Session11


 * 3-23-13**
 * Thay part two / Within Szass Tam’s Estate**

We gather and exit the room of water through the door Thorn worked on. We step onto a bridged walkway that goes over a ground floor with 3 fire braziers. There are two more sets of doors… 1 doesn’t seem to be locked, and Thorn carefully walks across to the second set of doors and begins working on the trap. Erevin looks down and pulls Yuki to the front with him, having her create water to douse out one of the braziers. 2 fire elementals spring out of the other two, leaping up to the walkway and lighting the whole walkway on fire! Thorn is caught between the door and one of the elementals as fire lights under his feet. Erevin turns and fights the other elemental, while Wren launches arrows into the one on Thorn. Posy works her way to the front to join Erevin, while Azarius grabs Yuki with his tentacles to pull her out of the fire along the walkway. Mali leaps down to the ground floor to attack from below and avoid the flames. As we take down the fire elementals, more spring up out of the braziers to take their place. Yuki works quickly to keep everyone alive, and Erevin extinguishes the remaining braziers. Three chests in the room are full of beautiful red rubies. Worth about 3,000 gold in all.

With the fires now out, and the room seemingly safe, Wren opened the unlocked door. She was met with a quick prick on her finger, and quickly met with a strength fading poison. Thorn went over to investigate, hearing her gasp as she was stuck. He gave her a quick application to stop the poison from spreading and weakening her further. Inside we see a sloping walkway, slick with some sort of substance. Below the walkway was a ground floor of dirt. A large fin moved through the dirt. A landshark.

We decide to check the other door to see our options, and Thorn works on disarming the trap that he had been interrupted on when the fire elementals came out. A rune seems to appear over the door, and Thorn falls over in a deep slumber. We try, but nothing seems to wake him. Yuki uses one of Axton's precious dispel magic scrolls, and gets him up and moving.

He checks the hall behind the door that’s now safe and finds two more doors. The first, he carefully unlocks and opens to find a beach… well that looks safe. The second door isn’t locked, inside is a luxurious room of large, comfy chairs, a fire place, and 4 soft beds. A sign on the wall reads “Rest Area”… Yuki goes through the door and takes a running leap into one of the beds, snuggling into the pillows and blankets. She begins to sink into the blankets and mattress. Azarius stands just outside of the door, and reaches in with his tentacles, latching onto Yuki and pulling her out of the bed. As he pulls her up, tentacles from within the bed try and hold onto her. Posy holds onto Azarius as we all latch onto one another and pull in a tug of war to get Yuki out.

We ignore the beach, and head back to the land shark… The ramp down is slippery, but we use ropes to tie each other off, and ever so carefully work our way down. Behind the next door is a natural cavern that curves down. 2 earth golems stand guard. Thorn sneaks to the next door and works on getting them open while the others quietly run for the doors. They wake, and look to charge us. Erevin charges to them to hold them off for everyone else. Mali tosses out an entangling spell, pinning them in place, allowing for Erevin to disengage, and get us all into the next hall.

Inside another door, is a dark room with a shadowy woman from another plane. She is surprised when we rush into the room, and yells at us in a foreign language. Speaking a little brokenly in celestial, she manages to convey to Yuki that she has been bound here by Szass Tam. There are runes over the doorways that she is unable to touch. Azarius melts them with his acid spray, effectively breaking the spell that bound her. She leaves us with a bag of 1000 gold worth of onyx stones, a rapier, and her thanks. She escapes back to her shadow plane.

Through the next passage, we find a rune on the floor that is a teleport pad, and stairs leading down. We decide to go down the stairs. It’s colder, misty, and has a graveyard smell. Piles of body parts, zombie and skeleton, are on the floor. Coming down the hall from the other direction are 2 mummies, a large skeletal knight, a vampire, and 2 liches. With our protective scroll spell still on to hide us from the undead, we try to make a break across the room quickly, but we are noticed… As Yuki moves to consecrate the hallway, blue lightning flashes down the hall and drops her to the floor, lifeless. Destiny, a feather-winged woman, appears out of Yuki’s body, absorbing part of the damage of the lightning bolt, leaving Yuki still unconscious, and barely clinging to life. Erevin and the skeletal knight clash into the hallway. The vampire fades into the shadows and appears to attack Thorn. Wren cradles Yuki and tries to move her out of the room, but she is weakened and Yuki’s armor is heavy on her unconscious body. Azarius tries to hit the vampire with a spell vs undead, and calls out that something is wrong… his spell isn’t working like it should against the undead. Wren looks up with this information, combined with the failure of their scroll’s protection, and takes real notice… there are 6 of them… the vampire who uses shadow… the large skeletal knight… the blue lightning… She shudders and calls out “Stop! It’s a spell! These are our friends!” Mali desperately searches Yuki’s body for the last dispel magic scroll, while Wren works on healing Yuki. White light flashes from down the hall… We get Yuki barely back to her feet, and she casts the spell from the scroll, fading off the magic illusions, and revealing Axton, Crowe, Kale, Kinu, Uther, and Ursus, as Axton's voice becomes intelligible, calling out that something is wrong, and his turn undead spell didn’t work! Everyone is relieved to see each other still alive. Apologies are quickly given. Kinu announces that she found the book we needed.

Reunited we travel to in to a room with a glass case. A simple quill and ink vial, along with an elegant map of Eltabar, the capital city of Thay inside. There is 1 section missing on the map on the wall around the city. We recall Bellana talking about Eltabar. Don’t try to map the city, it’s a crime punishable by death. People there will try and sell you fake maps. Looking at the map, the canals of the city form a giant water rune for a circle of binding. A city-sized ward of binding? Something big must be bound there.

There is an ancient elven story about the start of Thay. Ancient Egyptians used to have control of those lands, but red wizards summoned a demon lord who won their success in the claiming of Thay.

We guess that completing a map of Eltabar would release the demon lord… we can’t just leave it here. Thorn and Kinu look over the case and can’t find any traps… As tempting as it is to simply draw in the line and watch the destruction of Thay… we are still in Thay, and close to Eltabar, and Azarius points out that the demon wont stop with just Thay… it will spread and bring death and destruction to many places. Opening the case, a white light flashes! No one is hurt… an alarm! Azarius suggests sending it away, and needing a safe place to put it… Wren and Yuki look at each other. There is only one person they could trust with such an item… Rosche, the wizard in Lyrabar who is also The Storm Master of Bloodstone who defeated Szass Tam most recently. It is decided that Axton will use the scroll of recall, taking Ursus with him for protection, and return to Lyrabar to take the map, ink, and quill to Rosche… and the book to Gregori.

After the two of them vanish, we barricade the room and set up noise traps to lend us enough time to rest and get the spellcasters back their magic.