Session 13 – The Sinkhole of Evil
Campaign I, session 13. Previous: Session 12. Next: Session 14.
The group did indeed back out to Teryk to return the bodies recovered from Thethamun, as well as resting to recover from their encounter with ghouls. On the return trip the party spotted some striking white flowers with spots. Hugo (hench mage) was able to identify this as henbane, a poisonous plant in the nightshade family. After some discussion with the party, Hugo harvested the henbane for potential use in poisoning major threats in the future.
During this downtime, Pash (PC venturer) brainstormed the possibility of building some barricades and besieging the dome. There was quite a bit of discussion on how that might work, how much time it might take, and what other risks might befall the party if they attempted it. Ultimately, the party decided to shelve that idea and make an excursion back into the lower level of the temple complex. They also decided to scour the town for additional military oil and holy water for this excursion.
Returning down the spiral stairs, Abiyir (hench orcblooded paladin) and Singil (PC orcblooded shaman) ripped out a second of the bars blocking their passage. The party started following the left wall and entered a very damp, grey cavern. They were fortunate to spot an oozelike creature creeping along the damp floor, and double-fortunate to have a henchman that knew something about such creatures! A grey ooze in ACKS will consume nonmagical metal, wood, and similar weapons that strike it, and is also immune to both cold and fire! Fortunately, the creature was very slow-moving and the PCs could back out of the room faster than it could pursue.
Marching the other direction, the party came to a cavern filled with blood-red water. A narrow ledge on their left would allow them to continue without having to get wet. Eventually, they came to a wider cavern, still filled with this tainted water, with a treelike entity growing out of it, spreading its tendrils along the floor, walls, and ceilings. Their ledge came to an end, and they had some unpleasant options: jump 5’ to another ledge on their right or wade 20’ to another ledge on their left. Unconsidered were some options for swimming through the water in various directions. Eventually Ardingle (hench mage) cast Floating Disc to ferry the party across the 20’ to their left.
The party could see some torchlight coming out of a side passage ahead, and moved towards it. The side passage was now worked stone rather than natural cavern, and they could see the source of the light was a torchlit room with 5 priests chanting around an altar. When their leader spotted the light from the PCs torches, they stopped their chanting and started questioning the PCs about why they were here. Travain (PC bard) tried to convince these priests that “hey, we’re the new guys, just moved in” blah blah blah. “You shouldn’t be down here! Return upstairs at once!”. At this point Pash moved up and took over the conversation, BSing the priests for a few moments before invoking the art of treachery.
During the ensuing fight the leader of the cult cast darkness into the eyes of Casino (PC spellcarved soldier) and Deuce (Casino’s wardog), blinding them and effectively taking them out of the fight. Since the priests were in plate armor and shields, it took some time for the blows to land and take them out of the fight, but the PCs were otherwise mostly unharmed.
The cultists were wearing holy symbols of Tiamat, the daughter of Khyber, and their altar was quickly identified to be the center of a sinkhole of evil. The PCs pried out the silver and gold inlay, and poured holy water over what was left – this destroyed the altar’s effects and the sinkhole will become cleansed over time (provided nobody restores the altar or builds another). At this point I offered the PCs and henches an instant chance to change alignment to Lawful and offered 100 bonus XP to all Lawful characters within the party for their righteous deeds.
Additionally, the altar room had two black marble statues of a naked, pregnant elf/dragon hybrid, with a tattooed symbol of Tiamat on her belly. While these statues would potentially fetch a couple-hundred GP, they were also 20 stone each. So, instead of trying to haul them back to town, the PCs lifted them out and tossed them into the gap they had used Floating Disc to cross earlier, to use as a makeshift bridge on their return trip. Unfortunately, this action would disturb some horrifying creatures from beneath the water – a pair of squamous, writhing creatures, all tentacles and eyeballs and teeth!
The party would soon find that these creatures’ attacks were also paralytic, but thanks to the heavy armor of Abiyir and Thranator (hench dwarven vaultguard), most of their attacks were defrayed. Abiyir and Singil were able to finish off one of the creatures, while Thranator fought heroically against the second alongside some conjured berserkers. A crit from the monstrosity brought Thranator to death’s door, but fortunately a volley of javelins from Meathead (hench kobold warrior) and his followers (regular kobolds recruited last session) was able to help bring down the second horror.
While Thranator did suffer sustained injuries to his hips and lower back (he will no longer be able to forced march), he was able to walk under his own power and should be able to return to fighting shape with either magical healing and one night of bed rest, or one week of bed rest.
Spent of much of their spells, the PCs made their way back to the dungeon entrance. They will decide next session whether to leave Thranator at their cart and continue adventuring or return to civilization to recover spells and additional hp.