Slice of Glaive

Since we are done in this room, the group decides to head on out to the other door with a J label since that is the only key we currently have. When we open that door, we see a hallway, at least we assume so through the dark!! Ghoral heads in and narrowly escapes a pit trap with spikes at the bottom. He yells back about the spikes. I follow him through, jump over the spikes, and see the tunnel on the side that he had also mentioned. We go through the side tunnel and open out into an oddly shaped room. The others are following not far behind. There is a door, I would assume that opens out into the hallway we had been in before the J door opened, and beside that door is a lever. I notice some irregularities in the wall on the opposite wall from the door. Upon closer examination, it appears to be the mechanism for a secret door. As everyone piles into this now very cramped room, Perrol really wants to pull the lever. Having learned something from his previous experiences, Perrol checks the lever with his knowledge of security systems before pulling the lever. He hears something and goes out to see what happened. When he returns, he reports that the trap floor has been locked in place so we don’t have to worry about it again. I test out the secret door and find a dusty closet with shelves in it. We decide to continue out to the tunnel again and this time take the other direction. We head back in the direction of the stage room. We burst out into a room adjacent to the stage room to find it filled with rubble. As we approached it, Perrol heard some shuffling sounds. We see nothing of interest in this room other than one wall that appears slightly ajar. I inspect it and it is another secret door mechanism but this one is broken and does not close. The next room is larger and filled with stage props and masks. We decide to check Ghoral again with Perrol’s magesight to see if his ‘disease’ has progressed. Again, there is nothing much to see in this room so we head on out. Suddenly Perrol and Kross make startled noises and turn behind them. Perrol yells to the rest of us that a translucent rubble creature is advancing on Kross.

Segment 12
Half-move to get back to Kross a.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 9 in the legs for 8 damage
Kross attacks it and does some serious damage in the vitals. In full paladin mode, Jarlyn yells, “Begone, foul creature” and a brilliant white light erupts from his holy symbol…And nothing happens. The creature shrieks and tries to flee. In the middle of its escape, Ghoral hefts his Cat Lady’s Claw, slips, embeds his weapon in the mortar of the wall, and ends up prone on the ground. The creature continues on its way.

Segment 3
Ghoral rights himself and grabs the creature. I use my entire turn to move onto the other side of Ghoral and the creature.

Segment 4
Everyone is waiting around to figure out what the best way to move would be. The creature breaks free of Ghoral’s hold and moves away.

Segment 6
Attack=Strashuri with DCV 7 in the vitals for 7 damage. It falls and appears to be dead, ruining my chances for getting answers.

End Combat

The creature is dead and although it appears translucent/transparent it is solid. Looking at it with magesight, Perrol sees and tells us that the creature’s body is glowing. As he glances at Ghoral, he sees that the glow is brighter. We can wait no longer and give one of the curse-break potions to Ghoral. Shaking a bit as it takes affect, Ghoral ends up cured and no longer glowing with magic.

Out in the stage room, we go down the hall to west that we’d neglected earlier in favor of opening J doors. Up the stairs and around the corner is a J door that we open. We find ourselves in a large oblong room that is nearly empty except for some pedestals. Ghoral notices that the wall to the right is irregular, and like previously I find a secret door. This time it is Ghoral who opens the door and finds the dusty closet. Perrol saw that the entire room glowed with magic. I go into the room and look around for traps and secret doors. As I get to where the east wall straightens out I stumble slightly over something. Upon further examination, it feels to be a box covered by a cloth. I try removing the cloth so that I can see what ever is underneath. Unfortunately, once I pull of and cast aside the cloth, I still see nothing. When I was holding the cloth I had trouble grasping the concept that I was even really holding cloth. The box appears to be about 1 foot deep by 3 feet tall. When I continue my examination of the exteriors I find nothing else. I return to the group and tell them of my feelings when I was over by the objects. When Perrol entered the room he paused for a second, apparently having seen a rectangular object against the wall along with a crumpled object on the floor. He goes over there to turn the objects so that the other side shows and nothing really happens. I decide to try and take the object(s) outside of the room, thinking that they might be visible when they are outside. Partway there, I seem to be aware that I’m no longer holding it. I walk back to the wall and what is there is thinner than it was before. I find my way back to my approximate spot and feel around on the ground for the object. Jarlyn comes in to help me carry it out. I’m unable to keep my grip on it, but Jarlyn gets it out and it appears as it exits the door. We basically repeat this procedure to get another painting out. The first one was a landscape and the second is a fantastical scene. We continue in this vein for some time. Then we take the now visible paintings to lock them into the J room near the beginning of our journey. We go down the other side of the tunnels we’d so recently been in. We end up in a throne type room. Up on the throne is a sleeping, snoring gnome wearing a silver crown. On the steps is also a carved cherubic face that comes to life as we approach the throne and demands money to talk to the king. The king is completely incorporeal and mumbles about how they were betrayed by their own magic. There is an armrest that I check for traps; it’s clear. However, in the armrest are the N and the E keys to open those respective doors. We are very excited about this. When Ghoral opens an E door with the key, it bursts into flame and he takes significant damage before he has a chance to extinguish the fire.

