The party found themselves within the hollowed-out cellars of the lighthouse ruins, recuperating from their already numerous battles of the day. With daylight quickly fading, the group decided to stay where they were.
They did receive a small amount of down-time: Brubar offered tattoos to anyone that wanted one. He first propositioned Ya’an a tattoo using some of the orc blood from the fallen enemies. Overhearing the offer, Perrin inquired further: “What kind of tattoo can you make?”
Brubar, excited by finally feeling useful, enthusiastically replied, “Really into tribal right now.”
Ya’an now felt it necessary to learn more: “Is that it? Anything else?”
“Uhhh…Oooh!” Thinking of the orc shrine at the end of the room, he pounded his chest with the hilt of his shiv and exclaimed, “Make eye of Gruumsh!”
Ya’an was hesitant before, but now the idea of the vengeful One-Eyed God permanently depicted on his chest was downright offensive to his heritage and certainly his sense of style.
Perrin, however, was unfazed and absolutely down with a new tat. He even assisted Brubar by using one of the nearby orc-bedrolls as kindling to start a fire with flint and steel. Brubar turned the blood into ink over the fire, and with his shiv began stabbing a tribal design Perrin’s left arm.
On the other end of the room, Ruari was inspecting the draft coming from behind the statue, when Sandy (aka Sandifoot aka Gazu Zilzu of Jorpip) approached to seek his opinion. Sandy was eager to get to the thousand-year secret gnome celebration, and was interested in borrowing Amy the Pony from Orvyn. Ruari cautiously agreed to help plead the case, and Oryvn was open to the idea, assuming Amy was alright with it. Sandy made his way back to the outside of the lighthouse. After some whinnying from Amy, the surroundings grew quiet.
Minutes later, the party began to hear what sounded like an orc casting a spell. Perrin quickly stamped out the fire leaving the room in almost total darkness. The rest of the group hoped they had been mistaken. Then just outside their room, in the antechamber, the sound of stone on stone grinding, then a loud thud. Something was just feet away from them.
Just outside the double-doors to their encampment, pairs of dark eyes reflected from the smoldering embers. Then dozens of glowing red eyes of skeletons and zombies. Then a large orc came up behind the undead.
A loud, menacing chant began: Stay, dear friends, and work for me. The pay is little and the pain is deep, the days are long and you’ll get no sleep. You’ll rise for me and toil past death, sold for stones in darkest depths.
Brubar, Alaric, Perrin and Ruari were completely enthralled by the chant, wanting nothing but to stay right where they were, listening intently. Ya’an, Orvyn, and Darrana were unsure of how they should proceed.
Oryvn attempted to return his allies from their brainwashed state, including enchanting his morningstar with magical light and waving it before his new allies, but to no avail. Ya’an decided that he would try and carry Perrin away in hopes that distance might break the chants hold. Upon Ya’an’s attempt, Perrin insisted on staying for the chant, and resisted. In the ensuing rustle, Perrin managed to elbow Ya’an in the eye. Oryvn then channeled Istus and projected positive energy towards the skeletons in hopes to turn them. While unsuccessful, the chant stopped, which seemed fortunate. The affected party members regained their faculties.
While the formerly-enthralled party-members were becoming aware of their surroundings, the large orc behind the skeletons began casting again, then demanded, in the common tongue, “COME TO ME!” Brubar violently shook his head in denial, shuddered, and rushed to the back of the room as far as he could from the voice.
The orc then cast a spell, this time summoning a spear-shaped force that appeared before the group. The force impaled Brubar through his chest. Blood poured down from both sides of his body, and he slumped to the floor.
The orc leader started yet another spell, and then suddenly grew to double his size, after which a great pounding on the foundation was heard and felt. This had the side effect of shaking the ceiling loose above the entrance to the chamber and the ensuing rubble managed to block the orc and undead from reaching the party.
Ruari pushed the orcish shrine/statue aside, while Orvyn was able to heal Brubar just enough to stabilize him. Alaric then provided Brubar with the last of his goodberries to get him back on his feet.
The party then made their way down the tunnel behind the statue, guided by Oryvn’s illuminated morningstar. It was a well-carved, wide stone path with frequent steps leading further down, with each step the ceiling higher, and the scent of saltwater stronger. Suddenly, moss, fungi, and long vines were common sights by their torchlight.
While navigating deeper further inward, Darrana noticed among the vines on the right next to a pile of torn bits of cloth and hard-bits, a vine-like creature she knew to be an Assassin Vine, and warned the others to keep their distance.
On the wall opposite to the dangerous vegetation, about twenty-five feet up, a shadowy hole was visible by the light of the magically-lit morningstar. The hole appeared to be about one-foot wide and 3-feet tall, or roughly, gnome/halfling -sized.
Darrana, the most confident in her climbing abilities, attempted to climb the wall the twenty-five feet to the opening. After a few slips, with some effort and patience, she was able to climb to the opening with the lit morningstar strapped to her, only as soon as she reached the opening, a group of bats fled the hole, startling the halfling, and she fell back down by the rest of the group, injuring her severely. Rather than attempt this again and risk greater damage, the group decided to press on. The morningstar’s magical light had run its course, and so the party lit a torch.
