The Shackled City, Day 15 (2007-01-05, 6:30 PM) Chapter 4: Zenith Trajectory

Players (Characters)
Scott (Rain)
Jeremy (Grokk)
Catherine (Amber)
Tony (Roland)
Rachel (Horkina)
DM: Tom (Garlen)

The party headed out to where the canoe had dropped them off, intending to rest on the far side of the lake. The ferry keeper jumped out of the canoe about 20 feet out, and swam up to the party. He attempted to punch Horkina, but was quickly surrounded and dropped. The party took his canoe and sailed across the lake, and took turns resting while others kept watch over the party and the horses.

Back inside Bhal-Hamatugn, the party discovered a set of jail cells. A human in one cell said the halfling spellcaster in the next cell was in league with the kuo-toans. The halfling countered that the human talked to rats, and was obviously the one in league with the kuo-toans. The two threw accusations back and forth as the party walked away down the nearest staircase.

The stairs led to a flooded room that was obviously used for torture. Manacles, stretching racks, and various other implements lined the walls. As the party approached, an extremely distorted mummy -- so rotted that his original race couldn't be identified -- came up out of the water and attempted to attack. Roland blasted it with fire, and the others pounded it with blades until it collapsed back into the water.

The party headed back to where they'd found the dragon fingerlings. A set of stairs led up to a door, where Rain discovered a lightning bolt trap which he expertly disabled. He also noticed a trigger mechanism to shoot poison spears across the room, and disarmed it. He quietly opened the next door and discovered a black dragon. The dragon reacted sluggishly as the party moved to surround him. Grokk and Horkina hit him hard, while Rain and Garlen poked at his vital organs. Roland used a spell to distract the dragon, causing him to twitch and giving the party an opening in which to hit him. Everyone landed their attack, and thus, the dragon was slain without getting a single action.

The party headed back to the large room with the statue of Blibdoolpoolp. A kuo-toan wearing shiny plate mail and wielding a large pincer staff stepped out next to the statue. Grokk, Horkina, Garlen, and Rain surrounded him, but struggled to hit him. He injured the whole party with an unholy blight and then seriously wounded Garlen with his staff, so Garlen retreated. Roland cast a dispel magic to remove the cleric's numerous protections, and he quickly fell to a string of attacks. Amber healed Garlen and the others. She then stepped up to the huge statue and cast Stone Shape to put a large crack across the middle. This made the top half of the statue fall to the ground, creating a large pile of rubble for Rain to kick.

Having secured all but the upper level of the stronghold, Roland used a simple divination to find the direction to Zenith. He was clearly within a hundred feet, directly east of the main room. Garlen spider-climbed to the top balcony and lowered the drawbridges that allowed access to the uppermost doors, and the party headed through. Several mushrooms, including a couple of aggressively violent ones, were being grown in one room. Horkina, practically immune to mushroom poison, hacked her way through the violet funguses and even ate a bit of them. As the party moved into the next room, Rain noticed a kuo-toan hiding upside down on the roof, looking intent on striking Roland. Garlen climbed up to attack, and the rest of the party surrounded and destroyed the assassin.

Finally, the party came into Zenith's room. The dwarf sat in a throne, flanked by his own family banners being flown upside down, with a strange glowing circle in front of his throne. He called out "I prophesy your doom" as he threw a glass sphere toward the far wall and stood in a defensive posture. An invisible arm attacked Horkina, so Roland used glitterdust to reveal the enemy: an invisible stalker. It fell quickly once it became visible. Amber and Roland each cast spells at the dwarf, and he soon succumbed to their magic and was captured. As the party left the kuo-toan stronghold with Zenith in tow, they released the two prisoners. The prisoners continued to bicker as the party handed each of them a spear. The two continued to face off as the party left for home.

Back in Cauldron, Amber sought a method to cure Zenith's obvious insanity. A divination told her to "seek the invisible sign to peer inside the smoking eye." A spell of see invisibility revealed a strange mark on his forehead: the sign of Carceri, the prison plane of the Abyss.