March 22, 295 YF, Late Afternoon
The party emerges from the mines, and begins the walk back towards Gray Cliffs. However, before they have gotten very far, Tala spots Barav Kree (Tala’s hawk) circling overhead. He cries out and flies down, alighting on her outstretched arm. There is a message tied to his leg, which she unties and quickly reads:
Tala –
Do not return to the town under any circumstances. It is extremely dangerous right now. Come to my tower immediately; I have need of your assistance.
-- Critias
There is some debate about whether they should head immediately to the town or follow Critias’ advice. They decide to take the path of caution, and they change course to head towards the sage’s tower on the far Western side of the island. As they cross the island Westward, the dwarves get a good view of the ruined city, and they have a most disturbing revelation: the island is only about half of the size it used to be! The city (and the island) used to stretch out about twice as far to the South as it does now. Most of where the city used to sit is now where the Serpent’s Fangs lie. Given what Fargo saw when they rowed out to the Fangs before, the party presumes that half of the ruined city must lie underwater, beneath the Fangs.
The party presses onwards, heads through the ancient ruins on the island. Anathor and Tardok recognize it as definitely the remains of the city they once lived in. They arrive at Critias’ tower, one of the few buildings in the ruins that remains intact. It stands perhaps 80 feet tall, carved from stone in an architectural style similar to the rest of the ruins, without windows or other features besides an open entryway at the base. The party enters the first level of the tower, and is immediately confronted by a pair of large snarling hounds! The two dogs are larger than the halflings, and they shimmer with energy. Further, the stairs upwards to the tower are now blocked by a translucent orange field of some kind.
Ug begins to cautiously approach the dogs, wanting to pet them, but as he does, they spring into action! Jaws snapping, they engage the party in combat. Further, the hounds appear to be able to howl and shoot bolts of energy through their eyes that badly stun some of the party. The battle is in full swing when Tala begins to realize that these dogs are awfully familiar; in fact there used to be some statues in this very room that look just like them!
Tala might have identified them much sooner; she failed the DC 10 INT check to recall several times in a row at the beginning of the combat. Sometimes the dice are unforgiving…
Quickly realizing what must be going on, she starts calling urgently for Critias. The dogs begin to back down, though the party takes a few more whacks at them for good measure. A few moments later he wanders down the stairs, and is quite startled to see what is going on. Pointing at the dogs in turn he says their names, “Romulus! Remus!” and they turn back into statues, albeit somewhat chipped and cracked ones now.
Embarrassed that he forgot to disable his defenses, he apologies and leads the party upstairs to the top of the tower. They enter a large workshop, with piles of notes covering every surface, books stacked into tottering piles, and arcane research equipment scattered all about. Despite the lack of windows on the outside, the workshop appears to have an excellent view of the surrounding ruins.
At first it is difficult to get a coherent story out of Critias; he is easily distracted by the newcomers to the island and tales of the events that the party has encountered so far. Half the party peppers him with questions about all sorts of things while the other half attempts to keep him on track about what is happening in the town.
For purposes of a halfway-sane Story Hour, it would be rather difficult to recount the disjoint flow of conversation with Critias. Here is the information the party gained in discussion with Critias in a somewhat more linear order.
Critias warns the party that it would be very dangerous for them to return right now; that an evil priest of some power has come to the town and is charming or attacking any who stands in his way. The party describes Lazarus, and Critias says that it is very likely the same person.
He explains that the Mayors of Gray Cliffs have had the responsibility for generations of guarding a powerful artifact, the Warding Stone. Critias believes the Stone is tightly connected to powerful enchantments that protect the island, the same enchanments that likely destroyed the ship that Fargo was on. He isn’t sure how Torix was able to get to the island years ago, but thinks it may have something to do with the fact that Torix was unconscious and not on a boat.
Critias tells the party that Lazarus came to the island to take the Warding Stone for his own foul purposes; and that Mayor Netter had managed to foil him temporarily by fooling him into taking powerless replicas. In the early afternoon, Lazarus discovered the deception and came back to the town, angry and powerful. Critias tells them that the Mayor, the bard Caladriel, and several others in the town were gravely injured by his attack, and he has taken not only the Warding Stone but several Rakalith “gatekeys”, similar to the one the party has. If the party had returned to the town directly and tried to stop him, Lazarus would surely have defeated, and possibly even killed the entire group.
Critias is certain Lazarus is now seeking a way off of the island, and the sage only knows of one way to do so. Deep below the city, there are portals that lead off of the island. They require powerful ancient magics to reactivate, and a gatekey to use, both of which Lazarus likely has. Although he is uncomfortable sending them into such danger, he asks the party to travel deeper into the mines they just discovered in the hopes of tracking Lazarus and monitoring his activities. Critias warns them most strongly not to directly engage the evil priest in combat; doing so would surely lead to their deaths. However, if they can spy on him, see if he is really headed out through a portal in the undercity, then Critias thinks he may still be able to stop him. The party must gather this information for Critias; he cannot go himself without disrupting vital work that he is in the middle of.
