Session 26

THE FOUR WINDS BAR

12 Sunstrong, 4433

Characters:

Gorr, ranger 5
Daqqa-Jin, barbarian 2
Cassia, fighter 1

Lost in the Cellars

The group was resting in the Night Wolf Inn after getting lost for a while [last session] when they were approached by an Amazon warrior, an aspiring champion of Athena who wished to join the company. Since Robert the Swift was in bad shape and his Mummy Rot wasn't getting any better, they were happy to have another pair of hands and welcomed Cassia to the group.

The party returned to the library and tried their hand at the clock again. Some more experimentation by Daqqa-Jin led to a solution - after each combination, a few minutes of waiting was necessary to produce the right effect! The clock produced a rotting stench, a peal of thunder, the smell of flowers, smoke, and freezing cold before sliding aside to reveal a narrow passage.

Daqqa-Jin proceeded in and found a gleaming chromium rod floating in a black void, securing it with his backpack. The group reluctantly followed when their friend was drawn into an extradimensional gateway! The group found themselves in a sealed room with magical frescoes of clouds swirling along the floor. Touching the chromium rod (called the Four Winds Bar) to each corner of this room opened a secret door and allowed them to escape in a flurry of mist, leaving behind the skeletons of less fortunate adventurers.

Finding themselves in burial chambers of a familiar style, the group searched for a way out. They passed through the "Family Halls," "Hall of Adventurers," "Hall of Thieves," "Hall of Knights" and "Hall of Wizards," discovering many oddities & dangers.

In the Hall of Knights, the dead were stacked high up to the shadowy ceiling, covered in ancient & ornate armour. When Daqqa-Jin began searching the corpses for valuables, the group were assailed by insubstantial undead materializing out of nowhere. Daqqa-Jin fled in supernatural terror into the darkened tunnels, his friends in hot pursuit. They ended up in a high-ceilinged cavern where mobile stalactites occasionally launched downwards to impale the unwary. The barbarian's headlong flight had placed them all right in the center of danger! A few of the party were brought down to a handful of hit points and they escaped only with a careful plan and a bit of luck.

Steve: "It's like a Metroid level!"
Chris: "We are all basically one Piercer attack away from death at any time."
John: "Fuuuck, I shoulda rolled up an extra character..."

The passed through the Hall of Wizards where the skulls of the dead swivelled to follow their every move, skeletal hands rasping in anticipation. They found a golden door decorated with nymphs and satyrs and a passageway with an icy wind blowing, but decided to pass through the Hall of Slaves towards the exit. They were pursued by two large, pale, corpulent crawling creatures like bloated centipedes but decided not to engage with them, running at top speed towards the tavern stairs.

Questions & Ghosts

Back up on safe ground, the group explored more of the Inn's strange & mysterious rooms. They attempted to open a secret panel of some kind in the cloakroom, but weren't able to. Found the kitchen, staffed by odd gray-skinned people. Explored the parlour and played with a few of the musical instruments there, and found a magical horn hidden in a secret compartment!

Upstairs they explored the smoking lounge, decorated with animal head trophies and paintings of diverse adventurers from around the world including James, Rain the elven bard and a Viridian named Rory. On the balcony they found an evil-looking amulet in a stone coffer and decided to leave it alone for now.

Exploring from the library, they took a spiral staircase up through another "back passage" and ended up in the attic, emerging from a small, featureless black door. The ceiling lay close above and with no windows, everything was lit by little oil lamps. Many more guest rooms were up here, but the group descended the stairs to the 2nd floor.

In the art gallery, they saw something truly strange. Accompanied by a spectral singing, the translucent apparition of a little girl wandered past them, seemingly unaware of their presence. This ghost or illusion or whatever it was did not respond to their attempts at interaction. The group waved and asked questions eliciting no response, until Daqqa-Jin asked "Where are you?"

The ghostly child replied "Between starlight and hellfire," before vanishing.