At the end of the passageway, their passage turned to be a large slowly-curving staircase leading downward as the group found themselves in a large open room. While the others could only hear the sound of water below, Brubar was able to use his darkvision to point out multiple doorways, and the sizable section of stairs that had been broken, and could clearly see the water, below. He also noted that writing was on the walls.
By the torchlight, the Elven-literate (Ruari, Ya’an, Alaric, and Perrin) noticed that some of the wall’s inscriptions were in Elven and one other language. Ruari recognized the second language as Aquan, spoken by many intelligent underwater creatures. Ruari, having been raised in the Elven district of Troutbeck prior to its ruin, had studied the language of the Aquatic elves. He fluently read the Aquan, which translated as “The Porpoise welcomes the Longsword“. The Elven was also translated for the group as, “The Longsword welcomes the Porpoise.“. Additionally, there was the repeated Elven inscription, “May the beaches of our trade be gilded.” Ya’an theorized they were in an old secret trading post for Aquan-goods.
Perrin lit another torch and ventured down the steps and leaped into an open doorway opposite the broken section in the old carved path. Oryvn and Alaric followed suit. Perrin then jumped down to the second section of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Perrin found himself at a dead-end. To his left, a sealed stone doorway. Straight ahead: water. To his right, a small beach, in which the wall above it read an inscription in Elven:
Walks in the wind
Runs in the rain
Makes dry oceans in the sun
Counts time, stops clocks
Swallows kingdoms, gnaws rocks.
Throw it in the water.
Yelling the riddle up to the rest of the party, Ruari was able to deduce that the answer to the riddle was ‘sand’. Upon Perrin’s tossing of the beach sand under his boots into the water, the stone doorway that had previously been sealed began to open.
Meanwhile, Oryvn continued down the corridor at the broken path. Despite a pungent odor of rotting flesh, he could detect no undead, so he navigated his way deeper and deeper with Alaric and Honey Badger Bill in tow. When they were met by a closed door, Oryvn pushed it open. The click of a faint mechanism was heard — the door was boobytrapped! By the light of his torch, he saw a wooden box on his left; the side of the box facing him slide down into the stone of the floor. What emerged was the source of the scent of rotting flesh. Eight writhing tentacles protruding from the head of a clacking mandibles and tooth-filled maw, with a ten-foot long segmented body of a multi-legged creature he distinctly recognized as a Carrion Crawler!
Honey Badger Bill panicked and ran. Orvyn and Alaric stayed to fight; Ya’an and Ruari ran up to assist. As Ruari approached, his keen Elf eyes noticed a hidden secret passage. Darrana rushed to join, but she was unable to jump to the passageway, and fell a great distance to the water, below. Her riding dog, Grumpus, jumped down the steps to find her.
Though Orvyn and Alaric were slapped by the beast’s poisonous tentacles many times, only once was Orvyn unable to resist monster’s paralytic touch. Thankfully, the Carrion Crawler’s goal was to focus on paralyzing its prey before devouring; Alaric, Ya’an, and Ruari were able to beat the beast back until Orvyn finally came-to, and the four finally crushed the skull of the foul abberation.
During the battle, above, Darrana quickly swam to the beach where Perrin seemed to be relaxing, admiring the unseasonably warm air. Along the way she noticed an empty cage in the water that she was forced to swim around. At the shore, Perrin and Darrana saw a large dorsal fin in the water: a shark’s. The water-logged halfling then peered into the stone doorway that was previously sealed, and saw what appeared to be a dining table with mostly-broken chairs around it. The table had two bits of rope, each tied to the two separate legs of the table. Atop the dining table was a dark stain, possibly from blood of some sort. Two old braziers and a pile of wood rubble were along the walls, and this room revealed three closed doors.
With the large dead crawler in front of them, Orvyn’s torchlight revealed the room. On the wall across from him, a hole, about one-foot wide and three-feet tall. Two long tables were also in the room. The first sat a second dead carrion crawler, split and splayed open on its back. Behind that table was another, atop it was:
- An Elf skull with a spherical black onyx sitting in its eye-socket, and two dull pearls used to replace two teeth.
- Under a black cloth, a silver coin covered in a bright, heatless flame. On the coin was the symbols of oar crossed over blade; Ruari recognized it as an old Troutbeck coin.
- A corked ceramic vial with a marking of a white bird with an X for its eye.
- A book with a title in Aquan: “The Journeyman’s Guide to Carrion Crawler Dissection”
- A clear, corked glass vial of viscous liquid that Ya’an determined was simple oil.
- An unused Sunrod, a bright six-hour light source when struck.
- 4 Tindertwigs, used for quickly creating a flame.
Orvyn detected magic in the room: The coin emanated evocation, the magic of energy manipulation and creation; the ceramic vial abjuration, the magic of protection.
As the party gathered these things, Brubar began walking to rejoin the group, only to be slapped around the throat with a long tendril, making a crushing sound. He appeared to be pulled into the shadows. Orvyn peered into the hole in the dissection-room, and was able to make out what appeared to be the half-orc’s foot, pulled away into the shadows by a dark, tentacle-like hand.
Orvyn described what he saw to the group, and the description nudged Ya’an’s memory of a story from the Llandry monks about creatures that lurk in the shadows and attack weak humanoids. Unfortunately, the details of the creatures in the story, to Ya’an’s recollection, were fuzzy at best.
