Charles Plemons' Blog

Game summary for April 19, 2007; present characters included Aker Cruven (litorian exotic weapon master/ritual warrior), Eol Seregon (half-elf hexblade), Evo Shandor (human fighter/rogue), Grot Bloodtunneler (shield dwarf barbarian/warmain), Lyrin Sinbal (simian incantatrix/warmage), Morak Beardfist (shield dwarf fighter/rage cleric), Thoril Songsteel (human thug), and Valgen (afflicted wererat human fighter/rogue).

The party visited Dagsumn and learned more regarding the coming Age of Worms. When he mentioned the Apostolic Scrolls, they revealed they found a bill of sale for those to Prendergast Brokengulf. Dagsumn seemed most troubled by this news and indicated Prendergast is a very wealthy and popular man in Waterdeep. He is a retired gladiator champion and owner of the Champion’s Games and the Field of Triumph arena. So, they decided to seek a way to join the Champion’s Games and explore the arena between matches.

The group went and bought items to help them in the arena. In the meantime, Dagsumn located someone to sponsor them as team manager. In two days, the group signed on as a gladiator team called The Mercenaries, under the banner of Lord Urtos Phylund II. Now legally in the games, the group went to Prendergast’s Free Dinner for the contestants and nobles of the city. Within, they rubbed elbows with many of the city’s elite and made a wager or two, or three. They also encountered Tirra, a known ally of the current champion, Auric. She indicated she represented Thoril’s former guild and was willing to work an under-the-table bet on the party. She promised a 7,500 gp payout for winning the games if they would agree to pay 2,500 gp up front. After much deliberation (and much concern on the part of Thoril), they agreed and paid her. Also during the dinner, The Mercenaries got their first looks at Prendergast, his lovely wife Lady Aridarye, and Prendergast’s right-hand man, Captain Okoral. The games’ judge, Talabir Welik, went over the rules of the arena. Afterward, the group descended the elevator system in the middle of the arena and entered the Coenoby.

The following day, The Mercenaries got their first opportunity to display their skills in the arena. They were involved in the second battle against three other teams. The Mercenaries got hit hard by a charging horseman and a group of elven archers, but the moment The Mercenaries got rolling, enemy gladiators died. It was a short, brutal, and rather spectacular battle wherein The Mercenaries outmatched every opponent and slaughtered or intimidated into submission every team. The crowd was impressed with their prowess, and the ratings board listed The Mercenaries at rank 6 by the end of the battle. Valgen offered a wink to a scowling Prendergast as The Mercenaries were lowered back into the Coenoby.

With their first match behind them, and gold won from gambling lining their pockets, The Mercenaries now face the daunting task of figuring out what to do to try and catch Prendergast in his foul deeds. They will not fight again until sometime on Day 3 of the Champion’s Games, so they have some time snoop about, assuming they can avoid Okoral’s elite guards…

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!

Game summary for April 5, 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 Thoril Songsteel (human thug).

The party advanced into the caves, where Aker realized the yellow fungus-stuff ahead was actually yellow mold. They dropped back while Lyrin burned out the mold and some undisturbed shrieker fungus with a fireball. Advancing, they came upon a cavern with glowing water. Moving in, they discovered a spirit naga who brought most of the party under its influence with its mesmerizing gaze. Eol protected himself with protection from evil and did the same for Grot. Before long, the naga lay dead.

Moving ahead, the group ran afoul five drow thralls and a female drow priestess of Lolth. A vicious fight ensued, with Aker falling victim to confusion and injuring Lyrin. The drow thralls were mostly ineffective other than to divide and slow the party. Thoril’s use of sneak attack devastated one of the thralls, and the rest of the party followed suit, laying down the soldiers without too much effort. The priestess saw the holy symbol of Moradin about the neck of Morak Beardfist, and the two engaged in a brutal battle. She walloped the dwarf repeatedly but was unable to bring down the raging, bearded cleric. In the end, it was the halfbreed hexblade, Eol, who struck the killing blow upon her.

Sorely injured and almost out of spells, the party dug in and made camp. During their rest, a trio of octopins came sneaking in across the ceiling. With their slowing gaze and long reach, they brutalized the party for some time. Grot, who was on guard, scored the first strike against the creatures, nearly killing it with a tremendous blow from his hammer. Lyrin broke up their momentum with a wall of fire and then discovered his lightning bolts had no effect upon the monstrosities. Aker drew and hurled his axe while Grot fired away with his magical spike-launching shield. With hammer and blade, the party finally brought down all of the strange critters.

Now exhausted, the party redoubles its efforts to dig in and rest.

Game session 30 of the Age of Worms is complete. Characters present 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 debated their next course of action for some time before deciding to look for a sewer entrance near Brian the Swordmaster’s Smithy. They found an entrance in a back alley and slipped into the stinking tunnels of waste beneath the city. Within, they soon encountered a cluster of carrion crawlers feasting upon a corpse. At the prospect of fresh meat, they abandoned their meal and attacked. The party was largely unscathed from the encounter except for Eol, who ended up paralyzed for a short time until recovered by one of Aker’s potions.

