Dragon's Demand: Adventures in Bookkeeping

Game Date: 3/8/2014
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: Dragon's Demand, Session 7
System: Pathfinder
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Flarin (Trevor) - Human Barbarian
Halfbeard (Cliff) - Dwarf Ranger
Lilith (James) - Tiefling Paladin
Raz Furian (Matt) - Human Sorcerer
Tanith Tularn (Thomas) - Human Cleric
Vires (Daniel) - Human Alchemist

Previous Session Recap:
I missed the 3/1 session.  Here's a recap, courtesy of Thomas.

Lillith was unconscious, but we saved her.  When Raz and Halfbeard came back to town, Raz was very concerned about divine light shining from her hands and Delilah spent the rest of the day comforting her.  Halfbeard and Tanith were making all haste back to the cave, but ran into an Alchemist (Vires) who basically said he blows stuff up and we said he could come along.  In the fight, Tanith stormed the giant creature, was promptly reduced to a few hitpoints, and withdrew.  This gave enough time for Daniel's character to reach Lillith and administer a potion.  However, the monster came back for Lillith.  She had to use a couple of hero points to avoid death.  Tanith made it quite foggy to try to help the party escape, but Halfbeard pays no mind to fog and shot the creature through concealment all the same, downing it.

We got several chests that are magically sealed from the cave that we think are part of Hunclay's estate.  We went to catalog things at Hunclay's mansion and were met with a few magical traps.  We are very good at finding them, but the finding is preceded by doh! and ow!  We found a servant who Tanith apparently spoke to in Infernal when greeting him instead of common, but Halfbeard convinced him to help us out.  At the top of the mansion we found an observatory with some sort of flying demonic cherub.  Because Tanith is to friendly with these things, he tried to talk to it, but it shot lightning at him.  Halfbeard and Lillith came to the rescue to down the fiend.  We still have to explore the bedroom (which the servant told us was dangerous), another room that whose door keeps shouting at us, and the cellar.  We have a few weeks before we our completion deadline for cataloging the estate, so we decided to go back and rest.  Raz was with the party throughout Hunclay's estate acting as the scribe.

Today's Session:
After resting at the inn, we continued to explore Hunclay's manor.  This time we went for the basement first.   First we found a lot of storage crates full of mundane items.  Down some other hallways we found a wine cellar, a meat freezer, a room full of magic items, a room designed to contain dangerous summoned creatures, and a workshop full of clockwork parts.  At one point Flarin used a frozen side of beef to break down a trapped door.  Perhaps a bit unconventional, but it worked.

Once we'd inventoried everything we could downstairs, we went up a couple of floors and checked out Hunclay's bedroom.  As we stood in the doorway, an enchanted bearskin rug growled at us.  Having already seen the rug last session, Lilith had prepared by bringing some bear traps.  She used Tanith's lance to push the trap into the room.  It didn't really help.  As Lilith entered the room, a large Fiendish Grizzly Bear  magically appeared on top of the rug.  For the most party Lilith soloed it while the rest of us fired at it from the hallway.  Flarin joined the melee on his turn, shortly before Raz's Magic Missile finished it off.

We continued taking inventory of Hunclay's possessions.  We found some keys that would be put to very good use for the rest of the session.  We also found a piece of paper containing dirty limericks, but the paper detected as magical.  We used some arcane trickery on it, and the words rearranged themselves to reveal Hunclay's to-do list.  Among other things, it mentioned a secret door in the clockwork lab in the basement. 

But before heading back downstairs, we tried the keys on the screaming door across the hall.  The door opened to reveal a study, where Tanith and Vires both took damage trying to open a trapped chest.  Once the study was accounted for, we went back to the clockwork room and found the secret door.  It looked like it might lead somewhere dangerous, and a few of us were low on hit points, so we went back to the inn and took care of more business in town.

Last week they'd taken some of the locked chests back to the inn, so now we used the newfound keys to open some of them.  There was a lot of gold and other treasures, but of course we're not to touch any of that as it belongs to our employers.  We also found a book written in a strange language, full of celestial images.

Now well-rested and healed up, we set out for Hunclay's secret passage.  We went down some long narrow hallways, until we found a room with a summoning circle.  Inside the circle was an "Accuser Devil", which looked like a grotesque cross between a child and a giant fly.  It spoke to Tanith telepathically in the Infernal language, pleading to be released from the circle.  It promised it would return to its home plane if released, but Tanith was skeptical.  So finally Tanith made a deal - we'd release the creature, but if it didn't immediately unsummon, we would attack.

We released the devil from its prison, and it immediately vanished.  But we still detected it in the room.  It had only turned invisible, while pretending to teleport away.  The party took a couple of shots at the Accuser's last position, but didn't have much luck hitting it.  Raz then used a scroll of Glitterdust, which blinded the devil and made it visible.  Knowing when it had been beat, the Accuser teleported away for real this time.

It wasn't long before we encountered another extraplaner prisoner.  After passing through a hall filled with arcane symbols, there was a hallway filled with bright magical light.  At the other end, an imprisoned fae creature pleaded to be released.  Her name was Maffei, and she was from the Plane of Shadow.  As such, her shadowy form was unable to pass through the magically-lit hallway. We looked all around for ways to dissipate the light, but had no luck. 

We did have a vial of magical darkness dust, but it was part of Hunlcay's estate, and we didn't want to use up any items that should be inventoried.  Finally we decided to head back to town and ask Lady Belhaim for advice.  As we started to leave, Flarin took it upon himself to use the dust, which made it dark enough to release Maffei.  She agreed to serve us until she could find a way to return to her plane.

We had now explored every room in the house except for one.  After opening a barred door, we saw a large room with a pit at one end.  On one wall, in large letters, was the name "Cthepaltangoulgi" and other words in the Abyssal language.  A voice yelled at us from the pit, at first mistaking us for Hunclay.  It turned out to be a devil that looked a bit like a minotaur.  This devil crawled out of the pit and attacked.  He had high AC and hit hard, dropping Vires early in the fight.  Luckily Lilith's smites hit hard as well, and a couple of attacks brought the devil's hit points down far enough for Raz to finish it off with a Magic Missile.  It's funny, Raz is the least damaging person on the team, but she managed to finish off all three encounters today.

Hunclay's estate now completely inventoried, we headed back to town.  We ended the session there.