Serpent’s Skull – Part 66

Sanctum of the Serpent God – Grave Robbing

Tabansi’s Journal, Part 66

Having turned down the wonderful ‘offer’ that Izon had given us, we headed back towards our camp, and spot some lights on in one of the buildings on the coast of the island. Since most of the buildings on the island are abandoned, and the Irdufhan don’t normally need lights, we decided to head down to investigate.

Player’s Notes: It had been decided before the session that we’d like to spend some time getting the rest of the party levelled up to 15 before doing anything more serious, so the GM provided us with some smaller engagements which we’d missed early in the adventure. They turned out to be mostly quite easy for us, but it was a nice change of pace from running away from things we couldn’t defeat. One of the players couldn’t make the session, so they are still are level down.

The building was a single story affair, similar in style to the larger buildings in the Morlock area, and I carefully made my way down to the windows to see what I could see, whilst the others held back. Arkin had already decided to head back up to Saventh-Yi rather than explore here, since he wanted to spend some time with a lady friend he had recently met, so that left me as the only capable scout.

The first set of rooms I could see were small and filled with furniture but otherwise empty of inhabitants. Moving over to the window onto the central room by the main doors, I saw a large, mostly empty, room with pillars going up to a 30ft high ceiling. Hanging from the ceiling were a number of shapes which I first took to be spiders, but I then realised had the upper bodies of humanoids. I didn’t recognise them, which I feel stupid for, because when I later described them to Ek’Tura he recognised them as most probably Driders. Being an elf, even if only partially one, I should have known.

I was very much for just killing them, the others were more flexible in the approach they wanted. We moved up the steps to the door, and I briefly caught sight of one near the window – but there was the sound of spell casting and it vanished. Opening the door and moving inside, I called out for them to show themselves, as Athazog stayed a step behind me.

There were further arcane words spoken, and the doors were suddenly enveloped in thick webs, cutting me off from the others. Fortunately Derek was able to run up and purge their invisibility, turning three of the driders visible. All three tried magic directly against me – one cast a black ray which I dodged, another a lightning bolt which missed entirely and the third tried some mental enchantments which I managed to shrug off, and then put three arrows into the creature.

Derek drew his flaming sword and cutsthrough the webs, allowing Athazog to perform a running, pouncing, flying charge at where one was up on the ceiling, cutting it down almost immediately. As the rest of the team moved in, we made pretty short work of the creatures. They tried more magic against us, but eventually all four of them were killed.

There wasn’t much else in the building, though I came across the boot prints of what was possible a female humanoid, I’m guessing a drow. What they were doing here we still don’t know, but whatever it was we’ve put a stop to it.

We decided to have a quick explore of the rest of the island, since it was one we had pretty much ignored up until this point. At the centre there was a cemetery, which turned out to be home to a handful of mummies. Though they could have been dangerous, our use of air walk rendered them little more than sitting targets and we dispatched them with few problems.

Ek’Tura decided to explore the graves further, and summoned some earth elementals to go underground and collect up anything of worth. This desecration turned out to be quite fruitful, for several weapons of quite powerful enchantment were found in the graves.

By this point we had enough arcane items to pay off the Troglodytes, who had demanded such if they were to provide us with aid in the coming fight with the Serpentfolk.

Our final exploration of the day was to investigate some canyons to the west which the Morlocks had told us were inhabited by some large, dangerous, creature. I found tracks of some huge insect like creature, which Ek’Tura determines is possibly a Vemerak. A bit like a drider in form, but with tentacles and claws and much, much larger.

We hunted it down to a crossing of the canyons, where it burst from the ground and grabbed Ek’Tura’s lion figurine, ripping it apart. It was also able to put a stop to Athazog’s charge with its long tentacles and claws, but Derek and Ek’Tura decided to get out their heavy artillery, and a combination of Destruction and Disintegration destroyed it relatively quickly.

We returned to the surface to pay off the Troglodytes, then rested up to decide what to do next. We still need to investigate more of the spears in the city above, and Ek’Tura needs to visit Absalom for some magical research.

There is still the question of how we get the Artisans on board. They have requested a stunning performance of poetry, song or music from us in return for their aid, but it is something we are unable to provide since none of us are that way inclined. Maybe we will have come up with a plan by the next time I open my journal.