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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1545569" data-attributes="member: 9626">The next morning, the party made their second attempt at raiding the temple.  Once again, they used magic to enhance their stealth ability.  Tsine made most of the party invisible, but left the mounts (including Rudyard and Quercus’ special mounts) outside.  Tal insisted on bring the little girl, however, since she so far lacked any tendencies towards self-preservation.  At least the horses could run, and the Pegasus and hippogriff could fight back a predator or lead the horses away to safety. The party invisibly snuck towards the center of the forest, and then to the temple.  It was a large, stone building, and about two stories high.  However, if the Lady of Blood really did live in a drow city under the temple, the area underneath the temple was potentially endless.  The group quietly gathered together and worked out a plan.“Well, a frontal assault would be a mistake,” Seldszar pointed out.“But all the windows are too small to get through,” Dane complained.Tal grinned (like anyone could see it.)  “I have an idea.”While he explained his plan, he withdrew a staff, and quietly made his way to one of the sides of the temple.  After nearing the temple, he peeked through the window, and noticed that it was connected to a hallway.  He then used the Staff of Earth and Stone he recently purchased to temporarily create a hole in the wall.  The group quietly entered the temple, and began to explore.  Soon, they found the entrance, if the double doors, position in the temple, and pair of foreboding Bas statues were any indication.  Tsine pondered the statues, and had an idea.  “Maybe we can get some information out of the statue.  I’m sure there’s some kind of magic that lets you talk to inanimate objects.  If nothing else, this could be further proof of the existence of Bas.”Dane snorted.  “And how do you propose we move a heavy statue like that with us?”Tsine responded by simply unrolling a portable hole.“Oh,” Dane replied, looking foolish (which again, fortunately, didn’t matter.)Unfortunately, while the plan didn’t have the first most obvious downside most adventurers dread (the statues animating,) it did have another problem, for no sooner did Dane, Quercus, Robin, and Rudyard heave the statue over the hole, then two cultists casually began to walk down the hallway towards them.  The party was still invisible, but the suddenly vanishing statue made both of the cultists realize something was up.The party sprang into action, but realized that a loud fight would be a mistake, and that they needed information, they moved quietly and tried to avoid doing lethal damage.  However, Seldszar still overcompensated, and hit one of the cultists so hard in the back of the head with a sap that his neck completely snapped!  Rudyard had a little more luck, and he sent the second cultist on a brief nap with the flat of his blade.  However, two of the party were now visible, and they had bodies to deal with.  A hurried Tal cautiously opened the first door that he saw, and sighed with relief when he learned it was a storage closet.  He whispered for everyone to go in through that door, and they all dashed in, dragging the bodies along.Once safely inside the closet, Quercus healed the surviving cultist into consciousness.  He woke up with a groan.  “Where am I?” he croaked.Tal cancelled his invisibility and took over the interrogation.  He pulled out his sonic rapier and held it to the man’s throat, while letting him notice the vibrations of the blade.  “It doesn’t matter who we are or where you are.  If you don’t give us the information we want, you’ll suffer the same fate as your friend here.”The cultist’s eyes went wide, and Quercus and some of the other more “ethical” members of the party were about to step in to restrain their friend, but Tal looked back and gave them a “don’t worry, I’m just bluffing” glance.  The cultist easily started talking; he apparently wasn’t among the highest-ranking individuals here.“Look, I don’t know much.  I’m new here.  They don’t tell us anything!”Tal sighed.  “Look, we just need to know where the Lady of Blood is.”  However, as he was saying this, Rudyard and the other more observant heroes noticed there were screams coming from outside.  Something was happening nearby that was throwing the place into a panic.  Were they found out already?The cultist continued.  “Oh, she’s in the drow city, way below us.  You have to go down eight floors, and then cross the underground lake to even get to the entrance to the city!  And I don’t know where she is beyond that.”Tal, who also heard the shouting by now, quickly asked his last question.  “Where are the stairs down?”“In the northeast and southeast corners of this floor.  They’re in the hallways, so they’re easy to see.”After hearing this, Tal hit the cultist across the head with the side of his blade, knocking him unconscious.  He and the rest of the party burst out the door, and prepared to make a run for it.  Shouts were all around them, and people were yelling about an attack, but at first, no one really paid much attention to the party, even though they all were essentially visible at this point.  They made their way quickly to a staircase, and began their descent down.  It was only after they cleared the first floor that the rushing cultists finally took notice of them.  What followed from here was a bloodbath.  Any cultists dumb enough to try and stop the party were cut down without effort, so soon all of them either fled up using the other staircase, or down ahead of the party.  After going down five floors’ worth of residential floors, the party entered a far less structured floor.  