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The Lost City of Barakus writeup
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<blockquote data-quote="Lwaxy" data-source="post: 6311725" data-attributes="member: 53286"><p>Our wizard teleported back to the city alone that night to get the supplies needed to mine the hot pool and the crystal caves. We wanted to do that before we got into Barakus – hoping to find the cave again to begin with – to be able to afford more scrolls and potions and other stuff. It turned out teleporting back to us was little problem when he was teleporting alone (could spend more mana on teleport precision). He just landed in a pond and was all wet. </p><p></p><p> As soon as we got him dry, we marched on north to the indicated brick house at the edge of the forest. It was just small, with a rusted fence around it. It must have been rather old, but except from broken windows and door it looked just fine and we were kind of considering using it as our own base out here. Once we had routed out what the brothers hadn't dared to do alone before. Which turned out to be a barghest. As we had the brothers, the druid gal and the other bard with us it wasn't that much of a challenge. As we got it in the first room, our SCs thought it safe to search the rest, while the 2 druids (the half-elf and one of the brothers) went to search the area. The other half-orc took watch outside. </p><p></p><p> In a ruined library we found a note linking it with the wizard's tower, the note also mentioned some sort of teleport ring. Other than that, we just found some minor diamonds. However, the only room which still had a door had stairs leading downward. Thinking it was just a way to a normal basement, we went down and got shocked by an electrical trap. Some of us decended quite fast after that, ending in a small chamber with only a barrel with 2 sunrods in it. But hey, those things don't come for free either, and there was a tunnel out of there we of course had to explore. None of us thought of informing the others where we were going, or thought of waiting for them. The place looked kind of unfinished, and we had trouble judging how long we were walking, it was probably faster than going through the forest. We passed a cave that seemed to have been a rest place once, but the bucket used to take water out of a pool here was dirty, and we had our own water. Eventually we came to a larger cave and followed another tunnel breaking off in a right angle. Following it we aoided a trap and came to a dead end. Hidden there was some sort of steel tool. We thought it must have a purpose and spend quite some time searching until my bard, not the rogue, found a secret door following the original tunnel direction. We walked on for a while and then came to another basement with stairs leading up. There was a circle of runes around the stairs, which we recognized as a summoning trap, partly because of the text we found earlier. We even managed to find out that we needed the name of the trap creator to pass. Which we didn't know. The name had been on the paper we had found, but we hadn't brought it with us for some dumb reason. Deducting that this was probably the basemet of the wizard tower we wanted to take on anyway, we made the decision to go all the way back to try from above. We could still try our luck with this summoning circle if above would not work. </p><p></p><p> Long story short, we reunited with the others, trecked all the way to the tower, couldn't enter by any means and trecked back the next day to brave the circle – or rather, find the paper and thus the circle creator's name. Gah. </p><p></p><p> We came out in a big, well stocked, well preserved library, it even still had noes in books the wizard who owned it had read last. Stairs going up ended at a door we found was magically trapped. Not able to determine the codeword or what it did, we didn't go through but the rogue and the dwarf took the door out of the wall and placed it at the bottom of the staits at the wall. The face of our GM was priceless. We decided to teleport it back to the city, identify it properly and sell it. </p><p></p><p> Again we came out at a library, this time with all magic books. They weren't up to date but still useful, but there was not a single book on conjuration. Didn't bother us much as our wizard was more into abjuration and enchantments. We also found a letter to his 3 daughters, with the last bit strangely crossed out. </p><p></p><p> To the next floor again we had to take out a summoning door. On that level, we found all the missing conjuration stuff, way more than on any other subject. Guess we found this wizard's specialty. And on to the next floor we went, again taking out a door. But by then we knew the command words – each door had a letter carved in it, which was one of the names of the 3 daughters. One by one, my bard and the wizard brought the doors back to the city and sold them for an immense ammount of money. </p><p></p><p> The tower top was actually glass, with an illusion on it to make it appear brick. Yeah so we decided to claim the tower and sell most of the outdated books one by one, except for whatever the wizard thought useful. Over the next few days, with the brothers and their new friend departed, we did inventory. As we had also found a ring which had a gease on it (identified in the city) and functioned as a teleport without error for the wearer to get back to the tower top as long as the spellbook it compelled the wearer to search hadn't been found, our wizard was happy. He would gladly search, starting in Barakus, as long as it meant he could teleport himself and everyone else here if needed. So he had 2 places he could securely teleport to now. </p><p></p><p> Our attempt to find the entrance to the burial cave to mine stuff landed us in, not in front of, a grimlock cave. We had to fight our way out and destroy an evil god's statue in the process, and all it got us was a ring of swimming. Our priest asked his god to stop fooling around with us, that we would have plenty of time to root out evil and please, let us finish one thing after the other. That seemed to have helped, because we actually got there next try and were busy for a week or so. </p><p></p><p> Our next trip to the entrance of Barakus, with lots of scrolls, potions, items and new spells at the ready, landed us close enough to walk there and keep exploring. By now, we felt we needed to hurry to find the missing sorcerer guy – we had almost forgotten about him. </p><p></p><p> We decided to go straight ahead this time, not trusting coin flips. We found a statur of orcus, just a piece of stone but the cleric and the paladin/knight destroyed it anyway. Just then we found the cave had an owner – an orc named Burg and his war dogs. He had noticed our tracks days earlier and thought that we might have decided to heed the warning above the door. He thought us foolish to want to find the lost city, and also warned us of a ghoul down the path we hadn't yet taken. Ghoul... my bard kind of wanted to run. Missing a secret door, we went back and east from there, finding and finishing the ghoul. We also found an ogre, who was happy we had killed off that ghoul as it had prevented him from hunting (“Deadwalk thing not have make me dead other thing for eat“), and after a short battle with the dwarf decided he would leave us alone if we'd leave him alone. None of the inhabitants remembered anyone fitting the description of the lost sorcerer. </p><p></p><p> We explored on, finding nothing but a chasm with a bridge, empty caves and a harmless ratmen colony. Harmless as in, they thought us to be intruders, we fought back and they decided to rather let us pass. Tunnels went upward from there, and the ratmen told us there were weird things going on lately, not counting the ghoul, and that they avoided the area as it led to an old orc burial chamber. We went anyway, of course, but found the chamber empty. Being done for the day we went back to take up Burg's invitation to stay the night, and while talking with him, the rogue out of a hunch checked the area again and this time found that secret door. Burg was all surprised and was happy for us to check out what was there. He had never gone beyond the ratmen himself. </p><p></p><p> The next morning we found an empty cave with 2 spring traps at each exit. It spelled kobold. We disabled them and once more flipped a coin. The flip told us to go east. And then back west. Arriving at an intersection with a stalagmite in the middle, we found runes carved into it. Written in Draconic and barely readable but we could make out something the knight and the fighter recognized as Warrior's Prayer. Caves west and north of there were empty, so we went a longer passage south to come out in a cave with glowing rocks in some alcoves. The floor was strangely dirty, so we cleaned it up and found a magic circle. We were able to identify it after some ritual and found it to be a way to transfer CON from whoever touches the stones to whoever is in the circle. Not of much help right now. </p><p></p><p> As it was late, we went back, but upon hearing sounds from north we decided to check it out from the cave where we had disabled the traps earlier. We found a cave full of spiders, who had had kobold for dinner at some point, and had to smoke it out. We also found a chute leading upward, and someone was talking up there, calling out to us. So up we went, expecting other adventurers but instead found a group calling themselves travelers, camping in another entrance to the caves. We soon found out they were minor bandits, 3 siblings and a half-orc orphan, who used to bge in the gang we had finished. They warned us of another entrance down a slope to the east, describing something we could identify as kobolds coming out of it at night. Our priest and wannabe-paladin managed to talk some sense into them to stop robbing travelers, and when the priest wasn't listening the rogue told them stealing in secret was way better <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> We stayed the night, and they departed the next day. </p><p> </p><p></p><p> Now we definitely wanted to meet the kobolds, so the next day we went outside and went down the slope east to where the entrance to the kobold lair was. We decided to be polite and not kill off any more of their traps. In our world, kobolds were usually chaotic good to neutral nuisances. By now, Burg had followed us out of worry, with his dogs, so we had him along.