24 Eleint 2993
Three newly arrived members of the Reconstituted 3rd Cohort—kobold wizard Jhane and two warlocks, Zarxik the tiefling and Slim the dwarf—convene at the Dancing Horse Inn and Meadery and band together, deciding to make their first journey to Arden Vul, where apparently loot is just strewn about the ground begging to be picked up.
Before the leaving town, Slim asks around about the R3C and its reputation in Gosterwick. The responses are slightly mixed, but most people asked have at least heard of the group and rumors of its deeds.
The group then journeys to the cliffs of Arden Vul and begins ascending the Long Stair. Zarxik proposes the group use the Arden-vator, but only after making the strenuous climb down to the immense statue’s palm does anyone realize that they do not know the activation word. The prior R3C scribe noted that riders need to say “Arden in Mithric” but did not include the Mithric word for “Arden.”
Frustrated with the empty trip, Jhane begins to climb back up the arm when she sees a white, possibly humanoid-shaped figure scaling the cliff face high above and then disappearing. The group deduces this may have been an albino baboon.
Finally reaching Arden Vul proper, the party starts combing through the rubble of the mostly leveled southeast quadrant of the city. The group comes up empty after hours of searching. All four of the former watchtowers along the southeast portion of the city wall are completely destroyed.
Beyond the fourth tower, outside of the wall, the party sees a blackberry patch covering some sort of structure and goes to investigate. The area is well-traveled with a beaten path leading directly to and from the blackberry patch. Feces along the path, which Jhane determines are likely baboon droppings, provide a distinctive aroma.
As the group is about to inspect the blackberries further, a huffing and puffing Hatchen Mallet arrives to join the party, the dwarven fighter having just clambered up the Long Stair himself. Checking out the berry patch, the party sees that it has grown over an old, dry cistern with a four-foot-wide crack at the bottom. Slim climbs down and finds that the crack is traversable for a time but quickly narrows, so much so that people would have to doff their medium or heavy armor to even be able to crawl through.
The armor-clad Slim and Hatchen suggest the group explores elsewhere, and the party heads to the two gate towers abutting Arden Vul’s east road. Though these were searched previously, the party investigates and finds a wax tablet with Mithric script. Zarxik uses comprehend languages to translate the following:
That suck-up, Lucius Cornelius, took Lord Marius’s relics to his own abode. He said he needed them to prepare his biography. We’ll never see those things again! Nor Cornelius, the rat. I think he’s holed up in a hidden lair somewhere along the chasm wall, south of the Imperial Bridge.
From one of the towers, the party looks out to the east and spots an expansive building still mostly intact—or at least more substantial than anything in southeastern Arden Vul. Proceeding there, the party finds the structure to be an ancient villa, built in the Archontean style but left to ruin. The trappings of former wealth are evident, and Zarxik surmises that there would likely be a record of the villa’s former owner in Narsileon.
The first room off the main atrium the party explores appears empty, but the scent of a wild animal emanates from an adjoining room. Hatchen cautiously approaches and—when crossing the threshold—sets his eyes upon a giant wolverine looming over the corpses of two adventurers. The beast leaps to strike, and the party answers in kind. Jhane, Zarxik, and Slim attack from range with bolts of fire and focused magical force while Hatchen gets right up in the wolverine’s grill, swinging his mighty maul.
Once the beast is dispatched, the party can fully take in their surroundings. They stand among sixteen massive casks in the villa’s former wine cellar. First things first though: loot the bodies. The dead adventurers’ possessions include two sets of chainmail, 16 darts, a longsword, two flasks of oil, two potions, two scrolls, 113 sp, and a chunk of amber worth roughly 175 gp. Slim pockets the potions and scrolls as the spoils are divided.
Then after a bevy of crude remarks about bungholes and stopcocks, the group turns its attention to the casks. Jhane tries the tap on one, but no liquid comes out. Zarxik shakes the cask and doesn’t feel any liquid sloshing around but does feel that the cask is not completely empty. Hatchen smashes the cask open with his maul, and inside he discovers the jelly-like remains of long evaporated wine.
The next ten casks feel the same as the first and pour no liquid, but when Jhane investigates the twelfth cask, her hand goes straight through it—an illusion. Looking through the illusion, Jhane makes out fourteen glowing Mithric letters arranged in a circle on the wall. Zarxic, still under the effect of comprehend languages, deciphers the letters, starting at the top and going clockwise: “O-R-C-U-S-A-I-D-S-P-A-I-R-S.”
Reading the message as “Orcus aids pairs,” the pair of Zarxic and Jhane tries touching the glowing letters in order. Upon touching the “O,” Zarxic is slammed back and instantly knocked unconscious by what Jhane senses to be an invisible creature. The party attempts to flee, but the creature maintains its assault, knocking out Jhane and Hatchen in quick succession. Only after leaving his compatriots to their certain demise is Slim able to slip away. The invisible creature does not pursue Slim once he leaves the cask room, but he does hear the sounds of bodies being pummeled to death before escaping the villa and retreating to Gosterwick.
With the ultimate price paid three times over, Slim returns to the safety of the Dancing Horse and wearily identifies the scrolls and potions before an uneasy rest: a scroll of protection from evil and good, a scroll of locate place, a potion of fire resistance, and a potion of hostile levitation.
