Session 3: I Got 99 Problems but a Lich Ain't One

A. Story Recap

This week we picked up with our adventurers in the basement / caverns of Zaldara, the Duchess of Rot, a powerful lich. The party had recently befriended and set free a faerie dragon, named Elonast who had been locked in Zaldara's dungeon and who the party learned used to be Zaldara's old familiar.


With the help of Elonast, the group of adventurers began making their way through the twisting caverns that connected to Zaldara's cellar. Elonast steered the group along the back wall of the caverns until they entered a gem chamber, a room covered floor to ceiling in pink crystals as if the group was standing inside a geode. Careful inspection by the group revealed that the crystals were magically conjured and had the ability to teleport anyone who touched them. While the group didn't know exactly where these conjured crystals would teleport them, they decided it best to pass through this chamber without touching anything.

Passing through the gem chamber, the group made their way up a set of stairs to a large stone door, with the image of a kraken carved into the stonework. Having encountered one of Zaldara's trapped doors previously, the group decided to inspect the door and in so doing noticed runic magic on the door. When the group asked Elonast if she knew anything about what the rune did, she replied "SQUEEZIES!" The adventurers were sure they didn't want to find out exactly what that meant, so Fitz made careful use of his mage hand and a pick axe to deface and disable the rune.

Safely through the disarmed door, our group of adventurers was overwhelmed with a wretched stench of death and decay. Sneaking ahead and peering through an opening on the left, the group noticed a ghoul feasting on what appeared to be the severed arm of a halfing, gnome, or perhaps a human or elven child. Cramming themselves into the tight squeeze of the hallway, the group was able to carefully maneuver and get a sneak attack in on the ghoul. A fight ensued with another ghoul making his way out of the room when the first ghoul was hit. Kaely sunk an arrow into the first ghoul taking him down and getting the first killing blow of the night. When the party had carefully dispatched both ghouls they crept further down the tiny hallway noticing another doorway to their left. Inside, they noticed another ghoul playing in a fountain of what appeared to be blood. So enthralled with his fountain was the ghoul that the group was able to move past without being noticed.

The group then made their way to a larger hallway where, to the left a set of stairs led upward toward the raid lead by the Harpers in the main area of Zaldara's tower. To the right, the group found another pair of ghouls. Elonast surprised the group by releasing her euphoric breath, intoxicating the ghouls.  The group made short work of them and continued further in their quest for Zaldara's vault. As they made their way down the hall, the group came to a foyer of sorts. To their right a stone door, which Elonast told them was the door to the vault. Before them was a short set of stairs.

With the door to the vault opened, the group was able to see an iron chest surrounded on either side by two floor to ceiling stone pillars.  Ella was able to detect an evil undead presence in the vault. Cire threw his voice into the corner of the room hoping to draw out whatever evil may have been hiding behind the stone pillars and sure enough two specters and a poltergeist floated out from behind the pillars toward the sound in the corner of the room

Unsure about facing the ghostly creatures, the group quickly but quietly shut the door behind them and decided to explore the other way. Fitz made his way up the stairs and came to a landing where the walls were decorated in coats of arms and rusty armor. However, amidst the rusted old armor was a pristine iron shield. Fitz, in true Fitz fashion, decided that shield should be his, and lifted it off the wall. As he was strapping the shield to his back, the swords behind it came to life and two flying swords came flying right at him. While the flying weapons proved difficult to hit, swirling around in the air, the group was still able to take them down without getting hurt.

From here the adventurers began to strategize about the best way to get access to the vault without the poltergeists attacking. Cire had the idea to disguise himself as Zaldara and convince the specters to stand down. While some of the party wasn't quite on board with the plan, Cire spent some time with Elonast working on perfecting Zaldara's image and Ella helped out with her disguise kit. Fully disguised, Cire waltzed into the vault room and commanded the specters to retreat. The specters were a bit skeptical, but ultimately Cire gave a convincing performance and the ghostly figures retreated down the hallway, leaving Cire alone in the vault room with the locked chest. Fitz came to his aid, picking the lock with his mage hand and the chest was opened to reveal  gold, scrolls, and a tome that

Zaldara Cordress, Dutchess of Rot,
Queen of Ghouls

appeared to be bound in human skin, which the group recognized as Zaldara's phylactery.  Fitz began to gather up the items in the chest, but as he touched the phylactery a sickening crack was heard and Zaldara herself appeared in the room before them. 

The group attempted to persuade Zaldara to let them leave with her phylactery, of course to no avail. Some of the group scattered, running towards the stairs leading to the main tower. Fitz's mage hand carrying the phylactery and Ella made their way up the stairs, hoping to get the phylactery up the stairs to the Harpers. Unfortunately, they were met with a Flesh Golem at the top of the stairs. Upon hearing some of the group at the top of the stairs Remalia made her way there and engaged the flesh golem.