All throughout Critias’ description of what Lazarus is up to and what the party must do, the party peppers him with questions on a variety of other topics. He is pleased to meet the dwarves, though doesn’t seem to fully accept their story of being from the past, and is distracted on to other topics before he can question them further. Rak Shaol, he confirms, is the name of the ancient city that used to be on this island. Critias is fascinated to see that the party has an actual gatekey, and is eager to study it further when the opportunity presents itself. The sage confirms that he can in fact translate the Ophidian writings that the party has found, though it would take him considerable time and attention that he cannot spare at the moment.
When the party mentions the Ophidians, Critias is startled, and warns them that that name is never to be mentioned among others. He does not offer any further explanation, telling them that it is truly in their best interests to remain ignorant of the reasons why.
Fargo asks him about the Web of Shadows, and after referencing a few of his volumes he answers that according to legend, there was once a powerful group of assassins operating out of Rak Shaol. The leader of this group used an artifact called the Web of Shadows, and that with it there was no target that was beyond his abilities to eliminate. Unfortunately, he has no information about where it might be now.
The party accepts the task, and prepares to return to the mines in the morning after resting. Before they leave, Critias offers to give them some measure of protection against Lazarus’ enchantments, to protect their minds at least. The party agrees, and Critias casts a spell on the entire group, with sparkles of magical energy settling onto the head of each individual.
Rather than risk returning to the town and encountering Lazarus, the party decides to camp for the night at the base of the tower. In the company of Romulus and Remus, the party sets watches but has an uneventful evening.
Me: Torix, as you settle down for your watch one of the hounds comes over and licks you with an energy tongue. It tingles.
Torix: Torix finds this both strangely appealing and repulsive.
March 23, 295 YF
The next morning, the party memorizes their spells and prepares to head out to the mines. Before leaving, Anathor pilfers a few minor items from Critias’ storehouse, but leaves him a few gold in compensation. They trek back through the ruins and across the island, and return to the cave entrance.
Through all the dust and debris in the mines, Tala is able to track the trail of someone who has come to the mines after the party left them last. The party decides to follow the trail directly rather than explore the areas of the upper limits that they did not venture into before. She is able to follow the trail down into the lower level, into the mining tunnels proper. The maze-like tunnels would have been difficult to search without a guide, but the party is able to use the trail to make their way through easily. Apart from Ug placing a dead baby blade-spider on Tardok’s head, the trip down is uneventful.
Unfortunately, Tala loses the trail as it descends into a lower level below the mines. Going down a stone staircase, the party makes their way into a large vaulted tunnel, tall enough that their light barely reaches the curved ceiling above. Without a trail to follow any longer, they begin to search along the corridor. After travelling for some distance in the dark cavernous corridor, their progress is blocked by what appears to have been a major cave-in that goes on for some distance.
Venturing the other way down the corridor, after a while the party comes across a side passage, still intact. At the end of the passage are two rooms, with a dense web of red glowing lines crisscrossing the entire room. The effect looks very similar to the blue lines where the party rescued Anathor and Tardok. Peering into both of the rooms, the party can see that the room is lined with glass cylinders, and there appears to be a humanoid figure in each of them. The party tries tossing a rock at the field, as they did before, but this time the rock bounces right off.
Heading back to the main corridor, they continue along it for another fair distance. The passage ends at a giant pair of double-doors, sealed with magical glyphs on every square inch. Doing their best to analyze the glyphs, the spellcasters come to the conclusion that the wards are focused on keeping something in rather than keeping them out. They decide not to experiment with opening them.
To either side of the door, corridors lead off into the darkness. Following the right branch first, the party comes to a long-abandoned temple of some kind. There are three Ophidian skeletons, in faint remains of robes, arrayed around an altar at the far end of the room, all facing towards it. Sitting on the altar is a golden bracelet of two serpents twined around each other.
The party explores the room, and notes a common symbol of a closed book in all the carvings on the walls. Jakob supposes that it is probably the holy symbol of whatever god was being worshipped here, but he does not recognize it as belonging to any god he knows of. Anathor takes the bracelet from the altar, but the party decides not to play around with it right now.
Instead, they head back to the main corridor, and go down the other side passage. Almost immediately, they see torchlight ahead and the sounds of activity. Milo heads down the passage alone, moving silently in the flickering shadows. Around the corner he sees another temple room, somewhat similar in shape to the one the party just explored.
