Session 43 & 44 - The Temple of the Crystal Heart
29th October & 6th November 2022
In-game timeline: DR1489 Eleint 27 - Eleint 27
Our Heroes awake after a long rest just after midnight on the day their ship home is due to arrive. They decide to attempt to enter the temple at the abbey in the hope that they may discover what happened to Clarice and possibly even dispose of some evil clerics and/or gain some rare but much desired loot in the process. They are acutely aware, especially Carro, that time is somewhat against them, and some plans for quick escapes are rapidly discussed.
Under cover of night, and of Carro's Pass Without Trace spell, they enter the abbey ruins once more and approach the tower. The distant sound of harpies atop the tower worry them, and the flickering light from a room within the tower gives them cause to rethink their usual "Storm the Room" plan of approach,
Mahtis volunteers to scout ahead, and turns into a spider to spend almost two valuable hours running around the evil temple to see what may be ahead. Despite using up some precious time, she does return with a good report of what the temple contains, and what they may have to face, as well as a route to reach what seems to be the "final room" in the temple. She did not, however, find Clarice - alive or dead.
The party decide to sneak into the tower and use stealth as their friend. Unfortunately, with the Pass Without Trace long worn off, this didn't work so well and their banging and clattering brings a shout from above, asking who they are and what they want. Their answers don't seem to placate or convince, so they rush into the room above to see a prepared spellcaster waiting for them.
Luckily for TC, the spellcasters first volley misses and TC is able to rush up to him and perform a perfect sweep with Dragonsboon, almost cleaving the wizard in two. TC's flurry of attacks nearly takes the foe down, but the mad wizard is able to fire off a response. His madness is confirmed as his last action is to send a fireball at the top of the stairs, enveloping not only the party, who were either in the room with him or in the process of coming up the stairs, but also himself, causing him to unintentionally end his own life in a ball of fire. The party survive the explosion, though some ended up worse off than others.
Wanting to press their advantage, the group run up to the roof, just in time to see the two harpies that were settled there fly off into the night. TC fires off some Eldritch Blasts in their direction but they seem to get out of sight quickly.
With no further enemies in sight, the party head back to the inside and search the charred body of the wizard, Ozymandias. They find very little that has survived the fireball, but tucked inside his cloak is a poem, written by the wizard himself, regarding the relics of old on this Isle.
Thoughts turn to the next challenge. Mahtis' scouting showed four crystal statues standing on the walkway between the tower and the temple. Two were of dragons, two of standing bull-like creatures. The two bull statues seemed to have red crystal "hearts" so the group focussed on them first.
Working on the assumption that these two statues would come alive, they are reluctant to approach them on the walkway itself. TC risks a slight venture outside and throws a lit torch in their direction, so they can be illuminated. He then retreats back into the tower and all four of them stand upon the roof and fire ranged attacks at the bull statues.
Their fears are realised as the first attack hits and the statue comes alive and rushes the door to the tower. By the time it reaches the door it has already taken significant damage. It then struggles to break open the barred door and TC takes the opportunity to hit the other bull statue, and it too rushes the door. Before they can open it, Kandi spies a perfect opportunity to use his Shatter spell to damage both crystal statues, resulting in one of them falling, and Mahtis takes her chance to break the crystal heart with a well-aimed frostbite spell.
Meanwhile the other bull, damaged from all their attacks so far, manages to break open the door and rushes up to the roof. The group prepare themselves and manage to get some attacks in as it approaches, and Carro slams the trapdoor down on it, causing it to waste time opening the door to get to them.
Carro is stuck next to the statue as the others back off and fire their ranged weapons at it. TC blasts it with the effective Eldritch magic, whilst Kandi and Mahtis fire off their cantrips - saving their spells for bigger battles - and managing to distract the statue enough to disrupt its attacks on Carro.
As Carro defends himself admirably with two shortswords, fending off the heavy swings from the crystal greataxe held by the statue, he is surprised to be smacked in the back by a very poorly aimed Eldritch Blast and turns to see a sheepish TC lowering his hands. When the statue follows this by landing a blow from his axe, Carro is starting to look quite badly off, causing TC to run in and heal up the elf to try to make up for his fluffed attack.
Eventually, with Carro close to falling, the continued attacks from the group topples the statue, with Kandi's psychic attack of Mocking finally dropping the bull creature, and the group quickly smashes the crystal heart to prevent it from regenerating. The party congratulate themselves on a well-executed plan and use up a few of their valuable spell slots to hand out some needed healing, not wanting to waste time resting up.
They decide to press on into the evil temple but Carro uses another spell slot to re-cast Pass Without Trace to hide their tracks and cover the noise they make.
The high elf is tempted by the large green-stone statue of a handsome elf, standing above a gold-inlaid urn at the top of a staircase. He does not recognise the statue, but avoids interacting with it, for now, when the others urge pressing on quickly. They descend the stairs and enter the hallway where the main doors are, though Mahtis explains that they are blocked by heavy rocks on the outside.
As a deep feeling of dread grows within all of them, Mahtis proceeds to look all around at everything, trying to hear if they have disturbed anything, and generally looking around. Her perception is acute and she manages to make out what appears to be a very crude trap in the floor near the main door. The group discuss how to avoid the trap, but they are suspicious as to why the trap is so crudely indicated. With more good investigations and some on-the-ball ideas they eventually work out that there is a REAL trap beyond the crude one, which is fake. Knowing this, they can easily avoid it taking an alternative route.
Still in a rush to progress without being distracted, they head into the room with four chests against the wall, cautious of the strange crystal statue standing in the corner, but it doesn't move, for now. The party presses on and reach the enclosed wooden walkway that they know stretches out over the lake. The walkway is adorned by more crystal statues, this time of woodland creatures, but these do not seem to have red crystal hearts and do not move at this point.
And so we leave our Heroes standing in the wooden walkway, discussing how they should approach the evil room, that Mahtis has already scouted, and knows it contains a number of statues and an ominous, moving, dark figure in the shadows…