Shattered Star: Follow The Lemure

Game Date: 11/15/2014
Location: The Game Cave
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 9
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Looplily "Lilly" Timber (James) - Gnome Cleric/Fighter
Maruca (Daniel) - Human Ranger
Shemus (Cliff) - Elf Ranger

The Session:
We're still exploring the dungeon beneath the former Tower Girls HQ.  Today started with us finding a wand inside a tapestry rod, but we didn't have any party members who could identify it.  We found a magic fountain, but it wasn't healing or anything; the magic just keeps it from overflowing.  In the fountain was a piece of green crystal, but we haven't found a use for it.  In one room we encountered a pair of Lemure Devils, and persuaded them to follow us.

Down one tunnel we found the skeleton of a Bulette.  A gray ooze attacked Bjertha from the mud, corroding her armor.  We all beat the ooze's initiative, and it went down before it got a turn.  Lilly fixed Bjertha's armor with a mending spell, and we kept going.

We reached a large room with about 30 feet of water in the middle.  There were columns along the sides that were shaped like tentacles.  In order to test the water's depth, we sent in one of the Lemures.  It sank and never came back.  So we sent in the other Lemure, which similarly disappeared.  We cast Light on an arrow and fired it into the murky water, and saw something moving down there.  We didn't feel up to this fight yet, so we tried one of the other tunnels.

We found a locked door with a bronze plaque, depicting runes we could not read.  Maruca and Kelson worked on picking the lock, and several die rolls later we finally got in.  The next room was full of cages, some of which held skeletal Fleshdregs.  The creatures attacked, and most of us fought back.  Lilly attacked the empty cages instead, because she had a sudden fear that we would lock her up.  Of course, we might not be tempted to lock her up if she wasn't always doing things like attacking cages, but that's one for the philosophers.

Once the Fleshdregs were dead, we left Lilly to her cage smashing, and looked into the next room.  There was a winch-operated portcullis, and a burnt corpse.  Fearing a fire trap, we used some rope to operate the winch from a distance, then headed on through the doorway.  The next hall appeared to be a nightmare of flame traps, so we held off.  We passed back through the cage room, tiptoed past the obsessed Lilly, and tried another hall.

The next passageway led to a maze.  As Lilly caught up to us we heard a growling, and we soon found ourselves face-to-face with a Hell Hound.  This demonic doggie hit us right away with fire breath, which did a fair amount of damage.  When the breath recharged, he used it a second time and dropped Bjertha.  The party healers patched her up and Shemus dealt the killing blow to the Hell Hound.

We took a short rest and headed into the maze.  We didn't find anything interesting in the maze, and the other end just took us back to the other side of the hallway full of fire traps.  We took out our current piece of the Shattered Star, hoping it would lead us to the next one.  It seemed to be pointing towards the water room we'd considered earlier, so we headed back that way.

We pondered at the edge of the water, not wanting to get our feet wet.  Lilly was the bravest (or most impulsive) of us.  She grabbed a rope and swam across, getting attacked a pair of Sinspawn.  Once Lilly got across Bjertha followed, and a third Sinspawn joined the fray.  Lilly grappled two Sinspawn simultaneously, as Bjertha made to the other side.  The rest of the party fired their ranged weapons at any monsters they could see.

The Sinspawn had the ability to enrage those they attacked, but we never really got to see this in action.  With Lilly holding two of them to keep them from escaping back below the water, we managed to finish them off quickly.  We ended the session there.  Some of us are about to level, so we've decided to take an extended rest if possible.