The party barely had time to register this odd event before they saw another strange visitation: a stooped, cloaked figure with its face obscured, clutching an ornately carved staff in one wizened hand. This odd and spooky being spoke to no-one, instead tracing the path that the ghostly girl had followed, looking around the room intently before vanishing as quickly & mysteriously as it came.

After all these strange experiences the party needed some answers. They spoke with Mr. Everbleed and learned many strange facts about the Inn, about special combat training, the strange phenomena they've seen, the identity of the mysterious Guild Master - and that Rain once owned a magic item called a "Four Winds Bar" as well!

After some accelerated time in the Forest of Dreams, Eric Withakay was back up to full strength and able to use his clerical magic to heal the party and remove Robert the Swift's mummy rot - this also cured his curse of sleeplessness and he was able to get some rest for the first time in a while.

Monsters:

5 piercers (130 xp)

Treasure Obtained:

2 grave trinkets (brooch & necklace)

Bonus:

Solving the clock puzzle (1000 xp each)

Daqqa-Jin has reached level 3, good work!

[NWI] Evocation: the magical card game

Before his untimely death, Suba-Jin took a book on games of chance out of the Night Wolf Inn's library. Amongst poker, parcheesi and other pastimes it mentioned a game often played in the land of Adummim, called Evocation.

It is a magical, Tarot-like gambling game. The cards drip with gorgeous imagery and are themselves enchanted, relying on each player's focused will, deftness of thought and social skills to bluff, bid, strategize and so on. The deck itself seems to 'know' the players' actions and breaking the rules, loss & theft of the cards seems impossible.

A table consists of 4-6 players. A full game is nine hands although few games of Evocation go that length and it is considered heroic to play "a full nine." Few would attempt more than one full game per month. The game can be played for any stakes, but experienced players call their preferred style "prestige betting" - an ante & minimum bet of 50 silver or more.

Some hands are called "Mystical Combinations" and have special effects on the players. Few have been written down but rumours include endowment with spell abilities, mystical insight, beastly transformations and crippling curses.

A few combinations are spoken about, including "The Moondrop," "The Six Stars," "World Without End," "The Demimonde," "The Empress" and "The King of Fools." What they do is not exactly clear except that drawing out the King of Fools is very bad!

[System]

1 - Players ante up

2 - First cards are dealt [roll 1d24+INT+WIS+CHA]

3 - Betting: all players must place minimum bet, raises can happen in any order.

4 - More cards are dealt [roll 1d6+1d24] 

5 - Cards are revealed [highest total wins & takes the pot]

Session 25

MOURNING & RIDDLES

4-12 Sunstrong, 4433

Characters:

Robert the Swift, fighter 4
Gorr, ranger 5
Daqqa-Jin, barbarian 2

The group left Room IV: Restful Seas with Suba-Jin's body [see last session], bringing it back to Viridistan for a funeral. The Inn staff were sympathetic and stories were shared about his life and exploits. The group heard strange tales about some of the Inn's other rooms.

Meanwhile, Gorr entered Room I: The Forest of Dreams, to speak with the ancient talking tree. Over a year had passed in that twilight realm since they had first met and it had grown a branch that the ranger could use for a bow. He was warned against climbing too high because dangerous flying creatures sometimes roosted in the tree's upper boughs. He climbed about halfway up the great tree and harvested the branch without much trouble. 

Returning to Viridistan, the group sold off the gold jewelry they took from the mummies at such a great cost. Suba-Jin was cremated with much of his treasure and the party met with his cousin Daqqa-Jin at the funeral. This slave-catcher saw an opportunity to join the group since they were now a man short.

Robert spoke to the priests of Hextor about curing the mummy's curse [see last session]. It was going to be very expensive (6000 silver!), but the priests were willing to knock down the price to 4000 in exchange for an unspecified favour at a future time. Robert wasn't sure about that.

