Session 37: More East Wing Adventures

The party continued the exploration of the East Wing and spent the night in the old Hermitage.

This write up is based on our Sunday, January 3, 2024 session and was written by our scribe Carl with a few additions from myself. Thanks to our mapper Jimmy for the screen shots.  Since we are scattered around the country, we use Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: The Northeast Tower Completed

Location: Inside Tegel Manor.

12:30 PM
Noonish, just down from one of the towers, with a load of loot to go back for sometime or another.

A statue of a zombie talked to us, offering advice and taunting Reebo a little. It is calm but says it is bored with just the walls to look at. Benedaar offered his sympathies.

Backtracking, we returned to the room with two women chained up. We left them behind last time since Aefir had detected they were slightly evil in temperament.  Paraselene sprinkled some holy water, and displayed his holy symbol but there was no reaction. We decided the were probably not vampires.

They looked in good health, not what you would expect from prisoners. But there was no trap we could detect.

Beneddar cast Charm Person on one of them, and asked some questions. They answered and we listened. They had been travelling toward Sunlitten with some friends who were killed by vampires. They had no real sense of time, and had no food or drink for some time

Slightly evil took the day, and we left them to rot or get eaten by vampires.

On to new rooms, and yet another locked door. Reebo did his normal lock mechanic actions and trap checking, but this was an unusually difficult lock and after several tries we went for brute force

Aefir, as usual, opened the door with a crashing slam. The rotten wood of the door had probably corroded the lock, but that no longer mattered.

The room was overgrown with a weathered statue of a man amid a big pile of leaves and other nature stuff.  There was a reptilian creature who spoke to us, "Well, I guess you decided to smash the door." 

Paraselene entered the room, and it asked how many we numbered. We told it we were here but the others were coming along in a bit. Aefir shook his head and said, "This thing just tried to charm me" and the fight was on.

  As so many of our encounters have gone, this one went well.  In quick order, the naga was down and out. Thanks to Natalie's constant awareness, no ambush from behind had occurred.

The human statue was just a statue, and we searched the room carefully. We talked about skinning the snake, and figured it would take about an hour and Beneddar got right on it. The room was treasure-free as far as we could find, deviating from the myth about naga and loot.

Another locked door, of course, but this one responded to Reebo's skills.

As Benedar skinned the naga, we searched the next room to the west and Reebo handled the northeast door out of the naga room. It led to a room we had viewed from the outside on our first walk around. Aefir opened it and spotted a crossbow trap just as it went off. Aefir dodged, and the bolt just missed Benedar's head. Guess we didn't notice the trap when we first looked in from outside...

Paraselene made sure the crossbow was fully disarmed.

Based on Aefir's pretty good mapping, we expected there were rooms to the east, and we did a thorough search for secret doors and mechanisms. Arkelm went out the window to search from that side, and found only a window looking in.

Inside were LOTS of hunting trophies, from many places far and away. We could not read the plaques from the window, but the trophies were labeled.  There was a door on the south wall, but none on the rest. Beneddar finished skinning the naga and we proceeded.

We all went outside and climbed into the trophy room. A rat hole in the northwest corner led down and to the east.

On of the trophies was a unicorn with its horn intact. Arkelm recovered it for his materials.

A skeleton in the room spoke to us in Abyssal. It asked for Dew Worms. Only Beneddar could understand,and the promise of outside worms was not good enough for it. The lizard skeleton (which had glowing eyes) attacked us.

It grabbed Benedar with its tail, and once more we were into the fray. Paraselene moved smoothly to smash the tail, freeing Beneddar. A couple more swings and the skeleton lizard was....wait for it... BONED!

More room searching, more hopes for loit... A nice stone throne beckoned  to us to sit, but we resisted the urge. Stone on the butt, just not that appealing.

We opened the only door going out from the trophy room and found lots of bones littering the floor.  A partially embalmed elephant head was on the wall, and we took the tusks. Searching high and low for secret doors proved fruitless, though we could not see any way to get into these two rooms (trophy and bone) from the inside.

Going on, we found a work table with more bones and stuff on the floor. Rotten, yet another project that was interrupted. It had been a warthog, perhaps.

Beneddar climber into the next window and got swarmed by flies. He left the room to get away from the swarm. When we all gaggled at the window, Benedar looked closer and saw what might be a body or bodies on the table. They were mostly decomposed and were crawling with flies.

Arkelm cast bonfire on the table in the room, hoping to drive the flies out. The flies buzzed off and confirmed the body part theory, exposing lots of maggots. The table caught fire and threatened to spread. Many, but not all of the flies had dispersed.  Shadow went in to search around, and the flies were just a nuisance by that point.

