Thursday, August 10, 2017

Session LXXXIX: Emerson, Frank and Tor

Continuing our ongoing Swords and Wizardry sandbox campaign...

Current Player Characters:
Thenus (Ranger)
Wang Du (Monk)
Centari (Elf)
Wolfheir (Viking)
Arg (Half-orc)
Sir Gwain (Paladin) 
Su (Cleric) 
Gorp (Kobold Wizard)
Todashi (samurai)

NPC's
McDagger (thief)
Biggs (fighter)
Emerson (bard)


Having found the green portal which they believed to be the exit, Sir Gwain lead the way to confirm that this was indeed true.

Back at the main entrance, they passed through the portal once again and began to retrace their steps, heading deeper into the labyrinth.

Down a passage that they had not explored they found an up sloping passage with a door at the end painted with a rams head.  The door was stuck and McDagger failed to open the door. Sir Gwain pulled the door open. Suddenly, a heavy cart with an iron rams head sprung from the closet beyond, rolling over and crushing members of the party.

Emerson the bard was gravely wounded and was screaming in shock and terror when he discovered that his hand, with which he performs upon his lute, has been shattered.  He pleaded with Su to heal him but Su had already healed the near death McDagger.  Su handed Emerson a clear potion that they had previously found in the wizard's chamber.  Emerson quickly downed the potion but immediately died from it's poisonous contents.

Leaving the body of the bard behind, they continued winding their way though the maze. Sir Gwain narrowly avoided falling into a pit trap in which an entire 40' section of the hallway teetered open.  After wedging spikes into the pivoting floor, they carefully made their way across.

They passed though the Hallway of Water once again and headed down a new passage.  Turning some corners they found themselves in front of a locked door.  McDagger picked the lock but failed to discover that the door was trapped and the thief was nearly killed again as the ceiling fell in on him. After recovering the thief, they found that the door only opened to a blank wall!

Continuing down the main passage and through a curtain,  they were attacked by two scorpions which Arg and Sir Gwain quickly dispatch.

They came across another door, but this time Arg was smart enough to trigger the arrow trap from a distance. This door turned out to be false as well.

Through some more curtained hallways they found another pool with a copper statue at the far end.  Arg leaped across to the statue and discovered two keyholes.  Using the keys he had found earlier, a small copper box rose out of the platform.  Upon opening it, Arg was electrocuted to near death!  Inside the box, however, he found a small black sphere.

Heading down another passage while consulting their map, they discover that the map appeared to be mostly complete except for a center portion.  It is in this space that they determine the prisoner they were sent in to dispatch must be. However, they decided to head back to the surface to rest and recover for a few days.

Once on the surface, though, the kids that had befriended them and wished to join their quest questioned the party about what happened to their friend Frank. Stretching the truth, Arg said that he died bravely fighting Minotaurs.  The kids were sad but asked why they left his body down in the dungeon. Arg responded with... something less than comforting.

After a couple of days rest, they headed back into the depths with the aspiring adventurers in tow, retracing their steps from the entrance.  They recovered Franks body, who had died from a deadly portal accident, and Emerson's body, who died from a deadly potion accident, and carried them up to the beach room.  There they buried the bodies with their companion Tor the dwarf who had died from a deadly Ettin accident.

They headed to one final arched opening that they had failed to explore and discovered stairs leading down. The stairs passed a landing with an iron statue of a bear but they found nothing odd about it.  The stairs wound down to a door which also proved to be false, but opening the door had brought the Iron Bear to life.  Arg, Wolf, Sir Gwain and Thenus charged the Iron Bear and fought it at the top of the stairs.

Having seemingly explored the entire maze, they headed back to one suspicious wall, and upon careful examination, discovered three small holes about the size of the discovered sphere.

After much debate about which hole to drop the sphere into, Wolf and Sir Gwain inserted the sphere into the first hole while the others stood back. A trapdoor opened and dropped the two into a pit of spikes.  The sphere rolled out of a slot at the base of the wall.

The companions were rescued from the pit and with the sphere in hand, tried another hole.

Wolf reached over and dropped the sphere into the third hole and was sliced by a bladed pendulum that dropped from the ceiling.

With one hole left to put the sphere, they finally opened the magic door and entered into a larger round chamber with a circular formation of pillared stone. Inside the stones, a forcewall distorted the image of a prisoner.  It was Koshan, who has been imprisoned by Hithata!

Would you trust this guy if he told you to go into a maze?
Talking with their prize, Koshan learned that Hithata had sent the party to kill him for taking the old wizard's eyes. Koshan told the party that he was a pupil of Hithata but that the wizard had grown corrupt and had destroyed Koshan's entire village. In vengence, Koshan confronted Hithata and had stolen his eyes. In a final desperate effort, Hithata imprisoned Koshan in his maze.

Koshan offered to aid the party if they set him free.  Thenus, who was quite angry for being sent by Hithata into his deadly maze was all for siding with Koshan.  However, it was the samarui Todashi who determined that Koshan is indeed telling the truth. Wang pulled the lever to remove the forcewall and Koshan was free.

With a new ally, they gathered their loot and left the maze to hunt down Hithata who was nowhere to be found.