</p><p></p><p> It ended with us making friends with the kobolds, learn a lot about the caves and the going-ons, and Twee, their leader, deciding to come with us for a while, together with his bodyguards Shack, Shuck, Muck, Mack, Devash, Kreshh, Nut, Fluck, Dingan and the shaman apprentice Digellidip (did I mention our GM loves to attach a string of NPCs to us?). </p><p></p><p> Twee had found a map of party of the cave by a large lake he wanted to show us and had been wondering what was up with that, but he didn't trust his folks enough to be of much help, but he had been an “outside adventurer“ for a while, so he claimed. Could explain while his rooms were so neat, and why he had his tribe to battle drills. </p><p></p><p> The cave with the lake was large, and we were shown a ledge in the cave, which had a statue of a beautiful maiden and an amulet of protection from sleep and charms (the kobolds knew what it was) in an offering bowl. Only a “critter free of good or bad“ as the kobolds called it, could use it without awakening the skeleton guard though. We determined it meant a person of neutrality. The only true neutral SC was my bard, so yay. Fire beetles were a real annoyance everywhere, but we found as long as we kept our distance, they kept theirs. </p><p> </p><p></p><p> There were islands in the middle of the lake, all of them holding an entrance to a hidden room, but it required 3 keys to open,which the kobold hadn't found and he was disappointed that we didn't have them either. With our trap identifying scrolls, we knew it was a fireball trap, nothing any of us dared to trigger just yet and we couldn't just remove this door. However, when we came back up, a grumpy water mephit attacked us, claiming the lake and all the cave as his. The kobolds had forgotten to mention that. Fleeing down, we tricked him into following, and when we all used our rings of invisibility we had bought before, he rushed right though us, falling for the open door illusion the kobolds had quickly created and triggered the trap. We got him back to the lake in time, not wanting to kill it, and it grudgingly admitted we weren't easy prey and no evil intruders. </p><p></p><p> While the priest and the gnomes discussed the terms of exploration, the rest checked out the now open room before trap reset and found a chapel with a statue of a robed guy and pews carved with faces of sleeping people. There was also a secret door, and deducting that the faces and statue may be an opening mechanism we took the restofthe day to figure it out. Could have gone faster if not for meddling impatient kobolds. But it just lead to a small chamber which help but a pedestal with a red cube. Knowing it must be something important, we took it and forgot to check for traps. Poison gas quickly spread and we had to run. But while the door to the chapel was still wedged open, we did find a way to take it out and teleport it to the city to sell... then we got equipment allowing us to take out the poison gas trap, too. Really, this quickly became more profitable, together with the options to mine the other cave, than this fabled city we were searching. </p><p> </p><p> The water from the lake drained through a narrow channel leading to the cave where a mist demon was the mephi had asked us to kill. Ya know, demon, priest and by now clearly paladin... they had to do it anyway. And that was all well because we might have missed the entrance to Barakus (and a bit of minor treasure). The entrnace was a heavy door half ajar with words in common over it reading something like opening your mind and bringing your true heart. We decided to ignore that for now and check out the rest of this level first, especially as the kobolds didn't really dare go down and we kind of liked them by now. </p><p></p><p> The rest consisted of a cave with a pool and a mermain statue which had a protection from evil around it, a varguille (I hate those) we tricked into following us to said statue (we almost lost Muck in the process and hurt the shaman apprentice) and finished it off there. Then we found the cave of Grimba the Grumpy Gnome (“I tried living outside once, it was awful“ who, after being made friendly, which involved the kobolds apologizing for trying to steal from him before, told us even more about the caves, including that there was a young mean dragon close who had recently moved in. Also, the next level down was filled with supposedly evil orcs and goblings, to which Burg admitted having heard their voices before when the tried to come up. He and our wizard traded spells, and we slowly learned, after spending the night, that he had been thrown out of his gnome village for being annoying, and he feared following us for being rejected again. A prist+paladin persuasion later (and a GM who sure had fun with this) our group had grown another gnome, with our secondary gnome bard getting somewhat jealous when my gnome started to like the grumpy know-it-all for his, well, knowledge. I believe the GM's comment was that we shouldn't have taken leadership feats if we didn't want followers. It was hillarious. </p><p> </p><p></p><p> Next day we were shown another cave exit and then the cave part where the dragon was. It turned out to be a young black dragon named Zemfer, and while he did attack us first, we managed to persuade him to talk to us. Turns out he was recently orphaned. As black dragons in our worlds aren't necessarily evil, the GM rolled his alignment and he turned out to be chaotic neutral. As you can guess, young dragons like adventure... and the kobolds immediately venerated him, which meant Zemfer needed to do something heroic. And with Zemfer wanting to follow us (officially, he claimed he would lead us, of course) the kobolds decided they would also follow. </p><p></p><p> The dragon already had an apprentice. A goblin adept, former apprentice of a goblin shaman who was now bodyless in a corner, studded with diamonds. Good thing was, the goblin was not only too coward to return to the lower levels, he also needed to stay up here and cast a black dragon illusion while the master was out. </p><p></p><p> With the dragon's caves found, that was all of this level and we concluded that weekend while our PCs went back to the city and then the tower to sell stuff and stock up on things again.