Shattered Star: The Second Shard

Game Date: 11/29/2014
Location: The Game Cave
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 11
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

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

The Session:
I missed last week's session, during which they explored an underwater shipwreck, found a brooch which they agreed to return to an undead guy's widow, fought some Darrows and a Dark Mantle, and rescued Fenster the Blight from a torture chamber.  They left off with a choice of two sets of stairs leading down.

Today we picked a stairway and headed for a small room.  As we approached, we were overcome with magical darkness.   We turned around and headed back up the stairs, out of the range of the darkness spell.  As we were moving, Bjertha felt a bolt glance off her armor.  We waited for the spell to end and then rushed back into the room.  We encountered a Darrow named Magister Khrysm, and her two Homunculus henchmen.

The first Homunculus went down easy.  Khrysm killed the second henchman herself, when she hit our party with a Thunderwave spell.  Kelson made the final blow against Khrysm, and we looted the room.  Between Khrysm and the room's closets, we found a few potions, a Wand of Spiritual Weapon (11 charges), 232 gold, 1423 silver, and 2100 copper pieces.  We took a long rest in this room.

We went back up and then down the other set of stairs.  These stairs ended suddenly, but on the way down there was a hidden door.  Slancio felt his piece of shard pulling him towards the next piece, and we followed the secret passage until we reached an altar room.  The second shard was guarded by two giant spiders called Shriezyxs.  But lets just call them spiders because it's easier to type.

The spiders didn't hit often but they hit hard.  They each got three attacks per round, and if they'd ever managed to hit with all three it would likely have killed their target.  Bjertha faced one while Lilly kept the other one occupied.  Lilly dodged each round, keeping the spider busy while Shemus fired damaging arrows at the creature.  Once Lilly's spider was dead, we all concentrated on Bjertha's, taking it out pretty quickly.  Shemus dropped it with an arrow, but it got back up.  Kelson dealt the final killing blow, and Bjertha hacked at the bodies to make sure they didn't get back up again.

The pedestal in the center of the room had grooves to fit all seven shards.  Since this meant we'd probably need to come back here in the future, we went around the rest of the Crow compound and made sure everything else was dead.  Lilly took a sample of some brown fungus which damaged her as she collected it.  She had to do a lot of clever things involving swords and barrels to keep the fungus doing her more harm as she dragged it back out of the dungeon.

We went back to town and headed for the mansion of Sheila Heidmarch.  We found out that the new shard was the Shard of Greed.  We are now taking 40 days of downtime in order to do more research.

Session rewards:
+983 XP each.
65.88 gp each.

Reminders:
As the holidays make a lot of us busy, we are considering taking the rest of December off and resuming sessions in January.