Puzzling at the Inn

The group returned to the Night Wolf Inn to explore the basements. They passed through a kitchen cellar with many passageways, explored the wine-cellar and were followed by some strange twinkling amber & rose-coloured lights like little will-o-wisps. They passed by a crude statue or golem of some kind and into an odd burial chamber called "The Hall of Slaves."

The twinkling lights followed them, and the group began to feel kinda drunk. Gorr looked around a bit and saw a heavy black iron door with a pentacle on it, while the others tried to interact with the wisps to no avail. After a short time they were getting very intoxicated! They returned to the tavern to sober up. The twinkling lights followed them to the cellar stairs, but not back up to the first floor.

After eating and trying to sober up a bit, they wandered over to the Inn's library to poke around. 

Gorr found an ancient book called "Kings of the Long-Fallen" which expounded the crackpot theory that the elves - primitive forest-dwellers that they are - had once ruled the world and possessed miraculous powers: buildings that could fly, great highways that crossed the world and sorcery beyond the ken of men. It included many macabre tales of the cruel and powerful elven sorceror-kings with names like Asulam Omdrekh or Shodredh Dachod.

Robert investigated the grandfather clock by the fireplace which had a bizarre 18-hour face, four hands, and some other odd symbology:

close-up on the hands and numbers

Puzzling out the riddle of the clock occupied much of their afternoon. They were able to get the hands to a zero or 'reset' position, but they couldn't produce any other effect beyond that. Wandering around the Inn's first floor provided many clues that seemed relevant to this puzzle: statues with odd names & numbers in the dining hall, carvings along the ceiling in the cloakroom and pillars with symbols and numbers out on the east tavern portico.

[DM - many notes were taken here, some are written up on the Discord page!]

While looking around the inn for clues, the group noticed a door in the cloakroom that wasn't there before. Opening it, Gorr was magically drawn through into a misty void! The group followed him and ended up in a cramped passageway beside a creepy funhouse mirror. Many portholes or 'spy windows' allowed them to look from here out into the Inn's many strange rooms [see map]. Trapdoors leading up and down allowed them to move through these back ways.

Robert tried smashing a pane of glass with his axe, and it not only proved to be impenetrable, but at that very moment he tripped on a loose board and managed to jab himself on a sharp piece of wood. Coincidence?

When Robert touched the funhouse mirror (it had to happen) the distorted reflections of the party stepped out to attack! It was touch and go, but Daqqa-Jin's net turned the tide and the party destroyed their evil opposites who dissolved into mist.

The gang walked through these spy passages, observing many of the rooms they'd never been to:

- A room tastefully decorated in mahogany and brass. A reception desk with a 'wait here' sign and small bell [XVII - The Stygian Library]

- An impossibly huge underground cavern [XVI - The Caverns of Repose]

- A black void strung with enormous glittering spiderwebs [II - Web of Drowsiness] 

- A large boat lazily drifting down a river between two high cliffs [IX - Stream of Consciousness]

- An icy mountain landscape of clouds & snow [VIII - Cerebral Cliffs]

- The inside of a large bell-shaped temple carved with exotic imagery [not sure what room this might be]

- A glassy landscape in a starry void, lit up by a blue shooting star [III - The Comet's Tail]

After some investigation, Gorr found a concealed one-way passage [EDIT - this passage actually allows travel in both directions. Oops. -DM] into Room I - The Forest of Dreams. From inside the room it was totally imperceptible, and the peephole they had been looking through seemed to be just a knot in a nearby tree.

Back on familiar territory, the group pondered their next move. Was there more to that clock? Should they venture into another room or brave the basements again after sobering up?

Monsters Defeated:

mirror-versions of Gorr, Robert & Daqqa-Jin (607 xp)

Treasure Sold: 

mummies' loot: gold goblet, circlet, bracelet & ruby earring

Xénos has reached level 2! Good work!

Happy Birthday to Eric Withakay, who is now 24!