Game summary for April 12, 2007; present characters included Aker Cruven (litorian exotic weapon master/ritual warrior), Eol Seregon (half-elf hexblade), Grot Bloodtunneler (shield dwarf warmain), Lyrin Sinbal (simian warmage), Morak Beardfist (shield dwarf fighter/rage cleric), and Valgen (human fighter/rogue).
The party succeeded in resting and nursing their wounds from their latest encounters. Once recovered, they pressed on to find a whip-wielding drider hanging from the ceiling. She began attacking viciously from above, each strike of her whip drinking in blood from the inflicted wounds. Aker inspired his allies when he made an amazing leap from the ground to brutally slash the spider-creature. Others tried the same thing, and Grot succeeded in knocking her from the ceiling. She crashed to the ground, breaking her neck in the process; however, she also fell on top of Aker! They dragged him from of the twitching corpse, and Valgen took possession of her magical bloodfeeding whip.
They then turned their attention to the doors to the north. They were large, white marble doors with purple veins of minerals running through flanked on either side by white marble columns. Yawning menacingly in front of the doors was a 10-ft.-wide by 15-ft.-long open pit. It dropped down 40 ft. into a bed of spikes. On the far side, a body lay impaled as if it walked through the door and fell in, triggering the trap. Valgen and Grot moved to investigate but triggered the real trap—a pressure plate caused the ceiling along the side of the pit to plunge to the ground. This forced Valgen to leap into the pit and become poisoned by the spikes below while Grot was brutally pinned beneath the weight of the stones.
Suspecting the other side along the pit had a similar pressure plate, Eol took a rope and tightly bound the legs and body of the drider to make it skinny. He then pushed it out in front of him until it triggered the other trap. Sure enough, the ceiling fell and drider gore sprayed out across the pit. Thinking quickly, Lyrin activated his daily use of create equipment to make stilts. The nimble litorian, Aker, used them to scramble across the pit. Using a lasso, he snared Valgen and hauled him up out of the pit. Unfortunately, the fighter had so little strength, he could barely move in his leather armor.
With no other recourse available, Aker decided to go through the doors and look for a reset switch for the trap. As the doors opened, they exposed a large stone statue in the shape of a massive brain. Veins of purple ran through the white stone and pulsed with a faint light. Aker moved in and found a lever marked “Arm, Disarm, Reset.” He moved the lever to reset, causing the ceilings to move back up. Before he could move it to disarmed, he became dominated by the brain. It directed him to kill Valgen, which he attempted to do. Seeing this, the dwarven rage cleric, Morak, hit Aker with a hold person. Summoning his last bit of strength, Valgen tipped Aker’s paralyzed body over into the pit. Lyrin then blasted the brain with a wall of fire in a ring shape, which ended up shattering the stone. Eol’s raven familiar, Nevermore, then flew in and landed on the lever, moving it to disarm.
Having passed the traps, the team found a large circular room with a 15-ft.-deep pool full of tadpole creatures. Hovering above the pool was the mind flayer they had encountered in Sodden Hold! It taunted them and unleashed its octopins, which slowed half the party. The mind flayer girded itself with protective magic such as displacement and shield and then went to work with its mind blast and suggestion abilities. Soon, the octopins were dead, but most of the party was either slowed or stunned from the mind blast. Lyrin traded spells with the monster but could not defeat its spell resistance. Meanwhile, Eol moved about under the protection from evil spell and began peppering the illithid with arrows. Others began drawing ranged weapons and Lyrin discovered his acid orb to be very effective.
Using suggestion, the mind flayer sent Lyrin off toward the brain room to take a nap on some benches. It used ray of enfeeblement to make Eol too weak to fire his bow. Another suggestion forced Valgen to toss his crossbow into the water. Beardfist was hit with a direct blast from an empowered lightning bolt, which forced him to drop his rage and heal himself.
Eol and allies were able to counter the strength damage by using an enlarge person effect followed by bull’s strength from a scroll. Aker spent some time trying to scale the walls to “get the drop” on the illithid; alas, he could get no traction. Finally, Lyrin returned from his “nap” and move beneath the mind flayer. Using a blast of flame, he brutally torched the creature and killed it with his magical might—the accumulation of arrow and crossbow wounds had just weakened it too much to withstand the attack.
Searching the illithid’s rooms, they found a disturbing ledger. It indicated a man by the name Gast Brokengulf had hired the illithid (named Ilserv) to assassinate the party. Ilserv had then had its thrall Telakin (the greater doppelganger) use the shapeshifters of Sodden Hold to try to kill them off. Finally, the last entry in the ledger mentioned Gast had purchased some kind of relic called the Apostolic Scrolls from the mind flayer.
After leaving the mind flayer’s lair, the group returned to the Crooked House inn to recover. They found a message from Dagsumn to meet at his home. In addition, a young boy darted about hanging notices around the area. They read one, an announcement for the Champions’ Games, and noticed a disturbing bit of news. The Games director is one Prendergast Brokengulf!
