shifty louts

Arduin Arcade Session #7: The Howling Tower

Players

Summary

Wurdigan the 3rd. Month of the Sun 5202

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At the White Walls Inn, the magi of the Amazonian Kleopatra, human Patxi Falcultad, and Halfling Armsman plan another expedition to the Howling Tower in the Lake of Mists. They hire 4 spearmen for 15 gold sovereigns each and make their way there.

Opting for a westward approach, the group slowly heads down the western passage, denoting its black and white checkerboard floor, pieces of broken glass, and smears of charred, burned oil. Luckily, there is no sign of the Ebon Skeleton guards who patrol this hallway.

Heading northward, the passage continues north beyond their torchlight but turns eastward. The black and white checkered floor ends as this eastward passage begins. They head down this way, finding a verdigrised door beckoning them in a voice that modulates between masculine and feminine timbres.

The rusted door seems to know their names, addressing them. Paxti and Kleopatra speak to the door who tells them they are the door themselves, the alien intelligences of stone, silently humming beneath the ground. The knowing drone of buried aeons.

All three fail to open this passage and continue eastward as the door laughs at them. They continue onward, finding a similar-looking door that doesn’t speak. Heggid commands the mercenaries to open this southern door. Easily, the mercenaries push open the door. Within a simple room that bears rusting doors featuring snarling faces, both east and west.

Kleopatra attempts to open the eastern door, finding that it releases long strands of a mucus-like liquid. Paxti goo-drinks, finding it is snot, much to the disgust of Heggid and their mercenaries. Kleopatra shears some of her black magus robes and plugs the snarling face's nose, and it's soon laden with fluid.

The mercenaries are commanded to push open this eastern door to find a passage filled with these snot stalactites descending from the ceiling. The passage, however, connects to a previously explored tunnel, indicating a secret door.

The group heads back, and with the manpower, the western door gives way to a room that bears faded murals of a copper-haired, pale silver-skinned heroine’s journey to black wizardry. Part of the western wall doesn’t give way to their torchlight, and Patxi hears faint burbling behind it. Kleopatra commands (or attempts to) for the darkness and whatever is behind it to show itself. The faint burbling becomes a roiling, churning boil as delicate stone tendrils run along the joinery of the brick and begin to seep hot, boiling mud out.

Kleopatra continues to attempt to command the fluid as Paxti, Heggid and the mercenaries stand back. Eventually, the hot mud subsides, slowly cooling to display within it ammonite and gastropod fossils. The western wall melted to hot slag. Within, a deeper darkness.

Kleopatra is reminded of Jeremiah Joyce’s urgings regarding the Despot Xyl Hypogeal, mines some of the ammonite fossils while Paxti explores the chamber behind the wall, finding it drops 10’ down into a room hot and covered in similar Precambrian fossils. Another secret room that bears a bricked-up wall that connects to the black-and-white checkerboard hallway they passed through.

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Heggid and the mercenaries assist Paxti up from the 10’ drop. The group wants to clear the room and focuses their attention on the last south-eastern door of this room. Opening it to find a small 10’ by 10’ room of skeletons arranged in supplication around a larger, octopod skull. Kleopatra grabs the skull and feels their consciousness travel into the past, hearing the dream of a stone city made of non-Euclidean geometry.

Paxti sees Kleopatra entranced and wrests control of the skull, but his mind rebuffs whatever malignancy is present within the skull. Heggid and the mercenaries are out of their depth as whatever the magi are up to is beyond their comprehension. Paxti finds the south eastern wall; bricks are plumb in most places, but oddly angled for the lower section.

Kleopatra uses her 10’ foot pole and pushes the bricks, yielding another secret passage that sees the group find 18 goblin-like cavemen standing around a piscoid wood effigy, like the ending of Blair Witch Project

The group rests, consuming a ration as a sudden drumming is heard rising and falling in intensity to their southeast once more. The group, aware of the creatures that drum, plans to avoid them.

The group heads back out of this room, returning once more to the tittering, taunting door. The mercenaries bust it down and find a plain room with peeling plaster and an overturned stool that oozes a sighing, violet fluid. The room smells vaguely of yeast.

Paxti once again goo-drinks find it to be some sort of sourdough-like yeast, simply commenting, “You can make bread with this, yo”. The door’s taunts have ceased, leaving the room hollow and sounds echoing.

Marching is heard from the north as plans are hatched for Kleopatra to Command Undead. She bristles with necrotic energies as 12 Ebon Skeletons bearing amber stone crystal lattices hold battle axes trundle toward them.

Kleopatra’s black arts command 8 of the skeletons, who swiftly cut down the remaining four uncommanded. The Ebon Skeletons stand at parade rest, awaiting further orders as the group plans a pincer maneuver to clear out the Haggorym room.

Heggid, Paxti, and the mercenaries split off while Kleopatra and her ebon skeletons head back out to the entrance door. The pincher maneuver is sprung within the stinking room; take the Haggorym by surprise.

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The Ebon Skeletons cut down three in succession, as Heggid and the mercenaries attempt to throw oil and torches, but miss, making the room slippery. The Ebon Skeletons press the advantage, slicing a Haggorym’s nose clean off, as the Haggorym’s spears cut down three mercenaries, nearing killing another, and Heggid.

The Ebon Skeletons continue to cut a swath through the horde. Kleopatra casts Cause Light Wounds, liquefying the flesh of another two Haggorym. Patxi’s zweihander cuts down another as Heggid’s spear finds purchase against these stinking fiends.

Soon all but one Haggorym stands, but it dashes its head upon the stone floor in front of the wooden effigy, killing itself as brain matter flies across the room. Kleopatra commands the skeletons to destroy themselves.

The remaining mercenary and the group take the wooden effigy and leave the Howling Tower. The group delivers the statue to the occultist/luthier Jeremiah Joyce at the White Walls Inn, who tells them it's a figure of Oloo, He Who Waits Dreaming, and adds it to his growing collection of occult artifacts.

Aftermath

Treasure Found:

Foes Encountered:

Rumors:

Deaths:

XP Awarded:

Notes

#arduin-arcade