Session 8 Outline

Harvester 11

Acting on the information obtained from Jevicca Norr, the party locates the old abandoned manor in the Oldtown district: a crumbling ruin, it sits within an overgrown, walled estate. The party cautiously explores. The manor turns out to be mainly empty, except for some old and ruined furniture.

While the party explores, they hear noises of movement, and something invisible runs past them towards the front door. The party gives chase, and Richter casts entangle on the overgrowth within the estate walls, and manages to net the invisible creature. Approaching cautiously, the party dispels the invisibility and finds a female orc dressed in armor and bearing a sword.

The group quickly subdues their captive, but she is less that cooperative, snarling that the party does not know who they are dealing with. Unimpressed, the party knocks her unconscious and ties her up. They then take all her equipment except for a bone ring she wears, which will not come off her finger. They leave her in one of the rooms of the manor, and continue exploring.

Moving down to the wine cellar, the party finds a newly-excavated tunnel leading into the darkness. Cautiously they enter. The tunnel leads on, continuing deeper under the city itself. After about 600 feet, a side-tunnel branches north. For the moment, party decides to continue on down tunnel. After another half mile another passage branches south, while the tunnel they are in continues on to a dead-end. No secret door or exit from this dead-end can be found; however, the party does find several unused-looking digging tools, as well as a leather bag containing what looks to be food and exploration equipment, as well as a handwritten note.

The party remembers the bone ring worn by the orc in the manor; might this be the ring of wishes implied by the note? They decide to defer further exploration until they get this ring, and they return to the manor.

The orc is still unconscious, and the ring still will not come off her finger. Undeterred, Minaret emotionlessly cuts off the orc's entire finger, then knocks the now-awake and howling orc unconscious again. Vangkor doesn't approve of the rogue's tactics, but is able to remove the ring from the orc's finger. When Vangkor puts it on himself, he is dismayed (but not entirely surprised) when it grafts itself to the bone in his finger, becoming unremovable. Furthermore, although the ring does register as being magical, it has no wishing power that he can discern.

Returning to the caverns below, the party decides to explore the side tunnel branching north, worried that enemies might be hiding there. The side tunnel leads to a warren of passages and small caverns. They do not go far before Minaret falls into a hidden pit trap with jagged rocks. She is not seriously damaged, but just as the party helps her out, the north wall of the cavern explodes outwards, and a large creature with chitinous black hide, claws, and many-faceted eyes attacks: an umber hulk! The battle is fierce, and the party is sorely hurt before the umber hulk is brought down. Licking their wounds, they return to the surface, after Minaret hides the female orc in the pit in the umber hulk's lair (her rapier manages to somehow puncture a few holes in the unconscious orc in the process).

Harvester 12 - 19

The party spends the next eight days recovering and re-equipping themselves with supplies. They do some more research, and Richter finds some further references in the Library of Verbobonc to the biography of the mysterious Count Di'Riccini. There is a wealth of information, but it will take some time to find and read through it all. Eventually Brother Fabitor drops by, asking about the party's progress. It has now been quite some time since Kalerecent vanished, and he is becoming increasingly worried. The party grumblingly agrees to head back to the Banewarrens the following day.

Harvester 20

The group returns to the abandoned manor to continue their explorations. The first thing they notice is that the gates are closed... did they leave them open? Fletcher attempts to do some tracking to learn more, but he can't tell for sure: there are too many tracks, and the ground is too solid. Returning to the caverns below, they discover that the female orc's body is missing from umber hulk's pit (much to Minaret's annoyance). Inside the passages the tracks are clearer, and Fletcher is able to read them. However, he is confused by what he sees: some of the tracks are obviously humanoid (though smallish), yet some appear hooflike, and others almost feline in shape (though very big). Could someone have led both a horse and a giant cat down here?

The party goes on, and cautiously explores the second passageway heading south (near where they found the bag with the note). The natural passage (apparently excavated by the umber hulk) twists a bit, then opens into an open area of worked stone. To the west is a larger chamber with a higher ceiling, and to the east is an octagonal area with several exits, one of which is a steel door covered with runes and symbols. It appears they have found the Banewarrens.

The party briefly investigates the taller room to the west. It is about twice the height of the entry chamber, and is dominated by a large mysterious device like an iron tower topped with a brass sphere, rising at least 30 feet high. About halfway up, a metal catwalk encircles the walls, and an iron spiral staircase in the southwest corner of the room joins the two levels. The upper level has five exits, two archways leading to the north, two to the
south, and one massive metal door to the west, shimmering with a bluish sheen.

Rather than investigating this room immediately, the party decides to explore the octagonal chamber to the east of the entry tunnel first. The runed door there has many seals and locks, as if it were a vault door; however, it is slightly ajar, and the party cautiously enters. Beyond lie several rooms in succession: in the first is a nasty purple-red wraith which the party dispatches with little difficulty, and in the second is a pedestal of stone, upon which sits a purple-red crystal that seems to glisten with its own light. Remembering the warnings about the deadliness of the artifacts in this place, the party avoids the gem altogether and backtracks to the octagonal room. They slam the steel door shut: it appears to lock automatically when it is closed.