Meanwhile, back down at the vault, Xandaros heroically charged in to fight zaldara. He, Sagres, and Cire managed to hold their own against the lich, landing a few blows against her which she mostly seemed to shake off.

Eventually the group realized the only way out of this predicament is to run. So that's exactly what they did as Remalia made her way downstairs to help hold off the lich so the group could get to safety.  Making their way out the way they came the group was almost in the clear when the ghoul who had been playing in the fountain of blood took notice and gave chase. The group again decided to pose as Zaldara and command the ghoul to run the other way. It worked! The group was able to make their way to the mouth of the cavern where Callbrax was waiting. Callbrax cast a spell and teleported the group out to a clearing in the front of the lich's tower. Remalia joined the group and summoned Zaldara.

The adventurers pressed Zaldara for what information she knew about the death curse and offered to leave her phylactery and leave her alive if she told them what she knew. Zaldara beaten down from her fight with Remalia reluctantly agreed.

"I have been studying the death curse extensively," explained Zaldara, "because it affects me too. You see the curse not only siphons away the souls of those who have been resurrected, but it siphons away the souls meant for my phylactery. Indeed since the curse struck, I have not been able to feed any more souls to my phylactery. There will come a time, when I will reach my end. My research has lead me to the conclusion that the only thing that could cause such a phenomena is an ungodly necromantic device called the Soulmonger. I do not know what it's purpose is. All I know know is that this Soulmonger is collecting all of the souls of the deceased and that the amount of dark energy it has gathered is enough to power an undead being like the world has never seen, greater than any lich.  My scrying indicates that the soulmonger is located somewhere in the peninsula of Chult. Though I cannot pinpoint where."

Armed with this information, the group upheld their end of the deal and agreed to leave Zaldara's phylactery on the ground. Before they left, they asked one more thing of Zaldara -for Elonast's freedom.

Perhaps it was because she was overwhelmed with fear for her own life, perhaps because she knew she was bested by this group, but whatever the reason, a glimmer of the lich's once human self was almost recognizable as this question was asked of her. "You may take her or you may set her free. I have kept her locked away for far too long" 

B. This Week's Achievements

In keeping with the previously announced achievement system, our players began earning achievements this week. Per the rules of achievements only one player can earn each achievement in a given session (with a few special exceptions that are achievements all players earn at the same time) and the achievement will go to the first person to earn it in a given session; and a player cannot earn more than 3 achievements in one session. This week's achievements and their rewards were: 

Character	Achievement Title	Description / Reward
Xandros	A Wizard Is Never Late	Be the first person to the game (reward: inspiration)
Cire	Putting the Tard in Tardy	Be the last person to the game (Reward: Title - the slow)
Cire	And the Oscar Goes To	Roleplay your character exceptionally (reward: inspiration)
Kaely	Finish Him!	Land a Killing Blow (Reward: inspiration)
Cire	Maybe We Can Reason With It	Defeat an Enemy with Social Skills / Persuasion (Reward: inspiration)
Fitz	Safety First	Disable / discover a trap before anyone is trapped (Reward: inspiration)
Xandros	Kick his ass, sea bass	Get a critical hit on an enemy (Reward: inspiration)
Fitz	My Middle Name is Klepto	Steal something (Reward: inspiration)
Xandaros	Leeroy Jenkins!	Charge into battle when the odds aren't in your favor (Reward: inspiration)
Everyone!	Let's Get it Started	Finish the Intro Adventure

C. To Dos and Reminders

Our next session is next week, not two weeks out this time. 

Because everyone reached level 2, please between sessions, go ahead and level your character up. If you need help, message Rach or post in the group. 

Session 2: I'm on a boat annnnd it's getting attacked annnnd....

A. Story Recap

The Diviner

This week our adventurers started their journey dockside with Callbrax. When they approached Callbrax's ship, they were greeted by a human paladin named Eleamisa "Ella" Gelarise. Ella introduced herself to the group explaining the was also a friend of Paela's but had been unable to join the group at Paela's family inn because of how far she had to travel, she was barely able to make it in time to meet up with Callbrax and the rest of the group at the docks.

A coral blight

The group set sail on board Callbrax's boat, the Diviner, for Zaldara's island, a journey that would take them 3 days. After a beautiful first day of smooth sailing along the Sword Coast, the crew and the group of adventurers suddenly found the boat unexpectedly stuck in a coral reef.  Before Callbrax and the crew had time to figure out the best plan for freeing the boat, Sagres and Ella quickly observed this was no ordinary reef - the boat was ensnared by coral blights who were climbing and boarding the boat. 

