Session 3/17/07

                Faerisa 18: After awakening in darkness and refreshing spells and equipment, the adventurers head north through the room with four serpent altars, doing their best to remain silent as they explore the shadowy corridors of the temple.  They pass through a stable room with two docile riding lizards quietly munching a pile of fungus.  Jack pulls out his pouch of stinky fungi from the Slaughtergarde Laboratory and discovers that the fumes from the mushrooms repel these reptiles as well.  He spots saddles, bits and bridles for the lizards on the north wall, and the party takes a few moments to cut the riding equipment apart in case any more drow riders show up later.  They head down a western corridor which soon turns north again and ends at a set of wooden double doors.  Beyond the doors there is an east-west corridor, and the smell of desiccated flesh wafts from the western side.  A faint trickling of water can be heard.

                Heading west, the party comes upon a pool of water fed by the trunks of two stylized, eight foot high elephant spigots.  They have no time to investigate this pool closely, because two hand crossbow bolts fire out from the darkness near the elephant statues and strike Jack and Cyndele.  The bolts are covered with vile drow sleeping poison, which causes the two warriors to fall unconscious immediately.  The rest of the party rushes into the room, their feet splashing in the pool as they advance.  Two female drow – elite rogues known as Irindix’s Stings – are skulking in the shadows, their ambush successful.  Altaer shatters one of the elephant statue’s legs and the great stone beast topples into the font, creating a huge splash of evil-smelling water.  One of the Stings is forced to dodge aside as it falls.  As Dvalin and Klar move inside, a shadow cloaked dark creeper and a male drow in the livery of House Surrinak move to flank them.  Even short two members, the party makes relatively quick work of the four enemies, but the last Sting calls out in Undercommon down the western corridor, alerting her priestess to the presence of foes.

                A deep, rich female voice takes up a chanting prayer to Irindix, the Crone and Dark Huntress of the Underlands.  Klar’s darkvision reveals a drow priestess clad in shimmering black chainmail and a purple cloak in a room to the west, so he charges off towards her to disrupt her spell casting.  Klar slams into the priestess, cutting her with his ancestral orc double-axe and getting her undivided attention.  However, the half-orc could not account for the priestess’ three grimlock bodyguards, who quickly move out of the shadows and flank him.  Dvalin moves down the corridor to reinforce Klar, followed by Ayotunde and Altaer.  Klar is grievously wounded by the grimlocks and falls bleeding to the ground.  The drow priestess, Lanthurrae, taunts the party: “Your bodies will be crushed in the mandibles of the true master of this temple!  Irindix the Dark Huntress will not betray us against your feeble efforts.”

                Meanwhile, a whisper on the edge of Jack’s consciousness awakens him from the poison.  The fey-touched fighter feels an odd itch at his neck and chest along the right side, but he suddenly is awake and alert.  Aware that his companions are in a desperate battle down the western corridor, he moves at his best speed toward them.  Jack comes around the corner just in time to see Dvalin fall bleeding to another grimlock’s greataxe.  Ayotunde calls on the healing power of the goddess Shandae to get Klar back on his feet and fighting, and she taunts Lanthurrae, who hisses a curse against Shandae.  The drow calls on her dark powers to bestow a wisdom-draining curse on Ayo’s head, but the will of Shandae’s servant is strong and Lanthurrae’s curse has no effect.  As Altaer whittles down the grimlocks with his sorcerous magic and Klar engages up close and personal with the Lanthurrae, Ayo casts another healing spell upon Dvalin and the dwarf delver rejoins the battle just in time to help Jack cut down the remaining grimlocks. 

                Lanthurrae is badly cut by several nasty swings from Klar, so she casts invisibility and attempts to flee.  Thinking quickly, Altaer tries to pinpoint her position and fires a ray of frost, hoping to catch her in the beam.  Though he does no damage on account of her spell resistance, the beam’s impact allows Klar to find Lanthurrae’s position and finish her off with a final swipe.  Irindix’s dark cleric falls with a surprised cry of disbelief, and her life bleeds out on the black and green veined stones of her worship room.  All is quiet.

                Investingating Lanthurrae’s sanctum reveals another set of four dark altars, each with an offering of golden treasures upon them.  All four altars depict Irindix in one of her lesser known forms – the Dark Crone – an old woman, sometimes eyeless, carrying a crook.  She represents bitterness, revenge and all things lost to time.  Klar irreverently knocks the head off one of the crone idols and spats upon its altar.  The party collects the treasure on the altars and, exhausted from the combat with Lanthurrae, begins the trek back to their hiding place to rest.

                However, a pair of wererats down an eastern corridor near the font with the elephants has different plans.  The two lycanthropes fire crossbow bolts down the corridor, one of which punctures Jack’s breastplate and causes the fighter to grunt in pain.  The ratmen demand to know why the adventurers are “meddling in Stilleto Crew business,” but the party merely cuts down one of the rogues in answer.  Dvalin severely wounds the other, which flees north into a room full of precariously balanced bells, causing a deafening, cacophonous clanging throughout the northern wings of the temple complex!  The falling bells crush the unfortunate wererat, but the resultant alarm must have alerted every foe in the temple to the party’s presence.  As such, they dash for the entry room and head up the stairs towards the relative safety of the Oakwood.

