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| I wonder why monks can't meditate in D&D, but I can. |
When the others awoke, Moriag, the tiefling, had gotten some kind of message. He lifted the corpse of the fallen war hero, and threw it into its grave, before casting some kind of spell on it. The corpse let out a shriek, before opening a portal that Moriag, the tiefling, entered while saying that his father had told him to return to their home in the eight circle of Hell. We were reduced by yet a member - down to 3.
Us other in the group couldn't do much about it, but decided to look through the room again, to check if we found anything new. We found nothing, and the statue that was the secret door we used to enter the room sat still, and couldn't be moved. We were forced to enter the double doors on the end of the room opposing the grave if we wanted to get anywhere, and we agreed that it was best to do that. Despite lacking a healer and leader, we went on, into the ruins that had been infested by Kruthik.
We entered the room behind the doors, which was a relatively large room, and the most noticeable thing noticeable was a pool of blood-red goo in a small pool in the middle of the room. There were many doors in the room, and purely decorative columns. The roof was roughly 20 feet, while the columns stretched for 15, allowing some room in between. There were two doors to our right, two on the wall we had come out of, one on the left, and two that had collapsed on the end opposite of us. Our door and the one on the left appeared to be bigger than the other doors.
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| The bigger entrance door someone got, the smaller the you-know-what. |
The first thing that happened when we entered the room was that I used the goblin salute I had learned from the previous room. I wouldn't want to risk upsetting another ancient hero of war. We'd barely managed to defeat the last one, and another would surely kill us for sure, leaving us to be devoured by the giant bugs known as Kruthik.
The monk, as the rest of us, was curious about the bubbly pool, and decided to walk up there, fill a flask with the goo, and drink it for some reason. Both me and the dragonborn also went up the the pool, and the dragonborn told us what she knew of the history of the goo. It wasn't just blood-like goo, it was blood, composed by mixing the blood of the enemies of the goblins who ruled this place. They had drunk it after battle, as a sign of domination. I, curious about the taste, decided to take a sip, and the dragonborn also drank some.
I wondered what the other doors were for, and I decided to check out what was behind them. I walked over to one of the smaller doors, the one on the right nearest the entrance, and opened it up. No sooner than I had stepped inside, I got buried by blackened bones, knocking me prone. Then, just as luck would have it, I heard growls and moans from outside the room I entered, and bubbling sounds from the blood-pit. I should have known it wouldn't be this easy.
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| It's a trap! |
ENCOUNTER TIME
Undead goblin had stood up, and were obviously not friendly. The blood-pit had started bubbling, and let out a mist almost as red as it was itself. We were pretty bad in it, and it didn't get better when I heard a loud growling roar - obviously by a powerful zombie, and ethereal mumbling. I couldn't do much, but I heard the battle going on outside. My allies appeared to be mowing down the enemies in swift strikes, and the sound of the weaker undead horde disappeared.
It seemed like the fight was to be an easy one, but the door I had entered was rapidly shutting itself, threatening with locking me in. I fey stepped outside quickly, but I was still struggling to get to my feet. Just as I had stood up and gotten a look at my surroundings, The monk was thrown into the bubbling cauldron, and appeared to be taking a lot of damage. The dragonborn was thrown into me by a fierce-looking undead goblin, knocking me down. The goblin used the dragonborn as some sort of eladrin-squisher, and held the heavy dragonborn above me by the throat, against the wall.
Things were looking dark, and I felt a cold chill down my spine. The dragonborn managed to break loose from the grip, attacking with her flail just after. But no sooner than that had I discovered the source of the ethereal mumbling. A ghost had seized the opportunity and attacked the dragonborn, who failed to dodge the attack.
At the same time, the monk had managed to break loose, and managed to flee away from his assaulter. It was another undead, not as big as the one who had pinned the dragonborn, but still a force to recon with. It followed the monk, and struck him. The monk responded by jumping on top of the decorative pillar, out of the undead's reach. The ghost then vanished from sight, but appeared again not long after, right next to the monk. He was struck again, and appeared to be badly damaged.
The dragonborn delivered a strike to the undead and ran away to the same pillar the monk was standing on, and got followed by her undead foe. I could only do a little more than stand up, and barely managed to summon a cloud of daggers above the big goblin.
The monk was badly damaged, and felt the need to flee. He attempted to jump from his pillar to another one, but couldn't jump far enough and hit it with his face. After falling to the ground, he ran further away and healed himself as best as he could. While he did this, the dragonborn had managed to get over to the monk's goblin, and delivered a fatal blow.
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| Seriously, dude. Are you sure you're a martial artist? |
I used the time to rush over to a spot I thought good for what I was planning. I uttered an elven curse-word, before raising my staff, before jutting it back into the ground, sending a wave of thunder in my proximity, which hit both the ghost and the big undead goblin, and sent them flying into the walls. The undead appeared to hit the wall pretty hard, but the ghost just kind of flew halfway through it.
Unable to move, I could only watch as I realized my mistake; I was completely open. The undead rushed over to me, striking me with his weapon, and delivered a very hard hit against me. The wound was deep, and things were looking slim. *thunk* we heard. *thunk*. It came from the other door, and I was fearing that it was more enemies, that would kill us for sure.
