Sessions 58, 59, 60 - The Ones Where They Rescued The Children. Well, Most Of Them

12th, 19th, 28th April 2024

In-game timeline: DR1489 Uktar 3 - Uktar 7

Our "Heroes" are somehow survived a battle they seemed bound to lose. They did so with impressive tactics, or maybe luck. Probably both. But they are paying the cost. They are all exhausted, to varying levels, which is impeding their ability to do things.

They head down from where the strange creature, Deggmir, came, and find a strange "laboratory", spotting a dead body (Horgarth), his tearful, grieving elven wife, Starwyn, a large "operating" table, another table holding a strange, metal enclosure with a glowing "thing" inside, and a small chair that seems to hold a bundle of thick, tangled wires, some barbed.

The group are in a hurry and only give a cursory glance around the room. Carro finds a bottle filled with a misty swirl of gas, and ledger of sorts with a number of dates, names and races, with Horgarth being the final name in the ledger. Talking with Starwyn and putting two and two together, they think that the bottle contains the extracted soul of Horgarth.

TC takes Horgarth's dead body and they all leave the room, with Starwyn, to check out the rest of this level.

They find three pictures, which seem to be portals into other places - rooms and mountainside. In a hurry to try to find the children, they leave Horgarth's body on Charlotta's bed and head back up the ruins, remembering that the children are on a higher level. They take Starwyn with them, giving them Charlotta's rapier on the way (which was displaying the gnome's head!) as some level of self-defence, which hopefully wont be needed. TC and Mahtis take the heads of Charlotta and Redback with them as trophies, claiming they could prove useful. They do manage to get a couple of bracelets from Charlotta and Redback, which they suspect may work in some way with the portal pictures, as well as grabbing two bunches of keys, one from each of them.

Our "Heroes" are in a hurry, at least hurrying as best they can in their exhausted state, and they can only glance at things on their route - not stopping to investigate beyond trying a few door handles and looking in some open crates - all reveal nothing of interest to them, but they promise themselves to come back later "to do the looting thing".

The group is acutely aware that they were previously told that the children were guarded and there were also lizardfolk in the upper levels, so they are expecting a fight at any moment. But no fight comes.

In what they suspect is the first level below ground, which they have not visited before, Carro and TC are both surprised to see the mural depicted on the stone staircase seems to reflect visions or stories that they have heard about in their respective pasts. TC wants to press on but Carro insists upon getting some, albeit brief, description about this and why TC knows about it - the cagey paladin replies that it is from another land, or rather Land.

Pressing on they come across empty rooms, though the rooms seem to have been occupied until quite recently. Mahtis hears some children's voices from the other side of a locked door. After some discussion with the others, she turns herself into a small spider and crawls through the keyhole into the room to scan it out. Inside are a number of children, seemingly guarded by another golem-like creature, that the children seem to be ignoring.

A plan is formed. We know how well that usually goes.

They recall from previously garnered information that the golem may contain the soul of a previous villager, so perhaps if they can overcome the creature without killing it, this could be more merciful. This is rapidly forgotten as TC, feeling knackered and not very persuasive, fails to convince the creature to let them rescue the children.

And so a fight ensues. The golem, which they later is called Beryl, slams TC against the far wall after they open the door and TC's initial attempt at stopping it failed. With Carro attacking at disadvantage due to exhaustion, and also having to try to stop Starwyn from rushing into the room, and then finding out that his arrows seem to have little effect on the creature, the battle seems to be in the hands of TC and Mahtis. Fortunately Beryl is focussed on the heavily armoured paladin for her attacks, though unfortunately for TC she is managing to hit him quite a bit and his health is reduced quite a bit.

Carro puts a flaming sphere from the ring he is wearing behind the golem in an attempt to actually cause some damage. TC uses his inspiration in a desperate attempt to bring Beryl down before she slams him into the ground. He hits, and Beryl is looking very unhealthy, but she does manage to smash TC into the wall and he falls unconscious.

Carro is unable to move his flaming sphere towards Beryl without damaging an unconscious TC, so he instead runs up to the golem in an attempt to get closer to TC to help him next time, though the elf knows that his weapons are proving ineffective against the creature.

As TC bleeds out, Mahtis manages to finish off Beryl in a very lethal manner with her Traxiil magic warhammer. As the golem dies, a tear drops from her eye.

Carro administers a healing potion to the unconscious TC, bringing him back around, albeit with his third level of exhaustion.

As Starwyn runs in to search for her daughter amongst the children (whilst also comforting the other Moonfall children a hug), all our Heroes feel *Inspired* at saving the children. One of the tallest children, a boy called Talfen Strong, steps up to Carro and tries to put on a brave face to thank the strangers for saving them.

