Category: Graveyard of Empires: The Islands of Curabel

Session 76 Summary

*This would’ve been a lot quicker, but I wasted a whole bunch of time typing out Session 74 again cos I’m a fool*

We were in the thick of things yet again. After entering the Calculation and Processing room,  the shadow creatures had ambushed us, ringing myself, Thorfus, Chuq and Edan and putting our backs to the wall. After a brief exchange of blows, they dematerialise however, wailing the entire time in what apparently is Ancient Dwarven, though only Chuq can hear them. It seems they don’t like the sheer amount of magical light we’re carrying.

The lights seem to flicker in thier passing, and the gasps of shock alert us to their reappearance amongst the hirelings. Chuq quickly grabs Edan and shadow-steps into the melee, right on top of one of them. Myself and Thorfus have to hoof it the old-fashioned way. We clash briefly, and whilst we land a few blows, four of them gang up on Apolline, wounding him and dragging him down through the floor.

It’s a difficult fight, shadows aren’t exactly easy to hit, but in the middle of a crowd, mixed in amongst our own shadows and with a significant number of glowing weapons swinging around we were lucky we even knew where they were. I was lucky I had my suit, the odd visor helped immensely in identifying them. Oddly enough, they are still vulnerable to electricity as well, as Zelena uses up her stun stick’s charge in bringing one down.

The shadows are cowardly creatures it seems, as they swiftly disappear away from us again, going after the fleeing Fulbert. Four of them descend on the old man, whose only defence is Pons, who is looking to the south, and Sumnah, who is oddly brave but lacking the means to hurt them. The ancient elf launches a pair of arrows into the shadows, but succeeds only in hitting Fulbert in the eye. A mercy kill I’m sure, as he was seconds from becoming one of the foul creatures.

Two more appear behind Owyn and Guarinus, so myself and Thorfus run into save them whilst everyone else head to the octagonal portal room. Thankfully we pinned the doors open. I gulp down a healing potion as we charge in, only to be greeted by two more suddenly appearing in front of us.

We clear the room as quick as we can. The shadows seem to explode after a fashion when they die, but even with that we can’t be sure none escaped. I bring down the last visible, and we rush back out into the corridor. The shadows continue to assault anyone vulnerable or alone, leading us on a merry chase and seemingly avoiding Chuq especially. Slowly, we gather the entire party together in the portal room however, making things easier on us.

While we assess what to do, they strike again enmasse, several jumping on the weakened Owyn. We counter-attack as best we can, trying to bring the magically armed to the front and protect the others, who retreat through the northern airlock. In the scuffle, Zelena is dragged through the floor and Owyn narrowly avoids a similar fate. We banish three only to have another two appear from nowhere, but eventually we are able to bring them all down.

I’m quite proud to say I got the final blow.

The party as a whole heads north. The cell area is relatively safe from the shadows thanks to the airlock and Desric’s protections, and with a couple of rooms being open, we have a decent number of beds and space for people to rest a night.

Chuq however, has other ideas. There is no saving thier lives, much to Belroar’s dismay, but the monk believes he can at least retrieve some of thier equipment and perhaps thier bodies. Whilst me and Thorfus keeping an eye out from the observation room, Chuq returns to the portal room and shifts into the shadows.

After several long, tense moments he returns, carrying Zelena’s body and a bundle of ancient dwarven robes. He looks exhausted, no doubt people aren’t supposed to live in the shadows, and tells tales of the shadows being dead dwarven acolytes.  Disturbingly, Zelena has suffered additional injuries, and it seems as if we had fought and killed her shadow as well.

We’re happy for his success, and take the time to lay Zelena and Fulbert to rest. After, we set a customary watch from within the observation room, but go for a longer twelve hours due to the number of injuries. I take a bit of time to talk to Sturloc during our watch. The hireling has been finding it tough, especially now with Talon gone too.