The two staircases and the corridor between them was more or less the same, but the entire right wall was gone.  Beyond the gap, there was a massive cavern, filled with plants and apparently all kinds of animals.  Rudyard paused for a moment as he looked at it.  “Apparently, the Bas worshippers are keeping nature preserves underground like we do.  Does that mean they also have the secret to the sun-storing crystals?”The eighth basement only had the stairs and corridor, and one door in the middle of each wall.  Trusting to Krista, Dane tried the east door first.  He apparently guessed correctly, for there was a trap door in the floor here that led further down.  However, the room wasn’t empty.  A large, hideous female humanoid with splotchy purple-black skin was here, and she drew her scimitar as soon as Dane opened the door.Dane didn’t hesitate for a moment.  He charged right into the room, but the woman had both very thick skin and full plate armor, and his weapon was just deflected against them.  Quercus and Seldszar had the same problems when they tried to attack her, and Rudyard and Robin chose to wait in the hallway, and respond to any attacks that might come from behind.  Tsine and Tal fired at the hag with magic, but only Tsine’s lightning bolt penetrated her magic resistance.  Finally, the hag was able to respond.  She swung at Seldszar with her scimitar, wounding him slightly with a grazing cut.  However, Rudyard and Robin’s hunch was soon proven right, as the door behind them burst open.Behind it, there was another nature preserve, but the trees and ground were black and bloodstained, and the few monsters they could see were just as twisted and evil.  Just behind the door, there was a second hag, which is dressed in hide armor.  She was being guarded by a wolf and a strange monster with a body like a monstrous bulldog, but a strange multi-level mouth with many layers of teeth.  Before she could respond, however, Rudyard and Robin took advantage of their intuition and attacked their nearest foe, the wolf.  It died almost instantly.  “My beloved pet!” the hag yelled, and then took a swing at Rudyard.  Meanwhile, the dog-thing wrapped its tongue around Robin, and began to pull him towards its mouth!Dane realized things were going badly and quickly, and his awareness of the danger he was in helped hone his skills even more.  This sudden burst of determination was enough for him to find a weakness in the hag’s armor, and he used it to cut the foul creature’s head off.  Quercus immediately turned around, and moved to help Robin fight the dog.  Seldszar tried to help as well, but couldn’t find room to tumble in behind the dog and second hag.  Rudyard and Robin continued to attack the hag and dog creature, and Tsine killed the dog, but Tal still was unable to get past their spell resistance.  The hag looked at the group with a face twisted by horror and rage.  “My…sister!” she wailed, pointed at the pile of dust that the first hag turned into.  “You will pay for this some day!”  With that, she suddenly vanished.The party quickly gathered up the treasure the first hag had, and then moved to the trap door.  In a rush to get to the lake before a proper defense could be mounted, they lifted the door up without checking for traps, causing an alarm to ring out.  Of course, they were already noticed long ago, so it had no appreciable effect.  Below the trap door was a massive circular stairway down, that was carved out of a natural fissure of stone.  Soon, the staircase led to an underground chamber with an entire dock built into it.  Beyond the chamber itself was nothing but darkness, but presumably that was the lake the prisoner told them about.  Unfortunately, the boats were almost all gone, as the cultists used them to flee to the drow city already.  However, there was one left, but it looked like it was designed for a crew of twenty!  Still, beggars can’t be choosers, the party decided, and they quickly ran down the stairs and towards the boat before the survivors in the temple could catch them.  However, as they neared the boat, a pair of guards was alerted to their presence.  The guards, a pair of bipedal insects, slowly stalked the party.  Finally, just as they boarded the boat, they struck.  Both released clouds of a deadly, corrosive gas around the party, then charged in with their spears.  However, once the party was aware of them, they easily made short work of the two unfortunate guards, and then fled the boat until the gas cleared up.  Once it was gone, they untied the boat, raised the anchor, and began their very slow journey across the lake.OOC Notes:  The dog and bug monsters were yugoloths, from the Manual of the Planes.  The surviving night hag druid will be used again.The alarm the party thought was them was actually an undead attack on the temple I had planned on having before the game.  I thought it might be one way to get into if they continued watching the place for a little longer.  And I pretty much skipped the fight in the residential floors in the game as well, since it really was pointless to run with a bunch of 9th and 10th level characters.Axegrrl, the problem is the events I'm recapping here are so old, I don't really have a handle on what class and level everyone is anymore.  I know the basics, though.  Quercus is a half-celestial cleric, with a level or two of paladin, and he's thinking of taking the hospitaler Prc (which I didn't look at very carefully, apparently.)  Tal is a 2nd level bard, he has a level or two of Dragon Disciple, but is mostly a sorceror.  Tsine is a wizard with a couple of fighter levels.  Rudyard is a ranger.  Dane is a fighter, Seldszar is a rogue, and Robin is a ranger.  All of them are around 9th or 10th level at this point.</blockquote>

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