Alternate Title - "RIP Harambe: #DicksOutForever"
After a short hiatus caused by personal things, we're starting to get back on track with our sessions and session six is the lynchpin in future plans, as well as "correcting" some things from the previous session.
As noted in the previous post, the party sped through Valeth Tower after fighting outside, and since most of us had kind of checked out by the end of the session, I decided to "restart" the party on the top floor, directly after slaying/looting the zombie minotaur. Once the brief recap was out of the way, I described how the runic enchantments of the tower had faded after the minotaur was slain, to which they surmised either it was the cause of the runes, or the runes created it. Chicken or the egg. Because the enchantments were down, I described that the sounds of combat outside had diminished as well. We did some CSI-type stuff right off the bat, getting as much info as possible on the flower-stuffed head of Analise Brokengulf. The head was removed with surgical precision. Her facial expression was terrified but not surprised. There was no pools of blood in the ritual room, nor was her body found at all. There were also no plants in the room - that brought a moment of "why would he tell us that?" as if it were a clue, but it was mostly to indicate the flower in her mouth wasn't from that particular room. I also let Lenneth attempt a Nature check to see if she'd recognize the plant, but with her result, I only told the party that it isn't native to the North Sword Coast at all.
Satisfied that they'd gained all of the information from this room that they possibly could, the party revisited Lezard's presumed bedchambers. Because of the stressed spartan nature of the room, there were many questions about whether or not it was his actual bedroom. And/or whether he's the actual master of Valeth Tower or if he is somehow also just a servant. I played up his charming, but haughty and elite demeanor having met him the day before, and how at odds the room was to that. With stacks of correspondences and scrolls aplenty, the team went to work, investigating the scene. Lots of missives from wizard schools of Faerun, and LOTS of "spreadsheets," for lack of a better term, noble crap, about mining and crop yields in the area, presumably for tax purposes. Items of interests to members of the Lord's Alliance, but nothing that really stood out as "important" in the sense of clues as to Lezard's whereabouts or what was happening at the tower. Gabriel decided that it'd be a good idea to search the bed, so he whipped out his battle axe and chopped it in half. More missives spilled out from the under the straw-stuffed mattress (again, not feather or down or anything super high class), of an even more esoteric nature, bunch of elven wizardy bullshit, and also his monster-image porn collection. Biggest clue, under the bed was an intricately scrawled sigil/glyph that was vaguely reminiscent of the pulsing runes on the walls and floors of the tower, but with far more minute detail and written that didn't appear to be the same dwarven-esque the remainder of the runes were in. Could this be a curse? Protection? Something else? Besiljka decided to sketch a copy on one of the blank sides of a missive laying around, to follow up on later with learned scholars of the Realms.
Moving on down to the second floor, the stench of decaying zombie bodies hit the party like a rampaging triceratops. I imagine Lenneth and her heightened blind sight senses probably took the brunt of the rotten-asshole-stew smell. But let it never be said that our Tiefling complains about the little things. Starting at the bottom of the stairs, the party entered the westernmost room, which turned out to be the visiting Eroth quarters. As Lezard is a minor scion of the family, important enough to have the tower and demesne over a section of the Elven Protectorate, but not so important as to have the heads of the family in attendance, the room was quite sufficient for the Eroth representatives. Banners adorned the walls and the beds were much nicer than the room upstairs, but otherwise, there wasn't much notable about the room. Except the closet, and the treasure chests within that were most likely the tributes and dowry from the wedding. Lenneth had a set of thieves tools that she picked up from the corpse of the party's old rogue Rafael. Yeah, remember him? Glad the player's write things down. So even though she doesn't have a lot of experience lockpicking, she rolled really well and popped the first chest no problem. A good amount of coinage and some uncut gems (emeralds) were secured, high five team. Then she moved onto the second one and as she jammed the tools into the lock, the chest snarled.
Yes. Goddamned Besiljka's player was like "he's gonna throw a mimic at us" and Lenneth's player was like "he said they're too strong and won't throw any of them at us" to which it was countered that I threw a dragon at them in session one so... Look, it was a wyrmling. How was I supposed to know that it'd almost TPK in the first round??