The party travels south down an open corridor, which leads to a long room in which stands a huge, rusty iron vat. Suddenly they hear a droning noise coming from the corner of the room, and they see two horrible humanoid shapes that appear to be composed of swarms of tiny insects and worms. The creatures are repulsive, and the party's blades seem to be less effective against them. Luckily their bludgeoning weapons do full damage, and the creatures are destroyed without serious harm to the party, allowing them to examine the room. The huge vat has iron rungs on the side, which break when Vangkor attempts to climb them, spilling him ten feet to the floor. The party finally gets to the top, and finds the vat is empty, as are several iron buckets stacked about the vat's base. Finding nothing else of interest, the party exits to the west, follows a staircase leading down.

The steps end in a very long hallway. A passage leads north, a door west, and to the south the hall branches into a narrower corridor lined with many doors. These doors have runes similar to the one in the octagonal chamber they encountered earlier. Several of these doors appear to have been opened. As the party moves south to investigate the hallway, suddenly a tall, muscular creature with dark blue skin, long claws, and wild black hair appears next to the party. Its eyes glow with an evil yellow light, and its body and hair drip with cold water. It makes several ferocious attacks, but the party responds in force. However, after taking several damaging hits from the party, the creature vanishes again as silently as it appeared. Unsettled, the party cautiously continues.

They find that the open "vault doors" lead to small 10' by 10' rooms. One of these contains a long, metal box that resembles a coffin, inside which are pairs of leather straps suggesting something was confined within. Another room has an interior which is very cold--almost freezing. Water covers the floor of the room and the hall near the door. Before they can make much of this, the blue creature suddenly reappears without warning and attacks the party again. Its tactics are insidious: after it appears, it attacks with its claws, then vanishes again before the party can do it serious damage. This cycle repeats several times until finally the party manages to deal it some severe damage, after which it does not immediately reappear. The party itself has been fairly wounded by the attacks, and decides that they need to rest and heal before continuing their explorations.

They are on their way back through the room with the vat when they hear the sound of several creatures approaching from the octagonal room to the north. The party has no time to retreat or douse their lights. The creatures reveal themselves as they move forward to attack, and the mystery of the tracks in the tunnel is answered. Four of the creatures are goblins, but they are led by two unlikely monstrous creatures: one is a muscular humanoid with a bull's head and feet, a minotaur, wielding a large, sharp greataxe; the other is a creature that resembles a centaur, but with the torso and four legs of a lion: a lamia!

An epic battle begins. The lamia goes right for Richter... and begins to beat the tar out of the hapless cleric. Worse, with each blow Richter feels his ability to contact his god being drained! The rest of the party immediately focuses all their efforts on the lamia, thinking him to be the most dangerous opponent. However, the lamia is quite dextrous and dances about, swinging its fists wildly. Meanwhile, the Minotaur proceeds to cut the rest of the party to ribbons with his greataxe. The creature is magically hasted, and each vicious blow of its axe seems to unerringly strike and do massive amounts of damage. The party begins dropping like flies. Worse, they have no chance to stabilize; one minute they are grimly on their feet, then the minotaur nearly cuts them in half with his axe. Fletcher falls first. Richter, having no spell ability left and hoping to heal the downed ranger, desperately lunges for one of Fletcher's cure potions while in the minotaur's threat range. This turns out to be a mistake, as the minotaur immediately crushes Richter down... and then picks up the potion and drinks it himself! The lamia is brought down, but Minaret and Ian fall shortly after, leaving only a sorely wounded Vangkor versus two goblins and a raging, hasted minotaur that has barely been wounded. Things look very bleak, when a shout comes from the north hallway. The minotaur whirls around, to face a human man in plate mail, charging with a drawn sword. This can only be Kalerecent: the rescuee become the rescuer. The paladin and the minotaur begin exchanging numerous crushing blows, while Vangkor avoids the arrows of the remaining goblins. Kalerecent is obviously skilled with his sword, and manages to wound the minotaur quite severely. Things are looking up, when the creature lands a nasty blow on the paladin, and he drops to the ground, unconscious. Vangkor, seeing only death around him, uses his fly spell to retreat. He frantically races out to the north, hoping to work around to enter the vat chamber from the eastern stairs. He is nearly there when he hears a bellow and several screeches. He arrives on the scene to see the two goblins dead, and the minotaur battling the blue creature the party had fought earlier. The blue creature takes a blow from the axe without even stumbling; snarling, it then proceeds to rend open the minotaur's chest cavity. Its claws dig into the quite-dead minotaur's collapsed body, and tear the spinal cord out with a meaty ripping sound. It dangles this dripping curiosity in front of itself for a moment, as if examining it... then proceeds to cram it into its mouth. Crunching on this tasty morsel, it then spots Vangkor. It produces an indescribable grin of evil, the cracked bones of the minotaur's spine jutting from between its lips, and then vanishes.

Vangkor doesn't wait for it to come back. He discovers that Kalerecent and Minaret are still alive, though unconscious. Using the party's remaining healing potions, he revives them. The three grab what equipment they can find from the bodies of their slain foes, and quickly carry the bodies of their companions out of the Banewarrens.

They return immediately to the Church of St. Cuthbert. Brother Fabitor is overjoyed to see Kalerecent alive, and gladly pays the party triple what he promised for his safe return. He also has the slain party members resurrected at no charge, since they died while finding the paladin. The party remains several days at the Church, recovering from their ordeal.