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lwaxy, post: 6311725, member: 53286"] Our wizard teleported back to the city alone that night to get the supplies needed to mine the hot pool and the crystal caves. We wanted to do that before we got into Barakus – hoping to find the cave again to begin with – to be able to afford more scrolls and potions and other stuff. It turned out teleporting back to us was little problem when he was teleporting alone (could spend more mana on teleport precision). He just landed in a pond and was all wet. As soon as we got him dry, we marched on north to the indicated brick house at the edge of the forest. It was just small, with a rusted fence around it. It must have been rather old, but except from broken windows and door it looked just fine and we were kind of considering using it as our own base out here. Once we had routed out what the brothers hadn't dared to do alone before. Which turned out to be a barghest. As we had the brothers, the druid gal and the other bard with us it wasn't that much of a challenge. As we got it in the first room, our SCs thought it safe to search the rest, while the 2 druids (the half-elf and one of the brothers) went to search the area. The other half-orc took watch outside. In a ruined library we found a note linking it with the wizard's tower, the note also mentioned some sort of teleport ring. Other than that, we just found some minor diamonds. However, the only room which still had a door had stairs leading downward. Thinking it was just a way to a normal basement, we went down and got shocked by an electrical trap. Some of us decended quite fast after that, ending in a small chamber with only a barrel with 2 sunrods in it. But hey, those things don't come for free either, and there was a tunnel out of there we of course had to explore. None of us thought of informing the others where we were going, or thought of waiting for them. The place looked kind of unfinished, and we had trouble judging how long we were walking, it was probably faster than going through the forest. We passed a cave that seemed to have been a rest place once, but the bucket used to take water out of a pool here was dirty, and we had our own water. Eventually we came to a larger cave and followed another tunnel breaking off in a right angle. Following it we aoided a trap and came to a dead end. Hidden there was some sort of steel tool. We thought it must have a purpose and spend quite some time searching until my bard, not the rogue, found a secret door following the original tunnel direction. We walked on for a while and then came to another basement with stairs leading up. There was a circle of runes around the stairs, which we recognized as a summoning trap, partly because of the text we found earlier. We even managed to find out that we needed the name of the trap creator to pass. Which we didn't know. The name had been on the paper we had found, but we hadn't brought it with us for some dumb reason. Deducting that this was probably the basemet of the wizard tower we wanted to take on anyway, we made the decision to go all the way back to try from above. We could still try our luck with this summoning circle if above would not work. Long story short, we reunited with the others, trecked all the way to the tower, couldn't enter by any means and trecked back the next day to brave the circle – or rather, find the paper and thus the circle creator's name. Gah. We came out in a big, well stocked, well preserved library, it even still had noes in books the wizard who owned it had read last. Stairs going up ended at a door we found was magically trapped. Not able to determine the codeword or what it did, we didn't go through but the rogue and the dwarf took the door out of the wall and placed it at the bottom of the staits at the wall. The face of our GM was priceless. We decided to teleport it back to the city, identify it properly and sell it. Again we came out at a library, this time with all magic books. They weren't up to date but still useful, but there was not a single book on conjuration. Didn't bother us much as our wizard was more into abjuration and enchantments. We also found a letter to his 3 daughters, with the last bit strangely crossed out. To the next floor again we had to take out a summoning door. On that level, we found all the missing conjuration stuff, way more than on any other subject. Guess we found this wizard's specialty. And on to the next floor we went, again taking out a door. But by then we knew the command words – each door had a letter carved in it, which was one of the names of the 3 daughters. One by one, my bard and the wizard brought the doors back to the city and sold them for an immense ammount of money. The tower top was actually glass, with an illusion on it to make it appear brick. Yeah so we decided to claim the tower and sell most of the outdated books one by one, except for whatever the wizard thought useful. Over the next few days, with the brothers and their new friend departed, we did inventory. As we had also found a ring which had a gease on it (identified in the city) and functioned as a teleport without error for the wearer to get back to the tower top as long as the spellbook it compelled the wearer to