14 Eleint 2993
Axle, The Marqck II, Mr. Beaks, Huzzah!, Grexes, Fernweh Fareburrow return to the Halls of Arden Vul, where they join Černoboš Vosk, fresh from a night’s rest at the Sign of the Broken Head and now a bruising 2nd-level barbarian. After taking morning tea with Lankios, the party makes rapid progress to the chamber of the portcullises, entryway to the crypts, sharing info and comparing notes about the groups’ experiences with the feathers like those dispensed by Maat along the way. After hours of searching the catacombs, the party finds only 10 ancient and oversized silver coins but is visited by a clockwork dragonfly that is able to allow conversation between a mysterious KK and the group. The mechanically communicated voice tells the party that it will purchase valuable and certain mundane items in exchange for information about the Halls of Arden Vul.
The adventurers then ascend up a level to where the Well of Light is located, and hearing the sounds of many baboons, returns to the lab. They secure a variety of spell components, allowing Grexes to create multiple vials of Potion of Berserkers. The party ascends the tunnel behind the secret door. Reaching a large basement, they battle three aggressive giant spiders and find multiple statues as well as the right marble leg of the Statue of Arden.
Returning to a now quiet Well of Light level, the party proceeds from the lab in the north to the room with a rusted portcullis level in the shape of an ibis that blocks a path that seems to end prematurely in blackness. Heading east from that room, towards a section of the level filled with baboon noises hours earlier but now quiet, they discover both a room full of baboon poop and an intriguing mechanical bird, likely left 1,600 years ago by an acolyte of Thoth. The bird’s command word is unknown and first shocks Axle and then casts the cantrip infestation on him while spouting two phrases, “Thus spake the Raven, [Burrrrrp],” and “The meta-magical qualities of arcanum are a product of a quintessential flux in the divine thought of Thoth, especially when compared with the macro-ontological properties of piety.” Deciding the mechanical raven is a trove of information for research and possibly valuable to KK, Axle stuffs the raven into his bag of holding.
Further east down the hall, the reason for the quiet becomes clear. A half-dozen albino, man-sized baboons lay in ambush, ready to surprise the party. In less than a minute, the party manages to kill five of the simian servants of Gerrilad the Grey at the cost of The Creature’s consciousness (and Fernweh’s dignity), but the sixth ape makes its way, hooting, to an unseen hall further east and provokes the riotous sounds of many more baboons as well as at least one much larger-sounding creature. The party rapidly retreats to the surface, their pursuers unwilling to follow them into the daylight.
The morning of the 14th of The Fading greets Wooshhh, Nubbins, Tippletoe, Vogelvina, and Uffda with a fierce wind as the party leaves the Sign of the Broken Head for the Halls of Arden Vul. The party decides to bite the sling bullet and head down to the debouchment level and pay the halflings their entry fee of 25 gp plus 10% of treasure found for access to a safe starting point for their delve into the Halls. This has the added benefit of possibly allaying curiosity by the halflings regarding the secret entrance to the north the R3C found from the basement of the Plaza of the Priests of Thoth.
After paying the halflings, which ensures that all future delves from this entrance will only cost the R3C 10 gp plus 10% of treasure found, the party sets about exploring. First the party peeks into 3-30, an archway just north of the Plumthorn Gang’s portcullis-guarded lair. In 3-30 the party finds a Thothian Teleportation Ring, no transportation tiles, but most curiously, a floating marble bust. Jellicose, Wooshhh’s sword, tells the party that the floating head is a Sortian Portable Sage, but its command word is unknown. (Perhaps the subject of detailed downtime study?)
The party discusses viewing part of the halflings’ lair, but they deem the entry fee of 100 gp is too high. They then head north to the double bronze doors in 3-34, where Nubbins wild-shapes to a spider and crawls through a peephole to explore further. He finds the chamber of 3-35 filled with dust, a dead adventurer, and a halberd. Crawling east, Nubbins discovers a northern extent of the chasm, a narrow stone bridge across to 3-40, another 15-foot statute of Thoth, and a seemingly newly bricked up wall on the southwestern side of the chasm-spanning bridge. Investigating the door to the northwest of 3-35, Nubbins finds a room empty but for a gold-leafed desk. Proceeding north still, he finds a one-way door that would lead to 3-26 by the secret stairway to the basement of Lankios.
Nubbins reverts from wild shape and heads to the debouchment room, where the party is investigating the 15-foot-tall statue of Thoth there. The party hears a small, barely audible click when the left arm is raised horizontal but the right is left down. Checking around the statue, and keeping in mind that the halflings can see what they are doing, the party finds evidence that the whole pedestal of the statute shifts to the south. Given that they heard the click but the statue did not move, the party discerns that more might need to be done to uncover the secret of the statue.
