Session 0054 - Stuck Doors

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.

001-Alicia Silvermane: Matt

Session Log

After the fight with the emerald claw soldiers the party take some time to recover, with both Alicia and Harbek treating the wounds of each party member before applying magical healing.
Arkaban tends to himself, using an oil on his body that seems to help him recover.
After their initial healing efforts, the party loot the bodies. They find a small collection of silver and copper coins and they replenish some of their crossbow bolt stock. Afterwards, Eriana decapitates all of the corpses and gets help taking the bodies downstairs to the gallery level and tossing them over the 50-foot ledge to the jungle floor below.
While all this is going on, both Ferdinand and Hrovard examine the contraption at the giant double doors. These doors are very impressive - around 20-feet tall and about 9-feet wide each with such a tight fight it looks like you could not event fit a sheet of paper along the edges of the doors.
The mechanism consists of a winch-like wheel, a sturdy chain, and iron spikes embedded in the door. Ferdinand comes to the conclusion this is some sort of contraption designed to force the doors open. It looks like the device has not been finished being built. He examines the doors and does not see an obvious locking mechanism. The doors likely open outwards, so he guesses they might be magically held or barred from the other side.
The party are still suffering from their injuries and realize they probably need a couple of hours to recover with the help of the magical healing from Alicia and Harbek. They decide to head back down to the gallery level and go to the room where they have been camping out to finish their recovery.
Everyone moves back to that chamber and they spend the next two and a half hours or so there. They use this time to magically heal themselves. Once that is done, 009-Harbek Fireforge uses his portable forge to set about repairing Hrovard's enchanted axe. He does a fantastic job (getting critical success) and fully repairs the damage quickly.
When they are ready the entire party returns to the chamber and site of the recent combat with the cultists.
They examine the mechanism in front of the double doors again. Ferdinand could not figure out how it works, but guesses that perhaps the dwarf oracle Harbek and warforged wizard Rebar might be able to figure it out.
Both of them come to the same conclusion as Ferdinand that it is clearly designed to force the doors open and that the device has not been completely assembled. The cultists must have been working on it when they arrived.
With his crafting skills Harbek is able to deduce that it was nearly completed. He figures he could probably fix it but guesses it'll take some time - maybe half and hour to an hour or so.
The party then wait and stand guard while he finishes constructing the mechanism. All of the spikes and chains are secure in the door. The main device has been bolted to the floor and still needs some work. He manages without any difficulty (again rolling a critical success), and gets the device working in just 30 minutes.
Harbek tells the party someone (presumably himself) needs to operate the winch mechanism. He will do that, and suggests that everyone else get ready for when the doors open. He figures that the device with either succeed in forcing the doors open or it will break and could be dangerous to be standing around.
Rebar stays with the dwarf while the others man the stairs to guard against any trouble coming from up the stairs.
As the winch tightens on the chains the door creaks and groans and there are periodic cracking noises. Eventually there is a loud CRACK! noise as both doors are violently flung open.
To everyone's surprise there is a massive torrent of water that suddenly gushes forth from both open doors, as a wall of water at least as high as the doors is released!
Eriana reacts quickly, diving into a far corner and curling up, as the water washes over her. She remains unharmed. Rebar has the presence of mind to lie flat and grab the base of the bolted winch mechanism and let the water flow over him. He also remains unharmed (both critically succeeding on their saves).
Harbek attempts to do the same as Rebar but the parts of the mechanism he grabs onto break off the mechanism and he goes tumbling down the stairs. All the others also tumble down the stairs with the torrent of water as it gushes out.
Alicia and Hrovard are pushed the farthest (both failing their saves), all the way down the 50-foot flight of stairs and onto the gallery. The large half-orc is pushed out and off the ledge, but he reacts quickly and manages to grab the edge of the gallery to keep from falling the 50-feet to the jungle floor below.
Eventually the flow begins to subside, and Hrovard is able to pull himself up onto the gallery floor. Everyone else is able to get up as the water flow is reduced to a rate slow enough to sidestep it.
They all get back to the chamber now somewhat battered and bruised, but nobody is badly injured.
Looking inside they see there is still a flow of water from the open doors and the room beyond seems flooded. Those with darkvision (Eriana, Harbek, and Arkaban) can see the chamber beyond is dark and quite vast. Ahead to the east is a large three-tiered ziggurat that rises 30 feet with runes carved on each tier, much like the one that Arkaban had been studying on the level above.
Ferdinand tests the water with his rapier and finds that there is a lip by the door that drops about two feet into the water. It appears the entire room is still flooded by 2-foot deep water. The water looks slightly murky but not too bad.
Listening in the chamber, they can hear the sounds of a steady stream of water to their left. Eriana is able to spot where she believes the sound is coming from to their left at the north end of the chamber. There is a 5-foot diameter hole in the wall with water pouring out of it at a fairly constant rate. It probably accounts for the stream of water continuing to flow out of the double doors.
While they stand listening at the door, Ferdinand believes he can hear something moving in the water - another distinctive sloshing sounds he thinks could be from someone or something walking in the shallow water.
The party enter the room cautiously. As predicted, it is 2-feet deep and rises up to most of the party members thighs, save for Harbek the dwarf who is much shorter. For him the water level is above waist height.
They begin to move slowly to the ziggurat when they notice a figure moving out of the shadows towards them from around a corner wall to the north.
It appears as a bloated humanoid covered in sores and glistening with water. As it approaches, the being clearly has dark skin like one of the dark elves though it seems like the poor creature must be an undead zombie of sorts.
Initially the party pull out missile weapons and shoot at it. The undead creature seems to ignore the missile weapons and advances. This creature does not seem to have the slow, lumbering movements of a typical zombie.

When it gets close everyone begins to feel like their lungs are filling with water. It becomes very difficult to breath and to speak. Fortunately, both Rebar and Arkaban seem to be completely unaffected.
Eriana is the first to engage it in melee. Movement through the water is difficult, but she is eventually joined in combat with the creature by Ferdinand, Hrovard and Muroni.
The creature is clearly undead, as one bolt stuck in it from Alicia appears to continue to injure it with its divine magic designed to harm undead.
It takes considerable damage before finally succumbing to multiple attacks and damaging spells from Rebar, Arkaban and Harbek. The dwarf struggled to cast spells while choking on water, but managed to succeed. They learn that fire might not be terribly useful against it, but the Phase Bolt cantrip does damage it.
Ultimately they manage to take it down, but not after it managed to hit Eriana with a powerful blow from its fist. She immediately begins to feel ill effects from where it hit her. After the combat it is clear that something has affected her from the touch of this creature.