome spearing through his stomach. Pheldran then sees a stairway comes down upon a halfling priest.
N-Guuk looks at the stonework. It appears dwarven, which means that the trap are going to be high-quality. We begin to relive the memories of the ghosts as we explore the building.
There is a tiger cub that comes up to N-Guuk. The tiger mom mauls N-Guuk. Delyra tries to Sleep the tiger, unsuccessfully. Pheldran casts Mage Armor. N-Guuk punches the tiger a couple of times. Delyra moves around the tiger's far side. The tiger misses mauling N-Guuk as he squirms. Dunbarton enters in. Delyra moves in closer for a close-up Color Spray, which did nothing. Pheldran greases the tiger. The cub runs back.
The greased tiger only manages to hit N-Guuk once, but very hard. Dunbarton pierces the tiger hard. Delyra tries a second Color Spray, stunning the tiger for a round. N-Guuk, enraged, clocks it hard with the side of his axe. Pheldran hits with the side of his sword and Dunbarton whacks the tiger too.
Pheldran tries to lure the tiger cubs into a side room so that can block them in using the desk. They are too frightened. Delyra gets them to Sleep. That'll do it.
Pheldran remembers that there was a device, and finds it. The stairs open up. Jasper walks down the stairs, jumping the last 6 feet down. Pheldran suggests that someone stay up top to work the stairs mechanism. Dunbarton and Tam decide to stay behind. The others go down. We discover Glenn's dead body, but the spear is gone. The left lever is down, the middle lever is not.
N-Guuk trades places with Tam, so that Tam can read the carvings on the wall. Tam suggests that some of the sigils are probably deciphers for the traps. Tam confirms that this is a temple of Daewyr. Tam returns up top and N-Guuk back down below.
The trap wall that we remember is not closed. We discover Timmy's body and move it towards the stairway. N-Guuk uses his extra great axe where the floor drops off. He can also see the double doors beyond that.
We use a rope thrown across to see where the rope begins to sag to determine the far side of the false floor. It is 8' across. At Delyra's suggestion, she casts Mage Hand. At Pheldran's suggestion, Delyra moves the lantern closer to the door to see what she's doing. A cone of fire comes out instantaneously. The doors did not open.
We use Jasper's grappling hook to catch the doors, again using Mage Hand. N-Guuk tugs on the rope. Fire shoots out again. The rope burns. N-Guuk suggests we go up top and then try to remotely manipulate the levers. We realize that the Mage Hand needs to see its target. Mage Hand can't do it alone. We try a grappling hook, which slides off as it gets far enough. Pheldran suggests leveraging it from above with the spare ax. After a few times, it works. Nothing seems to happen. N-Guuk tries the middle one; it succeeds safely. We look at the double door. Still closed. Still burping fire when we try the grappling hook again.
Jasper notes that there is a pendulum trap down the hall on the right side. N-Guuk tries to break the chain as the pendulum trap is set off. Delyra attempts to make it brittle with a cold spell.
Dunbarton joins us down here.
Pheldran sends the Unseen Servant to the bottom of the well to attach the grappling hook to the dead body down there. Delyra gets lowered down into the water to discover the broken body. She discovers no traps, levers, buttons, etc
N-Guuk looks below the illusion for levers. No luck.
The Unseen Servant trips the left hall door trap. Nothing else eventful.
Jasper finally discovers a ceiling tile that opens a path down the right hallway.
In the new chamber is really rotten furniture, like a bar. There is also a door on the far wall to the right. The Unseen Servant tries to open that door. A powder opens out around the Servant. Pheldran knows that whatever it is, it is caustic.
"Thank god Brian's not here; otherwise, Jasper would be useless."
We enter the back chamber. Inside looks like a vault area. There is a pile of ashes, a slit open canvas sack, and a glistening white dagger.
"Yo, who be that."
This is the dagger talking. "Gelfor, the Immortal"
Gelfor tells the story of being put in that sack for a while. He escaped from the sack, but not before he was trapped in the little room.
Gelfor is not pleased to be used as a weapon. He was pretty down with being used for a good cooked meal. Pheldran tries to sheath Gelfor. When that doesn't work, Pheldran carries him.
We go to the double doors. The Unseen Servant shows Gelfor what the trap is. Gelfor goes up close and discovers for us that beyond the wood is rock. Ha ha ha. So we all head out.
The ghost images still happen.
We decide to return to the Outside Inn. We ask if there are places we can sleep. We sleep there.
We wake up. Early (damn construction workers).
We talk about heading to the Corstref to tell them what we know about the haunting. We get an audience with the priests. We tell them about the whole thing: the tigers, the ghosts, the traps, Gelfor, the priest's book, the ashes we collected.
We go looking for an alchemist. He suggests the librarian. So we go to the library. The librarian puts up the "members only" front until we show her the book. "Don't touch anything."
She returns with a gentlemen in his fifties. He suggests using slaked lime to fix it up. Pheldran joins the Library at Tier 1. The book is to be donated and repaired for free.
The week has gone by. Pheldran has read many, many things during this week.
In the diary - the book that is repaired - of the priest, written is that some children offered to take him to the ghosts. They were from Pembrey House (although the children called it Eagle House). Tam remembers that Sir Brannigan lives at Pembrey Estate. Also in the diary were references to Gelfor, but no indication that he knew what this immortal was that was trapped.
We head back to Dinas Felin. En route, Mayor Reaper, with whom we spoke, mentioned that he knew that the Estate had changed hands to the Brannigan family at some point. Tam suggested that we should approach the Governor first.
Long story short: the Governor questions that the Brannigans unlawfully taxed a charitable institution against the Pembrey House. Then, underneath the scope of the government, Brannigan's father seized the property outside of normal channels. We suggest that we tell Sir Brannigan that we need to seize back the property and that notification is being sent to the Capital. Suggested was that the Church of Arus fund the new orphanage, which is likely, as the building is already there.