GoodParty: The Crypt

 We have brought the mages back to Caristhium, and there was a parade; Tavros managed to look suitably royal. Next up on the agenda is to investigate the vault. Vigo still isn’t sure why the dark army hung out at the capital for a couple of months. The vault might actually tell us something about what they were after. Vigo thinks the vault is probably empty, since the dark army probably looted it or at least took whatever it was that they were looking for.

The vault was researched countless times over hundreds of years, but nobody was ever able to get in. Small amounts of the king’s blood weren’t sufficient, and nobody ever got more ambitious than that. 

We discuss things a bit further, and Marshall suggests that we use True Resurrection to bring back King Luc Elfsbane; Tavros expresses his displeasure at the prospect of any sort of regicide to mark the beginning of his reign. 

Vigo mentions that the dungeons are still in use. The vault is in the lowest level of the dungeon, behind a secret passageway that leads into some ancient underground ruins. He suggests that we sneak through the upper layers of the dungeon, avoid the bear-queen at all costs, and take care of business at the bottom. He also hands us a small stone - a teleport stone that allows you to teleport twice a day. 

We turn invisible and teleport to the courtyard of the castle at Sol Star. It’s a very large courtyard. It used to be very busy; now it’s sparsely occupied, with stormclouds and thunder worms overhead. One corner of the courtyard has been turned into an arena, and it’s littered with broken corpses. They look like they’ve been ripped apart, either with claws or with brute strength. Marshall casts Speak With Dead. 

The ghost shows up screaming in terror. Marshall pats it on the head. The dungeons have their own doors, with guards going in out. Did the corpse work here? No. Had it been here before? Yes. Does it know its way around? Yes. The head was well-armored and was wearing nice clothes; probably a warrior of some renown. Did he fight the bear? Yes. Did he sleep with the bear? No. Are these patrols always here? Yes. Marshall shoves the head into a pouch and casts Silence on himself, and we’re ready to go. 

Martini slips through the doors; Marshall doesn’t make it in at all; and Ruin stumbles and collides with the captain. The captain grabs him, but Ruin uses Dimension Door and disappears into the guard room. Martini notices a locker room, and promptly slips inside. She promptly slaps somebody’s ass and takes advantage of the ensuing brawl to steal some uniforms. 

Marshall’s still standing outside the door. He tries to slip in again. This time he makes it, diving through at the last moment. Marshall heads towards the fight, but Ruin has Tremorsense and is able to locate him. We pull on the uniforms in case something goes wrong with the invisibility. 

There’s a door at the back; it’s locked, but probably not trapped. Martini picks the lock and jams it so the next person through will have trouble with it. Ruin Dimension Doors us past the door. As we come in, we get a brief tingling; we’re probably not going to be able to teleport back up. There are guards patrolling in the midst of a bedlam of passages and cells. We head down the hallway and find a set of stairs going down. The prison: top level is temporary prisoners. Second level is long-term prisoners. Level 3 is the King’s Inquisition. Level 4 is political prisoners, sometimes with larger, nicer cells and elite guards. The 5th level is theoretically abandoned, and that’s the one we’re trying to get to. 

Ruin stops to listen but doesn’t hear anything except the prisoners getting fed; we head down to level 2 and about that time invisibility and silence wear off. There’s a brief pause as we take in the sight of Marshall stuffed into an undersized uniform, which is currently under a button-popping strain. The prisoners on this level are in bad shape, many of them neglected and starving. 

We head down one of the hallways and turn the corner to find one of the guards smoking. “Hey, do I know you guys?” 

Martini: “You’re going to wish you didn’t. Did I just catch you smoking on the job?”

“Oh, shit. Are you from the Inquisitors level?”

Martini: “Yes.” 

He gets out of our way, promising to get immediately back to work. We continue on and find a door with the symbol of the King’s Inquisition. Ruin stops to listen, and hears screaming and calm questions. We’ve definitely come to the right place. 

Martini takes her time checking for traps but finds nothing, then sets to work on the lock. She gets the lock open, and we go through and Martini once again jams the door behind us. The screaming is pretty audible now; we’ve obviously come during work hours. 

One of the inquisitors is torturing somebody for the location of some stolen goods. As we’re coming down the steps, we hear footsteps coming up. It’s an inquisitor, and of course we’re wearing the wrong uniforms for this area. Inquisitors only.. 

Marshall’s too-small uniform also catches his eye. Just before he starts shouting, Martini casts Modify Memory. He never saw us, and also he heard that one of the doors was jammed and he was sent to do something about it. We pass on, coming down to an area with a central set of rooms for the torture and a hallway going around; offices and special chambers are on the outer perimeter. We resume being invisible. And then we attempt to sneak around the perimeter and find the next set of stairs going down. Which we find, but it has a big iron gate and huge padlock; it’s a fairly fancy gate. 

We check it for traps and open the lock, because Martini is really good at this. The steps beyond are dusty, with only a few prints. As we get to the bottom of the stairs, we hear the clopping of mail-clad boots, which is better armor than the other guards have. There’s a guard in full plate with a masterwork polearm. 

It’s actually a nicely-appointed hallway; it doesn’t look like a dungeon. The doors are polished oak, and spaced fairly far apart; the cells here are apparently pretty nice. Martini takes to the ceiling (slippers of Spider Climb) and goes ahead to scout for the next staircase. 

The cells are quiet; Martini looks in one and there’s a clawed-up corpse in there. Another has a man singing snatches of random songs. She’s also watching the pattern of the guards, but they’re either random or deliberately unpredictable. On the plus side, they don’t seem to be moving too fast. 

