Eberron Adventure: Fourth Session

The party had reached Fal-Hatet, and brazenly hacked their way through their foes to reach the chapel of the Sealers of the Stone Maw. They stood in the mess hall of the chapel, just having slain two giants and a cadre of kobold lackeys. A pair of doors stood before them, barricaded, and a snaking hallway, carved into the rock itself led off to their right, heading deeper into the chapel complex.

Afraid of the zombies that might be behind the barricade, the party opted for the hallway, where they sounds a carved stone statue commemorating the first Prime Sealer, the leader of the order. Nearby, they found the office of the post, and set about looting it. The party discovered an ornamental great maul, a suit of ring mail armor, candles, a book of meditations pertinent to the Order, a few sheets of prized vellum paper, and a diary kept by the most recent Prime Sealer, started when he ascended to the post. All these were greedily picked up by the human wizard Kyllar, who immediately started pouring over the journal; sharing his discoveries with the party as he makes them.

The party advances deeper and deeper into the complex, descending a circular stairway down towards the catacombs...

…and the party pauses. The drow ranger Zyn signals for the party to halt, and prepares to scout ahead, and unprompted, Kyllar conjures an illusionary rock wall to function as a kind of one-way mirror, allowing the drow to enter the room unseen and report back.

Unfortunately, despite this momentous, uncharacteristic event of planning, forethought, and cooperation Zyn trips, and falls through the illusion, his swords dropping from his hands and landing on his face.

The party hurries down the steps, hiding behind the illusionary wall, with Kyllar reaching through the illusion briefly to help Zyn up and dust him off as giants and kobolds turn to investigate the noise.

Arrows are loosed from behind the illusionary partition. Kobold diggers flee; kobold soldiers try and wrap their minds around just what is going on, and the giants return fire with a blind salvo of javelins, one of which skewers the human monk Turnin, who was momentarily lost in thought examining one of the old funerary caskets. The missile pins him to the wall, and the agony of the wound knocks him unconscious.

After a moment of consideration, the dwarf druid Bearchief ignores the witless groans of Turnin fighting against Death, and instead fondles the air, creating a magical, invisible rock obstacle course between the giants and the party. The diggers fully retreat, and the kobold soldiers decided to flee as well, not understanding just what is going on. They are shredded by the magical rocky spikes as the giants continue to rage, one rushing forward through the spikes in a mad attempt to reach the party.

The party lets lose another round of arrows and magic while Bearchief moves to revive Turnin. Turnin gasps for air, and flails about in an attempt to remove himself from the wall, somehow throwing a dart from his robes into the face of the menacing giant. Turnin unsticks himself with the aid of Kyllar, and then hurls the javelin back at the giant in hopes of revenge. The giant advances, catching the javelin and hurling it back at Turnin in a stupid game of deadly catch. The rest of the party decide to intervene; close on the giant, and he is soon felled.

Lacking new immediate foes, the party is able to examine the catacombs. By the entrance are tiered plots built into the wall for typical clerics. At the far end of the room are large sarcophagi of the former Prime Sealers. Beyond them, in a dark corner is an excavated hole winding ever deeper into the mountains. Echoes of kobold shrieks and giant bellows rise up from the ancient rocks, and the party bemoans their ill luck, quickly deciding to double-back and investigate the haphazard barricade instead!

They find it quite poorly constructed indeed. The doors swing inwards, so the barricade is on the wrong side. Nobody said kobolds were intelligent. Or wise. After dismantling part of the barricade, the party throws open the doors, and discovers the rest of the clerics, who have been turned into shambling zombies. The party quickly dispatches them, then consecrates the bodies. Looking around, the party sees signs of a conflagration, similar to the ones found in the town, though this one isn't as devastating. A score of dead kobolds litter the rooms, some burned, other clubbed to death, presumably by the undead clerics. The room is looted, and is found to contain torch-making materials, more prayer books, some coin, and some assorted weapons. Nearby, an unbroken vial sits on the ground on some discarded bedding. Through a ritual, Kyllar is able to determine that it is slightly magical, and pertains to fire.

Finding a watery spring in the room, Shadowale strips down and begins to wash up. Kyllar averts his eyes but adds some magical heat to the water. The rest of the party sets about dismantling the barricade on the wrong side of the door, or reading the Prime Sealer’s journal.

In the middle of these tasks, the kobold soldiers make a (totally unexpected) sortie. Standing atop a half deconstructed/half built barricade, most of the party rushes to fend off the attackers, with Shadowale taking a moment to rinse the soap off.

Taking a few minor wounds, though felling none of the kobolds, the party holds the line, scrambling over both each other and the furniture rubble in attempts to get better shots or strikes.

Hearing the party fumble in their killyness, Shadowale foregoes armor, jumping out of the impromptu hot tub, grabbing only his weapons and running to join the mayhem. Scampering up to the top of the barricade, he plants his dagger in the scaled beast’s face, shouting like a maniac. The rest of the party, roused by this petite paragon of manliness, gather their wits, remember where the pointy ends of their weapons are and slay the remaining kobolds.

The party quickly dismantles the rest of the barricade, and reassembles it inside the room. They then rebuild it. They are momentarily safe, but trapped. They cannot stay long. Turnin and Bearchief take a short rest among the dead and clutter while Zyn, Kyllar and the (possibly) now clothed Shadowale nervously man the barricade, all too aware of the skitters of the kobolds and the thumps of the giants that are echoing off the stone walls and through the far-too-thin doors....