The door burst open, and in a swift movement, a shambling male dragonborn burst in through the door, throwing a mug of ale at the big undead, which left a crater in the back of his head, which then suddenly stopped in it movement. It fell over, and the newly entered dragonborn let out a bellowing burp, which for some reason appeared to have a healing effect on us. With the newly acquired ally, we easily defeated the last remaining ghost.
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I approached the dragonborn and asked him who he were. He stumbled past me without answering, heading to the now calm pit of blood. He had removed his flask from the back of the undead's head, and now reached it down into the pit, and filled it with the blood. He then gulped it up, and repeated, before complaining the drink lacked alcohol. He turned out to be a pretty heavy drunk.
I decided to question him when he had sobered up a bit (small hope for that), and scoured the room for anything valuable. I found a belt, which I used my knowledge of the arcane to discover was a Belt of Brawling (all improvised attacks count as attacks with clubs). I didn't need the belt particularly much, and neither did our dragonborn nor monk, and I decided to give the belt to the drunkard who in some way had managed to save my life.
He gave me a quick ''thanks'' before we asked him who he were. He told us he had been part of an earlier group, and that was about how far he got, before falling over in a drunken faint. He laid relatively peacefully on the ground, but didn't appear to respond much to us. He would move some when poked, but ignored any attempts of communication.
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| Just like in real life. Who said D&D lacked realism? |
He suddenly jutted up, and headed for the door he had come from. We had no other way to go, and followed him. We arrived in a passage that split in three directions: a kruthik tunnel to the left, a more civilized door straight ahead, and the same kruthik tunnel to the right. There was a crack near the door, and we decided to peek into it, so we better could decide where to go.
Through the crack we could see a room, where a pillar had been placed in front of the door. The room was slightly smaller than the one we had come from, but didn't have the same decorations or amount of doors. There was only one door, on the left part of the room, but to get there we would have to pass a group of enemies in the middle of the room. We could hear a mechanical grinding sound, and four statues had stood surrounding some sort of iron stakes that the enemies in the room stood on. There were also some goblin and kruthik remains in a pile in a corner, together with some unidentifiable rests.
Suddenly, the drunkard loudly exclaimed: ''No, no, no, not that way'', and headed off towards one of the tunnels. We interpreted this as that the room was too dangerous for us, and decided to take heed to his advice, and not go that way. We also decided that it was best to stick in a group, and decided to follow him into the right (former left) tunnel. The passage was narrow, but we managed to squeeze ourselves in.
Not very long after entering the tunnel, we came to what appeared to be the remains of an old tower. It was very dark, but it was discernible that it was some sort of constructed area, based on the bricks near us. I lit up a light in the room, revealing several kruthik, both on the ground and in the ceiling. They didn't appear to notice us at first, but when the monk lit up a torch, they charged for us!
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| I have no words. |
ENCOUNTER TIME!
Out of the shadows came more Kruthiks. The appeared both in the ceiling, and on the ground, and they too charged for us. I managed to react fairly quickly, and chilled the roof to the point where ice started forming over the kruthik, causing them to loose their grip and fall about 20 feet down. The kruthik who hadn't fallen down charged down the walls, and headed for us, attacking the people who had gotten first out of the tunnel. They spat some sort of green poison or acid, but were quickly stopped when the dragonborn fighter (not the drunk) threw not one, but two javelins at the at the same time.
The rest of the kruthik went down relatively quickly and without any interesting happenings, but they still managed to hurt us quite badly. We were bloody, and in tatters, and decided we needed a rest. We knew it would be too dangerous to rest here, in the middle of kruthik territory, so we decided that we needed to get out of here ASAP, before we could calm down. Going back would only buy us a slight amount of time, as the kruthik now had no hinders between them and us, and could easily follow us.
We looked around the kruthik-infested cave we were in, and found in total three other ways than the one we had come from. There was a big one up in the right corner, which had a slight glow. There was also two smaller paths, on the wall opposite of where we had entered, and on the wall to the right of it. We decided to not go the the eerie green light (which also had some faint chittering sounds), and went into the tunnel on the right wall, which went upwards.
We walked for a slight distance, before coming to a split. Here, there were two roads going down, and two up. We had come from one of the ones going down, and knew we had walked slowly downwards, so we decided to go up. One of the tunnels were dark, while the other was lit up by what appeared to be torches. We figured the torch-lit to be the option most likely to be safe, and went up there.
We ended up in the room where we had solved the puzzle, now with a statue lacking both its eyes (since the monk took them). We had thought when we saw the room that it was safe, but we were proven wrong rather quickly. Demons spawned from the braziers, that had re-lit, and we were beaten down and things were looking bad. Too bad the demons weren't the peace-loving kind.
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| Pictured: Some kind of smoke-breathing demon of peace |
ENCOUNTER TIME!
