Mattsters of the Mattiverse Session 8

Dockalonging Along

• Russ splits to go for a swim, and maybe check out the island
• Mad Gokar wanders around, followed by curious/frightened children and onlookers and grows increasingly irritated at the lack of armored scarves and alchemy shops.
• Apt and Edi go pay a visit to the town's representative of Alexandria
  • The church has a nice bell on top. It looks loud.
  • Her name is Jikk Hardwalk, and she is a Road Halfling who has ceased being itinerant
  • She does most anything that needs magical expertise around here
  • She gives directions, which we note

• • She gives us the lay of town (numbers are from the map)
    • Savil, the chief guard guy, lives in (2) (called the Stronghouse)
    • The docks (3) split about 60/40 Halfling/Human (all Boat Halflings)
    • The "Bridge to Nowhere" (4) has existed since before the town--nobody knows its original purpose.
    • The Feasting Field (5) will be the wedding venue in a few days. Getting married are two young, local Halflings.
    • (6) is the Church
    • Little Town (7) is mostly occupied by Halflings (some 250-odd total out of the 1-2k inhabitants)
    • Lord Ulirishay, when he visits, inhabits (8), a treehouse. Since he's not an elf, this is pretty weird.
  • She offers what support she can. That mostly means buying holy water from her, which will be available the next morning (we get 4 bottles)
• That done, everyone goes off to do their own thing for a bit
  • Edi gathers information:

As you carouse, you can't help but bring up the dungeon. Apparently, there are a lot of rumors around town about the place. They say that, in pre-alexandrian times, it was occupied by a group known as the Opal Fist. According to local lore, they conspired with devils and were brought low by the same.

• • Russ checks out the island. It shows signs of having been used as a meeting place for some while, albeit irregularly.
• Everyone finds a place to stay and buys whatever sundries they need (at the very least, Russ buys salt, anticipating things that need preserving)
• They rest the night in town

The Monastery

• As soon as they awaken, they gather the ordered holy water and start the trip into An Cran Fiodh.
• About half a day passes, and they find themselves at some long-destroyed ruins. They make their way inside
• Hanging an immediate right, they find a stream
  • Apt is ambushed by something invisible!
  • It gets a bite or two in before it's squashed. Gokar and Russ both use great Knowledge (Nature) rolls to figure out that it's a Phantom Fungus.
  • Russ thinks it's delicious, and cuts off a couple of pounds to take with
  • A quick swim in the stream, and Russ finds the skeleton of a long-dead man. He has a red iron key in one hand, but nothing else about him is discernible
• The party presses on, directly South
  • The hallway terminates at a room filled with ceremonial stuff. The party doesn't go in to investigate immediately, though, because a very large spider web is in the way.
  • The party gets ready, and Russ jiggles the web.
  • Two spiders appear! Gokar is bitten, but shrugs off the poison. The spiders are dispatched shortly after.
    • Russ and Gokar, of the same mind, immediately harvest each spider's poison glands
  • While they're busy doing that and cleaning webs off their weapons, Edi notices a silk-wrapped, humanoid figure struggling on the other side of the room. He immediately moves to cut it free--with a small cut, it is able to break itself out. And by "it", I mean, the ghoul that was trapped inside
    • The ghoul immediately paralyzes Edi and infects him with Ghoul Fever™
    • Russ runs up to assist, and also gets paralyzed and diseased (but probably saves Edi from death in the process)
    • Gokar uses the opening to smash face. THE GHOUL RESTS IN PIECES
• Searching ensues. There is... a SECRET DOOR! On the other side, there are continual light spells at intervals, and things look, if not exactly well-used, at least a bit more lively than on the other side. This has evidently not been nearly as disturbed as the rest of the Monastery.
  • It opens loudly!
  • There's a corridor on the other side. Gokar and Russ lead the way. Gokar is slightly ahead, and he is ambushed by... two more ghouls!

