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<blockquote data-quote="Menexenus" data-source="post: 3305847" data-attributes="member: 8951"><p><strong>Session 1: Into the Whispering Cairn</strong></p><p></p><p>Cast of characters:</p><p>Tarric (Scott's fighter)</p><p>Alexander (Jason's wizard)</p><p>Katawan (Dave's monk)</p><p>Alees (Kim's rogue)</p><p>Killick (JJ's ranger)</p><p>Killian (Jim's cleric)</p><p> </p><p><em>10th of Planting</em>:</p><p> The 5 characters (all except Katawan) departed Diamond Lake at dawn and traveled 3 hours on foot to the abandoned mine office near the Whispering Cave where they used to play as kids. The property is extremely dilapidated. Inside, the characters fight and kill a RABID SKUNK. </p><p></p><p> After some looking around, the characters decide to use the office as a base camp for their exploration of the Whispering Cairn. Killian stays behind to try to spruce the place up a bit and make it semi-liveable. The other four scout ahead, trying to remember where the Cave was. After some looking, they find the old cave entrance they remember hidden behind a collapsed tree. They climb through the dead branches of the collapsed tree and enter the cave. Alexander recognizes that the glyphs along the wall are written in ancient Auran. (However, he is unable to decipher them.) The party finds a broken mirror-shaped object with a glyph at the bottom. Alexander identifies it as a personal glyph (i.e. someone's name), copies the glyph, and picks up some shards of broken black glass.</p><p></p><p> The party notices a greenish light up ahead. At that moment, Katawan - another old childhood friend whom the group has not seen for years - arrives at the cave entrance and hails his former childhood friends. He relates that he was sent by the leader of his monastery to join them because the group of them have an important destiny to fulfill (as strange as that seems to all of them). </p><p></p><p>Soon thereafter, the party is attacked by THREE WOLVES that had turned the entrance of the Cairn into their own lair. Alees finds a silver armband and a leather backpack containing an ornate indigo lamp in the wolves' den. Across from the wolves' lair is a fresco depicting a large room with seven alcoves, all of which contain gleaming lamps of different colors.</p><p></p><p> The party follows the green light up some stairs and into a very large room with 7 alcoves. Only the green lamp is lit. There is a sarcophagus in the middle of the room carved with an image of a 7-foot tall hairless person in robes. The sarcophagus is shaped vaguely like an arrow and is pointed west. Alees finds and disarms a trap on the lid of the sarcophagus, at which time she discovers that the sarcophagus moves. Four characters work together to move the sarcophagus one click clockwise. An elevator comes up out of the floor in the alcove that the sarcophagus is pointed towards. Alexander places a torch in the elevator. The party decides to move the sarcophagus back. The sarcophagus will not budge in the counter-clockwise direction, so they move the sarcophagus clockwise again. The previous elevator descends, and a very loud, grating noise comes from below the alcove that the sarcophagus is now pointed towards. After about 10 seconds of noisy racket, the party hears a loud mechanical-sounding bang. The grating noise stops, but a new humming noise can be heard in its place. It gets louder and louder until a SWARM OF BEETLES and a MAD SLASHER emerge from a hole at the end of the alcove and attack the party. Alexander blinds the Mad Slasher with a Color Spray before being knocked unconscious by the swarm. The swarm of beetles attacks by completely enveloping party members within its range of motion, doing acid damage each round, and then moving on. The party kills the mad slasher but finds that it is unable to damage the swarm. They are forced to run. They burn some oil behind them, hoping that the smoke will delay the swarm's pursuit. This gambit buys the party just enough time to make it out of the cave mouth before the swarm emerges. However, once it emerges out into the open air, it disperses. The party is safe.</p><p></p><p> The party returns to the abandoned mine office and receives healing from Killian, who had focused his efforts on getting the fireplace and stove of the mine office working. Killian returns to town for supplies to repair the well, and returns later that night. While Killian was gone, Killick skinned and cleaned the 3 wolves they had killed and cooked up some wolf steaks that were tough but nutritious.