By morning, we set Edan up with some of the Elven gear we’d recovered, recovered our strength, and healed a few of the injuries. We eat breakfast, finishing off most of out water,  and Thorfus starts fiddling with the pedestals, hoping the platinum key gives us access to something more. He gets three options, which seems to be no different to before, except for acknowledging the key’s presence. He activates the sonic deterrent, which merely sets of an ear-splitting noise below, evidently the signal the dwarven captors used to send thier prisoners back to cells.

We decide to test the key with the portal to the north, and discover a broken key scattered around the pedestal there. Our key doesn’t seem to work. Checking the shards, we discover the key was similar to ours, but with an extra option of an ‘x’.

We spend some more time going through the bio-forge cubes, reading through the cryptic notes, learning what the dwarves thought of humans, elves, orcs, kobolds, ogres and lizardmen from thier studies. Several addendums note the potential uses of the various species for the dwarven empire, such as the orcs possibly making good ‘undying berserkers’.

The reptilian cubes are next, and we learn about how they tried to subvert the dragon species for war, including the creation of wingless drakes. The larger reptiles were deemed deadly, but unintelligent, and nowhere near strong enough to combat a dragon. The raptors were considered useful as ‘attack dogs’, being deployed through the portal system, though the council overruled this decision. Apparently, experiments were underway to compine the raptor’s intelligence with the larger lizard’s strength.

(John, have you been watching Jurassic World? xD )

Attempting to close the southern portal from here ends with failure, causing a flicker of power throughout the facility. It seems the power system in the southern room has been damaged, locking the portal open.

The party then plans to head back west, and collect the cubes from the calculation room. We leave behind most of the rescued prisoners and some of the injured, mostly taking anybody with a magical weapon. Chuq picks up mental activity to the east, but the west seems clear, so we gather up the cubes from both rooms in the east wing.

Unfortunately, we get jumped by a pair of shadows in the right-hand room. Naturally it was quite the ambush, as they managed to land two hits on me. TWO! I feel my strength get sapped yet again, the lucky gits. If they’d come at me honourably it’d have been a different story!

This time, with there only being two and us not needing to protect anybody, they quickly fall to our superior numbers.

The next task is to set up an area in order to combat the zombie horde to the east. We decide to fall back on our old ‘net across the door’ trick, adding the carts in as additional fall-back points and shooting platforms. Letting them come to us is the easiest method, especially since they’ll bottle neck in the airlock. Setting this up also give me time to get over the effects of the shadow’s touch.

Chuq goes ahead and pins the doors open, which prompts a reaction from the north, like the sound of a bunch of chairs scraping back and footsteps approaching. Chuq retreats and we prepare to fight. As the undead dwarves round the corner, they are met with a hail of arrows and bolts. A couple fall, but no less than sixteen charge down the corridor towards us. The net comes in handy, as me and Thorfus hack at the front ranks supported by Chuq and Beloar, more ranged fire flies over our heads to drop the rear ranks.

It’s a fairly easy fight, though I need a heal from Derich to keep going due to my earlier injuries. Even Sturloc and Kottar get in on the killing, scoring a few good hits with thier crossbows, it seems fish in the barrel style fights help them out quite nicely. Jaegar punctuates the end of the fight, pretty much exploding the skeleton’s skull.

After this fight, our spoils are becoming rather too many with the addition of the undead’s weapons, a small pile of platinum cutlery. We start piling loot in the corner of the room, since there is far too much even for the carts at this point. After Derich expends a few more heals on the party, we prepare to head east, though we’ll need to find water soon.

Session 78 – October 14, 2015

After dispatching the plant-infested undead from the previous session and a short rest. Our heroes magically explore the ruins above for unusual activity.

Finding nothing out of the ordinary, Edan (silently and nearly invisibly) headed out to ensure no other undead were around and explore the area just beyond the recreation room from which the plant-infested undead came from.

The area, divided into two tiled areas equipped with water spouts, was obviously some kind of bath-house. Both areas were covered with a thick layer of moss and fungus while the locker lining one wall were completely free of such vegetation.