Later, the party stumbled upon a pair of massive dire rats and a humanoid rat-man. All three attacked the party viciously, with Valgen suffering a horrific bite to the neck and shoulders from the rat-man. The group eventually killed the two rats and beat the rat-man unconscious and dying of his wounds. As he fell unconscious, he transformed into a human man. They then stripped, bound and revived him. After interrogating him a while, they determined he may have been under someone else’s control or enchantment, so they sent him running—unarmed—into the sewers.

After a while, they discovered a scuff of glowing fungus, like they found on the boots of the drow the previous session. They dowsed all their lights and let the dwarves lead the group through the tunnels, following the patches and scuffs of yellow. The team came upon an area where the sewer tunnel gave way to natural cave, and the strange symbol they found on the greater doppelganger’s head was painted on the wall in something that glowed only to darkvision. As they pondered this, a pair of drow thralls came out of the caves firing hand crossbows and moving in with rapiers. Despite a few well-placed shots, the drow were quickly overwhelmed and killed.

Looking into the cave revealed a bend ahead, with a faint yellow glow and ground covered by yellow fungus.

Game session 29 of the Age of Worms is complete. Present characters included Aker Cruven (litorian ritual warrior), Eol Seregon (half-elf hexblade), Lyrin Sinbal (simian warmage), Morak Beardfist (shield dwarf fighter/rage cleric), Thoril Songsteel (human thug), and Valgen (human fighter).

Valgen led the party into the mirror maze discovered in the last session. Within, they encountered sliding mirrored walls and doppelganger fighters materializing seemingly out of nowhere. After some brutal fighting, the party eliminated all the shape changers. Continuing through the maze, they discovered a door.

Within lay a large chamber split in two levels. The bottom, larger level, was where the party entered, and a large table with a strange metal helmet and bubbling vats of liquids drew their attention to one side. One the other side, two flights of stairs led up a raised platform with a throne in the center. Seated upon it was Delfen “Yellowknife” Ondabar, Lyrin’s mentor! He arose and invited the party to enter and learn the truth of things. Once within, his form melted and shifted, and an unknown mage stood before them.

The party wasted no time moving in as the mage began tracing arcane movements with his fingers. Thoril plunged into a pit trap, falling forty feet but avoiding the nasty spikes. Valgen charged around the pit and moved up the stairs and to the side to pressure the caster. The magic-user’s spell, confusion, caught Eol in its grasp and sent him babbling incohorently around the room and back down the hall. The group edged closer, with the mightily-muscled lion-man (Aker) hauling Thoril out of the pit by a rope. Unfortunately, a slow spell affected Thoril and Valgen, severely hampering two more of the party members. Even so, Valgen kept moving toward the caster, which prompted him to change shape again, into the form of a hulking orc barbarian! He hefted the greataxe the wizard had, oddly, been carrying and struck Valgen with a mighty blow, which sent him on the retreat. Stoic Morak moved up to heal his ally and triggered a poisoned spear trap, which lightly injured him.

The ape-man, Lyrin, continued a barrage of deadly spells, including ionize and lightning bolt to brutalize the shape changer, but he remained standing. Then, the orc shifted back into the form of the wizard and disrupted the party even further when he unleashed a wall of fire to split the battlefield and isolate himself and Lyrin on one side. The simian quickly took a tactical maneuver to seek shelter outside in the hallway of the maze. As Eol continued to run about the maze blathering like an idiot and the flaming wall sent wave after wave of scalding heat over the party, the shape shifter moved down the stairs and performed a devastating maneuver. He shut and locked the hallway door.

Bravely, the battle-hardened dwarven priest uttered a silent prayer to Moradin and marched steadfastly through the blazing inferno! The fires scorched his armor, singed his beard and burned his flesh, but more devastating was the spear trap he triggered as he stepped through. The razor-edged spike drove completely through his body, inflicting critical damage that put the dwarf reeling, but still alive. His burning rage was all that kept him on his feet.

Seeing Morak move into the flames, Aker scooped the slowed Thoril up and ran through the fire. Valgen slowly marched toward the flames as well. On the other side, Aker and Thoril flanked the wizard, who immediately shifted into orc form and laid waste with his axe. Valgen and Morak began their approach as Aker unlocked and open the door to the maze, allowing Lyrin to return. Outnumbered and pinned down, the shape changer met his doom at the end of the thug’s longsword.

After ransacking the room and the secret chamber behind the throne, the party dug in, nursed their wounds and had some much needed rest. They analyzed some clues, telling them something is going down in the sewers, and they then headed toward the surface. In the flood room, while trying to maneuver a magic mirror back up to Sodden Hold, a surprise came upon them. A secret door flashed open, and a pair of drow warriors moved to attack. Stepping out of the shadows with them, a tall many-tentacled creature—a mind flayer! It unleashed a mind blast, which crushed the will of Aker and sent him reeling. The mind flayer then left, and the party massacred the drow soldiers.

Now the party stands in the flood room knowing a mind flayer is on the loose, they have to try and get out of this area through a flooded hallway, and there is something untoward happening in Waterdeep’s sewage system.