</p><p> </p><p><em>11th of Planting</em>:</p><p> The party (except Killian) return to the Whispering Cairn. They check to see whether anything in the cairn has changed. It has not. They open the lid of the sarcophagus in the middle of the room. It is empty. Killick guts the mad slasher's corpse and finds a strange gooey orange substance in its stomach. </p><p></p><p> They decide to explore the hole in the floor below the green lantern (from which the beetles and the mad slasher emerged the previous day). They tie a rope to a piton and climb down the 20 ft deep shaft. The first room in this lower level contains a mangled/destroyed metal elevator compartment. The party surmises that its destruction must have caused all the loud noise. The walls of this room are covered with bas-relief carvings of hairless beings looking disapprovingly at those in the room. (However, these bas-reliefs have been severely damaged by the acid beetles.) </p><p></p><p> A few feet ahead the passage branches off to the left and right. Alexander, Tarric, and Killick went left while Katawan and Alees went right. The room on the left contained 6 raised slabs that looked like beds and a large statue of a hairless being holding a great club in two hands. At the end of the room was a corpse with a crushed skull lying on one of the slabs. They entered the room to investigate, and Alexander was immediately overcome by an overwhelming sense of fatigue. At that moment, they heard a scream from Katawan in the other room!</p><p></p><p>In their room, Katawan and Alees had discovered a large basin filled with a gooey orange substance that was crawling with more of the same blue acid beetles they had encountered the previous day. Before they could react, a GIANT BOMBARDIER BEETLE that had been crouching near a hive in the corner of the room sprayed acid at both of them. Alees dodged the acid spray, but Katawan took the brunt of it (causing him to scream). Tarric came running to help his wounded comrade. The fatigued Alexander also joined his friends in the room with the beetles. He cast Sleep at the back of the room, but instead of incapacitating the Giant Beetle, the spell merely caused hundreds of the small beetles on the orange goo to fall to the ground in a dormant state. Nevertheless, the giant beetle was quickly killed by Tarric, Killick, and Alees. Killick poked his quarterstaff into the hive. This aggravated the beetles within, but Killick chose to remove the staff before the beetles were aggravated enough to form another swarm.</p><p></p><p> Alees and Katawan tied ropes to Tarric and Killick and sent them back into the room with the statue to retrieve the corpse's body lying on the slab. Tarric quickly succumbed to the fatigue effect, but Killick quickly grabbed the corpse and left the room without any problems. This man had been dead for years. He wore masterwork red leather armor with an 8-pointed yellow star stitched to the chest. He wore a silver ring with a similar 8-pointed star insignia on his right hand.</p><p></p><p> Now that 2 party-members were fatigued and Katawan was wounded, the party decided to withdraw from the cairn for the rest of the day and return to the abandoned mine office (where they were given more healing by Killian). Alexander and Tarric immediately fell asleep and slept soundly for 8 hours even though it was only about noon when they returned.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Menexenus, post: 3305847, member: 8951"] [b]Session 1: Into the Whispering Cairn[/b] Cast of characters: Tarric (Scott's fighter) Alexander (Jason's wizard) Katawan (Dave's monk) Alees (Kim's rogue) Killick (JJ's ranger) Killian (Jim's cleric) [I]10th of Planting[/I]: The 5 characters (all except Katawan) departed Diamond Lake at dawn and traveled 3 hours on foot to the abandoned mine office near the Whispering Cave where they used to play as kids. The property is extremely dilapidated. Inside, the characters fight and kill a RABID SKUNK. After some looking around, the characters decide to use the office as a base camp for their exploration of the Whispering Cairn. Killian stays behind to try to spruce the place up a bit and make it semi-liveable. The other four scout ahead, trying to remember where the Cave was. After some looking, they find the old cave entrance they remember hidden behind a collapsed tree. They climb through the dead branches of the collapsed tree and enter the cave. Alexander recognizes that the glyphs along the wall are written in ancient Auran. (However, he is unable to decipher them.) The party finds a broken mirror-shaped object with a glyph at the bottom. Alexander identifies it as a personal glyph (i.e. someone's name), copies the glyph, and picks up some shards of broken black glass. The party notices a greenish light up ahead. At that moment, Katawan - another old childhood friend whom the group has not seen for years - arrives at the cave entrance and hails his former childhood friends. He relates that he was sent by the leader of his monastery to join them because the group of them have an important destiny to fulfill (as strange as that seems to all of them). Soon thereafter, the party is attacked by THREE WOLVES that had turned the entrance of the Cairn into their own lair. Alees finds a silver armband and a leather backpack containing an ornate indigo lamp in the wolves' den. Across from the wolves' lair is a fresco depicting a large room with seven alcoves, all of which contain gleaming lamps of different colors. The party follows the green light up some stairs and into a very large room with 7 alcoves. Only the green lamp is lit. There is a sarcophagus in the middle of the room carved with an image of a 7-foot tall hairless person in robes. The sarcophagus is shaped vaguely like an arrow and is pointed west. Alees finds and disarms a trap on the lid of the sarcophagus, at