Session 0051 - Searching for the Cypher

Roster

List of characters who's player was in attendance

Player characters who's player is attending the game start with 1 Hero Point, and can get more during the session.

Absent

List of characters who's player was absent

Player characters for missing players do not start the session with a hero point, and can not get any more during the session.

002-Eriana Valsarith: Morgan

Session Log

Ferdinand heads over to examine the large iron door as the rest of the party take a look at the bodies scattered in this area of the room. They come to the realization that the bodies are arranged in a way that suggests some kind of blast must have originated from the door. The pattern of blood, bodies and body parts suggests this. They make a guess that the blast may have covered a range out to 20 or so feet from the door.
This gives Ferdinand the idea of using his Charlatan's Gloves to conjure up a Telekinetic Hand spell to test the door from a distance.
Everyone else steps back from the door and he gives that a try. The door handle rattles and makes a distinct noise that suggest it is locked. However, the a moment later a single audible note erupts from the door with such intensity that the blast it creates generates a visible wave emanating from the iron door.
Ferdinand, Hrovard, Alicia, and Rebar are all caught in the blast - which extents to 30 feet. (The blast does 48 points of damage!)
Only Alicia saves against the blast but is still badly hurt. Both Ferdinand and Hrovard are hardy enough to remain conscious, but Rebar immediately collapses and almost killed outright.
Alicia gets to Rebar and uses her magic power to heal the warforged, allowing him to immediately recover.
Before anyone does anything more with the door, Alicia and Harbek use their skills to treat wounds and their magic to cure wounds. Ferdinand and Rebar also make use of healing potions to assist in their recovery.
They also allow for some time to be spent for both Alicia to refocus and Harbek to recover from using his power. Afterwards they turn their attention back on the door.
Ferdinand is willing to try and pick the lock, and Rebar offers to assist by using a Knock spell which will make the effort to pick the lock easier.
Everyone else moves back over 30 feet to try and avoid another potential blast. Fortunately, once Ferdinand starts to work on the lock the trap does not seem to trigger a second time.
The lock is quite massive, suggesting the key must have been very large. He can almost get his hand inside the opening. With the magic of his gloves and the Knock spell he find it relatively easy to pick. It takes him about half a minute with four clear successful turns of the mechanism to unlock it.
He then steps back and tries the Telekinetic Hand spell again to push the door open, but it is far too heavy for the magic to move it. Instead, he moves forward and pushes it open and is relieved when once again the trap does not trigger.
The room is dust-free despite potentially being undisturbed for centuries. In the middle of the 20-foot square room is a stone pedestal roughly 6-feet tall. On it rests a wooden staff.
He and others move into the room to take a closer look. It is a fine lacquered staff with a giant wooded tooth fashioned on the end. There is nothing else in the room.
They take the staff and head back into the larger chamber. It is passed over to Rebar so he can use his magic to examine it. He is certain the staff is magical, and he uses a Read Aura spell to help identify it.
After spending about 10 minutes carefully examining the staff he comes to the conclusion that it is actually powered by occult magic. He has the skill to recognize it, but is not trained in occult magic so he can not use it. The staff will most certainly contain magic spells that can be accessed by someone with the ability to use occult magic. Unfortunately, nobody in the current party are able to use it.
While this is a bit disappointing the staff is likely to be quite valuable. Unfortunately, it also confirms that it is not the cypher they were looking for.
From here the party decide to continue searching this floor for a cypher. Arkaban takes them to the room with the giant-sized spiral staircase leading upwards. He informs them this is where Garrow and the largest remaining group of Emerald Claw soldiers went. There is only one other room in the area they looked at, which was a big empty room with a couple of doors.
There is also a door they passed near the staircase they came up from the gallery, and the party decide to check out that one next.
It leads to a massive empty chamber, 55-feet wide and 100-feet long. There is a single closed stone door on the east wall.
Ferdinand examines this door and is convinced it is neither locked nor trapped, so he opens it. It reveals a room 40 feet across and 55 long. There is another stone door on the south wall to their right.
As the party move into the room, Hrovard walks up to the door to take a look at it. However, about 10-feet before reaching the door the ground beneath him gives way as a hidden trapdoor opens and he falls down.
Everyone else sees Hrovard reach out in vain to try and grab the edge of the floor as he falls into the hole. They hear screams of frustration and pain that quickly recede, followed by a brief pause and a faint thumping noise and some distant yells from the barbarian.
Others rush to the open pit and look inside. It falls for about 10 to 20 feet and curves eastward. The pit is lined with razors that show signs of fresh blood.