The party then heads west to a second statue of Thoth with articulating arms. Standing to the west of this statue at 3-15, the party lifts the right arm horizontal, and a pit with spikes opens to the north of the statue. Raising the right arm straight up opens a pit beneath Uffda and Wooshhh, and they fall onto the spikes, taking damage. After being pulled out, the party puts both arms straight out, and a chute opens to the south of the statue. This chute, magically greased, leads a triple rope tied Vogelvina down a 120-foot jouncing ride with no end in sight. After pulling Vogelvina back up, the party searches the western side of the statue and discovers a narrow secret passage that leads 100 feet to a desecrated temple of Thoth.
With walls covered in Cult of Set graffiti, fallen pillars, and a sludge-filled pool at the feet of a gigantic statue of Thoth, the party proceeds with care. Uffda takes one of two bodies nailed to the northern wall of the temple, 3-71, and throws it into the sludge pool, which erupts in tentacles as what can best be described as a slime kraken devours the body, returning the pool to quiescence. The party, frightened, returns to the eastern side of the temple and investigates two balconies reached by northern and southern doors, finding adventuring gear in the latter. Using the Rings of Friendly Defense, Uffda, now invisible and Wooshhh blind, quietly investigates the defiled statue. Climbing to the top she hears and sees two acolytes of Set in a balcony above and behind the statue of Thoth, likely guarding Cult of Set holdings to the west. Attempting mischief, Uffda and then Wooshhh try unsuccessfully to climb while invisible to the balcony.
The party explores the southwestern door but finds only a room blocked by a massive roof collapse. Switching to the north, the party finds in 3-84 a plaster heap that had been set on fire in the past. The party bursts through a stuck door into 3-82 but only finds another empty room. Exploring east next, the party encounters Susarra, an Archontean fighter who tells of her party, made up of Bimble, Thimble (taken by the slime kraken), Mimble, Gimble (thrown into the pool), and Fred (still hanging on the Temple wall).
Agreeing to help Susarra out of the Halls, the party heads to the northwest door from 3-82 and finds the bodies of Mimble and Gimble, from which they pilfer a ring of feather fall and Mimble’s spellbook with the spells The Brachteros Effect, Polymorph, Color Spray, Gaze Reflection, Phantasmal Force, Fog Cloud, and Mage Armor. The party then finds another one-way door to the north. Beyond is a passage into a maze of crypts (the beginning of which other R3C members found and minimally searched on the 13th and 14th of The Fading on their way to and from the Well of Light level).
Wooshhh, Nubbins, Tippletoe, Uffda, and Susarra spike the one-way door found in 3-85 open and continue into the Catacombs of Thoth. Quiet crypts line all available wall space, and the party decides to search a number of them. Halfway through their rummaging, the party hears the sound of bones falling out of crypts in the darkness and in short order is attacked by three skeletons. Fending them off but taking some damage, the party returns to searching. The party’s haul after three-and-a-half hours of searching comprises of a copper torq, a glass bead that looks like an eye, a rusty dagger, a silver holy symbol of Thoth, and five Archontean silver pennies.
Near the end of their investigation, the party hears a similar noise to the skeletons, but this time the sound is more fleshy and slathering. From the dark corridors, five ghouls charge the party. The ghouls’ attacks are vicious and damaging, but the party is able to weather the paralyzing power of the undeads’ claws. Fighting back with Jellicose, Wooshhh scores a number of critical hits despite the sword’s constant complaints about the taste of ghoul flesh. Nubbins wild-shapes into a giant badger and kills two ghouls.
Once the fight ends, the party decides to head back into 3-85 and take a short rest, but unbeknownst to the party, a gelatinous cube, attracted by the fighting, intercepts Nubbins at a T-junction of corridors and engulfs him. During the ensuing fight, several characters are engulfed but all manage to extract themselves before the start of their turns. In the end, Uffda scores two timely critical hits on the gelatinous cube and saves Nubbins, engulfed for second time, from certain death.
After resting in 3-85, both doors spiked closed for maximum safety, the party moves quickly through the catacombs to the portcullis room, Nubbins wild-shapes into a spider and reverts to normal form to open the portcullis, and the party beats a quick retreat to the debouchment room, where they pay the halflings a 10% share of the pittance they found, before heading up to the surface and to the Sign of the Broken Head for a long rest.