The Crystal Dominion - Session 18 Summary

Started by avisarr, February 28, 2010, 12:29:41 AM

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avisarr

The Crystal Dominion - Session 18 Summary

The Heroes:

RedEye - A sayune darkwalker with rogue skills and a few spells of sorcery.
Eiran - An elven ranger and archer with a gift for communicating with animals.
Sir Tristan - A knight in shining armor, man of honor and courage, and a skilled swordsman.
Alan - A human arcanologist... a magic tinkerer with a keen ability to "reprogram" spells and magic items.
Rikhaal – A human priest of Barrinor with an array of spells and powerful healing magic.

NPC Characters:

Koeglur – An ogre warrior, former slave, rescued by the party. Now serves the party.
Osh – A 12 year old human male serving as a squire to Sir Tristan.


The Story:

Before proceeding on with exploring the rest of the mine, the party decided to stop and rest and give their arcanologist a chance to review some of the items they had obtained. They had four enchanted items and Alan felt he might be able to ascertain their function if he spent some time analyzing them.

He spent a couple of hours studying the necklace, the potion, the green crystal tipped arrow and the golden dagger. Of those four items, he managed to identified two of them. The necklace was a necklace of missiles (detachable orbs that could be thrown and detonated like fireballs). The potion was a potent contact healing potion designed to be poured directly on a wound.

The golden dagger and green crystal tipped arrow were ensorcelled with spells too complex to unravel.

While Alan worked, the others rested, healed and ate a meal. Tristan spent some time riding the mechanical horse (which Alan had previously finished repairing) around the main chamber.

It was decided that RedEye would take the Necklace of Missiles. Having unraveled the magic of the necklace, Alan decided to spend a bit more time working on the necklace and managed to increase the power of the orbs by a bit.

When they were done with their various activities, the party regrouped and continued their systematic search of the dungeon. In the next side room, their light of their lanterns was glistening off of silvery strands of a web. It was a large chamber with long oaken tables and benches. It appeared to be a mess hall or dining hall of some kind. It was filled with a vast spider web whose filaments stretched from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. Three humanoid sized skeletal corpses were strung up in the web. There was also a fourth figure - a mechanized automaton, very much like the one that Alan had repaired and who was now following the group. Alan could see that it's throat area was undamaged and suspected that he might be able to salvage parts from the one in the web to restore a voice to "their" automaton.

As an arcanologist, Alan is very in tune with the magical energy field and is able to sense magical emanations, even at a distance. He could sense two magic energy sources in the room. One was coming from a gauntlet on one of the corpses. The other magic source was a potion on the belt of a different corpse. The party discussed the risk of obtaining the two items versus what might be in the room spinning the webs.

RedEye used his ethereal sight to view all parts of the room ahead. He discovered a large centipede like creature curled up and hiding in one of the upper corners of the ceiling, out of sight.

The party had been encountering the small "spider mechs" which had been repairing things. Three of these small mechanical creatures were following the party. Alan grabbed one of them and pushed it into the room with the webbing. The creature saw the damaged automaton strung up in the web, just as Alan hoped it would. The small mechanical spider began making its way across the room toward the automaton.

As it made it's way up the wall, it brushed by a bit of the web. Instantly, a bolt of electrical energy shot down the filament. The spider mech convulsed and fell to the stone floor twitching. Residual electrical energy continued to arc up and down the strands of the web.

The party paused. This was not what they had expected. They now weren't sure whether the centipede was an organic animal or some kind of mechanical automaton. Based on what they had seen so far, an automaton seemed likely.


According to the map that they had, there was a side door into this room down a side corridor. RedEye went down this corridor and found the side door. He phase walked through the door into the room, but choose to stayed "phased". This was a fortunate. As soon as he had entered the room, the centipede creature repositioned itself, lifted its abdomen toward RedEye and fired a long silvery filament of web. Because he was phased, the filament passed through him harmlessly. It was still a disconcerting feeling and RedEye quickly retreated out of the room.

The party then threw a flaming torch in. It got caught in the webbing half way through the room. The centipede scuttled through the web to the torch and quickly freed the torch which fell to the floor. The centipede, hanging in the middle of the web where the torch had been, was now visible to the party. It was quite large, almost seven feet long. Clearly the strands of this web were quite strong. Eiran took the opportunity to fire an arrow into the thing. The arrow hit its mark and the centipede fled back to its nest. The party noticed that the arrow, still buried in the side of the centipede, ignited before it was out of sight.

Eiran went down the side corridor where Red Eye was. He kicked in the side door and stepped into the room so that he could see the centipede and its nest. Eiran wanted to try out his green crystal tipped arrow that he had gotten last session. He drew, aimed and fired. Much to his surprise, the arrow flew right through the centipede, into the wall and vanished. The rest of the party were surprised to see the arrow fly out of one wall, cross the hallway and vanish through another wall. It seemed to have phased right through the walls, in the same manner that RedEye was able to walk through a wall. Powerful magic indeed! Unfortunately, the arrow was gone and the party had no idea how to find it. Who knew how many walls it had flown through.