Eventually the flies were few enough that the rest of us went in, the smell of cooked Long Pork welcoming us.  In the fireplace chimney were a set of rungs allowing climbing up, and Aefir climbed up. He found a hatch in the floor of the dining room we had explored earlier in our wanderings. We had either missed or failed to search that room properly.



Beneddar and Shadow had gone on ahead, and after a bit could hear some mumbling through a door. Shadow came back and informed for the party as Beneddar snuck up to listen more.

The sound appeared to be coming from a painting talking to a gorilla.  Noticing Beneddar, the painting started talking to him.It introduced itself as Radded Rufus and it asked us to move it (the painting) to ANY OTHER ROOM!!!  Staring at the gorilla was sooo old.

There was a bricked up doorway behind the painting. Benedar's tied the painting to his pack facing outward.

The gorilla was just a stuffed gorilla and Reebo recovered the eyes which were gems.

Back up the hallway, we opened a door to a young lady's bedroom. A trunk at the foot of the bed had nothing in it. Our normal search found that the desk, like the trunk, had been emptied out. On the bottom of one of the drawers there was a piece of paper with:

    “Our dance was magnificent. I hope you agree. Until next time, my lady. — RR”.

Though the initials matched the guy in the painting, he said he did not recognize the room.  Reebo dragged the chest along after him.

We left the manor to take stuff back to our cottage (our new home away from home) and the door was open. We were pretty sure we left it closed, and proceeded cautiously. Searching found nothing.  Reebo checked out the basement, and it was also untouched. He put the chest from the lady's bedroom onto the trap door, hiding it as well as possible.

Reebo's mastiff was set as cottage guard, with plenty of leash room to maneuver.

There was a round cover outside the cottage, and we decided to check it out too. Perhaps a little later than we could have but better now than tomorrow.

Aefir tried but could not get a decent grip on it, but Shadow managed to pry it loose. There was a shaft descending into the earth.  Rusty rungs went down about 40' to water. Perhaps a well of cistern?

Roped up, Reebo went down and confirmed it was a cistern. The water was foul, and several skeletons were at the base of the ladder. Useless for us other than body disposal if needed.  We put the lid back on and let it be.

Reebo made a couple keys for the cottage door, and we were comfortable taking our next rest there.  Needs a bit more cleaning and some decent furniture, but good enough for us overnight.  Reebo set up a crossbow trap in the basement, in case of intruders.

May 7th
The next day we got an earlier than usual start. We went back to the path approaching the manor and one more time checked a statue out there, just in case we had missed a lever or a trap door in our earlier checks. Still nothing.

Entering the carriage house, the coffin was still in place. We heard a horse in one of the stalls, but the only horse in the place was dead.

We saw the black cat that was around some days ago. It followed us a bit but we left it behind as we went north, looking for some unexplored sections of the manor.

A door at the end of a short hallway proved too complex, and we bashed it open instead.

As we were kicking away, a ghoul came toward us from the north. Arkelm smacked it with fire and it retreated. We slowly went north in the corridor, expecting more trouble. We could hear retreating footsteps around the corner to the right.

Aefir ran madly after it and fell into a pit trap. The ghoul came back, saw it was outnumbered, and continued running away.

Beneddar cast feather fall on Aefir and he scrambled out of the pit, ran to the corner and shot the ghoul with his bow. One more than before dead ghoul...

We could hear yelling of, "Hey, we are in here", from the two women we had left chained up twice before from the open door at the end of the corridor.

We ignored them again.

The door we bashed open revealed a warm room, much warmer than the air temperature in the hall. Plants were growing, and another locked door welcomed us.  When Reebo went up he noticed that the lock was very similar to the one he had trouble with. Having learned something from the first one, he got this one after a bit.

The room had light coming in from above. Looking closely it was glass roofed. The humidity was high and the room full of plants. Some looked rare, many were colorful.

Shadow bumped into one of the plants, and got a big dose of pollen. After a short fit of coughing he appeared OK. He passed on the advice to be extra careful.

Aefir found a 'grotesque plant' that attacked with flailing vines. The plant was mobile and reached for Aefir, and once again we were in combat. 

With the disruption of the fight, more of the stalwart adventurers ran afoul of touching the wrong plant in this greenhouse from hell...

Natalie could hear footsteps coming from the distance and yelled to the group that we may have a two-front battle soon.

Aefir wailed on the plant, and it riposted, hitting even his impressive armor class, and he was grappled. Reeled in, the plant bit him significantly. It attacked Paraselene with its other tentacle, but only smacked her shield.  Reebo took advantage of its focus to sneak a magnificent arrow into its vitals

From the hallway Natalie saw a man in a courtly outfit and armed with a cane sword. He did not look very friendly.

The big plant was killed by the arrow from Reebo, fell to the ground and released Aefir.


Continued in Session 38: Ram and Rodark Rump