This one, however, has a large archway at the far end behind a raised altar, with Ophidian script written all along it. To either side of the arch is ornate and complex stonework, with a small fist-sized recession. The temple room itself has lines of glyphs etched in the stone all along the floor, wall, and ceilings. Six pillars, with large stone snakes entwined around them, are spaced throughout the room and the glyphs seem to mostly be radiating outward from the pillars.
Standing in front of the portal, looking through sheafs of parchment, is Lazarus! At least Milo assumes it is Lazarus; he looks somewhat different than the last time the party met him. Whereas before he was a somewhat mild looking traveler, dressed unremarkably with a weathered old staff, he now appears in a robe of shimmering scales, his staff carved in the shape of a hooded cobra. He is bald, with striking features and a commanding aura. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to notice Milo.
Milo was a turbo sneaking machine. He made sneak checks up in the mid-20s several times in a row.
Milo returns to the party, and there is some discussion as to whether they should try and stop him, watch for a bit longer, or just head back now. They do not reach any clear decision, and Anathor and Milo go forward to spy and see if he can figure out more about what Lazarus is up to. The dwarven wizard is unable to tell anything beyond what Milo saw. However, as he is returning to the party, he falls flat on his face, clattering to the ground with a loud grunt! Lazarus calls out, asking who is there. The party remains hidden further down the corridor, but Lazarus does not come out of the room. Milo sees him do something with the staff, and all the glyphs in the room flash briefly.
Eventually Milo decides to get a closer look at what Lazarus is doing. His plan is to advance to the altar using the pillars as cover from being seen. Unfortunately, as soon as he crosses one of the lines of glyphs on the floor, the two stone serpents on the nearest pillar come to life and attack him. Milo tumbles expertly past them to try and flee the room and get back to the rest of the party, but one of the snakes coils around him, pinning the halfling tightly!
Meanwhile, Lazarus has invoked some power of his staff again, and a shimmering energy field springs up around the altar area, emanating from two black faceted rocks on pedestals at either end of the room. He points his staff at the trapped Milo, and a powerful mental force claws at Milo’s mind! But Critias’ protection seems to have worked, and he is able to resist the spell.
Resisting the effects of the staff required a DC 25 will check! Fortunately the mental shielding from Critias gave the party a +15 to resist it…
Hearing combat break out, the party starts running down the corridor to help. They get there in a few rounds, but in that time Milo has almost been crushed into unconsciousness by the giant snake. The party gets bottlenecked up in the small corridor leading to the temple, fighting the other snake that has moved forward to engage them. With a few mightly blows of his harpoon, Torix dispatches one and injures the other enough that it releases the badly injured Milo.
Lazarus attempts to make mental attacks on a few other party members, and they also resist it. He is quite shaken by this failure, and his aura of confidence is replaced with hurried activity. Lazarus takes a small glowing stone, looking just like the one the party has, and places it in the recess to the right of the portal. The archway crackles with energy for a moment and then goes silent. Lazarus begins casting a spell at it.
Fargo determines that he is casting a very lengthy spell, and that the party may still have enough time to stop it. They also notice that Lazarus’ equipment, including a big pile of notes, is lying quite some distance from him, and they decide to try and get to it. Ug rushes forward, crossing more glyph lines and releases serpents from two more pillars! The four serpents quickly surround him, attacking viciously.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party hasn’t quite finished off the last of the first round of serpents. Fargo tries to get past it, but it catches him with a vicious snap of its jaws. He goes down in an unconscious heap, bleeding. Jakob and Tala are doing their best to heal the injuries of the party, which are rapidly accumulating at the hands of the snakes. Torix is still standing only by virtue of his rapidly-fading barbarian rage, and Ug is savaged by the four serpents surrounding him. Further complicating matters, Milo tries to get the party to flee rather than fight, and heads off back down the corridor. Tala has a plan, and tries to rally the party, but mostly confusion reigns.
Just as things are looking grim, the tide turns in favor of our heroes. Fargo is stood back up by some healing, and catches several of the serpents in a Color Spray. The fighters of the group manage to get on top of things, and start slaying serpents in quick order. While this is going on, however, Lazarus is continuing to work his magics, and now the archway is filled with a flickering pale blue light.
Shortly, all of the serpents are defeated; however the party would have to cross several more layers of glyphs to reach the altar and it is clear that Lazarus’ spell will soon be completed. The party springs into action. Torix throws his harpoon at one of the black rocks projecting the energy field; his aim is true and half of the field collapses. Ug leaps over several lines of glyphs, and manages not to trigger any, getting all the way up to where Lazarus is!
Lazarus finally finishes his spell, and the portal before him springs to life, pulsing with energy. Uncertain of his ability to affect the party with his magic, with his defenses just destroyed and a very large fighter bearing down upon him, he grabs the gatekey and leaps through the portal. A few moments later, the energies flicker and go out.