As soon as the arrow had been fired, the centipede reacted. It turned and fired a silvery filament at Eiran. He tried to dodge, but the filament struck and wrapped around his  lower leg. A powerful bolt of electrical energy ran down the filament and into Eiran. He convulsed and fell to the floor thrashing. RedEye wasted no time. He grabbed Eiran's hand as he phased them both and pulled Eiran out of the room.

Tristan was very interested in the gauntlet that was on the hand of the one of the two corpses. But there was a lot of webbing between where the party was (standing at the entrance to the chamber) and where the body was suspended in the webbing.

The party had taken a nice thick furred cloak off of one of the corpses in the large entrance chamber earlier. Tristan went back to the table and fetched a few brooms and shovels and such. He then put on two pair of leather gloves and wrapped himself in the fur cloak. He hoped the gloves and cloak would provide some insulation. Rikhaal also cast a spell on him that would absorb some of the electrical energy.

Tristan then began hurling the brooms and shovels into the webbing, knocking down as many strands as he could. When most of the webbing was down, he rushed into the room, grabbed the corpse, ripped its whole skeletal arm out of the socket and then fled the room. The web sizzled and arced with electrical jolts, but very little of it got through to Tristan and he emerged victorious clutching the severed skeletal arm and the gauntlet.

Alan took the gauntlet and studied it for a half hour. As is the case with any arcanologist, he had a particular talent for ascertaining and nature and functions of enchanted objects. After a half hour of study, he determined that the gauntlet enhanced strength, but also allowed the wearer to produce a projected cone of force.

While Alan was identifying the properties of the gauntlet, the rest of the group was working together to retrieve the automaton that was in the web. With a grappling hook, some rope and a lot of dexterity they managed to retrieve the automaton without risking any more electrical jolts from the centipede.

Once the automaton was out of the web, Alan took both automatons (the web one and the repaired functioning one) back to the workbench in the stable. He worked on them for an hour. He took various pieces from the one and used it to repair the other. At the end, he had a fully functioning automaton that finally had a voice. Because it had been studying papers and had been listening to the group speak, it had already mastered their language. The group was finally able to ask it questions.

Alan interrogated the automaton. It's name was Raluvin and it indicated that it was a "servant golem"... one of three such units stationed on the "dock level" of the fort. The party questioned the golem about the fortress and what had happened there.
The mine fort was attacked by a contigent of soldiers from the Iron Brigade (a military organization with political connections at the time). The Iron Brigade (who had no wizards and no interest in the power crystals) was apparently interested in wiping out the Crystal Dominion, killing anyone with knowledge of its location and dealing the wizards a serious blow.

This Iron Brigade group was able to take the mine completely by surprise because they were being helped by one of the mine's own wizards... a powerful mage named Sarrulis who had apparently turned traitor. As the third highest magical authority in the mine, he had access to everything.

Even though he was just a magical automaton, Raluvin was an eye witness to the battle which ranged all over the mine. Raluvin fled and hid in the wagon in the dock level (which was subsequently knocked on its side by an explosion).

Raluvin's story was in total agreement with everything that the party had already learned from the historical documents, the letter from Mazuris and the historian Baldorin.

Raluvin was able to tell the party about the other automatons. Mazuris had been the chief magical authority of the mine and had created many automatons. Some were servants, others were designed for guard duty or battle. The small spider-like creations served to repair the other automatons.

The party asked about the size of the mine. Raluvin was able to tell them that the fort consisted of two main levels – the dock level and the fort level. Below the fort was the actual mine itself which was one huge cavern inside the mountain with a large lake at the bottom.

The party asked about traps and defenses. Why were all of the battle golems attacking them? Why were there so many undead here? What was ahead?

Raluvin did not have specific information about the traps, but he did know that Sarrulis (the traitor wizard) had been casting a number of spells. Raluvin speculated that after the Iron Brigade had taken over the mine, that Sarrulis had activated all of the fort's traps and defenses. It was also possible that Sarrulis had cast spells to create the undead and give them orders to kill anyone who entered the mine again. This was speculation, but the party agreed it was likely. The Iron Brigade and the traitor wizard had apparently never planned on returning to the mine.

The party explored a bit further. Raluvin was able to tell them what each room was. They encountered several offices and small private quarters that had once belonged to various officers. In the foot locker of one of these bed chambers, they found a potion which Alan identified as a "potion of might". It is some sort of strength and battle prowess enhancer, but it's exact effects are unknown.

In a conference room they found the green crystal tipped arrow that had, apparently, re-solidified and stuck in the back of a chair. They retrieved the arrow.

At a corridor junction, they encountered a light security golem, but defeated it in combat.

They next encountered a series of three rooms in a row which were workshops, smithies and craft rooms. In these workshops, they found various raw materials, unfinished objects and so on. They also found a number of half built golems and automatons.

In the last workshop, Tristan kicked open the door. Inside was a huge golem, obviously a combat model. The thing slowly turned to face him.

We ended the session on a cliff hanger. We'll get to this battle next time.