Evanna Spectre – blogpost 9

We stand inside the room where we found the Red Mage. He teleported, and the party is investigating books and scrolls. I can only look at the walls… Many skulls hang on the wall as some sort of offering; I look at them in utter disgust.

We decide to investigate another room with a pretty rug on the floor. When Yrod skips into the room, on the rug, it comes to life and rolls up – with Yrod inside it! It is a Rug of Smothering and every time we do damage to it, we do the same damage on Yrod! When I hear Yrod scream, I try to help her. Luckily, she escapes after trying a couple of times. When she’s out of the rugs’ grip, we kill it in no time. Inside the room, we spot a padlocked chest. Ilimitar checks for traps and warns Morsab for the trap inside the chest, but he’s already starting to open it. Inside, we find a mask, gold, pearls, gems, and a golden chain. Some of the items start to disappear, so I cast dispel magic to stop them. We come to the conclusion that the mask we’ve found is Razmirs’ mask. We decide to give the mask to Morsab to attune with because he has the most issues and needs the most luck out of all of us.

We search other rooms in the lower courtyard and find a staircase to the upper courtyard. We see Ogres in the distance, practicing their javelin-throw. It seems like a little competition and they don’t seem to notice we entered. We investigate some rooms here, and they all seem to be bedrooms. After a little while, the Ogres are done with their game and come closer. If we don’t move now, they’ll see us! We quickly enter a bedroom and discuss our plan. The Ogres walk past, some descend to the lower courtyard. In the distance, we can hear them scream:

‘THEY KILLED EVERYONE! HIGH ALERT! HIGH ALERT!’

The rest of the Ogres go downstairs too. We seem to be alone here.

Yrod decides to create a wall to barricade the stairs leading to the upper courtyard and makes herself part of this wall. Ilimitar is scouting again and gestures to us that he’s found enemies inside a room. We surprise them, and with a fireball and guiding bolt, we leave all Kobolds in the room for dead. We find some more rooms, one doesn’t open, and dispel magic doesn’t seem to work either. Great; now I’ve used my magic for nothing. How annoying. In another room, we just find trash. Ilimitar wants to search there, but the rest of us decide to move back to Yrod. Morsab saw some cool passageways along the way back and asks us to follow him. The tunnels don’t seem to lead to the lower courtyard… We see another door and enter.

We see a huge giant in front of us, with two Ogres and a ballista. Shishaldix tells the giant the passphrase we should have used on Razmir. The Giant thinks Shishaldix is lying and intimidates us. I feel so scared!

‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY CASTLE?! DID YOU MURDER EVERYONE DOWNSTAIRS?!’

He casts mage hand to scoop us all inside the room. He doesn’t believe Morsab either. I tell him my name and that we needed to intercept the loot from Razmir to help someone else and that we don’t want to enable the cult to let Tiamat rise from the nine hells. He relaxes and asks us to take a seat. He can help us to end the cult. The cult did not include him in its plans, so he doesn’t know much, but he is happy he now can take back control over his castle. He doesn’t like us killing his crew though. The Giant has enough information to make sure his allies will rally against the cult.

We firstly have to kill the Red Mage and then a dragon named Glaciel. It is a white dragon and lives in the center of this floating castle on the rocks. To complete the party, Zhaidos walks back to Yrod to get her out of her wall. When Yrod joins the party again, she wants to cuddle the giant. The giant doesn’t want that and creates wind to blow her off his leg – softly. He says he’ll make sure we will get where we need to be, as long as we defeat the remaining enemies inside the castle.

We enter another tunnel, leading to a crypt. This is the crypt of the giants’ wife. She is steering the castle, he told us – and asked us to leave her alone. We exit the crypt. The next tunnel we enter is normal human-sized and leads to another crypt. We feel that this is the crypt of the Vampire… We open the tomb and she is asleep – inside the tomb. Morsab knows how to end her ‘life’, and with a couple of tries, we put a stake in her heart and destroy the tomb. The vampire cannot regenerate anymore and the mist she used to transport herself with, floats around in the air doing nothing.

Happily, we walk down another tunnel. We know we are entering the dragons’ lair: the tunnel is made out of ice, and stuff and bodies are frozen in it. We enter a great room with a hoard at the end. We decide to wait a while inside Yrods’ igloo and take a short rest. Shishaldix makes an alteration to my chain mail so I can endure cold damage better. Shishaldixs’ little snake scouts the treasure, but nothing happens. We anxiously await the return of Glaciel…