We ran. That's really about it. First the drunkard, then the monk, then the dragonborn and then lastly me. While the others sprinted out the doors, I closed them behind me as i exited the room, and froze them, sealing them against each other. The others ran, and I could hear the demons knocking on the door, trying twice to get out. Luckily they failed, and we all managed to get out, get to the wagons, and then back to the city of Sharn.
When we got back, we ran into Molrik. The drunkard suddenly began charging at Molrik, screaming curses, but got stopped by the monk. While the monk restrained the drunkard dragonborn, also muffling him, we began talking to Molrik, who seemed terribly surprised. It wasn't weird how he got a bit scared, having a big dragonborn charging at him at random, but he luckily didn't do much about it. What he did do, though, was tell us that some scholars from the university in the city wanted some samples of the kruthiks, which we said we could get for them. Molrik told us he would notify them about it, reminded us about our quest for him, and we headed for a rest.
After regaining our strength, we decided to head back to the dungeon. We travelled back to the entrance we had left, where luckily no demon awaited us. On top of the pile of skulls in the center of the (first) room, a battle standard was now visible. The monk charged at it first, intent at getting it. Amusingly enough, despite his martial prowess, he fell, impaling himself on the spikes. I, the weakest member of the group, attempted to climb up as well, and got up with relative ease. I grabbed the standard, and threw it down on the ground, before using my climber's kit to carefully get down.
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| Wow, monk. Just wow. |
The monk got off the spikes with some help, and the standard was given to the drunkard, because we felt him to be a natural leading figure, and that he could most efficiently use it. After that, the monk healed himself up, and we went back down, but decided not to test our luck with the demons. We headed down the tunnel beside the door to the demons, and ended up in the same crosspath we had been in, this time taking the way back down into the kruthik-infested tower.
Not surprisingly, we met another group of kruthik in the tower remains, but it was a small group, and we quickly killed, smashed, butchered, impaled and inflicted a lot of pain to them, allowing us to pass. We all agreed to take the larger, glowing path, and ended up in a large chamber, filled with flowing egg sacs. We put up some light, and wouldn't you know it, there were a ton of kruthik there, and they all rushed towards us.
ENCOUNTER TIME!
I lit up the room, revealing about 4 bugs. But this was too little, it seemed, and just like the other times, kruthik came out towards us from the pitch-black darkness. A flying kruthik was the first to attack us, but in a way also volunteered for being the first to die. All of us managed to launch our attacks against it, and it fell over dead before any of the others could reach us. But they soon did after it had died, and a smaller swarm launched at us, while all the other kruthik moved closer to us.
Spotting a huge kruthik, I knew that we would struggle against this group, much more than the other. Despite how the other kruthik had gone down quickly, that had much to do with luck. I knew we had to go all-out in this fight, and I wasted little time on doing just that. I summoned my Big Ball of Fiery Doom in a spot near both the big kruthik, and another smaller one. The big kruthik appeared unharmed, but the smaller one appeared to be rather heavily afflicted by the heat. While the sun did little against the big kruthik when it was summoned, the after-burn appeared to hit it and the smaller kruthik alike.
The drunkard placed his battle banner in the ground, giving us all a slight boost morale, and I felt like I could fight a lot better than previously. Meanwhile, the monk ran up to a small glowing object, and snatched it in front of us others. While the rest of us fought, he had snatched a bag, which I felt a strong dislike towards. We all did our best, and the monk soon jumped back into the battle, and I summoned ice beneath several kruthik, and placed my Big Fiery Ball in the middle of it, dealing a ton of area damage.
The monk seized the opportunity, and kicked the big bug directly into the fire, inflicting much burn damage to it in addition to his physical damage. It twisted and turned in the fire, but fell dead not long after. Only a single small swarm remained after that, but it quickly fell to my cloud of kittens (Having cloud of daggers as my only single-enemy spell gets kind of boring after a while).
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| DEADLY RAIN OF ADORABLE MAGICAL KITTENS! |
After the bugs had fallen, the monk inspected his necklace, revealing it to be a magically enchanted necklace, boosting defence. While the dragonborn fighter (the one that keeps us defended) needed the necklace the most, he decided that he would sell it. The dragonborn bought it, but I didn't feel like this was a good action of the monk to make, selling what was in reality everybody's reward.
The monk had also taken a pouch lying by the necklace, which contained some gold, silver and healing potions. He kept the gold for himself, gave the drunkard the silver as booze-money, along with a promise of free drinks, and gave the healing potions to the dragonborn, which was about the only thing I had agreed upon doing. I got nothing, but we grabbed a carcass of a flying kruthik, along with some eggs (as samples), before I scorched the entire area with my ball of fire, killing any potential hatchlings along with the kruthik corpses.
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Post Script:
-We will be playing my adventure soon.
-I have more variations of Cloud of Daggers that I used out of boredom (such as mist of raining sharp objects, dagger-puring vapor and stabby-stabby cloud), but I felt like cloud of kittens was the best one to include in the post.
-Dragonborn keeps forgetting to mark, so she's not tanking all that great.
-The rogue was missing because EL is sick, but she's healthy now and most likely will come back.
-I have high doubts that I will be writing many more first-person summaries of our journey. It takes way too much time, and I don't feel like anyone's actually interested.
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