Saturday, September 4, 2010

Scarred Lands - Bats in the Belfry

Game Date: 9/4/2010
DM:
Rusty

The Party:
Aria Thatcher (Matt) - Half-Elf Bard
Blast Flashing, Jr. (Nick) - Gnome Warlock
Cecil (Dane) - Githzerai Swordmage
Paige (Leigha) - Half-Elf Sorcerer
Shade (Jesse) - Drow Rogue
Thorfin (Ted) - Goliath Fighter

Recap:
Last session ended with the party fleeing hordes of zombies, finally taking refuge in a church. As soon as we entered, the door vanished behind us, becoming a blank wall. We turned around and...

The Session:
We found ourselves in a rather hospitable-looking room. There was a long table filled with food. There were various pieces of furniture to examine, and two very detailed statues. The room had five exits: four doors and a flight of stairs.

Not seeing any immediate threat, we ate some of the food and explored some of the side rooms. We found an unmarked potion, and Blast dared Thorfin to drink it. It turned out to be some sort of ice potion, but Thorfin managed to overcome its effects. While exploring a small library, Blast found a ritual scroll of Transmute Stone To Flesh.

Soon, a large Basilisk came lumbering down the stairs. It wasn't a very long battle, and none of us ended up getting turned to stone (Aria came the closest). Our characters realized that the well-sculpted statues were actually people who had been stoned by the Basilisk's gaze. We used the ritual scroll, returning Paige and Cecil to normal.

Aria and Blast recognized Paige from our very first adventure. However, we seemed to be under the impression that she was dead. Also, she had no memory of attending the festival which kicked off our quest.

Further explorations yielded some notes written in a strange language, which none of us recognized. Aria used her Comprehend Languages ritual to read the documents, which turned out to be research notes. Apparently the entire island was actually part of some psychological experiment.

When we were bored with the first floor, we went up the stairs. The second floor had more shelves and crates to examine, and four doors to check out. Shade opened the first door, and we were attacked by two Poltergeists and two Animated Corpses. We weren't worried at first, until Cecil fumbled an attack, causing Dane to have to draw from our Critical Fumble Deck. It cause his power to backfire, summoning two additional Poltergeists. And to make things worse, our party kept rolling badly, while the DM rolled a few crits.

It was a very difficult battle. Jesse - who has a reputation in our group for being the untouchable badass - kept predicting a TPK. And it was close. We fought hard, we bled a lot, some death saves were rolled... but in the end we survived.

After the battle we checked out the room the monsters had come from, then we went downstairs and took an extended rest. Now refreshed, we returned to the second floor and tried more doors. We found one room full of Giant Spiders and Skeletons, but it wasn't a difficult battle. Once we'd cleared the floor, we found the next set of stairs to level 3.

On the third floor we found more furniture to search. Upon opening one cabinet, we were attacked by some bats and swarms of rats. We killed them off and continued our search. We found a few odd items, the strangest being a collection of heads. Thorfin found a puzzle box, but couldn't figure out how to open it.

He handed it off to Cecil, who tried to solve it using his superior intellect. But nope. Finally Shade managed to figure it out using her thievery skills. As the box opened, bright light began escaping from it. It became very hot and Shade dropped it to the floor. A ghostly figure began to take form, and... we ended the session.

Reminders:
We believe there's only one more floor to explore, which will be the bell room itself. Our next session is in three weeks, on September 25th.

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