Session 62: We Rescue the Slaves

The party rescued most of the rest of the slaves and killed more demons as they explored the dungeon beneath the Temple of Frigga. 

This write up is based on our Sunday, February 1, 2026 session. Written by our scribe Carl, with edits and additions by myself. 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: Back to the Temple

Date: May 21, 4433
Location: Tegel Village

10:00 AM  
Paraselene finished scribing her spells and caught up with us.

We decided to check out/clear the whole floor - not sure where the prisoners are, so not wanting to inadvertently leave any behind.

The first room contained broken furniture. It looked like someone searched rapidly and probably was frustrated as they searched.

We found a torn page that detailed frog life cycles, except the final stage showed a frog/human hybrid.

The next room had burned bodies, stinking the place up. Four blood stained mattresses, stacked up.  

In the main hall, book cases lined parts of the walls, mostly just books... but... stuck into a crack was a piece of OLD parchment. Beneddar carefully took it out.  Several lines referenced Gornax's book.. not the book we came here for but might be worth a few coppers:

“… and so, the Arch Priest hid the artifact in his tomb under our
struggling temple, had it sealed and the masons slain and burned. 
This was the last we ever saw of the hateful Gornax and the cursed 
Book, although he promised to return someday to return the 
Unspeakable back to our world. May the gods keep him dead forever.”

Further on we found a body, the telepathic priest who was dying when Reebo did his reconnaissance run.

Shadow heard some sounds, maybe dishes or pots and pans, behind the door at the end of the hall. Perhaps the kitchen was being ransacked, or maybe dinner prepared.

Definitely someone behind a door. Shadow heard the crack of a whip behind the door. 

Aefir checked the door on the right. The room was full of furniture stacked to the ceiling. Aefir climbed on the furniture to see if he could see over it. 

Aefir slipped and came crashing down in his plate armor along with several old chairs.

The door in front of Shadow and Beneddar opened inward, probably someone checking out the noise. 



It was a mutant human, ogrish but not ogre. A grotesque and foul creature. A few instances of combat later and though still grotesque, it was down.

Four ragged humans were also in the room. There was a well and a fire pit with a big kettle. Stacks of dishes. The people called the dead one 'The Taskmaster'. When asked, the last time they saw priests was last night, and they took a lot of food out.

They knew there were stairs through a secret door in an illusionary wall to the right after we leave the room.  We showed them how to get out of the temple and hopefully find help and security.

Heading toward our goal, another slave ran up toward us, saw us at a distance and stopped, looking confused. Shadow yelled at him to stop and come to us.  He did.  He had a message for Martinez, in a scroll case. One of our companion guards escorted him to the outside.

The scroll case opened to .... a parchment. A message for Martiez: 

"We have broken through into the old temple. We can now walk back and forth, and the artifact is likely in there. If we can find the tomb of Gornax we should have everything we need.  It isn't as badly flooded as we expected."

Heading in the direction the messenger approached us from, we came to a pool overfilled with deformed tadpoles.  We put oil in the pool, hoping to cut off their oxygen supply and ultimately killing them.

Pressing on, we covered quite a bit of distance into mostly deserted rooms and hallways that we explored before.



There was darkness... The front of the party, those in combat particularly, suddenly could not see. A demon?

More combat, the crackle of spells, the ARGH! as the demon resisted a spell, the normal combat that we know all too well.

There were a bunch of slaves, human, gnome and bullywug. Many were cheering for us.

Onward, hopefully to glory.  The assistants from town escorted the prisoners out.

The tunnel then opened up to a bigger area, and we found a room full of provisions. In the room, we found a secret door that appeared to be actuated by shifting a stone. It opened to yet more broken furniture, held together by a blanket of webs with a narrow path through it.  Hundreds of tiny spiders were all over.

And, to no one's surprise, where there are tiny spiders there are also ones that are NOT tiny. Only one, but it was big enough for two.

Aefir was briefly webbed, but the spider went down in a flurry of arrows and flames.

A set of stairs led up to the torture chamber area above.  A body was in the spider nest, a skeleton that had partly drawn a scimitar to fight but must have been webbed before it could act. He carried a bag of gold, and a bag of silver. We stowed them to be counted later.

Backtracking and going up a set of stairs, Shadow spotted a bullywug slave. Some priests were in the room too, and Benedar blasted off with a spell attack.

Fighting just keeps on happening.  Maybe it was something we said???

More interesting than spiders or bullywugs, these folks summoned demons and a Vrock (whatever that is, it was big and looked like a demonic vulture.)




Continued in Session 63: We Find the Big Cave.