Before continuing onward, the party discusses what their present resources are, and how much more they need to aquire in order to reclaim Stago from the nixie pool. 2800gp is what it will cost, and Routunious tallies the collected community horde at 2655.53 gp in value. This amount does not include any privately held treasure by the individual members of the comapny.
Elessaria volunteers, "I can make up the difference from my personal treasure...if we can release the gnome, we should."
Time is taken to discuss the logistics of getting back to Tick-a-Tick to retrieve the remaining purse and then get it to Mara in exchange for Stago's release.
Elessaria, who can use the magic wand of perfect illusions, will go back through the caverns and cross the river. Then she will climb to Tick-a-Tick and use the wand to convince the automaton that Routunious has asked for the release of the treasure. With the coins in Tick, a golden armband from Degar, and 45gp of her own, the bounty will be met.
It takes Elessaria around 20 minutes to cross the river.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party who are hiding in an alcove waiting for her return are startled by a sound. It is Fink, who is coming around from the effects of the sleeping poison.
After another ten minutes climbing to the top of the stone staircase, Elessaria reaches the top.
12:00pm
Using the wand of perfect illusion, Elessaria creates an image of Routunious which she uses to direct Tick-a-Tick to move from the entrance and allow her to pass into the mushroom chamber. She hears a slither and flapping above, but sees nothing, and nothing further happens. She asks the illusion of Routunious to scan the cieling of the cave, abut the light cast by his illusory hat reveals nothing.
Elessaria gets the gold from Tick-a-Tick and goes to the nixie hole. She has the image of Routunious instruct the automaton to take a defensive position and guard her as she moves into the next chamber.
Standing at the pool's side is the friendly fungus, farting in sadness over the loss of Stago. If mushrooms could cry, that would be what this one was doing as it peered into the depths looking for the gnome it had befriended.
Elessaria considers her options in negotiating the trade. She declines to jump in with the accumulated treasure. Instead, she tosses a rock in the pool and waits.
After a few minutes, Mara the nixie rises.
The nixie demands, "Show me the money!"
Elessaria drops the treasure into the pool, and Mara is delighted. "That didn't take long at all! Too bad, I had so many more chores for him!" With that, she dives below and in another few minutes a nearly naked Stago emerges from the pool, coughing out water as his lungs readjust to breathing air.
"My clothes are in Tick-a-Tick," he sputters. They return to the mushroom room and the elf turns her back while asking the illusory Routunious to allow her to open the compartment containing the gnome's clothes.
Once dressed, Stago retrieves his translation brooch and headband from Tick-a-Tick. Elessaria asks, "We need to get back to the others...can you climb?"
"As well as I could before I became a hen-pecked nixie slave."
Elessaria instructs the illusion to remain with Tick-a-Tick, knowing he will eventually fade away as the spell's duration expires. The illusion tells Tick to maintain a defensive stance regardless of what happens to the priest.
The gnome and the elf go down the stairs, but though the agile ranger is able to nimbly navigate the first steo, Stago falls badly and injures himself. He is knocked unconcious. Elessaria is perplexed by the situation and decides she must attempt to carry him the rest of the way. Unfortunately, she stumbles and drops him to the next step. As she leaps the rest of the way to his body, she discoveres he is dead, having taken a terrible blow to the head.
Elessaria has a brief image of Routunious screaming about wasting 2,800 gold pieces only to have the liberated gnome die within ten minutes of gaining his freedom. She shakes it off, and tries to consider her options.
Above her, she hears the tell tale farting noise of the friendly fungus, who is trying to follow them down the passage. Tick-a-Tick must not have considered it a danger, or the mushroom man would have been sliced to bits. She wonders about a mushrooms agility, but not for long, as it loses its grip and tumbles down the steep face of the step above her and breaks into small pieces as it lands beside them.
Note: In this campaign world, you are unconcious when you reach 0 hit points, and dead when you reach negative your current hit point level. You continue to take 1 hit point of loss per day due to rotting, and at minus double your hit points you can no longer be raised, although a resurrection spell might work.