But yes. It was a mimic. Mimikyu-chan shot out its tongue but failed to hit any of the team, so we did initiative and combat. Gabriel had top number so aimed for the things tongue, narrowly missing his chance. The mimic retaliated, aiming for the "weakest" party member in Lenneth, slapping her "center of mass" with its prehensile mouth appendage. Though she took 4HP of damage, she wasn't terribly upset at the encounter. Besiljka did was she does best and cracked the thing's hard shell with a powerful strike, but when it came time for Laucian to attack, he rolled a critical failure and ended up overextending his swing, smashing his sword eventually into his own leg, Fortunately, he didn't chop it right off. That was the only significant damage anyone received in the brief battle, which ended with one dead mimic in a closet, dissolving into a puddle of goo, the final blow coming from Battle Maiden Lenneth (way to take the College of Valor) wielding Erevan's enchanted short sword as she jabbed the sword into its gullet, "deftly" removing its tongue. So no second date? We had a discussion on whether or not one could eat a mimic, and it was agreed that it'd be a lot like trying to eat a xenomorph.
Going to the northernmost room on the floor next, the party found Analise Brokengulf's bridal chambers. I think this was really just a strong session based upon all of the questions the party was asking and the things they were specifically looking for in terms of their searches, as well as Gabriel's moral quandaries about just looting the tower - whilst, yeah, Lezard is MIA, potentially KIA, no one knows what's up, and the Eroths & Brokengulfs in the tower are all most likely toast, he doesn't just want to steal everything that isn't nailed down under the logic that surely there will be someone looking for this stuff at some point down the road. However, the rest of the party is a "pack it all up, could be useful" and Lenneth was really interested in getting some fine new dresses & accessories. The bridal suite also featured a walk in closet, so checking that out (and I love that the party is scouring rooms for hidden doors and traps and secrets and shit), they found a lectern with a black grimoire sitting closed atop it. I described the book as oily/greasy looking (and also to the touch). No one thought reading it would be a good idea at that point. It... uh... looks pretty evil. Gabriel tried to bless it with some holy water to see what would happen, and it sort of beaded off with a steaming roll. So this is clearly not a good book. But why is it in the bridal suite? Does it belong to Analise? Is/was Lezard under some kind of spell the whole time? The party never got around to selling the beaver pelts they found in the Redbrand hideout so they used a handful to wrap the book up. No one wanted to touch it at all, but they figure Lenneth is close enough to cursed as it is that the book couldn't possibly do more damage. Right? No sign of the bride's body or her wedding dress so the conclusion was reached that she was probably wearing the dress and her body is... Somewhere.
The only other room on the floor was the Brokengulf family suite, in which the party didn't find much of note. Again, banners and finery. Nobles don't necessarily travel from Waterdeep into "the middle of nowhere" with a bunch of valuables to be stolen.
In all rooms on the second floor of the tower, though, the constant "are there any plants here?" question came up. The little details and clues and hints that are being planted really seem to stick. And I like that. That the players are getting into the weeds with everything, paying attention to their surroundings, looking for keys to the kingdom as it were...
Back to the main floor, and at the bottom of the stairs is the kitchen. I figured everyone could grab a quick snack. The bread seems okay, but some of the leftovers from the night before were covered in flies. No one seemed all that hungry after fighting through zombies and smelling the filth on the second floor, so we quickly moved on. I did give stats on improvised weapons from the kitchen, in case someone needed a baguette as a tool of assassination.
Servants quarters were attached to the kitchen and it seemed the most logical to check in there. As all of the small serving staff were (most likely) pasted all over the floor and walls of the tower, the room itself was empty, and everything looked as poor & shabby as Lezard's room on three. Searching didn't turn up much, except a golden idol of Sehanine Moonbow, the patron goddess of the Moon Elves. Quite an interesting thing, given that Lezard and the Eroths are High/Sun Elves...
Last unexplored room of the tower was the guard barracks on the south side. Here, they found beds stacked like bunks and stores of Elven short/long swords and longbows. None of the swords appealed to the party (Lenneth already had an enchanted short sword, Besiljka is an axe user, and Gabriel is loaded with weaponry already) but Gabriel did decide he needed a longbow and a quiver of arrows for some ranged attack potential.
