Session 46: Doppelgangers and the Old Temple Ruins

The party gets some prisoners released and tracks the Doppelgangers to the Old Temple Ruins.

This write up is based on our Sunday, October 6, 2024 session and was written by our scribe Carl with a few additions from myself. Thanks to our mapper Jimmy for the screen shot.  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: Doppelgangers and Goblins

Location: Inside Tegel Manor

5 PM
We were under the Manor with our pal the goblin are leading us... somewhere.

Several hallways later we came to a door. Some knocking later, it opened into a jail. The dank and foul-smelling jail was manned by 3 jailers and had eight prisoners, one was an elf.

The elf's name was Mortion, Morton the Hand. He, as you would expect, wanted out and claimed complete innocence of everything. He was most definitely not one of the doppelgangers.

He said he and others were waylaid on a road at a 'toll booth' set up by the goblins.

Shadow offered to buy him out of captivity, and bribes did as they always do. Some other prisoners wanted out as well. The jailers were reluctant to let everyone go, but we got them out as well. We got everyone except the three goblins. 

They told us that one pathway would lead to the mausoleum and stairs up to the manor. It sounded good to us, so off we all went.

We came to a crypt/mausoleum area, with a cage type thing in the middle, and a door on it.  Doors slammed shut and people yelled to Reebo to open it up. Lots of shadows precluded some vision of what was going on.

Morton the Hand pulled lockpicks out of his boot and started on the door to the cage.

A misty apparition appeared and started taunting us.

Weapons went through the apparition (lich?, spectre?) with no effect.

Arkhelm cast Knock and the north door to the cage opened. Beats lock-picks every time.

Arrows fired at the specter bounced off the space between the bars, ineffectively.

Once the southern door is opened and arrows could be fired, they went  through the apparition just like the sword did.  It laughed and waved its staff at everyone.

Being pretty sure this was just an illusion, we moved forward south

Para was last and the apparition approached Para and raised its staff to attack. She ignored it which seemed to enrage it, but it did no damage.

The door at the south end of the room had to go someplace.  Yep, that door opened to stairs going up. Just what we were looking for. The apparition did not follow us.

The stairs went up to another....door. It was not locked and we went out found the door was in the side of a tomb in the courtyard near the liche's tower..

Out of the danger zone, we talked to the ex-prisoners. They said they were all coming in from the north of town when they were captured by the goblins. We fed them and they came with us as we went to search for the item that Steadfast came to get.

Looking in the window, no changes, so we climbed up and in. The Cauldren of Keridwen has to be there someplace. We could hear a sparking sound. Opening the door we saw a cauldron surrounded by electricity crackling.

 
This was the cauldron, a big and heavy thing full of green gooey liquid. We covered the lightning thing with a convenient rug, and the lightning stopped popping around the room. The cauldron was still full of stuff and that had to be dealt with before moving it.

Steadfast tried to use a crowbar to pry up a board and make a space to dump the contents of the cauldron.  We could hear a distant groaning sound as he pried away.  As he continued we could feel a vibration through the room, and we noticed that the walls were moving a bit - almost like the room was breathing, and the pressure increased in the air. He stopped and the room went back to normal.

Using a board, we learned that the contents are acidic. We decided to wait for another day to recover the caldron.

We went back to our hovel, and the new folks went to Tegel Village. We gave them a few silver to get some food.

May 11th
The next day, Steadfast morphed into a bloodhound for tracking the doppelgangers. It was cloudy and rain seemed likely, so we needed to find their trail soon.

Steadfast dogged the trail, on and on. He found goblin and human smells as well. At the bridge, the trail went up along the stream westward, and then uphill to the woods.

We could see some ruins and a clearing ahead as we went on. Steadfast could smell a lot of humans and another dog up ahead. Maybe a dog with a kid, and something that was not quite human. And some amphibians, possibly bullywugs.

We had gone off the trail a bit to the west, allowing for wind, so Steadfast had to reacquire the trail.  As he sniffed about we could see the ruins were pretty desolate, and nowhere near as overgrown as they should be given their age. Someone whispered, "Cursed land."

We heard a "Shh, i think I heard something", from the ruins. We kept moving on, trying to be quiet.

A group of what seemed like three priests were in the ruins. They were dressed in robes worn by clerics of Frigga. They noticed us too. Steadfast reacquired the doppelgangers trail, heading back into the ruins. This was a TODAY scent. We approached the priests. They had nothing that looked like our loot. The priests looked curious and a bit wary.

They greeted us, and we them. They said this is the ruins of a temple of the frog god, Tsathoggus, destroyed by holy warriors of Thor and Frigga nearly a hundred years ago. Their order was there to maintain vigilance over the area and to prevent the recurrence of evil worship.

Steadfast could tell that the doppelgangers had been through here a couple times, and the most recent trail headed directly to where the priests were. He had sniffed them out, and somehow, they knew it.

Steadfast started out with a spell and the battle was on.

When the dust settled out we had one prisoner and two dead. Yelling for the kid and the dog got a bark from below.  After we shackled the surviving doppelganger, it said it knew nothing about a kid and a dog.  It led us to the loot hole. Everything they took was there - potions and a ruby key.

Down some stairs to look for the kid and dog, who had been quiet since the one bark. Hopefully it was the kid silencing the dog and not trouble.  Down some slippery steps, it was totally quiet.  Looks like some of the old temple of the frog god had survived underground.

Some footprints, child and dog. All over the place. Reebo's mastiff thought the kid went north at the T, but the scent was all over the area as well.

North to a locked door, but the kid had not gone through, the trail led past it.  We came to a room that may have been a library at one time. It had signs of a thorough search, lots of books littered the floor.  We found the kid and dog hiding in a corner.  Some of us recognized him as a kid we have sometimes seen in town. He was happy to get some food. So was his dog.

His name was Lenrall and his dog was Chomper. He had been exploring and looking for loot, and knew his way around the place. We got a basic description of the areas he had been into, but some locked doors he had not entered. He said he had heard noises behind one that scared him.


Continued in Session 47: A Bone Swarm and a Flooded Tomb