With Lazarus’ disappearance, the glyphs seem to no longer have any effect. The party goes up to the altar to search it more thoroughly. Looking more closely at the archway, they can see that of the recessions on either side of the arch, one is triangular and the other square. However, there is no sign of the energy that activated it a few moments ago. It is fairly clear that the party’s gatekey would fit in the recession, but they decide against trying it.
On the altar itself is a closed book, carved from stone. Despite being carved from solid stone, the party finds that the book can be opened! They cannot read the Ophidian script within, although Milo writes some of it down. As they are looking through the book, more script appears at the “end” of the book.
Behind some rubble collapsed in a corner of the room, the party finds another Ophidian skeleton. However, this one is wearing a dark robe, covered in silver embroidered runes all across it. While it is tailored for an Ophidian, it looks wearable by a human or dwarf (although hardly a perfect fit). Almost unnoticeable against the dark fabric of the robe, the image of a closed book is stiched on the front of the robes in black.
Finally, the party starts going through the belongings that Lazarus left behind. Mostly his things consist of mundane travel gear, such as rations and a bedroll. However, they include many sheets of parchment:
Many pages of scribblings in a flowing, spidery language, similar to the runic carvings seen outside the mine. There are very rough translations of a few phrases throughout:
“Our prison(?) is complete ; we can only wait for the (return? / escape?) and remain faithful.”
“Rakath Arrik = Warding Stone?”
“they move in shadow, death Whispering the names of the knowing”
“Vakath Elat” is written and underlined, with the words “map?” and “Eldon Blakely – C. College”
“… in the final hours the blighted(?) waters themselves brought down even the mightiest of those who remained”
“of the Madness, we still know little. The formless angels doing the bidding of their Mistress undid centuries of civilization in but a few decades.” That passage has an annotation, doubly underlined: “Very dangerous to release.”.
“their research(?) beyond death has proven valuable; Sthanar’s work on the “Unraveler” is more than we could have hoped for. Using just a small piece of the Corruptor’s (essence?), carefully preserved, it can (madness?) (soul?) (unity?)”
---
Pages of diagrams and formulae that make little sense, with the phrase “Fate Conjunction” at the bottom. The work looks incomplete.
---
Several pages of what appears to be a trading ledger, providing an accounting of the purchase and sale of various commodities. The ledger is attributed to “Marcus Swimble, Factor of Trading of the Blue Talon, Dragonscale”.
Injured and exhausted, the party decides to return to Critias and tell him what they found. They makes their way back out of the mines and over to the tower. Dusk is falling as the party returns to the large stone tower. This time, however, the two glowing hounds do not attack the party, and Critias shortly comes down to let them up.
Critias is most concerned when he hears that they encountered Lazarus directly, but very glad that they managed to find where he went and confirm his egress. However, he has bad news for the party. While they were in the mines, he has done some further research on the nature of the enchantments that the Warding Stone was maintaining. He believes that there are powerful and horrific beasts, creations of the Ophidians, that are being kept at bay by the Stone. Without it, it is only a matter of time before they are unleashed on the inhabitants of the island.
Yet there is some hope. If the Warding Stone can be recovered, or Lazarus’ plans for it stopped, then the town and its residents may yet be spared. Critias has another task that he needs this group to carry out for him, one far more dangerous than their previous encounter with Lazarus. He believes that now that the portal has been reactivated, anyone with a suitable gatekey ought to be able to use it, and follow Lazarus through. However, there is no guarantee that on the other side, they will be able to use the portal to return. Unless the attempt is made, though, the entire town of Gray Cliffs and all its residents are sure to be destroyed by the weakening wards.
The party debates among themselves, and decides to venture through the portal to pursue Lazarus. Jakob says he can hardly sit back and watch his town get destroyed, and agrees to join them. It is already late, so the party decides to camp at Critias’ tower once more.
Before settling in for the evening, Fargo casts Detect Magic to go over the various items they have found. He determines that the black wavy dagger, the rune-stitched robe, and the serpent bracelet are all magical. The dagger has light Enchantment magic, while the robe has a jumble of weak fields which are hard to interpret. The bracelet has a much stronger aura of Transformation magic.
Anathor decides to try and wear the bracelet. As soon as he clasps it around his wrist, the serpents in it begin to move, and bite into him! The injury is not severe, and the dwarf can almost immediately feel his pulse quicken and his reflexes sharpen. There is no apparent way to remove the bracelet now that it has shifted. Both Fargo and Anathor try on the rune-stiched robe, but there is no obvious effect for either.
The night passes uneventfully. As dawn breaks, the party prepares to return to Gray Cliffs, gather supplies, get their personal belongings and say their goodbyes to the sleepy fishing village that has been their home…
(Run 2 ends)