Elessaria decides to use the Stone of Recall, because the contract with Shandar stipulates that all healing of wounds in service of fulfilment of the contract up to and including resurrection is free of charge. She speaks the command word, "Return."
In a crackle of energy she and the gnome are transported back to the tower of the old wizard who now employs them. His cleric, Mina, resurrects the gnome and applies what healing is needed.
1:00pm
Elessaria gives Shandar a briefing on the current progress, and he tells her she should return as soon as possible. "Can I provide you any food, provisions or...potions of extra healing? After all, you did manage to die by falling off a step."
Stago grumbles, "A ten foot step and I hadn't gotten my land legs back yet."
"I'm willing to part with my most recent batch for half the normal cost."
"No, thank you," Elessaria declines, "But the rations would be very welcome."
2:10pm
Elessaria and Stago are teleported with their packs full of food to the stairs and manage to reach the bottom without further incident or injury. They are able to cross
the river on the rope bridge they had built the first time they crossed, deciding that it is probably a good idea to continue leaving it there should a hasty retreat become necessary.
Meanwhile, back in the caves, the rest of the party has been waiting patiently but nerves are getting a bit frayed. The tension is broken, however, when a spider falls from above, barely missing the halfling thief. The shouting and commotion are so loud that Elessaria's elven ears can hear the commotion even from so far away.
Routunious gets his knives, Duncan prepares to strike with his staff, and Degar hits the spider with his war-hammer.
He shouts with glee, "On the first try!" The spider becomes a mass of pulp from the force of the blow, and several members of the party wipe spider muck from their clothes in dusgust.
Breathlessly, Elessaria and Stago arrive, and are relieved that the situation is under control. They recount the adventure in getting Stago back and explain that the delay was due to a short trip back to Shandar's tower.
"We brought food," Stago says, trying to shift conversation away from his death. A subject that makes him profoundly uncomfortable.
The rations are distributed and the party decides that they should encamp here in this easily defended alcove and sleep. The rotation of guards is established and they settle in.
6:30pm
Elessaria awakens and assumes guard duty while Fink and Degar sleep.
8:30pm
Elessaria hears sounds coming from down the corridor, in the large chamber they thought was empty. Looking in that direction she is surbrised to see a giant beetle scuttling around. She waits, and observes it, but the giant bug doesn't approach.
She stays on duty for another 2 hours with no other incidents.
10:30pm
The sleepers awaken. The magic users study their spells, the cleric says his prayers, and Elessaria mentions the giant beetle.
She asks, "What, if anything, do we do about that?"
Routunious asks her, "It's been there all night and hasn't been agressive?"
They decide that they should simply leave it be, and as calmly as they can, they move on down the corridor, descending further into the wild depths of the caverns below Daggerdale.
They haven't gone far when they are surprised by flapping furry beasts with more legs than they should have and long beaks.Stago, who has bitter expreience with such creatures, asks, "Stirges?"
Degar answers, bracing for a fight, "Close--these are stelurges, a bigger and nastier variety of the beasties."
"Of course they are," sighs Routunious and prepares for the carnage and blood loss that is certain to follow.
There are two of the creatures, and both swoop down to attack Elessaria.
The creatures are faster than they appear and have multiple attacks each round. One of them manages to sink its probiscus between parts of Elessaria's armor, and it grips her frimly with six legs, sucking her blood.
Stago casts magic missile at one of the creatures. Routunious throws two knives and misses on each attempt. Elessaria strugles in vain to pull the horrible creature from her shoulder while the other one continues to fly at her.
Fink fires his bow at the still flying stelurge, and hits it. The wounded stelurge circles back and makes a successful strike on Stago.
Stago whimpers, "Not again..."
Duncan casts a casts magic missile at the stelurge in Stago's chest, but to little effect. Stago passes out from blood loss.
Routunious attacks the stelurge in Stago with a dagger and misses. Elessaria grabs at the beast sucking her life's blood from her and tries to wrench it free, but fails.
