Session 51: The Throne Room and Owlbear

The party hears the cries of an iron bedframe being eaten by a rust monster, kills a wandering ghost, fights giant spiders in a throne room, destroy's a vampire's buffet, and finds an owlbear(!) in the heart of the manor.

This write up is based on our Sunday, March 2, 2025 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: A Cry in the Manor

Location: Inside Tegel Manor


1:30 PM
We were near dead center of what we have explored (we think).

We were examining a door facing a pit. We had rigged some ropes that allow us to safely enter and hopefully leave (at least without falling in the pit).

Reebo did his door check thing, and told us that it was safe to proceed. He proceeded, and seeing a lot of cobwebs he pulled out flint and steel and sparked them into oblivion (at least the ones by the door). Lots of small spiders died in the flash-off.

Stepping into the room, Reebo started to set up a rope bridge. It looked like a stock room, many boxes and other storage. Dead crickets, crab eyes, etc.  A ledger was also present. Spell components?

We took a sturdy small chest for our storage.

Moving on, we came back to a bedroom that was fully exploited earlier. A door from there to the east led to what appeared to be a chapel. A featureless black stone block was present. Beneddar, with his robe of eyes, could tell that the block concealed an alien creature. It shook him up more than some, being super eerie. Beneddar and shadow both realized what it was and went temporarily off the sanity charts - Beneddar became catatonic, and Stormlight saw red and attacked whatever he could reach. throwing Shurikens. 

That got everyone's attention, but no one was sure what had happened. Shadow's attacks continued. Shadow came out of his funk, but then he smacked Beneddar, stunning him. Eventually we got out of the room and stable.

Shadow explained that he had seen darkness, and then everything around him was a monster attacking. After coming out from it, he blamed the black box. Aefir got a sheet and covered the box. The sheet went right through the box and outlined a really creepy shape.  That clarified things for Aefir. After a couple seconds the box reformed (appeared to) with a couple of pieces of sheet sticking through.

Behind the box was an animal/creature. Aefir asked what it/they intended. There was no answer.

Beneddar took OFF his robe of eyes for a while, so he would not be subjected to the effects. So, on to the next room, and we let black boxes be black boxes.

Reebo could hear cries for help as he worked on the next door. Always suspicious in a place this old, but we cannot just ignore it.

After he picked the lock and Aefir opened the door to find a rust monster attacking a metal bed, the cries for help were coming from the bed.

Just then Natalie saw a ghost coming toward us from the north.  It was moaning about its sins and woes.  Natalie yelled that it was forgiven, and to go in peace...

Shadow attacked the rust monster, and it left the bed alone.

Ignoring the forgiveness, the ghost attacked Natalie psychically. It drew its sword and came forward. Good thing Natalie had that super shield.

Reebo came up, cast a fire bolt at the ghost, but hit Paraselene.

Once the rust monster was dispatched, Aefir and Shadow came back to help with the ghost.

It took some work (first time in a long time) but we put it down.

Necrotic damage is the WORST... it was probably time to head back to the home away from home.  Long rests are better with a padded place to lay down.

Checking out the room with the bed adn rust monster, we found another rat hole, and a bed that no longer called for help.

One door led out to the north. Reebo could hear a cranking sound, like a ballista or crossbow. Looking out it appeared to be just a hallway.

We came to a very large room.  Purple curtains, a marble throne, several doors. We could hear gagging and strangling sounds... ewwwww. There were Suits of armor, a fireplace with a deer head above it.

As Reebo investigated the room, he noticed that the spider/cob webs were really, really sticky. He got out flint and steel but they would not burn much... wet and sticky

We saw motion from the fireplace.. .giant spiders. Not too tough, and soon gone.

Benedar put his Robe of Eyes back on and looked at the pictures lining the walls. All Rumps, some skankier than others, but nothing of true significance.

After checking the pictures, Benedar walked the walls just in case a secret door or a wall safe popped out at him.  He found two secret doors.

Behind the hanging curtain was a long wall with corpses (vampire victims) hanging. Dead/undead and still struggling. Aefir put them out of their misery.

Past the curtain, up the hall, with the hanging corpses released, we ran into beetles in the courtyard on the left.  Bombardier beetles came out of a large pile of dung. Shadow immediately engaged them. The rest joined him and finished them off.

Backing up from the hasty advance, we checked out the doors in the hallway of vampire victims.

One door, not locked, opened to a corridor. It went to a dead end that also had a rat hole in the floor.

Behind a door in the hallway Reebo could hear muffled snoring. Locked, but we have a thief to take care of those bothersome doors. Of course, some doors take longer than others, and this was one of them.

The snoring stopped while Reebo was working on the lock, and some crashing noises came through the door, as if someone was trashing the room. Sounds of paper shredding stopped as Aefir opened the door.

An Owlbear was shredding scrolls for bedding... oh well. Some really nice furniture was not so nice any more.

With two of our finest looking at its back, the owlbear was toast in short order.

How in the world did an Owlbear get in here????

We did find one scroll, a clerical gem of Greater Restoration. While searching the rest of the room, we wondered how we can make this much noise and not get a random wandering monster... hmmmm

West from the owlbear room, we expected another bedroom. This room was some kind of study. It had a lot of books, mostly trashed and unusable...very sad. Moldy and rotting is NOT the kind of books we were hoping to find.

But with diligent searching, and a well used Detect Magic spell, a magic rune on the wall showed itself. It was on a panel in one wall, and Arkhelm identified it as an Explosive Rune. Good thing Arkhelm had the wits to cast that.


Continued in Session 52: Vampires, Ghosts and Traps