search hadn't been found, our wizard was happy. He would gladly search, starting in Barakus, as long as it meant he could teleport himself and everyone else here if needed. So he had 2 places he could securely teleport to now. Our attempt to find the entrance to the burial cave to mine stuff landed us in, not in front of, a grimlock cave. We had to fight our way out and destroy an evil god's statue in the process, and all it got us was a ring of swimming. Our priest asked his god to stop fooling around with us, that we would have plenty of time to root out evil and please, let us finish one thing after the other. That seemed to have helped, because we actually got there next try and were busy for a week or so. Our next trip to the entrance of Barakus, with lots of scrolls, potions, items and new spells at the ready, landed us close enough to walk there and keep exploring. By now, we felt we needed to hurry to find the missing sorcerer guy – we had almost forgotten about him. We decided to go straight ahead this time, not trusting coin flips. We found a statur of orcus, just a piece of stone but the cleric and the paladin/knight destroyed it anyway. Just then we found the cave had an owner – an orc named Burg and his war dogs. He had noticed our tracks days earlier and thought that we might have decided to heed the warning above the door. He thought us foolish to want to find the lost city, and also warned us of a ghoul down the path we hadn't yet taken. Ghoul... my bard kind of wanted to run. Missing a secret door, we went back and east from there, finding and finishing the ghoul. We also found an ogre, who was happy we had killed off that ghoul as it had prevented him from hunting (“Deadwalk thing not have make me dead other thing for eat“), and after a short battle with the dwarf decided he would leave us alone if we'd leave him alone. None of the inhabitants remembered anyone fitting the description of the lost sorcerer. We explored on, finding nothing but a chasm with a bridge, empty caves and a harmless ratmen colony. Harmless as in, they thought us to be intruders, we fought back and they decided to rather let us pass. Tunnels went upward from there, and the ratmen told us there were weird things going on lately, not counting the ghoul, and that they avoided the area as it led to an old orc burial chamber. We went anyway, of course, but found the chamber empty. Being done for the day we went back to take up Burg's invitation to stay the night, and while talking with him, the rogue out of a hunch checked the area again and this time found that secret door. Burg was all surprised and was happy for us to check out what was there. He had never gone beyond the ratmen himself. The next morning we found an empty cave with 2 spring traps at each exit. It spelled kobold. We disabled them and once more flipped a coin. The flip told us to go east. And then back west. Arriving at an intersection with a stalagmite in the middle, we found runes carved into it. Written in Draconic and barely readable but we could make out something the knight and the fighter recognized as Warrior's Prayer. Caves west and north of there were empty, so we went a longer passage south to come out in a cave with glowing rocks in some alcoves. The floor was strangely dirty, so we cleaned it up and found a magic circle. We were able to identify it after some ritual and found it to be a way to transfer CON from whoever touches the stones to whoever is in the circle. Not of much help right now. As it was late, we went back, but upon hearing sounds from north we decided to check it out from the cave where we had disabled the traps earlier. We found a cave full of spiders, who had had kobold for dinner at some point, and had to smoke it out. We also found a chute leading upward, and someone was talking up there, calling out to us. So up we went, expecting other adventurers but instead found a group calling themselves travelers, camping in another entrance to the caves. We soon found out they were minor bandits, 3 siblings and a half-orc orphan, who used to bge in the gang we had finished. They warned us of another entrance down a slope to the east, describing something we could identify as kobolds coming out of it at night. Our priest and wannabe-paladin managed to talk some sense into them to stop robbing travelers, and when the priest wasn't listening the rogue told them stealing in secret was way better :-) We stayed the night, and they departed the next day. Now we definitely wanted to meet the kobolds, so the next day we went outside and went down the slope east to where the entrance to the kobold lair was. We decided to be polite and not kill off any more of their traps. In our world, kobolds were usually chaotic good to neutral nuisances. By now, Burg had followed us out of worry, with his dogs, so we had him along. It ended with us making friends with the kobolds, learn a lot about the caves and the going-ons, and Twee, their leader, deciding to come with us for a while, together with his bodyguards Shack, Shuck, Muck, Mack, Devash, Kreshh, Nut, Fluck, Dingan and the shaman apprentice Digellidip (did I mention our GM loves to attach a string of NPCs to us?). Twee had found a map of party of the cave by a large lake he wanted to show us and had been wondering what was up with that, but he didn't trust his folks enough to be of much help, but he had been an “outside adventurer“ for a while, so he claimed. Could explain while his rooms were so neat, and why he had his tribe to battle