Upon closer inspection, Edan noticed movement among the vegetation. Specifically from cocoons along the walls of the first and second areas – the longer he lingered the more agitated they seemed. Edan quickly headed back to the others who were already on their way to join him, clearly not worried about any remaining undead – and dashing Edan’s hope to gather some choice objects from the gaming table.

After Edan explained what he found, the party quickly devised a plan to cover the vegetation with oil and light it on fire. Using a spear onto which they lashed oil flasks – they covered as much as the vegetation and cocoons with oil as possible.

During that time Edan rummaged and searched through the metal lockers – finding some valuable clothes, cards and a silver armband that he found intriguing. Chuq locked a door to another room – just in case.  

Once the oil was spread and Edan had completed his search of the lockers, Chuq lit the oil on fire and retreated back into the recreational room. The fire spread quickly consuming the vegetation and filling the upper half of the room with smoke. As soon as the fire reached the cocoons they burned away revealing the skeletons of dwarves long dead and forcing plodding fungal creatures to begin to move towards the party. 

With bow, fire and sword – the tenacious plodding creatures were dispatched. Their lack of speed their obvious downfall.

While the team waited for the room to slowly clear of smoke, the party collected the platinum coins, gold amulet and various other knickknacks strewn over the floor and tables of the room. Meanwhile – the dwarves busied themselves testing the information cubes which turned out to contain various entertaining games. 

It was getting very late and the party decided to return to the dormitory area in order to sleep and recuperate for a while. After setting a guard – many retired to sleep.

The party’s rest was interrupted early in the morning – around 6am – by a thunderous sound followed by a message in both ancient dwarf and the common tongue demanding our surrender to a “Dark King.”

Edan, knowing full well that he couldn’t be easily heard or seen, quickly moved into the octagonal room to look towards the entry area of the complex. There he saw row upon row of motionless warriors being tended to by other normal looking people.

Upon that discovery Chuq quickly devised a plan to lock access to the complex beyond the octagonal room using his shadow walk ability. However, the sounds of the closing and locking doors alerted the “army” and had them rush into the octagonal room – but the task was done, the doors were locked and the “army” knew the party had done it.

Then, all at once, the “army” then began to destroy the walls separating them from the party – as if commanded by an unseen force.

Soon, an imposing female warrior asked us again to surrender. After convincing the leader to stop the destruction of the walls, Chuq and Belroar soon deduced that her silver circlet was controlling the “army” and a plan was hatched to use Chuq’s shadow step ability to attempt to steal the circlet from her head while she was distracted by Belroar’s rambling discussion and Edan’s arrows. 

The plan worked (with help from some divine intervention) and Thorfus placed the circlet onto his head and gained control of the “army” while Edan’s arrows felled a spell caster. Upon returning to the hallway, Thorfus promptly ordered to destroy the non-zombies. 

The ensuing battle nearly killed Belroar as the now furious leader stabbed at him through an arrow slit, but the tables turned quickly when Thorfus and his probability sword killed the leader and crushed the moral of the remaining foes.

It wasn’t long before the party defeated the remaining foes dead, or drove them down into the elevator shaft where the undead await. One almost fled – but Chuq managed to get to him and kill him. 

The party, now with an army of mind-controlled zombie warriors, must decide their next steps.

Session 77 – October 7, 2015

We continued our exploration of the ancient dwarven research center, this time to the East. We encountered several skeletons and dispatched them, easily, thanks to good tactics. Then we found a lot of platinum utensils and plates to add to our collection. In the ancient kitchen cold storage, we found a wight who doesn’t realize he is dead.

The good thing about that is that he didn’t try to attack us. The bad thing is that he realized we are not official ancient dwarves, so he thinks we are rebels. He has backed around a corner where we can’t get at him without coming near his deadly touch.

