| Session Date | January 21, 2022 |
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| Base XP Gained | Carry Over |
| Player Notes | ZZ's Notes |
Leaving the cave of the slain chaos thing, the party backtracked through the natural caves and back into the long hall, eventually making their way to the secret red hall. After maneuvering the floating globe into an outside corridor, the party settled down to rest the remainder of that day and through the night. During the last watch, a good 14 hours later, a golden glow began to grow in the room from no apparent source. ZZ awoke his comrades as an immense winged lion like beast with human face appeared from the glow. It made no move, hostile or otherwise, but simply surveyed the party for a short time. Finally, Hans hailed it, asking if it were the resident of this place. Finally it spoke, seemingly offended at the suggestion. No, it said, it was not resident in that foul hall of demons. It introduced itself as Shalmenezar the Shedu. A parley of sorts followed. The orb they’d seen was not it; rather, the Shedu said it was an eater of the dead. It then claimed that many were interested in the activities of the party and that it had come to see them for itself. It looked at each of them rather intently, one by one, and seemed poise between being somewhat displeased and somewhat amused. At last it sighed and amusement seemed to win out. It then looked intently at ZZ and Bel, saying that “the ancient alliance of elf and dwarf was strong, but that it was not the only ancient and strong alliance.” It provided no further clarification, and soon vanished as it had appeared.
This rather inexplicable event concluded, the party decided to test the three potions they’d previously acquired from the room, each with a symbol carved on the glass flask holding the red liquid. ZZ tried the one with the eye and found it to be poisonous and the liquid like blood. But, he also determined that it would function as a potion of clairvoyance – if the drinker was not killed by it. Jarrik tried the one with the tower and began to succumb to its poison, though Mordecai was able to cast slow poison (DM sidenote: I just coined a new phrase as I write this: “better a neutralize poison in the head, than an adventurer on the ground dead”). Being poisoned anyway, Jarrik tried the third potion with the star, which proved to be to treasure finding. He downed the whole thing and became aware of a treasure to the east. The party quickly moved out and back to the long east-west corridor to triangulate the treasure, resolving its location as not very far away but without apparent access they’d yet found.
Mordecai, meanwhile, prayed for a neutralize poison spell. When he had it, Jarrik had returned and was cured. The party now moved out in earnest, but when Bel opened the door to the long corridor once again, she was set upon by two of the spider-like monsters they’d fought before. They were very strong and hard to kill. Worse, not long after going down, they came back to life and continued to attack. One even accidentally impaled itself on Bel’s sword, though this did not deter it. Hans then let the orb creature out, which descended onto one of the fallen creatures and seemed to partially enter it – it did not come back to life again. The second, upon coming to life, fled.
Moving back into the natural caves beyond the secret door, the party now took the unexplored southern way. They eventually came to a larger cavern. While exploring it, they were set upon by four more of the spider-like things, soon reinforced with two more. A long and deadly fight ensued, as the things kept returning from the dead. Finally, the party had enough of them down that some of them were able t start decapitating the monsters before they could rise again. Though the parts tried to rejoin, this gave the party enough breathing space for Burt Macklin to use the wand of fire to cast burning hands on the monsters, ending them for good.
The party pressed on, coming to another large cave, this one choked densely with webs. The party burned them out, but they burned very slowly. Still, they did find some treasure hidden deep beneath the webs. As second cave nearby proved similar and was cleared the same way. However, beneath those webs the party found a long-dead elf with a number of intact items on its person that survived the fire – elven chainmail, a hat, potion with an oily substance, a rope, and a heavy and elaborate gold torc with a great tourmaline and embossed with griffons. Knar used his wand to detect magic and all proved to be so. Bel decided to swap her older armor for this new suit as only she could fit in it. The party also noted that they kept finding long-dead elves around this place, though there was no apparent explanation why.
During these explorations, the party also discovered a 10’ diameter round hold going to somewhere above, likely the same location that the flying tentacular creatures that had walloped Mordecai were. The party was careful to avoid getting under that hole. Continuing on, the rough caves eventually ended in a secret door that led the party back into the tomb complex they’d first entered. From here they made their way back through explored areas to the large east-west hall where the portcullis was. Going up to it, Knar threw a fireball into it. The two flying tentacular terrors came rushing down from their lurking place above to attack with their rays, but a cone of cold from Knar and a well-placed arrow from Jarrik ended them both.
The blast of fire had illuminated the room beyond pretty well, and the party noted a lever that likely operated the portcullis. Burt now cast unseen servant and sent it to flip the lever. It did, but nothing happened and the mechanism seemed broken. The party now decided to return to the hole below, despite the length of time needed to get there. But they did without incident (bad DM dice) and used their rope of climbing to get out, determining in the process that the rope they’d taken from the dead elf was also a rope of climbing. Now inside the great room, they noted two exits. One was a huge double door of brass with leering demon faces on it, holding a banner of some sort. A large keyhole was in one door, and the gold key they’d found previously fit the lock perfectly. Beyond was a fairly rough cave leading off to the southeast, which the party speculated must lead to Castle Gold proper.
But the treasure was not that direction, so the party took the second exit, a narrow (less than 3’ wide) to the east. Mordecai now cast detect traps. As the party rounded a bend, he sensed a sliding wall trap; I appeared a very thick section of wall would slide to block the passageway. Orion tried to determine the mechanism, aided by ZZ, but they could find no trigger in this area for it. After verifying there were no traps at least as far as a door at the end of the corridor, Orion slipped ahead to scout. Letting the unseen servant open the door, he saw reddish-purple light glowed from beyond. There was apparently a very large room beyond, but a low wall (10’) that did not reach the ceiling blocked the view ahead. To either side in the corners of the room were statues of Type V demonesses. Cautiously, Orion slipped to one side and looked into what was obviously a great temple to the dread Demogorgon. A huge painting of the two-headed demonlord sat at the northern end above a large, raised section. The risers of the two stairs up this were carved to represent pitiful souls being crushed under foot. The floor of the chamber was a bewildering pattern of tiles of every imaginable color, style and size the meaning of which was not obviously apparent. The walls were painted with many scenes of demons and strange humans doing all sorts of evil demonic sorts of things, often watched over by Demogorgon. Two empty alcoves opened to east and west. Atop the platform was a fifth in the center, flanked by two bronze doors with demonic bas reliefs carved on their surface. It was not a pretty sight…