At this point, the party close the door to the room, with everyone, including the party, inside, and prepare to settle down for a well-needed rest. During this time our "heroes" find out that there are some children missing from the group - apparently Godfrey, Chuck and Ingred were taken away soon after the children were brought here, and Hansel was taken away separately yesterday. None of these names seem to be on the ledger that Carro found in the "lab" which he sees as a good thing, though TC sighs with a very perceptible level of frustration.

Starwyn asks to free her husband's soul from the bottle that Carro is carrying, but the elf hints that there may be a way to bring his soul back into his body, giving Starwyn a glimmer of hope. They decide to all settle in here for a long rest.

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The 8 hours' rest is uneventful, though they don't manage to recover any levels of exhaustion, despite there being some very basic bedding in this room. They do at least manage to recover some health and abilities during their eight hours of slumber. TC falls asleep on his watch.

As they lead the children back down the ruins' levels, some of the younger ones burst into tears when they pass the body of Beryl in the corridor, and TC, and surprisingly Mahtis, exacerbate this fear further by playing footy with the head of Charlotta at the front of the group.

As they descend, they pay a little more attention to the murals on the walls of the staircases. Mahtis does spot some ant-like creatures on some of the murals, seemingly in an observation role, and they seem to be different sizes in different murals. She assumes these are the Scriben.

They make their way to the lower levels, passing the remains of the various bloody battles that the party took part in the previous day. No attempt is made to shield the children's eyes from this gore - except by Starwyn, who tries to distract the younger ones. The children are likely to be traumatised by this short journey for years to come.

Reaching the portal pictures on the lowest level they previously reached, Carro uses the portal bracelets they took from Charlotta and Redback to pass through a portal into a room in a house in Moonfall, that they have been told was the home of Charlotta's adopted parents. They have worked out how the portals are used and they use this knowledge to pass all the children back into Moonfall, one by one, and finish off with Starwyn passing through too, taking the body of her husband Horgarth with her.

Whilst Carro is co-ordinating this with Starwyn, Mahtis and TC head to the northern room to search it. This is obviously Redback's room, there are some nice clothes for a tall male in a wardrobe. TC rashly tries to open a lockbox he finds on the dresser but triggers a trap when seeing if it can be opened and becomes harmed by the acid that flies out of the box keyhole. In a classic "stable door-horse bolted" scenario, he then uses a key that he found on Redback's body, and Mage Hand, to unlock the box (discovering that even using the key would have triggered the trap unless they turned it the "wrong" way to unlock the box). The box contained a decent amount of loot, though there were also some scrolls within the box, which are now ruined due to the acid.

Nothing else of note is found in the room (though Carro would like some of the clothes - though they may take some tailoring to fit him!) so they head south to what is obviously Charlotta's room - a very feminine room. In here they find a third portal bracelet and a box of paints that seem to be likely used to create the portal painting frames and runes. There is also a jewellery box with some nice loot and a desk drawer that has a couple of notes in there hinting that Charlotta has an accomplice - someone called Sperax - and that they were extracting souls and inserting them into Golems to create intelligent Golems and intend to sell them on some sort of "black market".

At this point Starwyn asks how they are going to resurrect her husband, Horgarth. Carro awkwardly deflects the question for now. They ask Starwyn to take Horgarth's body, and his soul in the bottle, back to Moonfall and to stay there until they return. TC mutters under his breath about the amount of money a good soul can fetch, according to the note….

Having got rid of the hangers on, our "heroes" investigate the other portal that lead to another room. Carro finds it leads to a room at the top of the ruins - unoccupied for now, but obviously occupied in the recent past. They are hunting for the missing four children, so all head through the portal to the top level and make their way down the steps, spotting another bas relief carving on the way down.

This carving rings very true with TC who briefly explains that this seems to reflect scenes from his own past, though in another Land. They press on.

Only to find that this level is the one where the children were found. They seem to have explored all the obvious levels of the ruins, though not every room has been explored, explained or looted!

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And so our "heroes" explore the ruins for one more time. This time more leisurely, as they believe all enemies are either dead or fled. They head back to the octagonal room.

After some examination and investigation they surmise that the room is some form of orrery that maps the movements of the planets in the heavens. Further investigations allow them to work out how the machine is powered by the small stream, and that it can be used to set a date and it will set the sky map to reflect the planetary positions at that date.

Whilst this is all very interesting, they get bored quite quickly and move on.