This wight, was once Alke, a researcher, who fled to the freezer and ate all the food before succuming to the cold of the storage room. He gave us new information about the research areas and that we need the platinum keys from the head of each research area to open up area X. [This gives comfort to know that if we can control more of these platinum amulets and get them away from here, perhaps it will prevent them letting Xena Tel loose.] We also learned from Alke that Xena Tel is a more formal name and giving distinction. I wonder if there is a dwarven cleric above who has not been corrupted and that we can trust?

We then found that the ancient dwarves have a plentiful supply of fresh water in their quarters, and found many nice items and some furniture. We encountered more undead, but barricaded them inside their rooms making it harder for them to reach us. There were some of a new type, but their newness did not appear to have any new abilities, at least not ones that would allow them to get at us.

Now that we have plenty of fresh water, we can greatly extend our stay down here.

At the end of the hallway with the rooms for the dwarves is an elevator with what appears to be two levels above us and two below us. We decided to search the rest of this level before attempting a new one. 

We continued to the large open recreation area and saw two bodies on the ground and the newest member of our group looked around tha corner and saw many more. Due to the openness of this room, we feared being surrounded and pulled back and used the same tactics against the skeletons, except we used fire. We encountered two new types of undead, that we plant-like and their skulls split open revealing a tentacle. Thankfully, we did not learn what would happen if it hit us.

We had completed another five or so hours in this place, when we decided to catch our breath and eat. I am interested in the platinum coins and gaming devices of cards and dice. More non-magical stuff we can sell to Marchmain and hang on to the magical stuff we have found.

I hope our success continues and that we can hold off on death and injury to our party.

Session 60 – The Better Late Than Never Edition

We took some downtime, cramped as the octagonal portal room was, and during this Belroar was able to finish several of his animal-body-part-recycling projects. Finklemur and Fitz also spent some time poring over their respective spellbooks, giving the both wizards chance to expand their repertoires.

(Sometime during our rest, Thorfus dreams about talking to his deceased uncle and Xen’Tellar, who warns him of danger in current task of locating the sphere, and offers him some guidance in how to proceed. Of course, none of the others know about this, except perhaps Araquiel.)

Chuq suggests a plan to get rid of the still-noisy zombies, utilising webs and the bottleneck the door provides. Thorfus also posits that we can use the airlock’s odd defence mechanism to simply fry them. The difficult part would be opening the far door and not getting captured by the undead or trapped in the airlock itself, which could be solved by Chuq’s shadow-stepping ability.

Eventually after a bit of thought and testing, we realise that we cannot really open the doors safely at all, and decide to leave the zombies to their own devices for now.

Finklemur shrinks Chuq down to just over a foot tall, and accompanied by Socrates, he starts scouting out the other side of the arrow slits, starting with the north-eastern one. The room beyond is a trapezoidal shape and doorless, with the only entrance being an elevator in the floor. The far wall is taken up by four metal lockers. 

He tests the elevator works first, using a panel beside it, which unfortunately makes an incredible racket. Luckily, nothing seems to react from below. Socrates is sent to explore the lower level, as the owl is still invisible, and notices that the tunnels connect all the elevators, as well as an additional one to the west. Several skeletal dwarves inhabit the tunnels as well, armed and armoured. There seems to be some valuables down there, and Finklemur gets Socrates to grab a scroll case and bring it back up to him. One of the dwarves also has a wand tucked into it’s belt, but he figures it would be too risky.

Belroar takes the time to inspect the dropping amongst the rubble, which he says comes from a lizard of some kind, which is definitely bigger than the dogs, and some sort of carnivore. Chuq takes the time to get the opinions of the three dogs on the matter, during which I’m pretty sure they discussed eating the droppings.

I worry for this party sometimes…

Chuq in the meantime is trying to open the lockers, but due to his current stature, it requires us to thread a rope through the handles and have the party in the other room pull it open for him. We get them all open in this fashion, and gather a collection of dwarven weapons and armour, some of it magical. Most notably are several multi-tools, part handaxe, part pick. There are also a few pieces of jewellery. 

