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Session 21

January 8, 2023

Note: This play report contain spoilers for the adventure The Incandescent Grottoes.

The Fighting Mongooses

  • Brom, the friar
  • Jymes Smith, the hunter (returning after an absence)
  • Philimandrus the Red, the illusionist
  • Rodger, the paladin of St. Elsa
  • Tomumbulo, the moss dwarf (appearing for the first time this session)

Their Retainers

  • Bors the Great, a warrior and seeker for glory
  • Ewe's Milk Esther, a frost elf compelled to the party's service
  • Gresham, a carpenter turned fighting-man

Recap

This morning, on an uncharacteristically sunny and warm 14th of Haggryme, the Fighting Mongooses left Prigwort, heading to Fog Lake to further search the Incandescent Grottoes for treasure and possibly to locate the fugitive imperial prismist, Marjoram Gryver, for whom the Duke of Brackenwold is offering a 5000 gold bounty.

They descended into the grottoes, and explored three new rooms, each with a weird stone sculpture and cryptic engraving:

  • A carved column of skulls set on a plinth, from which Philimandrus the Illusionist pried some onyxes at no small personal risk

  • A carved sphere composed of giant human eyes, which shared the room with magically appearing miniature stone figurines of many humanoids, including the party.

  • A carved sphere of melted human limbs

The Mongooses met a middle-aged wizard named Marjoram Gryver. She explained she was an imperial prismist looking for her lost companion, Meg. The party didn't mention the bounty and she remained amiable and spent a lot of time chatting with Brom.

The party examined the murals in the northern corridor before retreating from five giant frogs.

They descended to the lower level, and examined some burial urns at the foot of the stairs, thereby disturbing slugs with baby faces. The Mongooses fled before the chasing slugbabies all the way back to the grotto entrance.

Glimpsing the night sky reminded the party to camp and everyone bedded down in shared tents. During Brom the Friar's watch, from Brom's tent, where Marjoram Gryver had been sleeping, emerged an exact duplicate of Brom and attacked him. The friar fended off the doppelganger until the rest of the party awoke, and while initially the party could not distinguish the two, but before long, the doppelganger fled with one last attack on Brom, who remained unscathed.

Meanwhile

Jymes Smith, the hunter, who guided the Mongooses through the wilderness on their return from the Tomb of the Goat Lords, had been delayed. He was unable to join the party before they left, and so had followed behind later that day.

Before he left, he stopped at The Clashed Antler in Prigwort. There he met a filthy moss dwarf with a broad smile behind his yeasty beard named Tomumbulo. Tomumbulo also sought the Incandescent Grottoes, to collect unusual samples for his yeast farm. They opted to travel together, rather than brave the wilds alone.

At Fog Lake, the duo could not find the Mongooses but spotted a campfire and subsequently spent the night there, with a brooding goatman squire named Hrannick Lankshorn. Hrannick was tasked with guarding the horses of a party of House Brackenwold knights, also venturing into the Grottoes in search of Marjoram Gryver.

Today's Adventure

The Fighting Mongooses, ruing the lost bounty, spent the remainder of an uneasy night camping on the shores of Fog Lake. In the morning of the 15th, as they broke camp on a chilly damp morning, they were greeted by another party of travellers. Jymes the hunter, and Tomumbulo the moss dwarf, descending to the lake shore with the goatman squire Hrannick Lankshorn.

Hrannick explained in a rumbling voice that he is squire to Lady Bethmilda, and has been camping on a nearby ridge with the Brackenwold knights' horses. He urged the party to find Lady Bethmilda and companions, or at least retrieve their corpses, noting that they had not emerged from the grottoes for a week. He mentioned he planned to return to The Refuge of St. Keye with or without the knights on the morning of the 18th.

Philimandrus was wary of the travellers, but they exchanged stories. The newly reinforced Mongooses descended into the grottoes, retracing their steps to the room where they met the doppelganger. They discovered the door to the north (beyond which they previously met giant frogs), shut by them, had been opened since last they came. In the darkness beyond, Tomumbulo's unwashed ears could clearly hear wet lip smacking and chewing noises, along with muted coos of delight.

Jymes closed the door promptly, and then began carefully inspecting the room for tracks. He found a few distinct sets of tracks:

  • Three recent pairs of heavy human boot prints headed from the south entrance toward the doors to the corridor of giant frogs, and several slime trails following shortly after

  • Below those, a set of small human footprints coming up the stairs to the east before become hopelessly covered by the footprints of the party on their last expedition

The Mongooses decided to head down to the lower level, following what they presumed to be the doppelganger's footprints. As they headed to the stairs, they caught a glimpse at the end of the corridor of the a huge wriggling cutworm-like insect, depositing eggs in the corpse of a giant rat. They quickly covered Philimandrus' bullseye lantern, and the horror seemed none the wiser, so they crept down the stairs quietly.

On the lower level, they found themselves in a stone corridor lined with doors, which they searched. A collapsed room yielded only an overturned sarcophagus with a partially crushed human skeleton, but the next room's sarcophagus was still sealed. Tomumbulo pried it open with his crowbar, revealing a mummified corpse, bandaged and wearing a silver crown adorned with quartz stones.

The corpses' eyes shot open, and its withered hand sought Tomumbulo's throat, but was bashed aside by the doughty dwarf's shield. Philimandrus cast a spell to blind the undead, while Rodger and Brom sought to turn it, but its will proved greater than their faith. As the corpse stumbled about blind, the party stabbed, slashed, and pummeled the creature, only for to rise once again. Rodger's mighty blow with the blade of Sir Chyde dispatched the creature for good, and he claimed the crown it wore.

Another door held a short, rubble-filled stone passage, beyond which lay an underground lake. The party moved on.

Rodger's mighty thews made short work of the next stuck door, revealing a room with a metal grate for a floor and an acrid stench. Ewe's Milk Esther tested the floor with a ten foot pole, not discovering any pressure plates or tripwires. Philimandrus stepped into the room, only for his weight to overmatch the counterweight, causing the metal grille to fall ten feet into the searing acid below.

Miraculously, the illusionist avoided being too badly burned in his initial immersion, and was able to grab hold of the ten foot pole, while the remaining party pulled him up. Jymes and Brom dragged Philimandrus to the lake, quickly checking for danger before washing the illusionist clean of acid.

The Mongooses were startled by a trio of phantoms sweeping past them from behind, floating over the lake's broken bridge to the island beyond and the three stone coffins that lay there before fading away.

The Mongooses retreated to rest in one of the tombs, and Tomumbulo and Philimandrus discussed why the Mongooses were exploring the grottoes, as well as their future plan to seek the lost Harrowmoor child at the ruined abbey of St. Clewyd.

The pried open two last coffins, using a simple ruse to send away the mindless zombie servants who lurked in the latter tomb. They found:

  • A large quantity of human skulls, mummified hands, and black candles

  • A variety of fresh human limbs, heads, and a torso, all tattooed with magic sigils, which Philimandrus sketched for later reference

Amidst the skulls, hands, and candles, Rodger found a scap of paper with a scribbled note reading:

"Could even the wight of the priestess be forced into submission?

The Mongooses stopped to debate whether to use magic or cunning to further explore the trapped acid bath room, or alternately, to attempt a crossing to the island and the tombs there.