They call out to Hrovard and hear his faint voice. He got cut up from the pit (failing his save) and dumped out a hole in the wall to land on the gallery below, a distance of about 50 feet up. He is badly hurt but still conscious (at single-digit hit points).
He realizes he isn't far from the stairs they took to get up, so he gets up and takes a lesser potion of healing as he moves to the stairs. It isn't long before he rejoins the party, and both Alicia and Harbek set about treating his wounds and patching him up with healing magic.
Once he is patched up, Ferdinand has a look at the door to the south. There is now a 10-foot square pit before the door, but there is room at the edge to reach the door. He has Hrovard hang onto him from behind while he looks at the door.
This door is like the others in the complex, a massive stone door with a handle at about 6-feet from the bottom. He does not think it is trapped, but there is clearly a lock.
With Hrovard steadying him, he leans over to work on the lock. He calls out to Rebar for help with another Knock spell as it made a big difference unpicking the previous lock. The warforged wizard is able to cast it a second time before he attempts to pick the lock.
It takes longer to try an pick this lock, and in the process he breaks his picks. Harbek gives him his picks to take advantage of the Knock spell while it is still in effect. He has partial success and then breaks those picks as well (having two critical failures and three successes).
Fortunately, Harbek has a repair kit he purchased in Sharn before they left on the journey. He spends the next 20 minutes fixing the picks, but the Knock spell has long expired by then.
Giving it another try, Ferdinand managed to get the last bit of work on the lock required and he succeeds in unlocking the door. He tries to push it open, but it is hard for him to get sufficient force on it with the big pit in front of the door.
He switches with Hrovard and lets the half-orc barbarian put his muscles into it. He succeeds and pushes the door open. They see another dust-free chamber roughly 40-feet square with a stone pedestal in the center of the room rising about 6-feet from the floor. There is something gold a couple of inches thick resting on the pedestal.
To get into the room they need to get past the pit, which could easily be jumped over by Eriana. However, Ferdinand realizes he could use his magic glove and the Telekinetic Hand to try and recover whatever is on the pedestal.
The object is light enough that the spell works, and he is able to lift it up and out of the room without anyone having to enter. A look from across the pit into the room reveals that it is otherwise empty.
Examining the object, it is a 1-foot-diameter gold hoop that frames a clear crystal pane.
Arkaban thinks this looks promising as a possible cypher, but there is no way in telling until they actually try to use it.
Everyone heads directly to the room with the ziggurat. Arkaban is handed the gold hoop with Ferdinand and Eriana sticking to him like glue to make sure he doesn't try to go invisible and run away.
He seems to completely ignore them and is engrossed in holding the gold hoop over the runes. Most of them are written on the first two tiers, and only on three of the four sides.
It takes some time for Arkaban to go over all of the runes, and he eventually exclaims that it works and that he has found a translation! Ultimately he discovered that three of the runes change when viewed through the crystal in the gold hoop.
The language is in Jotun, which he nobody else understands - but these are words he is able to roughly translate for the party. The three words are "Monkey’s Paw", "Unicorn’s Hoof", and "Io’s Twinkle".
Arkaban thinks on this for a while and believes that these are names of stars in the ancient giant lore. He is still disappointed, however and double-checks for more names. He tells the party that he was expecting to find six words. Why six? Apparently on the massive stone chair on the top of the structure there are runes that he and Garrow have examined. They believe there is a code that requires six phrases to fully decipher. It is likely that these are three of the six, suggesting that either there is another cypher required or another location with runes like the ones on this ziggurat with the rest of the phrases.
When they realize more information is required, they continue searching this level of the complex. They move to the south side of the building to a large chamber near the spiral staircase leading up.
There are two doors on the south wall that have not been checked. They start with the door to the south west. The door opens into an empty 40-foot square chamber. This chamber seems empty like so many others on this level, except for layers of debris and great drifts of dust that cover the floor. Cracks in the wall allow narrow beams of outside light into the chamber, as well as wind, rain, leaves, and other jungle debris.
When they begin to move into the room one of the large drifts shifts and moves then a large zombie emerges from it. The undead is massive - quite possibly a dead giant. It towers over the party, but moves with the slow rigid movements of a typical zombie.

It proves to be very hardy, as the party attack it and deal a considerable amount of damage to it before it falls. The zombie flailed at them with large powerful fists but was unable to connect with anyone in the party.
When the final blow against it destroys the zombie it swells and explodes, igniting as it does so. The explosive blasts hits everyone except for Harbek who was just out of reach in the adjacent room.
The session ends right after the zombie was destroyed.