drills. The cave with the lake was large, and we were shown a ledge in the cave, which had a statue of a beautiful maiden and an amulet of protection from sleep and charms (the kobolds knew what it was) in an offering bowl. Only a “critter free of good or bad“ as the kobolds called it, could use it without awakening the skeleton guard though. We determined it meant a person of neutrality. The only true neutral SC was my bard, so yay. Fire beetles were a real annoyance everywhere, but we found as long as we kept our distance, they kept theirs. There were islands in the middle of the lake, all of them holding an entrance to a hidden room, but it required 3 keys to open,which the kobold hadn't found and he was disappointed that we didn't have them either. With our trap identifying scrolls, we knew it was a fireball trap, nothing any of us dared to trigger just yet and we couldn't just remove this door. However, when we came back up, a grumpy water mephit attacked us, claiming the lake and all the cave as his. The kobolds had forgotten to mention that. Fleeing down, we tricked him into following, and when we all used our rings of invisibility we had bought before, he rushed right though us, falling for the open door illusion the kobolds had quickly created and triggered the trap. We got him back to the lake in time, not wanting to kill it, and it grudgingly admitted we weren't easy prey and no evil intruders. While the priest and the gnomes discussed the terms of exploration, the rest checked out the now open room before trap reset and found a chapel with a statue of a robed guy and pews carved with faces of sleeping people. There was also a secret door, and deducting that the faces and statue may be an opening mechanism we took the restofthe day to figure it out. Could have gone faster if not for meddling impatient kobolds. But it just lead to a small chamber which help but a pedestal with a red cube. Knowing it must be something important, we took it and forgot to check for traps. Poison gas quickly spread and we had to run. But while the door to the chapel was still wedged open, we did find a way to take it out and teleport it to the city to sell... then we got equipment allowing us to take out the poison gas trap, too. Really, this quickly became more profitable, together with the options to mine the other cave, than this fabled city we were searching. The water from the lake drained through a narrow channel leading to the cave where a mist demon was the mephi had asked us to kill. Ya know, demon, priest and by now clearly paladin... they had to do it anyway. And that was all well because we might have missed the entrance to Barakus (and a bit of minor treasure). The entrnace was a heavy door half ajar with words in common over it reading something like opening your mind and bringing your true heart. We decided to ignore that for now and check out the rest of this level first, especially as the kobolds didn't really dare go down and we kind of liked them by now. The rest consisted of a cave with a pool and a mermain statue which had a protection from evil around it, a varguille (I hate those) we tricked into following us to said statue (we almost lost Muck in the process and hurt the shaman apprentice) and finished it off there. Then we found the cave of Grimba the Grumpy Gnome (“I tried living outside once, it was awful“ who, after being made friendly, which involved the kobolds apologizing for trying to steal from him before, told us even more about the caves, including that there was a young mean dragon close who had recently moved in. Also, the next level down was filled with supposedly evil orcs and goblings, to which Burg admitted having heard their voices before when the tried to come up. He and our wizard traded spells, and we slowly learned, after spending the night, that he had been thrown out of his gnome village for being annoying, and he feared following us for being rejected again. A prist+paladin persuasion later (and a GM who sure had fun with this) our group had grown another gnome, with our secondary gnome bard getting somewhat jealous when my gnome started to like the grumpy know-it-all for his, well, knowledge. I believe the GM's comment was that we shouldn't have taken leadership feats if we didn't want followers. It was hillarious. Next day we were shown another cave exit and then the cave part where the dragon was. It turned out to be a young black dragon named Zemfer, and while he did attack us first, we managed to persuade him to talk to us. Turns out he was recently orphaned. As black dragons in our worlds aren't necessarily evil, the GM rolled his alignment and he turned out to be chaotic neutral. As you can guess, young dragons like adventure... and the kobolds immediately venerated him, which meant Zemfer needed to do something heroic. And with Zemfer wanting to follow us (officially, he claimed he would lead us, of course) the kobolds decided they would also follow. The dragon already had an apprentice. A goblin adept, former apprentice of a goblin shaman who was now bodyless in a corner, studded with diamonds. Good thing was, the goblin was not only too coward to return to the lower levels, he also needed to stay up here and cast a black dragon illusion while the master was out. With the dragon's caves found, that was all of this level and we concluded that weekend while our PCs went back to the city and then the tower to sell stuff and stock up on things again. [/QUOTE]
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