Colonial Caerdia: Lark's Landing is a story being told through a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I'm running at a local hobby shop called the Devil's Bench. If you aren't familiar with this ongoing story, you can follow this link to Once Upon a Tabletop on YouTube to hear the start of it or read the brief summary I wrote when I switched from video to blog.
You can find the previous episode here.
7th of Waning Spring, 1AL
The 3rd Watch have once again descended into the depths of an ancient, ruined temple, seeking the vampire they believe lives within. They have come to a room decorated with a cat motif which has several doors exiting from it. They choose to go through the only one not explored on the previous visit. Beyond is a hallway with walls carved as guards holding hatchet-headed polearms leading up to a pair of doors etched with the head of a panther god.
Finding no signs of traps, Fiaeorri leads the way and is surprised when two of the guards swing out of the wall, crossing their polearms in front of her with a blue spark. The only way to pass seems to be to go underneath. T'Zaric leads the way, making it look easy - however, Fiaeorri, following behind, brushes one of the polearms and receives an electrical shock on her way under. Everyone else makes it through except for Patrick, bringing up the rear. As he slides under, he gets such a jolt of electricity that he gets paralyzed where he is. The others begin to argue about how to get him the rest of the way through, but soon realize that he's still being injured by the electricity and pull him out.
After recovering from their shocking experience, they open the door into the room beyond. A long, narrow room runs to the right and left, lit by faint light. To the right is a well with light glowing from within and a hole in the high ceiling above it, and to the left is an enormous statue of an ogre-like creature sitting on a bed of hot coals, surrounded by skulls and broken weapons. At the base of the statue, a panther crouches, though it gets up and begins stalking forward as Fiaeorri enters the room, heading for the statue. However, there's something strange about it - it seems confused, and looks tight through Fiaeorri as if she wasn't there.
Then T'Zaric enters the room, and the panther makes straight for him, attacking him. T'Zaric evades it by flying up to the ceiling. As the rest of the group enter the room, the panther doesn't seem to be able to see them either, and continues to leap into the air swiping at T'Zaric's feet.
Fiaeorri climbs the statue to have a look in its mouth and is disappointed to find nothing there, while Patrick examines the bones, determining that they are over 10000 years old. Then everyone turns their attention to the well at the other end of the room, which appears to be filled with some sort of liquid light. T'Zaric uses a magically formed hand to fill a crystal flask with it. A tiny amount clings to the outside and appears to be spreading, but he managed to clean it off. Fiaeorri then gets him to pour a drop on one of her lead coins, and they watch as the drop slowly spreads to cover the whole thing - though, oddly, it stops there and doesn't spread to anything else touching it.
Fascinated, T'Zaric dips his mask in the liquid light. Extang uses his ten foot pole to find that the well is about five feet deep, resulting in the pole also getting eventually coated in light.
Frustrated by the continued aggressive attention of the panther, T'Zaric flies up the hole - and finds himself emerging into a room and being smacked into the wall by a giant blue creature with pointed teeth and yellow eyes that declares him to be lunch. T'Zaric grins nervously, then teleports back down into the room below, gibbering to his friends about what he just saw.
Fiaeorri takes the magic whistle that allows someone blowing it to fly and zips up the hole to attack the thing. It delightedly swings back, doing a considerable amount of damage. Most of the others can't do anything, as they can't fly or get a line of sight on the creature up the hole, but T'Zaric follows Fiaeorri back up to throw some spells at the creature. Fiaeorri, of course has decided to get in a few more hits before retreating from this dangerous foe, leaving T'Zaric as the only target. With a couple glaive swings, T'Zaric is barely holding onto consciousness, and he also retreats from the hole, trusting that such a large creature won't easily fit down it.
Below, Quib is furiously trying to heal his friends as best he can. They all wait for a few moments, but nothing happens. Not happy with the idea of letting something live if it wants to eat him, T'Zaric flies to the bottom of the hole and sends a fireball up into the room above, and is rewarded with an enraged roar. Then, down the hole comes the creature - though it seems to have shrunk small enough to fit through - swinging its glaive. A number of others gather around on the ground, attacking from a distance. T'Zaric ignites another fireball, right in the creature's face, taking a fair amount of damage himself, but it still isn't enough to take the creature. It swings its glaive... and T'Zaric is knocked unconscious and begins to fall. Luckily, Patrick is ready for this, and he manages to revive T'Zaric with a spell - which is a very good thing, because T'Zaric then fell into the liquid light, which isn't a very good place to be unconscious.
The creature, heavily wounded, retreats back up the hole, but T'Zaric isn't ready to let it get away. He launches another fireball and follows behind it, finding that it has finished the job - the creature is dead and has returned to its full size. He does a quick search of the room, which is covered in charred and smoldering furs, before getting a rope and tying it to the creature's leg so the others can climb up. The treasure that T'Zaric didn't sneak for himself is gathered and they decide it is time to rest - a feeling reinforced by the poison in the air weighing on them.
They make their way back to the big room without the poisonous air and begin to make camp - but, as they go, they notice that a bit of the liquid light was still clinging to T'Zaric and was spreading. They try many magical ways of removing it, to no avail. Slowly it begins to cover all of T'Zaric - and as it creeps over his nose and mouth he finds his breathing cut off. Thinking quickly, he pulls up the hood of his cloak that allows him to breath under water. This appears to do the trick, saving his life - but leaving him as a strange glowing creature.
Extang, who mostly sat out the last fight, isn't quite ready to rest yet. He grabs Logan and goes to check out the one side passage that hasn't been thoroughly explored yet. It leads to a room the 3rd Watch had approached before, but had determined not to cross. It has a thick layer of dust on the floor that, when disturbed, forms into figures that move around the room. Previously, the 3rd Watch had decided to leave the spirits to their rest, but Extang is determined to explore. He and Logan make their way through the room, attacking the aggressive guard-like figures and finding them to be quite insubstantial.
They pass through the room, and into the hall beyond which takes them to the cat-motif room. Extang notices that the statue of the panther-man is missing just as it attacks him from the shadows beside the door, not so statue-like anymore. Logan is quick to defend Extang, but the creature seems entirely focused on the dragonborn, as if it recognizes him. Extang flees down the hall, and the panther-man follows, tearing into him. Logan, quick behind, is able to arrive in time to kill the monster before it kills Extang - and they watch as it turns back into stone. Not wanting to fight this thing yet again, Extang searches it for anything it has that might be reviving it, but his best guess comes from the strange cavity in its chest.
The two return to the others and join them in sleeping away much of the rest of the day. None of those on watch notice anything out of place. When everyone is awake again, Extang expresses great curiosity about that panther that can only see T'Zaric. They agree to go experiment with it a bit, but on their way there they must go through the cat-motif room - where someone is waiting for them. The vampire they came to hunt stands in the room, commenting on how good it is to see them again. He raises his arms to the sky and calls to some unseen friends.
The 3rd Watch begin their attacks on him, and are surprised to find T'Zaric flying over to defend the vampire. Logan charges in to fight, while Fiaeorri attempts to charm T'Zaric back to their side, only to find that the spell has no effect on T'Zaric - likewise, Patrick discovers that his spell to hold a person in place isn't powerful enough to trap a vampire. So, the young cleric breaks out his secret weapon, casting a spell called Daylight, filling the room with brilliant light. He and the group had discovered that sunlight was the only way to permanently destroy vampires, and they believed this was a surefire way to do the job.
The vampire, however, is entirely unaffected. It seems that, in spite of its grandiose name, Daylight does not produce the lethal light of the sun.
And that's where this game session ends. Find out how our heroes will fare next week in Episode 47.
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