• • • Gokar becomes paralyzed and diseased. Russ gets to return his favor from just before.
  • The party decides not to continue down this corridor until they've secured the lines of retreat. They close the door and endeavor to make it look more-or-less undisturbed.
• They make their way up the last corridor from the entry. It branches, and they go North.
• To the right is a room that used to be a larder. It looks like it's fairly recently been used as a larder, too, just with more humanoid ingredients. It doesn't have anything useful.
• To the left is a room. The party enters it carefully, but the shrieker sees them anyway.
  • It is killed quickly, but it still lets the entire dungeon know the party is around.
• Nothing found in that room, the party continues on to an adjoining room.
  • It too, is empty, apart from... a secret door! The instant it is found, a noise attracts attention. Russ and Gokar immediately recognize that it is coming from the room they just left, and that Edi is closer to that room than not. Russ moves into position.
  • Sure enough, two more ghouls attack, using the other end of the passage to position themselves behind the party.
  • The Mattiverse is a bit luckier on rolls, and the new ghouls are taken out without too much hassle.
  • This entire time, Gokar has been collecting ghoul heads. Russ can probably think of a few reasons, but doesn't bother to share since he doesn't really have the empathy to see that it squicks Edi and Apt out, and isn't personally bothered by it in the slightest. The less monstrous party members don't really comment on it.
  • The Ghouls had a little stash of crap they'd been looting from the successful execution of their ambush. The not-awful stuff is:
    • 30' rope
    • 270 gp (split on sheets)
    • scrolls
      • spider climb
      • acid arrow
      • magic circle of protection against good
• They continue South. There is a room to the West
  • When the door is opened, a Huge Giant Whiptail Centipede jumps out!

• • It hits hard. It manages to take a big chunk out of Gokar, and trips him in the process. It also poisons him, but the poison burns out pretty quickly.
  • Russ pulls Gokar out of the door, Apt closes it.
  • The centipede immediately starts battering the door down. The party withdraws to a point where they can bring a little more force to bear.
  • Centipede erupts a turn later, gets bombed by Gokar, slams him hard again (but suffers lots of penalties due to the smaller space, and isn't able to trip him)
  • Russ soaks an AoO to get a bomb toss in, and is rewarded with a mandible to the gut. He takes some poison damage, but, like Gokar, shakes it off pretty quickly.
  • The AoO used up, Edi and Apt are free to do some ranged shenanigans that bring the centipede low. Gokar finishes the job. Then keeps finishing the job. Then keeps finishing the job. When he's done, there's little left of the centipede's head but a fine, green paste.
    • Unfortunately, this means no poison glands for the Mattiverse.
  • There's nothing in the centipede's room but a bunch of Goblin graffiti and detritus. The party decides to camp in the second Ghoul Ambush room (the one with the shrieker).
• Levels ensue! Everyone gets to 4!
• The rest passes uneventfully. Everyone makes amazing heal checks, and the diseased pass their subsequent saves, staving off Ghoul Fever ™ for a day.
• The party heads down a corridor with bunches of rooms to the side.
  • It was evidently a place where the people who lived here kept things, but it's mostly trash
  • A ways in, skeletons burst out! Two are Human-sized, one is Troll-sized
  • Edi makes an amazing channel that blows away the smaller skeletons. Gokar trades blows with the troll while Russ ineffectually pokes at it. Edi finishes it off with a small burst of flame.
  • The party searches, and finds a small, secret compartment!
    • potion of blur
    • scroll of cure light wounds
    • scroll of speak with dead

Rewards

• Treasure noted above
• 200 xp to all for the Phantom Fungus
  • 25 xp to Gokar, 15 xp to Russ for figuring out its identity
• 200 xp to all for the Spiders
  • 20 xp to Gokar/Russ for extracting poison (and 2 giant spider poison vials)
• 100 xp to all for the Ghoul burrito
• 50 xp to all for finding the door to the "main" monastery area
• 200 xp to all for Ghoul Ambush number 1
• 100 xp to all for the shrieker
• 200 xp to all for Ghoul Ambush number 2
• 200 xp to all for the centipede
• 200 xp to all for the skeletons