Four blights managed to make it aboard and the group quickly sprang into action to take them down. In the midst of the fighting, suddenly a tiefling bard pops out from below decks and joins the fracas fighting along side our group of adventurers. It's a lengthy fight with the blights dodging many of our adventurers attacks, but also finding themselves unable to land many blows to the adventurers. One by one the adventurers laid waste to the blights, but not before Sagres took a fairly big hit from one of the blights, nearly losing consciousness. 

With the blights dispensed with, the party claimed some coral bits for themselves and tossed the remaining carcasses overboard. As the party regrouped and enjoyed some dried fish and fruit, the tiefling bard who joined them for the fight introduced himself. Cire, an infernal tiefling bard, introduced himself as a friend of Paela's who had been resting in his bunk since the boat left the docks, sleeping off a mad hangover. 

Zaldara's Tower

Day 3 at sea came and the Diviner drew close to Zaldara's island. The group observed a noticeable shift in the air as they approached the island. The air grew colder, the birds stopped singing, the sky turned gray. Callbrax tied off the boat and it looked as though the group was about to walk straight into the side of a cliff. But Callbrax had other plans. Touching the cliff wall he muttered an incantation and the wall parted, revealing the secret entrance into Zaldara's cellar. At just that time the party heard the low, loud bleat of Remalia's horn, signifying the Harper's raid had begun upstairs and it was time for our group of adventurers to begin their mission to sneak into the cellar and find Zaldara's phylactery while she was distracted with the Harper's raid. 

"I'm staying behind to tend to the boat." Callbrax informed the group. "Be safe, but please hurry. The longer you take, the more Harpers will die in the raid and the more danger we will all be in."

The group made their way through the secret tunnel entrance to the cellar. Before them was an open space, more cave-like than cellar-like. They could hear water dripping from the stalactites and jagged rock made up most of the wall. In front of them was another cliff face and a large rock pillar, with a tunnel leading back behind the pillar and up to the top of the cliff, to their right was an ornate stone door that looked out of place in this rough cave of a room. 

Cire took the lead and made his way up the path around the rock pillar as Fitz lit the way with his dancing lights. Opening up before Cire was another cave like room, with jagged rock walls and paths twisting among the stalactites. But before Cire had a chance to explore any of those paths, he heard a dry, cracked, whisper that seemed to come from nowhere saying to him "Whether it was by mistake or by foolishness you have come too far. Your soul will be used to fuel my endlessness." Cire panicked and yelled back to the rest of the group that something was wrong in that room... which of course alerted the 4 skeletons hiding behind one of the stalactites that he was there. A battle ensued and Ella took a significant hit, but the party prevailed, with Enna raining down fire on one of the skeletons completely obliterating him. 

Weary of what may be beyond if they continued going this way, the group made their way back out to check out the stone door. Careful investigation by Sagres revealed that the door was magically trapped, but the trap could be disabled by scratching out the skull's eyes. The trap was disabled and Fitz used his mage hand to unlock the door. 

Elonast

Behind the door was Zaldara's dungeon. Five iron doors stood before the group, locked tight with only a small slot  in each of them. Fitz sent his dancing lights inside the first one and when they came back unharmed the group worked to unlock the door. When they did, they discovered a small, lonely, malnourished faerie dragon inside. The group offered the tiny dragon some rations and she told them her name was Elonast. Elonast explained that she used to serve as a familiar, but her master had become "bad" and decided she didn't want her anymore so she had been locked away in this cell for a very long time. The group and Elonast decided to make a deal to help each other - the group would help Elonast escape the dungeon and Elonast would help them find their way around and (hopefully) safely retrieve the phylactery they came for. 

B. This Week's Achievements

In keeping with the previously announced achievement system, our players began earning achievements this week. Per the rules of achievements only one player can earn each achievement in a given session (with a few special exceptions that are achievements all players earn at the same time) and a player cannot earn more than 3 achievements in one session. This week's achievements and their rewards were: 

Character	Achievement Title	Description / Reward
Ella	A Wizard Is Never Late	Be the first person to the game (reward: inspiration)
Enna	Putting the Tard in Tardy	Be the last person to the game (Reward: Title - the slow)
Fitz	Putting the Tard in Tardy	Be the last person to the game (Reward: Title - the slow)
Sagres	Finish Him!	Land a Killing Blow (Reward: inspiration)
Sagres	Safety First	Discover or disarm a trap before anyone in the party is             trapped (Reward: inspiration)
Fitz	Did You Break a Mirror?	Roll two critical fails in a row (Reward: Title - the failure     +   inspiration)
Cire	Your Mother was a Hamster	Taunt an enemy (Reward: inspiration)
Sagres	Thief of Fate	Be the only person to roll a 20 in a session (Reward:             Inspiration)
Everyone!	We're Gonna Need a         Bigger Boat	Survive a Sea Encounter
Everyone!	Breaker of Chains	Free a captive