Session 23: Rooms of Revelry

The Adventurers destroy Rodip the Wight outside of the Temple of Harmakhis and dance with ghosts in the Ballroom as they continue their explorations.

Written by our scribe Carl with a few edits by myself. It is based on our Sunday, August 7, 2022 session. Jimmy took the screen shots on Roll20.

Location:  Inside Tegel Manor, at the Temple of Harmakhis.

We started where left off last time, in combat with a wight, in a sort of a standoff. It was in the hallway, we we in the temple room.

Aefir led the way out into the fray, and the party followed.  Moving down the hallway, we caught up to it and battle was joined. Shortly after the battle began, it ended with the wight on the floor.  Happy ending.

The wight had some coin, a magnifying glass, some bloody cloth and a book: My Liege's Tide.

We found a secret door in the hallway next to where we were fighting.

The door opened onto a long narrow room with a black mace suspended in the air above a lighted brazier at the far end. Detailed wall carvings depicting the decapitation of hundreds of commoners lined the walls. Executioners swung large axes and two-handed swords, performing the grisly work in front of dozens of onlookers.

Aefir didn't like the look of the floor and roped up, then entered cautiously. He hoped to recover the mace.

Wrapping his hand in cloth, Aefir grabbed at the mace. It vanished, and the room was filled with screams of agony from torture going on in pictures on the walls. Four gargoyles stepped out of the pictures and into combat.

Magic flew out of our casters' hands, to some effect. Two of the gargoyles tried to isolate Aefir, and two came to the doorway to attack Shadow and Nattie. Reebo bravely moved up close to get his attacks in.

It seemed that hitting one gargoyle affected all of them, and when Reebo shot one in the knee, they all crumbled to pebbles. When they died, all of the screaming stopped.

With Shadow's use of Chi powers in the fight, he needed a brief rest to recover, so we backed up to the bedroom from which we entered the hallway.

As we passed the little temple room, we finished searching the room completely. We left the (we think) solid copper ball for another day.

We entered a big room with music permeating it. No distinct source, but all over. Some paintings were on the walls.  Several finely dressed ghosts came over and wanted us to dance. Aefir ignored them and drew back a curtain on the north wall, but thought it over and went for the dance. Natalie did too, and Para was already on the floor. Reebo was a 'me too' dancer, but Shadow sat it out. Arkelm jumped at the chance to trip the light fantastic.

While everyone else danced, Shadow's prospective partner pouted and he watched the party going on.  Aefir and partner danced toward the middle of the room, and we heard a cracking sound. Aefir was able to dance out of the way of a falling chandelier.

The dance fever passed for us at different times, with Aefir helping some of us to decide that dancing is overrated. Shadow tried to pull Para out of the room. The music reached a peak, and stopped. Curtains parted to reveal a ghostly orchestra, who vanished shortly after revealing themselves.

Recalling one previous fireplace with triggers for a secret door, we checked the one in this room out closely.  On each side of the fireplace was a statue holding nice looking violins. Reebo found a hallway leading east from the fireplace when he rotated a brick.

Locked door to the south, and behind the curtain a locked door to the north. Also to the north, but from the ballroom a door with what sounded like a giant rat behind it. We opened the door but no rat in sight, just a hallway going north and then east.

Doors, as usual, in the corridor. One had some talk/mumbling coming from it. Opening it showed us four zombies bowing to a giant rat. The rat was wearing a plumed hat. We entered battle.

The rat ran out of the room, but it didn't get far as Reebo pinned it to the floor with an arrow as it tried to get past him.

Looting the bodies, we found a sewing kit was in one zombie's pocket. Nothing else of interest in the room. The throne was junky too.

Down the northern hallway to the east, the smoke smell we detected earlier got more intense.  Opening a door let out a cloud of overwhelming smoke and the stench of tobacco. Within the grayish haze, smoky profiles of men formed in the leather armchairs, then disappear.

A door to the west showed us an old man on an old couch. Filthy, smelly, malnourished. He was startled and asked for a few gold coins to help him.  Aefir asked who he is and why and what is he doing.  He replied that he is Fencred, and lives here. He is a guest of the Rumps, and has been here a long time. He kept asking for gold.

We offered him some help, but he turned into a Glabrezu demon (Named demon!) and said he would accept our surrender but only if he got someone's soul also. Aefir and Shadow got nose to nose with it, the rest of us plinking away from range.

Aefir took a beating when it grabbed him with a claw, but we put it down pretty quickly.

We found a bag containing 400 GP in a cabinet. The smoking room had a copper spittoon, Reebo said that it would be worth about six gold pieces if we could ever get the unwholesome sludge out of the bottom. He stuffed it into his pack.

While we were searching the room, and Shadow was meditating, we got interrupted by a well-dressed ghoul.  Shadow put it down quickly by himself.

We were pretty depleted by this time, so back to town...



Continued in Back to the Armory and a Road Trip.