Fink moves to Stago and Degar rushes up as well. The gruf dwarf straddles the gnome and prepares to strike the stelurge S croquet style with his warhammer. He hits the creature and it flies free of Stago's body and smashes against the cave wall, sliding down to the floor convulsing in its death throes and bleeding a mixture of its own blood and that of the gnome into a growing pool.
Routunious casts spell of cure light wounds on Stago, but it isn't enough to bring him out of his coma. Elessaria again tries to pull the stelurge from her shoulder but can't do it. Fink tries to help and still they can not pull the thing out of her.
Degar joins Fin trying to pull it free, but the effort seems beyond even their combined strength.
Routunious casts another cure light wounds on Stago and this time he opens his eyes and is able to pull himself to his feet.
10:40pm
Stago uses his ring of spell storing, and casts magic missile on the stelurge, and Elessaria manages to stab it with her dagger.
She growls through clenched teeth, "How many hits does it take to kill these things?"
Routuniuos casts another heal light wonds spell on Elessaria, to enable her to continue her struggle. Fink punches the creature but it only blinks and continues to suck blood from the elf.
Degar grabes the stelurge and pulls with all his might, but it won't come loose.
Suddenly, however, the bloated creature must have reached its capacity, as it pulled itself loose of its own accord and clumsily flies off down a side passage of the caves. Elessaria throws a dagger at it, but misses and the dagger clatters to the floor.
She follows its path and scans the cieling with her infravision. She sees clearly the warm, red glow of the bloated animal hiding above them.
"I don't think it will attack anyone again until its digested what it took from me...let's leave it," Elessaria suggests.
Fink won't have it and shouts, "Screw that!"
The halfling nocs his short bow and lets an arrow fly, hitting the flying blood bag squarely. He fires second shot and the stelurge drops to the floor of the cave with the sound of a bursting water ballon hitting pavement.
Fink marches over to the creature to finish it off if it needs finishing. He considers stomping on it, but he's barefoot. He decides to decapitate it instead.
Degar drinks potion of healing, and shouts, "Well, that was too short a fight! What's next? The beetle? I ain't done killing!"
Elessaria cautions, "That's over 10 feet long, and already behind us. Let's leave alone. It's not attacking us."
They debate their next actions for about 10 minutes "Distance weapons!"
"No." We talk for 10 min. In the end, they decide to continue exploring rather than retrace their steps until they have to.
They also decide upon a new marching order with Elessaria bringing up the rear instead of marching in the front of the company.
"I've been injured. And I'm protecting you," she says.
Degar quips, "Right. From the beetle!"
Continuing down the hall. They come to a fork and decide to go right. Stago listens to the other passage as he goes by. He hears nothing.
They come upon a large cavern that has a pool of water which covers the entire floor except for the entrance into the cave and the exit on the other side. The water is crystal clear and reflects the light from Routunious' hat. The party can easily see the muddy bottom of the pool, which lies evenly and without feature just two inches below the surface.
Degar says, "Let's cross, or are you afraid of getting your feet wet?" Fink
mentions that maybe a rope around Degar would be helpful, just in case.
Degar declines, saying, "Bah, no dwarf needs a tether to walk across a muddy floor." And with that, he takes a defiant step forward into the chamber only to discover that the water covers a think and sucking mud. His foot held fast, he loses his balance and falls face down into the goo. At first the rest of the party supresses a laugh at his folly, but any laughter turns quickly to horror as they realize Degar is being pulled down into the mud as though it were quicksand.
The dwarf manages to turn himself over and upright, but both his feet are firmly stuck in the mud. He begins flailing his arms and shouting for help.
Fink tosses Degar the end of a rope, and Degar catches it. The rest of the party
grab hold of their end and prepare to try and pull him free in a combined effort.
With luck and tremendous effort they manage to pull the mud covered dwarf free.
11:00pm
The party turns around and heads back up the path they had just travelled, deciding the mud is too great an obstacle to cross. As they take the other branch, they feel the passage sloping steeply downward and the air becoming damp.
It isn't long before they find that the passage ahead is flooded. The only way to continue forward would be to swim.
