Thursday, January 29, 2015

#80 - The Chamber of Offering

Craving rest and healing, the PCs deliberated as to the next course of action: break through the thin wall of stone and attempt to conceal themselves there or seek safety elsewhere. Irakas only one partial solution but preferred to save it for another time when the party was deeper in the dungeons of Glyphstone: she possessed a small glass sphere which could replicate the Leomund’s Tiny Hut spell. While it could ensure the safety of nine individuals (there were 11 total),  the extradimensional dome it would conjure would not necessarily be concealed. It could be discovered.
Irakas was most worried that the group would be discovered if they didn’t find shelter soon: it had only been a short while since they slew the guardians at the entrance and their enemies would discover this.

Dar used her druidic magic to change into the shape of a small spider. She crawled through the hole in the stone wall to examine the space beyond. Another door lay behind it, and beyond that a circular, mostly-featureless chamber that contained only nine round depressions in the floor. When she entered the room in her human form, she felt a strange humming energy in the air. It was ultimately decided that this chamber wasn’t worth the risk entering.
A new plan was hatched. Dar once again used her druidic magic to bestow great stealth upon all of her allies, so long as they remained close to her (30 feet). Meanwhile, Aleae used a spell of invisibility to run reconnaissance alone. Given that a nearby room was occupied by undead creatures (according to Clarion), the PCs finally decided to seek safety somewhere beyond the vast central chamber lit by the fountain and chalice.

So Aleae went out into the dark, quieted and concealed with the assistance of an infusion placed on her garments by Cypher. Despite their earlier “disagreement,” the eladrin and the warforged still had a common goal of survival, perhaps even triumph.


Aleae explored the vast hall, discovering strange features and a large number of doors along its perimeter. She also discovered that a second, possibly even larger room lay further to the south beyond a great curtain—a throne room, occupied only by a towering statue of bronze-colored metal carved to resemble a Dhakaani hobgoblin warrior.

She also discovered what at present was patrolling these chambers: a decrepit beholder (larger than the previous one) trailed by three shambling human corpses. She evaded it for a time, but the beholder caught her scene and began to glide after her. The other PCs were closer now and detected the threat. Lit only by the dim glow of the color-shifting chalice at the center of the Chamber of Offering, a battle ensued.

Aleae blasted the floating abomination with powerful winds from her Wand of Wonder, while arrows and javelins were hefted at the enemy. The beholder, once illuminated by magical light (in the form of Rungo, bespelled with Cypher’s magic), turned out to be dead: or undead, as it were. Its large central eye was all but gone, ruined and withered, while most of its eyestalks were broken or shorn away. Yet the creature had some vestige of its power in life, and used a few remaining eyestalks to lay enemies low with deadly rays. Magnus was stricken by magical fear, while paralysis took hold of Cypher. Dar was narrowly avoid a ray of disintegration.
The zombies proved tougher than they looked, absorbing blow after blow and arrow after arrow. Clarion and Kard put their holy water to good use—the zombies were burned like acid by its touch. Despite his fear of the undead beholder, Magnus managed to lob a few javelins into its dead eye. Kard boldly ran up to it, flinging his holy water into the ruined orifice and creating a virtual cloud of foul evaporating dead flesh.

At last, the creature tumbled to the ground, and the zombies were pulped on the floor in the Chamber of Offering.


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