which time she discovers that the sarcophagus moves. Four characters work together to move the sarcophagus one click clockwise. An elevator comes up out of the floor in the alcove that the sarcophagus is pointed towards. Alexander places a torch in the elevator. The party decides to move the sarcophagus back. The sarcophagus will not budge in the counter-clockwise direction, so they move the sarcophagus clockwise again. The previous elevator descends, and a very loud, grating noise comes from below the alcove that the sarcophagus is now pointed towards. After about 10 seconds of noisy racket, the party hears a loud mechanical-sounding bang. The grating noise stops, but a new humming noise can be heard in its place. It gets louder and louder until a SWARM OF BEETLES and a MAD SLASHER emerge from a hole at the end of the alcove and attack the party. Alexander blinds the Mad Slasher with a Color Spray before being knocked unconscious by the swarm. The swarm of beetles attacks by completely enveloping party members within its range of motion, doing acid damage each round, and then moving on. The party kills the mad slasher but finds that it is unable to damage the swarm. They are forced to run. They burn some oil behind them, hoping that the smoke will delay the swarm's pursuit. This gambit buys the party just enough time to make it out of the cave mouth before the swarm emerges. However, once it emerges out into the open air, it disperses. The party is safe. The party returns to the abandoned mine office and receives healing from Killian, who had focused his efforts on getting the fireplace and stove of the mine office working. Killian returns to town for supplies to repair the well, and returns later that night. While Killian was gone, Killick skinned and cleaned the 3 wolves they had killed and cooked up some wolf steaks that were tough but nutritious. [I]11th of Planting[/I]: The party (except Killian) return to the Whispering Cairn. They check to see whether anything in the cairn has changed. It has not. They open the lid of the sarcophagus in the middle of the room. It is empty. Killick guts the mad slasher's corpse and finds a strange gooey orange substance in its stomach. They decide to explore the hole in the floor below the green lantern (from which the beetles and the mad slasher emerged the previous day). They tie a rope to a piton and climb down the 20 ft deep shaft. The first room in this lower level contains a mangled/destroyed metal elevator compartment. The party surmises that its destruction must have caused all the loud noise. The walls of this room are covered with bas-relief carvings of hairless beings looking disapprovingly at those in the room. (However, these bas-reliefs have been severely damaged by the acid beetles.) A few feet ahead the passage branches off to the left and right. Alexander, Tarric, and Killick went left while Katawan and Alees went right. The room on the left contained 6 raised slabs that looked like beds and a large statue of a hairless being holding a great club in two hands. At the end of the room was a corpse with a crushed skull lying on one of the slabs. They entered the room to investigate, and Alexander was immediately overcome by an overwhelming sense of fatigue. At that moment, they heard a scream from Katawan in the other room! In their room, Katawan and Alees had discovered a large basin filled with a gooey orange substance that was crawling with more of the same blue acid beetles they had encountered the previous day. Before they could react, a GIANT BOMBARDIER BEETLE that had been crouching near a hive in the corner of the room sprayed acid at both of them. Alees dodged the acid spray, but Katawan took the brunt of it (causing him to scream). Tarric came running to help his wounded comrade. The fatigued Alexander also joined his friends in the room with the beetles. He cast Sleep at the back of the room, but instead of incapacitating the Giant Beetle, the spell merely caused hundreds of the small beetles on the orange goo to fall to the ground in a dormant state. Nevertheless, the giant beetle was quickly killed by Tarric, Killick, and Alees. Killick poked his quarterstaff into the hive. This aggravated the beetles within, but Killick chose to remove the staff before the beetles were aggravated enough to form another swarm. Alees and Katawan tied ropes to Tarric and Killick and sent them back into the room with the statue to retrieve the corpse's body lying on the slab. Tarric quickly succumbed to the fatigue effect, but Killick quickly grabbed the corpse and left the room without any problems. This man had been dead for years. He wore masterwork red leather armor with an 8-pointed yellow star stitched to the chest. He wore a silver ring with a similar 8-pointed star insignia on his right hand. Now that 2 party-members were fatigued and Katawan was wounded, the party decided to withdraw from the cairn for the rest of the day and return to the abandoned mine office (where they were given more healing by Killian). Alexander and Tarric immediately fell asleep and slept soundly for 8 hours even though it was only about noon when they returned. [/QUOTE]
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