Routunious asks, "Now what?"
"Anyone feel like swimming?"
Stago says, "The dwarf could use a bath." Degar ignores him, not because he wants to avoid a fight, but he is actually enjoying the tingle of the mud as it dries on his face. Perhaps the mud has some sort of restorative properties, magical or not.
Elessaria peers into the clear water with her fine elf eyesight and sees the
corridor appears to level off ten or 15 feet below and continues.
She asks, "How about Stago dive in and carry a rope under the water, just to get a sense of how much further the passage goes before it goes back up again?"
"If it starts back up again," Routunious says glumly.
"I'm tired of being in water," Stago protests.
"But you've had the most practice swimming of late," Fink offers.
"No, he's not doing anything that dangerous, we paid too much to get him back from the nixie to have him die on us for at least a week."
Everyone looks at Routunious in a bit of shock at his callousness. He stammers, "I'm just trying to be practical!"
Stago suggests the party can use the spider climb scroll he has and to climb the walls of the other room. He says, "This passage is clearly impassable and we know the corridor continues on the other side of the mud pit. If we all join hands and I cast the spell on all of us, the duration will be shorter, but we should all be able to climb the cieling and avoid the mud."
Elessaria asks, "What about getting back?"
"Maybe we won't want to come back," Stago answered matter of factly.
The party walks back to the mud pit, and continue discussing their options there.
"It's a piece of cake, I can cast it on everyone but myself and it should last for more than enough time to get across...but someone will have to carry me."
"I can do it," Elessaria says.
Stago asks, "Promise not to drop me this time?"
"I didn't drop you before!"
"Ok, so you held onto me while we both fell, nit picking details."
"Don't make me want to drop you and your chances of surviving will be better."
The party readies themselves and Stago casts the spell. They crawl across the the walls and discover that the passage on the opposite side of the mud isn't a passage at all, but dead ends in a room.
The cave appears empty save for a large stone sarcophagus in the center of the room which has ornate carvings and an inscription on the side facing you. The sarcophagus is completely bound in heavy chains with four elaborate locks. At the head and feet of the coffin are large candlesticks that seem to be made of solid gold, with a golden serpent entwined on each and a single red candle. The serpent’s eyes are red gemstones. On the other side of the casket is a candelabrum, also made of gold, with three candles in them.
The party stays in the entryway and look from a distance. The sarcophagus is covered by a layer of thick dust. The carved writing on the casket is in High Script, a very fromal kind of written Common. Elessaria reads one side, while Stago goes behind the casket. He is careful not to enter the perimeter of the circle of candles, and reads the other side. The words say, "Beloved Belessaria, You Will Be Avenged."
Degar shouts, "By Grabthar's Hammer!" The party turns to see what Degar is shouting about and they notice a statue in a hidden alcove, which seems to be watching over the chained casket in the room.
11:15pm
Stago asks, "What do we know about Belessaria?"
Routunious searches his memory, "She was...poisoned, right?"
Elessaria remembers her talk with Shandar, and recounts what she can. "600 years ago, Daggerdale was originally called Merrydale, an open and tolerant dale that suffered from vampire attacks.
Stago interrupts, "Hmm, vampires, eh? Do we think these chains are to keep people out or to keep something in?".
Routuniuos shudders, "If our past experience is anything to go on, it's definitely to keep whatever's in there from escaping."
"But that was 600 years ago and Belessaria lived 100 years ago," Elessaria argues.
Stago mumbles to himself, "Hmm, what's 500 years to a vampire?"
Duncan asks Routunious, "What about turning undead? You can do that, can't you priest?"
"I'm not powerful enough to turn a vampire."
"Wait...we have a scroll that makes us invisible to undead."
Degar grumbles, "You can't be thinking there's any chance there's a vampire in that thing. Nothing ye've said indicates this Bellewhatsit was a vampire. Everything we've heard is that her husband was an over protective freak of a wizard who lost his mind when she died. It's probably chained to keep out grave robbers."
Everyone looks at him for a moment, and Routunious simply says sarcastically, "Yeah, right."
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