Session 10 – The Daughter’s Greed

Campaign II, session 10. Previous: Session 9. Next: Session 11.

The party gathers their new compatriot (Mireya the Throdenite). After some discussion, they agree to pursue the dragon door before revisiting the goblin chief. Also, they leave their remaining hench, Jannis, back in town - “It’s pretty dangerous, take a break.” They do continue to bring along Tibor, an attendant of Talavosh (who stays at the entrance, and doesn’t enter the dungeon).

Their collection of poison, snow, fire from a torch, alchemical acid, and a shocking bolt spell for electricity proves enough to open the five-headed door, revealing a passage beyond.

The passage has an iron-banded stone door at the far end, with no doorknob or keyhole. In the center of the hall, a single stone tile is raised about 1 inch off the floor. After clearing the dust, they reveal a five-pronged symbol etched into the floor, along with the word “Nainarya” - “Let there be fire. While the rest of the party tries rubbing their torch on it, and otherwise debates about how to proceed, Mexiffeles goes back into the orb room, grabs one of the orbs, and drops it on the raised tile. The tile depresses into the ground, the door opens…

…and a pillar of flame shoots out from the ceiling – Vierath is mildly singed, but Mex is deeply scarred down his left side and incapacitated until he gets either magical healing or a day of rest.

The next room holds a five-headed dragon statue made of crysteel – it looks like glass, but is hard like metal! Gotta be worth a pretty penny, that! The party notes that there’s no further door, but their map shows another set of rooms beyond. As they approach the dragon, an auditory illusion speaks in Caernathi - “Where can one find the Daughter’s greed?”

This generates a lot of discussion, and some sadness that Cresilde’s familiar has passed; there’s no one in the party with a relevant proficiency to roll. Cresilde spends a fate point to temporarily gain a rank of Theology, centered on the cults to Tiamat. From this, she learns that Tiamat is known as the “Daughter of Khyber” and in addition to being worshiped as a deity is also believed to be an Overlord – one of the souls of Khyber that was made manifest on Eberron and is now sealed somewhere. After some additional discussion, Cresilde, answers “In the heart of every dragon!” and a new secret door opens.

In this final section, the party can see a wide room, with six alcoves on the sides and a spiked pit at the other end. Across the pit is another room with an ancient sarcophagus and an eerie green glow emanating from one corner. Five of the alcoves have smaller crysteel sculptures of Caernathi soldiers in heavy armor. One alcove also has a secret passage leading around behind to the sarcophagus room.

Vierath can hardly think of anything other than opening this sarcophagus – this is his path to amazing riches, opening an antique shop and finally escaping his brother’s shadow. Mireya and Fenmyra are able to persuade him to wait while Mireya escorts Mexiffeles to be healed by Tibor so the group can be at full strength in case of trouble. They also plan for Mex to break a door off its hinges to lay over the pit.

So, Mex climbs up, gets healed, and climbs back down. After breaking a door off, Mireya spots a swarm of rats (normal sized this time!) chasing into the room. She shouts for Mex to run, and takes off back towards the sarcophagus. Unfortunately, Mex has rolled poorly on initiative, and gets swarmed by the rats. He drops the door on some, but gets taken down to the ground screaming. Hearing his screams, Mireya shouts ahead for someone else to come help them.

Vezhka comes running, and Mireya runs back as well, only witness rats gorging on Mex’s throat and face, he is no longer moving but his leg is twitching. Mireya closes the door and drops a rock behind it, and the two of them return to the sarcophagus room, where Vierath assumes they left Mex up top with Tibor, and flips open the last of the latches on the sarcophagus. As he and Cresilde lift up the lid, there’s a flash of blue light and a pair of semi-decayed hands reach up to “help” them toss it to the side; a decrepit creature that looks vaguely like a dead or dying hobgoblin with rubbery skin sits up and glares menacingly.

Vezkha is quick to act – flying into a rage and smashing into it hard. Fenmyra tries to take a pot-shot but misses. Mireya runs in with her khondas and stabs – the creature falls back but still twitches. Vierath and Cresilde use a torch together to finish it off.

Inside the creature’s tomb, the party finds a pile of coins, a few pieces of jewelry, and a magic battle axe. They also move all the crysteel sculptures into the farthest room before the rats. Finally, Mireya tells them about Mex’s body, and they prep some oil to throw as they open the door – only to find that most of the rats have skittered off by now – one or two remain still chewing on the body and get burned to cinders.

The party closes off all the other doors from that chamber and begins funneling their treasure up the stairs to be hauled up by rope. The trip back to town is uneventful, and they throw a heroic funeral for Mexiffeles. As Kerowyn begins pricing out their loot, the group also discusses what to do with the magic items. Ultimately, they end up donating the items to the local Hall of Scrolls (for full XP and also Reserve XP). With newfound confidence and respect of the people of Bastion, they all (finally) level up, with several of them being only one XP away from level 3.