                The Surrinak hunting lodge is still deserted, and the party treks back north through the forest towards the elven settlement of Shul Sennek for a secure shelter in which to rest.  In contrast to the dark and stifling atmosphere of the Slaughtergarde Temple, the Oakwood is bathed in the golden light of the afternoon and the day is clear, cool and breezy.  Upon their return to Shul Sennek, the party, and Jack speaks to the elvish forest guardian Findar. 

                The itching sensation that awoke Jack has manifested as a series of interwoven lines of purple, green, blue and black on his upper chest and neck along his right side.  The marks resemble an amalgam of the symbol Jack drew for Findar and Jack’s chosen weapon, the scythe.  Findar believes that Jack might be starting to manifest a dreambrand – a mystical mark of which little is known, but has been seen to occasionally appear on the skin of children born after the Convergence.  Such dreambrands, once fully manifested, sometimes grant their bearers mystical powers.  The party rests for the night in the safety of the warded platforms of Shul Sennek under the watchful eyes of Findar and the elvish guardians.

                Faerisa 19: In the morning, the companions sell the gear and treasure they have looted from the temple.  Still recovering from their wounds and their running battles in the temple, they elect to remain in Shul Sennek for the day and plan their return strategy carefully.  Ayotunde heals their lingering wounds, and Altaer commissions a number of arcane scrolls from the local elvish scribe.  Jack, Dvalin and Klar spend the day practicing weapons and tactics, and Cyndele joins them for a time before performing her daily devotions to Arinna.

                Faerisa 20: Departing in the pre-dawn hours, the party marches south through the Oakwood back to the Surrinak hunting lodge, and from there back into the oppressive shadows and lurking evil of the temple.  The head south and then west from the entrance chamber, coming upon a set of heavy brass double doors at the end of a western corridor.  Dvalin checks the doors for traps and finds none, so Jack pushes them open.  Beyond the doors is a large room with two glowing, fiery gates in the southern walls, and a number of medium and large statues of various Abyssal creatures.  One large sarcophagus, adorned with a statue of a dwarven warrior upon a flame-hoofed nightmare, lies to the north.  The room’s guardian is a dangerous elemental from the plane of fire: a molten lava-spewing monstrosity known as a magma hurler.  It moves to engage the party, trailing smoke and glowing molten rock behind it as it moves.  The group closes distance with the magma hurler quickly, but its fiery claws pound and burn them fiercely. 

                The sounds of fighting attract a pack of undead from a wide northern corridor: a fast moving wight, a deathlock, and a ghoul.  The undead charge into battle, and the wight slams into Altaer, its cold energies drawing the life energy out of the dragonblooded sorcerer.  Altaer wavers under the wight’s assault but does not fall, and Jack moves to reinforce him, leaving Klar and Dvalin to fight the battered and wounded magma hurler.  The intensity of the battle picks up again, as a single Surrinak house guard and three drow acolytes of Irindix reinforce the undead.  The magma hurler falls to Klar’s and Dvalin’s blows just as one of the acolytes casts a darkness spell over a 20’ radius, cloaking herself and her allies in shadows.

                Altaer casts charm person upon the Surrinak house guard just as the drow emerges from the shadows.  Meanwhile, Klar, Dvalin and Jack cut down the drow acolytes, despite the priestesses’ attempts to pierce their armor with poisoned daggers.  As the last priestess falls, Altaer begins speaking to his new “friend,” the drow Surrinak guard called Corvael.  Though only a humble guard in service of the (now deceased) cleric Lanthurrae, Corvael tells Altaer many things about the Slaughtergarde temple as the rest of the party listens intently.

                Lanthurrae established the drow presence in the temple on behalf of a gnoll chieftan named Gashkarr, who instructed her to learn more of the gates of Slaughtergarde in hopes of reactivating one or more portals to the abyss.  Apparently, the ancient cult of Mu-Tahn-Laa is still alive in some form, and the gnoll Gashkarr is at the center of it.  Corvael also speaks of an “armory” located somewhere south of the Oakwood, and of the meddling attempts of the Luminous Order to stop Gashkarr’s plans to revive the Cult of Slaughtergarde.  Eventually he runs out of information to share, and Altaer bluffs him into believing that the sorcerer has cast a protection from fire upon him.  Altaer orders Corvael down the southern corridor and through one of the burning demon arches there, and the unfortunate drow burns to death, screaming betrayal.

                Finally, Dvalin searches the tomb of the dwarf warlord riding the nightmare, curious about what the sarcophagus might hold.  A carving on its surface reads “Here lies Goramnus, harvester of souls both good and evil.  Serve well, lest he find you unworthy.”  Opening the tomb, Dvalin discovers a finely crafted magical waraxe, runes upon which name the weapon “Kurnmor, foe-reaver.”  The dwarven blackguard was also buried with his shield, a magical steel dragonrider shield (red) which provides protection from fire.

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