Segment 12
Perrol walks over and stabs the lumpy pillar and gets a shriek out of it.
Half-move to get closer to this shrieking pillar and then Thasori.
Kross moves closer and fires at the lumpy pillar. It collapses but several piles of rubble consolidate into creatures.

Segment 3
Half move to get next to one of the new opponents.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 7 and miss
Ghoral turns and wails on the creature behind him. There was a moment of worry about him getting stuck on the bones, but he is able to extract his weapon without incident.

Segment 4
The others attack. After they are all done, the creatures start to attack, most especially Kross.

Segment 6
Half move to get close to one of the creatures.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 12 for 7 damage and slice open the shoulder
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 8 for 5 damage in the other shoulder
Ghoral slices another one straight up from the groin to stomach.

Segment 8
Perrol missed the creature in front of both he and I. Kross is still blinded so he cannot attack. Jarlyn gets his creature good and the remained two flee. Both mine/Perrol’s and Jarlyn’s creature leave trails of blood as they stagger off into the tunnels from which we had come.

End Combat

I move away from the hallway at my back. I couldn’t see down it because of the dark, and it is really not making me content. Perrol starts to walk around and inspect the walls and the room in general. He pokes a pile of rubble with his rapier and it does not appear to be anything other than rubble. He says to us that he found something. After checking it for both magic and evil, Perrol picks it up and it appears to be a wooden jewelry box with some crystal shards embedded in it. He opens it away from the rest of us in case it has a trap in it. He returns to the group when no trap immediately presents itself and tells us that it is a music box. Jarlyn is interested in trying out the crank on it and it makes music. We decide to head down to the next room. I’m third in line and get stuck in the doorway when the people in front of me stop. Word comes down from the line that there is a gnome in a bear’s suit on the stage that exists in the room ahead. I move farther into the room after Perrol skips ahead of me in line. It comes out that the entire stage is magic. There appears to be a show going on. Ghoral is fascinated and will sit and wait until the show is over to do anything else. We also notice that there is a stage trapdoor in the center of the stage. Ghoral climbs up after Perrol and I check for traps. Down the trapdoor, he sees cobwebs and some piles of junk. Perrol makes a decision that nothing menacing could be under there. He hears shuffling and makes a jump out and away from the trapdoor. We see one tentacle that had been reaching for Perrol and missed and another one that has grabbed hold of the ring on the trapdoor as if to pull it down.

Segment 12
I wait to see what will happen. Soon, my patience is rewarded as a tentacle shoots out and wraps around Ghoral’s chest. I move up to the stage around Ghoral and start to slice the tentacle to get my comrade free.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 10 (including minuses for hit location) for 4 damage
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 7 (including minus) for 9 damage and chop off the tentacle.
Perrol uses his rapier to chop off the end of the tentacle holding onto the ring of the door. Jarlyn closes the trapdoor and we now hear thrashing under the stage. We hear the creature ’s thrashing stop. Perrol comments that he hears the creature limping, for lacking of a better word, away from us. We decide to head back underneath the stage because Ghoral is drawn to the possible shiny stuff he way underneath there. We all troupe back onto the stage that we’d abandoned when we first closed the trapdoor. Ghoral opens the trapdoor and I pass down a lantern. I keep position at the top of the trapdoor tokeep watch on my comrades below.

Segment 12
As Jarlyn jumps down I hear a grunt from Ghoral as the creature grabs him. Ghoral strikes out at the tentacle around his leg.

Segment 3
Ghoral triumphantly calls that he got it in the head and that it’s gone.

End Combat

Ghoral drags it over to the trapdoor area so that Kross can get a good look at it and cannot really identify what it is. He knows that he has never seen it aboveground. As Jarlyn and Ghoral search under the stage, they discover a mandolin and a wooden chest. They hoist the chest up above and we all check it out for various traps and magical issues. There is nothing dangerous that we can tell about this chest. Inside we find a cloak that glows faintly with magic, a magical wand, a magical and locked book, and a steel rod that could work to open the doors. The rod has the glyph for the letter J, like there was on at least two of the doors. Ghoral tries on the cloak and Perrol asks him to take it off fairly quickly because we all remember that this city was abandoned because of a plague spread by magical items. Upon removal of the cloak, Ghoral no longer appears to be magical, which is a relief to all of us. We want to pack up this cloak again and not touch it again.

Deciding to head back to the first room with the chest, repacked except for the rod, we see the blood trail from our fleeing enemies going off to the east in the tunnels. Perrol uses the rod to open up the J-door with the J-rod and finds a barracks like the neighboring door only this one is not turned over or wrecked. As we go through the chests at the feet of the cots, we find no treasure or really anything. Perrol stares at Ghoral for a bit and then comes out with the information that Ghoral is still glowing faintly with magic. We are now worried that he may be infected by the plague/curse.