Players (Characters)
Scott (Rain)
Jeremy (Grokk)
Catherine (Amber)
Tony (Roland)
Rachel (Horkina)
DM: Tom (Garlen)
The party rested alongside the huge group of refugees to the west of Cauldron. In the morning, James set out with Amber's followers to make sure the refugees were all cared for. Amber cast a spell of Find the Path to guide the party through the tunnels to the Fiery Sanctum. As the party moved deep through the tunnels, they came upon a boiling lake. A pair of creatures that looked to be made of green and violet smoke moved to engulf Garlen and Rain, who both resisted their powerful energy drains. "Team Rogue" smacked the beasts, and a magic missile from Roland and a leap attack from Grokk finished them off. Further down, the passage was filled with foul-smelling, poisonous air. Roland wondered if he could use water breathing with a decanter of endless water, while Amber suggested the party should use the 10 minutes of fresh air available in a bag of holding. Eventually the party just ran through the noxious air, resulting in some coughing but not much else. A bit further on, the ground began to lurch. Roland suspected this wasn't due to a quake, but due to the presence of an earth elemental. Horkina moved forward and smashed the ground with her maul, drawing the attention of a pair of the earth creatures. Horkina and Grokk clobbered them while Rain and Garlen provided flanking, and a blade barrier from Amber and a pair of magic missiles from Roland provided enough to finish them off.
When the party reached the main gate, Roland noticed a pair of auras from an Alarm and a Disintegrate trap. He dispelled the alarm, and then Rain very carefully disarmed the disintegrate mechanism with some magical assistance from Amber. Just inside the main hallway, Rain discovered a secret door carved into the stone. He opened the door quietly, and Rain and Garlen snuck up on a minotaur woman who had been polishing her falchion. A few quick stabs to her vital organs, along with a magic missile, dropped her before she could react. Roland surmised this woman was Gau Kleeoch, one of the Cagewrights, partly from the small cage she was wearing as a necklace.
Rain discovered several more secret doors, including a thin stone wall concealing another hallway. Horkina crushed the wall and the party moved through to the south. A pair of kelubar demodands waited in the room beyond. Amber's Holy Smite blinded one of them while Rain and Garlen did the sneaky-poke thing and Horkina and Grokk did the smashy-axe thing. Roland also fired off a lightning bolt.
After the demodands dropped, Roland sent an arcane eye flying through some narrow tunnels in the wall. He discovered two more rooms with a total of six farastu demodands. The party moved to those rooms, and Rain and Garlen flew quietly over the slimy floors and dropped a farastu. Two others responded by enfeebling the pair, but they kept moving and dropped another with the same flanking tactic. Some lighting from Roland helped finish them off, while Amber's sling bullets bounced harmlessly off of the slimy ground. The other three farastus approached from the next room. Amber blinded one with her magical shield, but another responded by draining her strength to the point where she was no longer able to stand. Horkina, the shield guardian, and Grokk smashed the foul farastus, and the party waited a few minutes to recover lost strength.
Rain discovered yet another hidden passage, and a hidden alcove where a vrock stood sentry. The alcove was hidden by a dark curtain, which Rain pushed aside. Garlen fired off several shots from his bow and Grokk let loose with one swing from his axe, severely wounding the vrock. Another vrock moved into position beside the party and stunned Rain with his screech, but a crushing blow from Horkina and a trio of sonic rays from Roland took it down and left the other vrock severely wounded. Amber finished it off with a sound burst, and the party moved on.
As Roland carefully mapped the party's progress, Garlen and Grokk began to sing: "mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map! Find me a secret, avoid me a trap!" Rain discovered one such secret leading into a conference room. The massive stone table was built in the shape of the Carcerian Eye. A spell of silence allowed Horkina to smash the table into rubble without risk of alarming the rest of the Cagewrights.
The party continued eastward, where Rain discovered yet another curtain hiding a small room. A small pack of demodands had obviously used the room to torture captured humanoids. Grokk and Garlen each seriously abused a demodand's body with their weapons, and Rain followed it up by dealing out nearly as much punishment as the other two combined, leaving only one enemy standing. Not willing to be showed up, Horkina stepped forward and landed a perfect strike on the big kelubar's head, leaving it within an inch of its life. It resisted Roland's magic missile, but Grokk's axe was not so easy to resist.
Further to the south, the party encountered a woman in fancy robes with a strange hairpiece, wearing a small cage as a necklace. Garlen rolled behind her and Grokk's axe smashed into her, leaving her bloody and battered. She stepped back and tried to harm the party with Horrid Wilting, but it did only minimal damage. Rain finished her off with a quick sneak attack and then searched her room for treasure. Items of interest included her spellbook and a note saying she'd created a failsafe device to shut down the planar junction ritual.
The party doubled back to make sure they'd covered all of the areas to the west before continuing to the east. One room was occupied by a short, almost dwarf-shaped human wearing heavy armor. In the corner of the room was a large pipe organ made mostly out of bones. Rain charged forward and stabbed the man in his throat. Garlen ducked behind him and gave him a little poke, and when he jerked his head in response, he gave Rain another clear shot. The man fell dead on the floor. Rain discovered a complex set of musical notes written on the organ, and he and Garlen tried to play the sequence. After a few tries, Rain succeeded, and the organ opened to reveal a small chamber. The chamber held a shrine to Adimarchus, and Roland felt he could use the room to call upon the power of Adimarchus' former realm of Occipitus to fulfill a single wish.
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