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.
26th of Waning Summer, 1AL
Having just slayed three vampires that has once been members of Port Noble, the 3rd Watch take a brief look around the cat motif room for any threats or treasures - while Fiaeorri immediately takes to looting the halfling, which she recognized as someone who had a necklace like the one she used to hold onto for her master. She can't find it, though, until T'Zaric points it out hanging around the halfling's neck - in her desperation, she'd been searching pockets. Without a second thought, she hangs the necklace around her neck.
They also notice that the poison that once hung in the air here is now gone - or, at least mostly gone.
With five exits from the room, Fiaeorri goes to check the doorway across the room from where they entered to make sure it isn't trapped, while T'Zaric does the same with the secret passage behind the calandar stone. Both appear safe, but T'Zaric as surprised when a flying metal fish-like model comes out of that tunnel, flies around the room for a bit, then exits through the door from which they had entered the room. Everyone is very quick in denying Extang's request to follow it - he's certain it's trying to show them something - but he sullenly agrees that T'Zaric may be right that -if it is trying to show them something, it could possibly be telling them to follow the passage behind the calendar stone.
They travel down into a corridor with double-doors ahead of them and single doors to the left and right. The group decides to peek through the double-doors - just to check that there aren't any vampires in there. When they see, in amongst a metropolis diorama built around rivers of molten metal, a coffin on a dragon-ship, they know they have investigate further. However, as they head in, Fiaeorri is distracted by three pyramids that look as though they open like chests.
The lid of the first one is stuck, but Fiaeorri manages to pry it open, finding heaps of treasure inside. Seeing Fiaeorri shoveling treasure into her pack, T'Zaric changes his course for one of the other pyramids, with Quib trailing after him. This one opens more easily, but as he puts arm in he encounters a trap that he missed in his careful examination. A mechanical vice grabs his arm, holding him in place - but he turns down assistance from Quib and casts a spell, turning himself into mist and slipping out - just in time to miss being jabbed by several needles stabbing out from the walls of the chest. He is then safely able to get at the treasure, most of which he sends over to the party's collection in the bag of holding.
After finishing with her first pyramid, Fiaeorri heads over to the third, and is met there by Extang who is very concerned about her taking all the treasure for herself. On this one, Fiaeorri finds some nozzles, indicating a trap. She ducks down, getting Extang to do the same, and releases the catch with he mage hand. This results in the two of them getting heavily sprayed with a pungent - though nice-smelling - perfume. Extang uses his magic to clean it off of them, and Fiaeorri opens the top of the pyramid - which then shoots darts out from each side, one of which hits Fiaeorri. Not to be deterred, she digs into the treasure inside - this time allowing most of it to go to the bag of holding.
Over at the coffin, Patrick - with Logan nearby for backup - discovers there's a hole in the side. Shining some light in, he see's a skeleton and some scattered trinkets. So, he opens it up for a closer look - finding a skeleton that has been chewed on. He retrieves everything that looks valuable, sending most of it to the bag of holding, but keeping a bit for himself. He also tests the liquid metal with a crossbow quarrel and, when the metal heats up, decides it's a substance he doesn't want to touch.
The group then turns their attention to an alcove off to the side, where there is a huddled corpse on a stone bench with some trinkets at its feet. Patrick dips a crossbow quarrel in the liquid metal and fires it into the corpse - where it punches through the dry, brittle skin and lodges there. After a moment, it begins to smoke.
They head over and find that the corpse is that of a child with its heart cut out. Extang carefully checks the treasures at its feet to see if they are magical - pocketing the heart-shaped agate that is and completely failing to notice Fiaeorri using her mage hand to pilfer a golden llama statuette. The other items go into the bag of holding.
The 3rd Watch head out of the room, and Fiaeorri immediately checks to the right where an open doorway leads into a closet. Finding it safe, she steps in and vanishes - reappearing under an archway at the end of a wide, fresco-covered hall, which she recognizes as being close to where the group was attacked by a massive swarm of rats the last time they were here. Behind her, she finds a solid wall very convincingly painted to look like the hallway continues off into the distance. Then she finds herself pushed out from under the archway as the rest of the group - having been informed by Extang that the closet is a portal - suddenly start appearing.
Regrouped once more, they 3rd Watch continue on past where they slayed the giant rats into the lower passages of the temple. They explore around, finding a couple small treasures that were missed on the first trip to this temple many months earlier. After some misadventures with opening a bulging door with a room full of water behind it - leading to half the party being washed back down the hall - and then coming to rooms that Extang and T'Zaric recall as being close to where they first fell into the temple, the group takes a short break to recover from minor injuries and identify some of their new magic items.
They carry on, and find themselves in a passage that the first explorers believed to be a dead end - as it led to a rubble-filled stairwell. However, Fiaeorri notices that one of the blocks of stone in the slimy, disintegrating-stucco covered walls is much larger than the rest. At her suggestion, Logan pushes the block and in an amazing feat of strength manages to push the block that should have taken at least three of them to move. Behind is a small alcove with six sealed urns and double-doors on the far side.
Fiaeorri smashes one of the urns, covering herself and the floor in oil. Everyone else breaks the beeswax seals on the other urns, finding them also filled with oil. Extang reseals one and shoves it into the bag of holding.
Fiaeorri gives the doors a once-over for traps and, finding none, picks the lock - only to hear glass break on the other side of the door, and have a thick green mist begin to fill the area. No one appears to be feeling any ill effects from it, so they push open the door while Fiaeorri gets Extang to magically clean the oil off of her. Beyond is a chamber with a big stone monument in the middle, and they head in to look around - with Patrick quickly casting a spell creating a gust of wind to blow away the green gas so it is no longer a threat.
The monument is made of several pieces of stone, and covered in carved glyphs - with the top depicting an image of a man that looks an awful lot like Zotzillaha fighting a snake with a string of glyphs below it. Believing this to be Zotzillaha's coffin, Logan tries to push it open - to no avail. Looking around more, Quib finds a set of button-like glyphs at the foot of the monument. He matches them with the glyphs under the image on top of the monument, pushing them in order while everyone else prepares attacks for the vampire they're expecting to pop out.
The last glyph is pushed. Stone grinds on stone as the top of the monument slides open. They wait, but nothing happens. Slowly, they move forward and peek over the top - finding it to be hollow inside, but lacking a vampire - though there are some other treasures in there as well, including a jade mask and pendant that Extang recognizes from when he viewed the vampire's past in a magical mirror in a scene where they were removed as if by magical hands before Zotzillaha opened his eyes and sat up.
The 3rd Watch gather the treasures, and make a plan to wait here to ambush the vampire when he comes to bed. They settle in, some of them attuning to magical items, while others identify more. After waiting for over an hour, Zotzillaha has not yet arrived, but some very bold rats have begun to show up to nibble at them. In fact, the longer they stay, the more rats begin to show up, almost as if they are drawn by their presence.
However, that's where this session ends. Join us next week to find out how our heroes will handle this situation in Episode 53.
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