Forges of the Mountain King, Session 6: The Detour of Ruin

During the previous night Lethe woke up to mumblings and caught Vismund talking to his hammer saying "No. No I won't. I won't let you!". Lethe raise the alarm and everyone gathered round to question Vismund about the voices in his head. He admitted that they had gotten worse but that if they quickly dealt with the forge-bound demon they may go away and he was eager to lead them on. The party packed up their gear and headed out in search of the temple and the demon.

While traveling through the halls they came upon what appeared to be an old residential area complete with a market square with rotting stalls. The party stopped to search for valuables and Lethe discovered an old silver chased drinking implement made from a minotaur's horn. The noise of their search brought a patrol of dwarves in the service of the Mountain King who attacked them on sight. The dwarves were easy enough to deal with, and soon the party was back on the trail.

At a fork in the path the party changed their minds and decided to go return the crown they found in the throne room back to the Underking in the crypts before continuing to the temple. They could either head all the way back from where they came, down the great stairs, and then to the crypts, but that would take a lot of time and they stood a high chance of encountering more patrols and wandering creatures going that route. On the other hand, Vismund suggested that they take a shorter path from here to the Stairs of Ruin which they had not attempted to climb previously. It was much closer at this point and would put them very close to the crypts below. They debated the pros and cons but eventually decided to try out these Stairs of Ruin.

The party took the fork leading away from the temple and in time came to a pair of sealed gates. They appeared to be designed to be defended from this side and were not difficult to unlock. The doors were heavy stone gilded with gold and illuminated by a reddish light that came from the cavern beyond. After opening the doors they determined that these were the Gates of Gilded Blood they had heard mentioned in the writings of Yrgut the Trapmaster. A devilishly trapped locking mechanism was fitted on the other side of the gates, but it was easily bypassed from the other side. The party took little notice of it.

Beyond was a massive and deep cavern with a pool of water far below. Pillars of stone rose from the pool at differing heights. The pillars were connected by narrow stepped bridges forming an elaborated series of staircases that split and rejoined to terminate lower on the opposite side of the cavern. Many of the bridging stairs were broken, leaving gaps of up to ten feet is some places. Some of the ledges on the pillars were lit by torches on tall poles that guttered with a reddish light.

Lethe and Mike noticed great sheets of spiderwebs hung between the pillars and the stalactites in the ceiling of the cavern above. They suspected an ambush by spiders at any time. Dawn spotted a couple of pillar ledges that appeared to have been covered in sticky webbing, apparently an attempt to trap prey passing through the area unaware. The party picked a path that seemed the least dangerous and Dawn burned away the impeding webs.

The fires caught the attention of the inhabitants of the cavern. First to show itself was an ettercap webspinner, who perched on top of one of the broken pillars. Lethe had made a rope swing by hooking a grapple over a conveniently shaped stalactite and swung over to a nearby pillar with Jym. The ettercap shot restraining webs out at Jym and then caught the rest of the party that was near the gates in a massive sheet of webbing. A deathjump spider that was hiding near the ceiling leaped down onto Lethe and bit him, delivering a dose of poison along with its puncturing bite. Another spider climbed over the lip of the ledge near the gates and attack Mike. A third one crawled stealthily along the ceiling toward the party. Vismund placed the battle standard of healing near the center of the group and pulled out his hammers. Dawn blasted the ettercap with acid orbs and drove it off, keeping it at far range and out of the fight for most of the battle. Rael used his feystep to get out of the immobilizing webs and join Lethe and Jym on the next pillar and attacked the first spider. Jym, Rael and Lethe triple teamed the spider, and killed it before swinging back over the gap to join the rest of the party that was fighting off two remaining spiders at this point. Vismund and Mike had taken up the front line against them, each taking grievous wounds from their bites and poison. Vismund dropped before he was able to heal himself. Jym gave Mike an inspiring word to keep him on his feet before closing in. Rael caught up and then used his sword bursts to good effect. Lethe was having trouble aiming his bladebow properly with little room to move effectively on the cramped ledge.

Once the spiders were taken care of the party went in search of the ettercap that had gone into hiding once it was bloodied. Vismund was revived and used his arcane springboard to help the party get over one of the bigger gaps in the stairs, but then slipped and fell himself when attempting to use the rope swing to get across the smaller gap. Luckily a sheet of webbing caught him before he fell all the way to the base of the cavern. Dawn had to lower a second rope to help him climb back up. When the party was almost to the bottom of the stairs the ettercap mounted a desperate final attack. Jym and Rael finish him with a pair of expert sword blows.

At the base of the stairs Mike decided he'd stay behind and look for treasure in the murky depths of the pool below while the rest of the party continued on to the crypts. While they were away he turned himself into a creature more suitable to the water and swam around in the pool. He found a sodden corpse that appeared to have once been an adventurer and brought up his soggy gear. He recovered some coins and a magical bedroll, that although was soaked through still looked like it would serve well. It turned out to have all the properties of a restful bedroll, but Mike suspected it might also induce inadvertent soiling of oneself while sleeping now that it had lain at the bottom of a pool for so long.

Meanwhile the rest of the party had found the crypts again and prepared to enter the Underking's tomb. Vismund chose to stay outside on a hunch that the Underking may mistake him for Naurorc again. Jym, Dawn, Rael, and Mike were very highly suspicious of his behavior and there was a short stand off between them until Vismund gave them assurances that he would wait for them and not do anything “crazy”.

Jym, Dawn, Lethe, and Rael gave the Underking his crown back. He thanked them and then promised to come to their aid as a spirit when they would need him most. He also warned that if they stole his crown after he was gone he would haunt them until the day they died. At that he crumbled to a pile of dust and the crown remained behind in his tomb. Lethe was sorely tempted to steal the crown but thought better of it at the last minute. The party did steal the Underking's battleaxe of thundering +1 though.

After that the party returned to the stairs of ruin and met back up with Vismund and Mike. They reached the top of the stairs with little difficulty and headed back toward the temple.