Session 39 - Have You Heard the One About the Green Elven Statue?

4th Feb 2022 - 19:45 - 11:15

In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR Uktar 05. End of session: 1489DR Uktar 05

Our "Heroes" stand before an ominous door at the end of a stone bridge. The sense of dread they are feeling in this place seems to get worse as they approach the main temple building.

So they open the door and go in.

They stand at the top of a staircase that descends to the ground floor below. Ahead of them on the landing stands a green stone statue of a handsome elven male, who stands on a plinth above a large stone urn. Being cautious, for a change, the party decide not to immediately grab everything in sight.

Instead, Karoshi uses his Divine Sense and detect an emanation of undead coming from within the urn. Best leave well alone then, eh?

No. Let's grab the urn, thinks Karoshi. So he does. And the statue standing above the urn  starts to move! Its handsome face changes to become a hideous visage, the mouth of which curls into a smile and reveals vampiric teeth within.

Starting to regret their decision to not ignore this whole thing, the party try to reposition the urn back in the place they found it. This has no effect and instead the vampiric statue swipes at Derrick, who is already exhausted and damaged. With three attacks every round, and sharp teeth and claws, and an already unhealthy party, things were looking difficult.

Until Iwee steps up.

Casting Hideous Laughter on the statue they are then presented with the very strange sight of a green stone statue doubling up in fits of laughter. And this is how the statue continues for the entire fight. Despite being hit repeatedly by the fighters' blades, it still seems to find the whole scenario very funny. Stone chips fly in all directions, and the statue is slowly but surely smashed to pieces as it laughs.

Which is quite lucky, since Derrick makes the decision to throw the urn off of the bridge outside. This releases the two spectres that were contained within, who fly up and attack Iwee, who is standing with her back to the wall. But they miss.

The party face a useless statue who doubles over in laughter while everyone smashes pieces off of it, and two spectres who can't hit anyone if their lives (or deaths) depend on it.

And so our rag-tag band of "Heroes" make quite short work of this encounter with only a little damage caused to Derrick. The statue is destroyed, the spectres disappear and the urn is smashed in the waters below. The group descend the stairs and open the door at the bottom.

This leads to a lower hallway, with double doors that lead outside seemingly blocked with heavy rocks on the outside. Iwee spots what appears to be a trap in the floor near to the door. They quickly mark it out and avoid it by going round the corridor the long way to arrive at a further door.

Pleased with themselves at avoiding the floor trap, they line up by the door, preparing for what may be beyond. As Jaxii positions herself, she suddenly finds the floor falling away from her and she ends up at the bottom of a pit, taking damage in the process! It seems the trap that Iwee had spotted was a fake one, and no one had seen the real trap next to it. Jaxii was alive, but badly injured, and at the bottom of a 20 foot hole lined with sharp crystals that had cut into her as she fell down.

Using some sturdy rope, they manage to pull Jaxii up out of the hole, and expend some valuable spell slots healing her up a little. Finding the door locked, they quickly give up on that room and head to the other door leading off of the hallway.

This leads to a sleeping quarters, empty of people but they do find a very informative diary of Feandris, that fills in some of the gaps in their knowledge about the recent goings on at the Temple and on the Isle in general. Karoshi also finds an ancient tome that is quite delicate and will need some careful study at a later time, but which does seem to have some mentions of phrases that trigger Karoshi's interest, like "Eye of Kronos" and "Kovaks". He resolves to read this more thoroughly later.

They return to the locked door. Derrick produces the Tresendar Manor key that he has been carrying around with him for months. Using some Bardic Inspiration provided by Iwee, and the Inspiration that Derrick somehow obtained, and fiddling around with the key in the lock, they are all very surprised when the key actually manages to open the lock!

Inside the room they see four chests on low pedestals, and a crystal statue in the corner. They are suspicious. They decide not to touch these chests - they are fast learners, this group. They search the ground before them, cautious of there possibly being another trap. They find no trap, but between them, Iwee and Derrick do find a secret door within this room, and Iwee works out how to open the door, revealing a small alcove-room containing another chest. This chest is locked, but they are certain that *this* chest contains all the treasure. Rather than try to break the lock and potentially destroy the contents, they decide to return to this chest later, when they maybe will have found a key that fits (of course, they tried the Tresendar Manor key but it didn't fit this lock).

They refocus their efforts on the other door out of this room. Opening it, it seems to open onto the wooden enclosed corridor that extends out over the lake and leads to the building in the middle of the lake that they had seen previously from the outside. The sense of dread is becoming very intense. They feel certain that the evil is emanating from beyond the door at the end of this passage.

And so we leave our "Heroes" preparing for what they think will be the "final battle" in this temple. Whether it is "final" for the enemy, or "final" for them remains to be seen…