 

It takes some work to get the items through the slit, and some are simply to big or too high on the shelves for Chuq to reach. Socrates is available to grab several of the smaller items also, mostly jewellery from the top shelves. Eventually, Chuq has to retreat as the spell wears off, and Finklemur goes off to rest and recover his spells. He does first open the scroll case, revealing a magical scroll that turns out to be ‘Protection from Elementals’.

Chuq questions the odd of the complex. Four rooms, which appear to be armouries, accessible only from below and a distant lift. Each is capable of covering the central room through the arrow slits, and any intruder will have to fight through both crossbow bolts from all sides, then get through password-protected airlocks that fry weapons and armour. It was obviously intended to be a gatehouse, easily defendable. It had fallen however, though perhaps from inside forces or a plague of undead.

After this, we decide to take the time to have Socrates carry rope and hook the lockers in the remaining rooms so we can get at all the gear within, and also have our wizards scan the items for magic. The only issue will be the north-western room, which has a cover of it’s arrow slit.

One of the rooms contains a rune-carved set of platemail, which lights up Thorfus’ eyes certainly, alongside more of the same axes, crossbows and bolts, but also a carved chest. Chuq uses his shadow-stepping to get through into south-east room, and grabs the runic armour, a regular set and the chest. He takes a second step into the north-east room, and passes the magical items from there back through the arrow slot, before stepping back into the central room. 

Thorfus of course dons the runic armour, feeling rather more secure in it.

(Riese, if you’re reading this, I heard you say I suck after I went to bed. Boo, unfair!)

The party finishes resting, giving time for Brice to heal everyone back to health, and Belroar time to flirt with Xelina. Once done, we gather everything up and decide to leave the chamber and head back up to the surface. Thorfus takes the time to lay out his uncle respectfully atop the wagon.

On the way out, we spot a single monkey automaton cross their path, heading south, prompting them to be on guard. We ignore it for now except for Socrates briefly following it to get a rough idea where it was going, which appears to be the workshops.

Next, we happen across a group of ten dwarves waiting at the bottom of the spiral tunnel. They seem nervous, and are identifiable as Xenilum’Khel Militia thanks to their uniform cloaks. Wary for ambush, we continue to approach them. They seem to be complaining about having to wait for a group down here, as most have already left and the Naga is still running around.

They hear us approach and recognise us, specifically Thorfus as being Dolmon’s nephew. They’d apparently broken through the rubble earlier that day, and they’re quite insistent to get moving and leave, so we let them escort us out. Finklemur disappears at some point, and I realise he must of cast his favourite spell.

At the top, a small opening as been cleared, and we exit into the sun. Another team of twenty dwarves guard the entrance, led by an older dwarf, who identifies himself as Haakun Colm, an ambassador from Xurnost’Khel. Several Brothers of the Worldforge are summoned to take care of Dolmon, and they reverently carry him away. 

We talk a little about the intentions of the Naga whilst the dwarves block up the entrance again, to be on the safe side should the Naga come looking for revenge. We then head off into the city, which seems to be quite deserted. We’re led out of the dwarven quarter, and told we have leave to return the day after. The lower levels are a bit of a contrast to our previous experience, and instead of being mobbed, we’re now being avoided. We head over to Desric’s cousin’s home before going to the Sleeping Collossus.

We fill Ghermin in on our side of the story, explaining on how Carrow’s group got a hold of the phoenix egg in the first place. He notes our successes though, particularly obvious due to Thorfus’ armour, so we offer him a pick of our spoils. He takes all the gems, jewellery and robes, as well as most of the multi-tools and hand-crossbows. Finklemur also offers up the scroll, but Ghermin says he’d need a trusted opinion of another wizard.

The trip all in all leaves us a hell of a lot richer.

(The recording cuts out here, but I don’t believe I missed anything)