Heading down, they reach a door they have not been able to enter so far. They now have keys, which help. Opening the door, carefully, it reveals a small laboratory of sorts, unoccupied, containing a chair, benches and a variety of lab test-type implements. Dark stains on the floor are a little foreboding, though it seems old. A door opposite leads to a very solid, and seemingly old, rockfall, preventing further progress.

Investigating the room reveals some crude, medical-type tools and straps on the chair to hold someone in, some vials and bottles, but no obvious potions, and three notes describing lots of information about a "soul-stealer" device which prove most revealing.

They head to the lowest level, remembering a door they haven't entered to date - the one with the "Lights!" sign on it.

Opening this door, TC heads in, followed by Mahtis and Carro. Suddenly two strange knights rise up from the floor in front of TC. They seem to be made entirely of light. And they are not friendly. They attack TC.

It soon becomes apparent that none of the attacks performed by our "heroes" are actually able to have an effect on the creatures - spells, silvered weapons, magic weapons - all seem to go straight through the creatures.

TC decides to spend his time dodging attacks and looking around for what could be 'controlling' these creatures - spotting a ledge above the far door holding a concave mirror, a lit candle and a couple of small, stained-glass panels through which the light from the candle seems to be passing and this does seem to be causing the stained-glass knights. With an uncharacteristic display of intelligence, TC passes this information on to the other two.

And thus they all focus their efforts on trying to disturb this arrangement on this shelf before the knights do too much damage to them. Mahtis fails to hit a glass panel by throwing a hand axe at it, but TC cunningly steps aside, pulls a bottle of ink from his belt and throws it at the glass panels. It hits one of the panels, smearing it with ink and blocking the light from coming through it. This makes one of the knights immediately disappear!

Carro, finally pleased that he can show off his archery prowess against something that isn't resistant to normal weapons, takes aim for the remaining glass panel on the ledge, and smashes it into pieces, immediately removing the remaining glass knight! Quick thinking on behalf of the group of adventurers managed to avoid a difficult challenge! They quickly sweep the ledge clear of all the devices before the ink can clear and candle relight.

Inside the room beyond they find a number of filled flasks - looking like flasks containing extracted souls - and a number of weapons, most silvered. After some discussion they decide to release the souls (despite TC wondering how much money they could possibly get for these!). As the souls rise into the air and dissipate, the group all feel a sense of relief and gratitude as the souls are released.

They take all the weapons into the 'dining room' and leave them there for now.

Heading back into the cellar area where they found Horgarth's body, they look around in more detail - they were very rushed last time they were in here. The cocoon of wire and metal on the chair has tubes and stuff coming out of it. The smaller metal enclosure seems to have a glowing 'thing' inside it, as well as tubes and ropes that lead to the table.

With utmost caution, the group start to pull at some of the tubes and ropes. They discover that the metal 'cage' seems to contain a glowing splinter of wood, which seems to be getting dimmer since they pulled a gloopy tube out of the barbed-wire enclosure. TC is sure this is one of the splinters! He avoids getting too close to it, or touching it, for now - planning to do so later when they are in a safer and more controlled environment. Mahtis reaches into the cage and extracts the splinter, wrapping it in cloth and putting it in her backpack.

Mahtis dislikes the evil in this place and starts to smash up all the equipment here with her axe. The others stand back and let her do this, wrecking the lab. She feels good about destroying the tools used for evil. Until, that is, she smashes the metal, barbed-wire enclosure on the chair, realising too late that it contained, almost perfectly hidden, one of the children that was powering the device. Blood appears on the floor, and the boy, Hansel, who was in a bad way anyway - having been left unattended in this contraption for the last 12 hours or so - is now dead at Mahtis' hand. The druid is silent for a while after this and spends some time opening up the wire contraption to recover Hansel's mutilated and emaciated body.

They return to Moonfall, carrying Hansel's body. Mahtis feels obliged to tell Hansel's parents how he died, in private, which does not go well. However, the rest of the village are appreciative of the efforts of our Heroes at saving the other children, and at least finding out potentially where the three other children may be.

The group rest up at the village for a few days, recovering from their exertions. The villagers club together to gather a reward of 1,000gp for the group. The party discover that the third portal leads to a stone circle that is on the hillside a half-hour's climb above Moonfall village. They suspect that this stone circle may potentially be a way to get to Sperax, and the remaining three children and the second, partnered splinter. They decide this is an adventure for another day - and the use of this stone circle may need some investigation from Mahtis and her druidic contacts.

Our Heroes have the experience to all LEVEL UP to level 7, though they potentially have other things to spend their monies on - curing the lycanthropy that they all have picked up, for example! And so we leave the party resting up in Moonfall planning their next steps…