The singing guy is Baron Moreau, the one who got turned into a vampire. He’s not a vampire anymore, he’s just crazy. But he’s also the only live prisoner that we’ve seen down here. Marshall recognizes him, but the other two just keep pulling him along. While this is happening, one of the elite guards looks around and then sneaks down the stairs. 

Martini follows him, and Ruin drags Marshall along behind us. We head down the stairs, tailing the guard who went down here. Marshall’s lagging a bit behind, but we keep up. 

The bottom level really is abandoned; the guard slips around a couple of corners and goes to an intact cell and leans down and takes out something and slides it inside. Then he tries to head back upstairs. He’s coming right by us. 

We let him pass. 

Then we go to the cell, but on the way we pass a different cell and can hear someone eating inside. We look in. A poorly-cared-for elf is inside, which Martini attempts to ignore. Ruin thinks it might be Mythrandril. He immediately calls Martini back over. “We might need him! He may be the actual royal blood that can open the vault! What if the human kings failed because their claim was illegitimate???”

Martini: “Fine.” She’s made it as far as the other door, and she’s pretty sure the deposed King Luc is behind it. 

Ruin: “Mythrandril! What are you doing here?”

Mythrandril was apparently abducted by Chuck; they took some of his blood and threw him in the cell. Meanwhile King Luc is trying to order us to let him out. The guard comes rushing back down and starts trying to get Luc calmed down. 

After about five minutes he finally gets Luc to shut up and heads back upstairs. We move on and try to locate the vault. We look around for a bit and finally come to the end of the hallway. Somebody’s cleared some rubble out of the way, and behind the rubble is a hidden door that’s open. It looks like a lot of people have come through here. It leads into some ancient catacombs, and the room at the end of the hall has a full-on alchemical laboratory. It’s mostly been disassembled, but there were definitely some scholars down here. There’s a sort of medical table with straps and place to catch the blood. Beyond is another passageway that leads to a big stone door that’s cracked open; there are sounds from beyond. There are also some undead creatures decomposing on the floor: there may have been a bit of a fight here, and there may still be something big beyond the door. 

We listen. There are three very large creatures moving around. There’s also some kind of buzzing sound. Martini sneaks forward and looks to see what’s moving. There are three rather huge undead that are covered with pustulent sores that hatch into some kind of death locusts. 

Marshall looks around and identifies them as ancient undead from an unfamiliar tradition; they’re immune to electricity, but they can smell enemies and also force more wasps from their flesh. Turns out the real catch was that to open the door you need the blood of kings - plural. That’s why Mythandril is here. (OOC: To be clear, Martini's player figured that out; I did not.)

Marshall turns undead. Martini moves to the ceiling. 

Marshall does turn one of them, which retreats towards the back of the room. 

Martini heads up and across the ceiling, passing above the monsters. She gets about halfway across the room. Martini spots some flaming skeletons in the next room. Ruin tries to dimension door into the vault, but fails – such travel seems to work in the ruins, but not inside the vault. Marshall turns the other two, and moves behind us. 

Martini detours to check out a metal door off to one side of the room, and quickly cheks it for traps but finds nothing. Ruin circles around the giant undead and moves to cover Martini. Marshall moves forward and tries to turn the flaming skeletons in the next room; he fails. On the plus side, they don’t move to attack us. Martini now tries to unlock the door, but fails. 

After a couple of more tries, she succeeds and enters the side room. There’s an altar on the back wall, and an emblem of Vecna on the wall above it. There’s an amulet on the altar; it’s shiny. 

Martini takes the amulet. It’s an amulet of Mighty Fists +5. 

Ruin closes the door behind them, because the undead are starting to shake off the turning. 

Martini heads back up to the ceiling in the main room. “You guys deal with the slugs, and I’ll walk through the door.”

Marshall turns one of the undead, and Martini crosses the ceiling to the far door. Ruin sprints into the next room; Marshall turns the other two as well. 

In the next room are two skeletons who are A) on fire B) patrolling C) at least not giant or covered in death locusts. The skeletons move up and attack with incorporeal touch attacks. Ruin is, fortunately, fireproof, and largely made of Fortitude; he ignores the worst of their effects… physically. 

Martini crosses into the room, staying on the ceiling. Ruin flies up to the ceiling and attacks Martini. He doesn’t do a lot of damage, but… yeah. Marshall makes it to the doorway, right next to the two incorporeal flaming skeletons. He casts Mass Heal. 

Ruin is restored to health, as is Martini. One of the skeletons takes a fair bit of damage as well. One of them moves forward and attacks Marshall. Unlike Ruin, he manages to shake off the mental effect. Martini takes a quick glance around the room, then casts Mislead, leaving Ruin to attack her illusionary duplicate while she turns invisible and goes to check the side door. 

It’s trapped. 

Ruin shoves the effigy out of his mind and drops back to the ground, but tumbles as he lands and avoids taking damage. The Effigy that had gone still turns and looks at Ruin. Marshall drops another bit of healing, damaging the undead. They both turn on him, and afflict him with negative levels. (Restoration, he knows, will cure this.) Unfortunately, with the negative levels he also fails the will saves and his eyes begin to glow. 

Ruin kills the one that was possessing Marshall (despite the fact that it’s partly incorporeal). Marshall shakes it off; he steps back and casts Restoration on himself. The thing follows and attacks; Marshall takes a bit of physical damage, but shrugs off the really nasty effects. Martini just blithely keeps working on the lock while Ruin carves through the thing that possessed Marshall. 

The lock is beyond Martini’s abilities; we break down the door instead, and find an antechamber with a metal door on the far side. She checks it for traps and finds one. She attempts to disable it, and succeeds. This lock is much easier, and she gets it open. That brings us into another altar of Vecna, with a book on it; there are four alcoves around the edges of the room, behind closed doors.