02.08 Into the Ruins

[Deebee]

You descend into the lava tube you find outside the Northwest of the city wall (your shady contacts information is indeed correct).

You quickly deal with the two (very relaxed) guards who man the station at the top of the cable car. The huge cavern is hot and humid and illuminated with a faint glow from phosphorescent green algae in the water and fungus clinging to the rocks. The air smells unpleasantly of sulphur, it is however not at dangerous levels.

From the vantage point on the cable car ledge you see the building the ropes run into – a small wooden structure on a beach at the other side of the cavern. Set into the rock face behind this are the smooth shapes of building structures carved from the black rock. They have a somewhat unsettling appearance looking like they have been partially melted.

You descend to the beach. No one is around, and no one seems to be worried about security here. You chose a door (one of 5) to enter the spaces beyond. The octagon room behind reveals itself to have an illusionary floor following one of you (who?) falling into the 20-foot deep, water filled pit. This breaks the fall but it quickly become apparent that the water is inhabited by some kind of swarm (blood swarm) that feeds off a faller. Thankfully you are able to assist and retrieve your party member. Entwhistle spots something shiny in the murky water which you retrieve through the excellent use of Mage Hand. It turns out to be one of the wands of control water that you are here to recover.

After defeating a number of off duty guards men and women in the adjoining rooms you start a pitch battle with some on duty guards in the next room. What ensues is a lot of dodging around the rooms of the complex, running up and down the beach as guards come at you from all directions.

The culmination of all of this is a confrontation with Triel herself. You track her down to her room. As battle commences a doorway trap is trigger by Quarion, which traps Rogan and Quarion fast with piercing skewers that spring forth from the door frame. You take out her henchmen quickly and manage to free Quarion. Rogan is absolutely pinned, and despite Xinh’s attempts to smash the blades holding Rogan, and eventually passes out from his wounds.

Much missile firing and projectile throwing Triel emerges from the room to face you. You prove to be much stronger than anticipated and she falls quickly. Entwhistle not satisfied with her dropping makes sure she stays down (which turned out to be a good move as she was feigning and had a poison dagger at the ready for the first person to stoop over her)

She has in her possession 3 of the wands of control water.

[Zarniwoop]

The information we obtained from the mystery man proved sound and we followed the trail to some holes in the mountainside outside of town. We came across a winching station in a large cavern. We dispatched two guards and the "Scout" unlocked the winch mechanism. In order to be stealthy and ensure we were not going into a trap the "Scout" rigged up a rope harness and scaled down the supporting ropes to the winching station below. He scouted round and then entered the lower station avoiding a trip wire set to collapse the ceiling on intruders heads. We then set about getting the whole team down then securing the station with the lock we took from the upper station.

We then began to explore the area, entering the first room one of our number fell into a pit of water and strange creatures (Illusionary floor). We rescued them and saw an item in the pool. This was found to be magical and when the bard rescued the item with "mage hand" we had found one of the missing wands.

We continued to explore the area and we discovered various pockets of resistance.
<Tale to be continued later its quite long>

The Chase:
During one fight one of the henchman made a break for it and Leorn who had been sent to watch our backs gave chase not being the fastest Summoned a Fire Beetle to assist. I followed after to give assistance and we were just catching up when we encountered a closed door and some form of web trap. I dispatched the web using "Burning Hands" but we were unable to open the door. We awaited the rest of the party to catch up and we then investigated the rest of the room. Leading out from this room via a pair of doors was a long corridor...

Corridor encounter:
After entering a wide corridor and Leorn(Pitfinder) once again lived up to his name we were ambushed with arrows fired from holes in the walls. I scorched one with my "Scorching Ray", the "Scout" managed to smoke another, Leorn used his shield to block the last  while we opened the doors at the far end. Seeing that there was a HUGE room which would appear to be some sort of temple (possibly) we shut the doors and decided to back out. We smoked the last remaining hole and made our way back to the original doors which the "Scout" had barricaded with a table moved from the previous room. Expecting a fight we prepared for battle, the ranged weapons were prepared and the doors opened. As expected a fight broke out and some escaped.

The Darkness:
Having found ourselves back on the beach again our dwarven fighter attempted to close an open doorway into the room with the pool only to suddenly drop to the floor as he got close. Making the judgement that it looked like some kind of sleep spell or similar I approached his prone body, peering round the door to check what I was up against I saw Red Head beckoning to me in some kind of taunt!. I communicated to the others what I saw as I pulled our friend to safety. As I was doing that others worked at closing the door. We then moved onto another doorway in order to regain access to the inside. Expecting an ambush we formulated a plan. Leorn cast darkness onto a coin which was thrown into the room to mask our approach. I used ghost sound in order to distract and confuse our enemy. The bard used mage hand to remove to continual flame candles from the other side of the room thus plunging them into complete darkness.  We then had a dwarf check out the positions of the enemy and prepared our attack. A candle was thrown onto the balcony where they were hiding and the ranged weapon team piled in. We managed to take them out just as the darkness was running out and proceeded to get to work on the next door after the "Scout" checked out the balcony.

Triel's Room
Having cleared out several areas we approached a door we had noticed earlier with two continual flame candles outside. Forming up into our usual battle formation we prepared to enter I did not see what happened initially as I was not in the front ranks but Xinh was in front of me doing battle with a foe I could not see. When I was able to act as all our party was still in the corridor I decided to attempt to do burning hands by placing my hand round the edge of the door and aiming it into the room. Whilst this was successful I appeared to trigger some kind of trap on the door which caused the door to start to close and several spikes to appear which impaled my arm and Rogans body. I then spent some time trying to get myself free to no avail and Xinh had to break the spike with his Axe. The battle continued with us using ranged weapons to fire in through gaps. Eventually the doorway was reopened and we waded in to finish Triel off. Once she hit the floor myself and Entwhistle loosed another round of bolts and arrows into her just to be on the safe side  :!: