Aboleth Group - "Let me just put this flaming skull on my head...." - Session 23 LMOP

 12th Sep 2020 - 15:00 - 20:00

In-game timeline: Start of session, day 28 (1489DR Eleint 21). End of session, day 29 (1489DR Eleint 22).

Starting off in the storeroom, our 'heroes' venture back out after a long rest and clamber over the bodies of dead ghouls in the ancient dining room, to progress northwards, hoping to find the old Forge.

Esme pressed ahead into the next cavern to the north - only to be immediately attacked by some sort of glowing skull firing flaming rays towards her, but luckily missing. Running back out of the room she explained to the others the danger of entering the room. They listened, enraptured. And therefore didn't see the zombie dwarves 'running' towards them, which proceeded to crash into Esme and Mallorn.

The tight room in the corridor prevented the others from effectively helping, until Derrick had the bright idea to leap over the battle using his newly 'acquired' boots. He did so, but unfortunately didn't time his leap quite right and landed inside the room - long enough for a fire ray to be shot towards him from an unseen foe, but not long enough for it to get a second shot, and luckily the first one missed! Derrick ran back to the fight in the corridor and piled in, helping out the other two.

Unfortunately more zombies joined in the fight. As quickly as the party took them down, more appeared to take their place. And zombies, being zombies, were difficult to keep down and STAY DOWN!

Just as it looked like the heroes were winning the battle, the glowing skull appeared at the end of the corridor. As Derrick took a hit from one of the zombies, bringing him unconscious, Pruni had one chance to help him before the skull had his (or her - the cackling laughter was gender-neutral) got his attack in. Pruni didn't want to waste a healing potion, so instead used a healers kit to stabilise him.

Just in time. The skull launched a fireball into the middle of the group, blasting everybody, zombies included. Esme and Mallorn took the full force of the blast, whilst Pruni managed to dodge out of the way. Derrick meanwhile took two death save failures and was almost dead. Luckily Esme survived enough to heal Derrick back up. While others managed to take care of the skull, thanks to some useful shots from Pruni, Derrick recovered enough to get back in the fight. Between them, they polished off the last of the zombies, and headed back to the 'safe room' to rest up briefly. Luckily Mallorn's knowledge of the arcane arts gave them the insight that the flameskull would likely recover its health and abilities at some point, so maybe Pruni's decision to wear the jawbone on her head, and Derrick's new epaulette of the rest of the skull were bad ideas. They shut the skull inside the room and barricaded the door.

Venturing out once again into the room where the skull was first seen, they encountered no more enemies, but instead found themselves in a large forge, which was cold and unworking. They eventually figured out how the forge would work, but without a water flow to pump the bellows, it looked like it was staying cold. The party headed east to try to search out other options, and came to a glittering, beautiful cavern, damaged from an ancient fire battle.

Derrick forced his way into a closed room and found a small forge with a green flame…. And a hovering eye who asked, in a rather camp voice, what Derrick was doing here. The rest of the group joined Derrick and attempted to dispel the eye by reciting the phrase written on the bronze seal.

It didn't work. The eye registered the dwarvish, elvish and common languages, but seemed to be hunting around for a gnome. Pruni tried to convince the eye, which did seem a little confused, that all the gnomes in the World were wiped out, and halflings, such as her, were actually their replacements. Bizarrely, the ruse seemed to work, and the eye did not immediately start blasting them.

But it wasn't entirely convinced, and still wondered why they were there, and how the gnomes could all have been wiped out in a matter of a couple of decades - as it believed it had only been around for around 40 years or so. Mallorn managed to convince it what in fact, it had been stuck in the mine for centuries, not decades. As soon as it believed this, it realised that its job was over, and promptly disappeared.

Surprised by this turn of events, and a rare display of successful deception and persuasion from our 'heroes', the party eventually worked out this this was the fabled Forge of Spells. Wanting to try it out with Mallorn's previously magical statue of Oghma, a sequence of misunderstandings and miscommunications led to the unnecessary destruction of 500gp worth of gems, but the statue did regain its magic.

Derrick wandered off in the wrong direction looking for his fabled 'Garoth's Needle', which the others managed to find in the annex of this room, along with some bracers, which Esme stuffed in her backpack. Derrick was unsure how Garoth's Needle actually worked, but decided to wield it as a greatsword anyway.

In Derrick's indomitable manner, it wasn't long before Garoth's Needle was tested out. After heading north, dispatching a couple more guardian skeletons (and locking their bones away just in case they re-formed) and finding the source of the loud wave noises in the cave system, Derrick then wandered down to the other 'building' within this cavern and the party found themselves confronted by a Wraith named Mormesk. It didn't help that he appeared as Esme was in the process of opening his chest of goodies.

Between them it didn't take too long for the group to take down Mormesk, though not before it had done significant damage to Derrick, not only harming him, but also reducing his ability to recover. After dispatching Mormesk and stealing all his loot, the group decided they needed to spend more time resting up to recover health and spells. They were very fortunate not to encounter anything during their yet-another-rest.

Confident that they could take on anything left in the cave system, they formulated a plan. Mallorn burnt a windy path through the green fungi, hoping that any enemies running into the room would plough straight into the poisonous fungi, and allow him to use a fire spell to blast the poisonous gas around the enemy, whilst they could still navigate the room safely. They then proceeded to head to Griff's room to talk over the rest of the plan - the current intention being to use Esme's silver raven to send a mocking message to Lucian, taunting him to come after them.

And so we leave our 'Heroes', battered and bruised, but planning well and determined to clear out the rest of the cave system.