This proved deadly for the party. Exiting Valeth Tower after what seemed like an eternity (really, a session and half or so, but it felt like months of real time), the party came upon a grisly scene. Only about a third of the individuals who were celebrating the day before were still on their feet. Both Grimfang and Sora, the Dragonborn adventurers, were alive (and keeping the dwarves and Devkarin from each other's throats), and Mizmagnus the Izzet goblin, friend and semi-mentor to Lenneth, was surrounded by charred zombie corpses. Past the commotion of the survivors arguing amongst themselves, the party spotted a bone-armored individual in the far northern distance melting into the treeline with the remaining undead. Presumably this is the necromancer responsible for the zombies, but he was definitely a human and not an elf of any stripe. Why was he there? Is he somehow tied to the black book? Was he, in fact, responsible at all (I mean, he did walk off with the zombies, but...)? All anyone knows for sure is that he and his force returned to the forest and appeared to head north, towards Phandalin.
The party debated giving chase, but even at a quick sprint, they'd not have made the treeline before his forces were fully in the forest, and then you're facing a necromancer (one would assume, anyway, from the bone armor) plus his undead host, without knowing how strong they might have been. If he did indeed raise the zombies to attack the tower, we're talking a guy that controlled at least a hundred human/orc/dwarf/tabaxi/etc corpses, plus a minotaur. Probably a pretty tough dude. Or maybe he didn't do all of that. I THINK WE ALL KNOW THE ANSWER - MAAAAYBE.
Anyway, Gabriel wanted to do a Hail Mary of a shot and attempt to hit him with an arrow. I said, fuck it, make your attack roll. Technically, it was outside of the 600ft range of the bow, and would have had Disadvantage anyway, but I figured if he threw a Nat20, I'd give him the hit. Instead... He threw a 1. Which, as we all know since session one, never ends well. He also did a bone-wing-leap into the air before making the shot so, I ruled that in his jump, the arrow itself hit the bowstring in a bad way, causing the arrow to come straight back down and... Well... The arrow hit Laucian. I don't usually phrase in-game things in mechanical terms, but this dude had 6HP remaining, and when the damage roll came down... It was 7. Now here's where we do death saves to stabilize, but alas, there was no player at the table to make the roll, and the elf was pinned to the ground via arrow's trajectory going into the back of the neck and down & out through the chest plate. Yikes.
Moving right along, the party confronted the arguing dwarves and elves, as to the fleeing necromancer. No one else saw him in the confusion and conflict. Interesting. It's almost like... Naaaaaaaah, couldn't be. With a member bleeding out (I swear to Mielikki, goddess of the forest, I didn't intentionally kill him, I'd planned on NPCing him for the duration), the remaining members tried to get some answers for their burning questions. They filled in the groups outside about what had happened, and the dwarves, ever mindful of their bottom lines, inquired about their wedding gift & whether or not gems had been found. I was shooketh when Gabriel led the party to return the uncut emeralds. They weren't so valuable as to be worth making an enemy of every dwarf in the area, but I'd have given them some rolls to lie if they wanted to keep them. That was really cool, and netted the party an invitation to the dwarven thaig excavation to the southwest of the tower, "after all of this is sorted."
The Golgari seemed like they'd be the most knowledgeable, if not the most trustworthy, when it came to botany and the dark arts. Marwyn of the Devkarin immediately recognized the flower as something that doesn't grow in the Realms, anywhere, but that it comes from the Abyss. The team was hesitant about showing them the grimoire as well, but given dwarves aren't the most sorcererous of all the races, it seemed the best bet. Handing the book over to Marwyn, she was immediately intrigued by such a dark spellbook, but upon opening it and attempting to read, she was hit with a spike of psychic energy and cried out in pain, slamming the book shut. The text inside, though briefly glanced, also appeared to be Abyssal...
We called it there. Next session, the party will need to return to Phandalin with the terrible news, hopefully make it through zombie infested forest, dodge notice of the Abyss, and maybe, just maybe, make a buck now that they're paying their own way in life again.
Biggest takeaways of the session and an overall recap of important points - Lezard is MIA/KIA/IAIAIAIA something or other, and that'll lead to a destabilization of the area until the Eroth can investigate and consolidate power. The Abyss is involved in some fashion. The bone-armored individual, who we're assuming is indeed a necromancer, may be connected to the Abyss. Or may not be. There's still the Wave Echo Cave mine in play, with Gundren Rockseeker still missing and The Black Spider is out there doing Gods know what, with ties to all of this Gods know how. Is he also aligned with the Abyss? Is there something darker (wtf is darker than the Abyss??) going on? Is it all a smokescreen for something even more insidious happening?
Find out next time.
