Session 20 – The Fall of Black Dog Manor

Campaign I, session 20. Previous: Session 19. Next: Session 21.

The session begins with a brief recap – the party has found themselves in a “murder mansion” of sorts, and has thus far managed to avoid traps and find several secret doors by use of disern magic…

… speaking of which, Hugo (hench mage, currently discerning magic) needs to make a Spells save; he fails. He slows to a stop and his eyes go glassy for some time, as if he is spaced out, staring into the distance. Singil (PC orcblooded shaman) diagnoses him as being mesmerized; after about 10 minutes he recovers, shakes it off, and asks to sit down for a moment.

Alwyn (PC thief) wants to heed the cat’s warning and starts thinking of how best to reach the horses and flee, but first spots a second secret passage leading to the cellar. This sparks some discussion about what the party should do, until eventually Meathead (hench kobold warrior) and his followers decide to wander down while the rest of the party is distracted. They find a mostly wrecked wine cellar (3 intact bottles of the good stuff), a rancid buttery, and a butchery scattered with bones and debris. Soon, the others notice and move down to continue the exploration.

Dreyfuss (PC sakhalin watch-hound) is grateful to find stairs instead of a ladder. He smells the bottles of wine that the kobolds have attempted to hide about their persons and ignores it to sniff around for other clues. He deduces that many (possibly most) of the bones are human (or at least, humanoid) in nature. Alwyn searches for secret doors and discovers the connection between the butchery and the previously discovered “meat room” off to the side.

Dreyfuss continues sniffing around and notes a whiff and some air flow back in the wine cellar, detecting that there must be some kind of passage here. Casino (PC spellcarved soldier) and his hench Ebba (human fighter) approach to help open it. As they are discussing whether to open it immediately or prepare first, the manor house decides for them – the secret door slides down and reveals an enormous wurm-like creature, scaled, hungry and hissing!

Athelia (hench exalted wonderworker) immediately begins casting a spell. Casino stabs from behind Ebba and Dreyfuss, failing to penetrate the beast’s scaly hide. The beast itself responds by chomping Ebba clean in two, then snapping at Casino, who manages to survive intact. Dreyfuss lunges toward the beast with claws and teeth of his own but fails to score a hit. Alwyn fires his crossbow, aiming high, and lands a bolt squarely in one of the fiend’s joints, slowing its movements. Finally, Athelia’s spell finishes, and a holy circle begins glowing around her in a 10’ radius. “To me!” she grunts through clenched teeth, focusing her concentration on maintaining the spell.

Tassi (hench gnomish elementalist), hearing the commotion from the manor above, runs to the top of the stairs and conjures a pack of berserkers outside the protective circle. Casino pulls Ebba’s top half out of the fray while the berserkers distract the creature, which chomps them down and begins thrashing against the holy circle, unable to pass it. Alwyn lands a few more bolts from the other side of the circle, but the creature thrashes on, raging against the barrier. Singil warns the party against attacking from within the circle, knowing that it could disrupt the protection. The party backs out of the cellar; Casino tosses a vial of military oil on the stairs. Singil lights and drops a couple of torches as the beast chases up the stairs. The creature hisses in pain from the flames, then backs off and thinks to come up through the alternate route, the “meat room”. Athelia moves to block both routes with her holy circle. With Athelia holding her concentration, Singil begins hastily performing a ceremony of counterspell, hoping to send the beast back to its home dimension. The first attempt sends a pulse of disruptive energy at the creature, but the fiend shrugs it off. Gritting her teeth, Singil retraces the motions and begins again – this time, the beast pauses its thrashing and moves into the path of the blast – and disappears.

Relieved, Athelia finally drops her focus, and the holy circle fades. Alwyn rushes off to check on his cat, dragging Tassi along to translate for them. The feline stretches and looks up from his nap. “Oh. You didn’t die. Huh.”

The party takes this to mean that the immediate danger has passed and begins searching beyond the final secret door. Within, they find a shrine dedicated to the Black Dogs, a faction within the ancient Dragon House of Ghallanda. These Black Dogs resented that their Mark of Hospitality had to be used to serve others, and instead twisted its purpose to trap and murder unsuspecting travelers. Metri (hench dwarven rhetor) is excited to identify such a find, as nobody has seen House Ghallanda or indeed any halfling for at least two centuries. Atop the shrine, there is a strange canid skull, painted black, adorned with 5 engraved candles…

Beyond the shrine is a catacomb with a handful of sarcophagi and a large summoning circle. The circle is etched into a concrete floor, lined with trace amounts of precious metals. In the precise center is set a single vertebra from an enormous creature – Metri is able to identify it as dragonbone.

While most of the sarcophagi are marked with nameplates, the final sarcophagus is unmarked. Singil contacts the spirit world asking for advice on whether to open these tombs and sees a vision of a spirit dancing happily over the last unmarked sarcophagus. Still wary, she allows the eager kobolds to attempt an opening first, but they are unable. Tapping into her orcblooded savagery, Singil crowbars open the lid, cracking it in two. Inside this halfling-sized coffin, she finds the skeleton of a human-sized creature, evidence of a long-ago scratching and clawing attempt to escape, and treasure: a pair of magical bracers embedded with a pearl in the left bracer, two sacks of coins, and a single playing card…

After seeing all this, the party wants to destroy the evil place, and Dreyfuss enters his mind palace in an attempt to deduce the best manner of destruction. In response, I gave the player both of the divinations I had prepared for the question “should we burn it down”:

Should we end it with fire? Your mind races, filtering through all you have seen:

• The clean fireplace[s], as if swept yesterday?

• The scented wood, after centuries of disuse?

• The cellar’s brimstone odor?

It invites you to spark the flame…

Should we end it with fire? Your mind races, filtering through your observations:

• The false candles…

• The endless illusions…

• The ceaseless rain…

It may well fear the flame…

At this point, the party decided they needed to rest and gather their strength before deciding what to do, but were unwilling to stay in the house itself. So, they hauled back out to the stables. Pashlatine (PC venturer) of course was unwilling to sleep like a peasant, so she enlisted Ardingle (hench mage) and his floating disc to carry one of the beds over to the stable, using blankets to keep the rain off it the best they could.

The next morning, the group reassembles and attempts to decide what to do. As they discuss, there is a sudden shriek from the kitchen. Meathead and one of his followers come running and screaming from that area, and the party sees a barrier of flame blocking the route in. From inside, they can hear the last kobold follower whimpering and calling for help. Apparently, they had been cooking a hot breakfast for themselves.

The party spends some time trying to decide on a course of action. Eventually, they agree that Casino will take Singil’s ring of fire resistance and attempt a daring rescue. Unfortunately, he is unable to push through the barrier, taking minor damage in the attempt. Singil makes another quick attempt to counterspell the effect, but stumbles a line in the ceremony, suffering the stigma of failure. Before they can do much else, the flames die down, and they walk in to find that this poor kobold had stumbled upon the idea of trying to pee the fire out, and ended up with some quite embarrassing injuries…

Dreyfuss once again enters his mind palace looking for any additional clues. This time, he gets back the same two results as before, plus this:

Something wants you here. Something willing to use magical force. But how much power can it actually manifest at one time?

At this, the party agrees to use the scented wood, blankets and linens from the closet, books from the library, and remaining oil to turn the entire manor into an enormous fire hazard and use burning hands and torches from a safe distance. After watching the horrid place burn to the ground, they saddle up for the trip back to Metrol…