Journal Day 8

We went further into the depths of the keep and found a room with a towering statue of a warrior in plate armor and a pair of crouching dragons. When we entered the room, the doors behind us slammed shut & bolts slid in place locking the door. The statue lifted slightly off the ground and began spinning around, with its sword sweeping in wild arcs. I jumped on the statue’s back and found a panel to deactivate it but before I could actually do so, I got thrown off its back, landing near one of the dragons, which activated and hit me with a breath weapon attack. Kellisa managed to get onto the statue & disarmed it permanently, though.

There were four cherub statues surrounding the door out of the room. When Liam walked between them, a translucent wall went up between them, trapping him inside and the room started filling up with water. The rest of us put our backs into it and toppled the other statues over, breaking the spell and releasing Liam from the trap.

Beyond the door, we found stairs down to a natural cave, which opened into a huge expanse, maybe a mile in diameter. We were in the Underdark, the world beneath the earth’s crust. We saw a huge cathedral covered in jet black gargoyles carved from obsidian or onyx.

Inside the cathedral, crimson streams of blood trailed along the floor, spilling down into a grate in the floor. The blood was supplied from a dais where 2 men with ram skull tattoos covering their faces were chanting and carving up bodies. Bodies of brutally mutilated, bloody humanoid men, women, and children littered the floor around them. In the pit, the blood dripped down around a series of chains that led deep into the darkness.

The men at the dais didn’t see us, so we tried to sneak around closer to them, but as we turned the coner, there was a dark-creeper—a Halfling shaped humanoid made of shadow—waiting around the corner for us. He charged at Yonah and then a half-dozen feral-faced vampiric humanoids came at the rest of us. When we destroyed the dark-creeper, it exploded and everyone in the party except me was blinded temporarily. Then 2 barbarians and the pair of underpriests burst through the doors and attacked. We eventually fought them off. On the dais we found a ritual book, a shroud of gloaming, and a suit of hide armor.

We descended the chains into a nightmare. Blood poured down into a pit, a yawning black portal dominated the north wall with something straining against the portal from beyond. Blazing runes were inscribed in the floor and a giant statue of Orcus was in the corner, with two more smaller statues of orcus next to a small pit. A deathlock wight stood near the pit (causes fear, reanimated the undead, serve as powerful sgts & lts to more powerful undead. Very intelligent, pulls back the flaps of its face to cause terrible fear in its enemies). 2 skeletal warriors stood to the side.

Kalarel, a human in heavy armor with a rod stood at the altar, chanting a low droaning prayer from the book opened before him. More mutilated, disemboweled bodies were chained to a series of black pillars.

We managed to surprise Kalarel, and I launched a powerful ranged attack on him but my shot was just wide of the mark, even after I tried using my elven accuracy and an action point to aid the attack. Then Liam charged at him, but as he crossed the threshold near him, the bodies on the columns screamed out in agony and moved to shield Kalarel. They were pale reavers, semi-substantial intelligent undead creatures that can become insubstantial & pass through solid objects. They attack with their hair, through which they suck blood and rejuvenate themselves.

A bunch of them swarmed in front of Kalarel and we were unable to fight our way through them all before Kalarel completed the ritual. The portal was activated. A blazing light flashed out from it, and Kalarel and all the other enemies in the room were blasted into nothingness. Our party was all thrown against the far wall.

4 horsemen, the same 4 who had been flying over the city of Allaron, rode in through the portal and dismounted. Their steeds returned through the portal. The 4 horsemen were deva, with red skin & black markings: they are Woe, Fear, Pain, and Burden. 1 has pure white eyes & bears a shield, another has glowing red eyes, another has metallic silver eyes and also bears a shield, and the 4th has pure black eyes with blue swirls within it (the same color as that cloud which attacked us earlier) and a laugh that I somehow remember from the depths of my subconscious. The fourth has a shield with a coat of arms that’s a modified version of the symbol of Orcus and as he breathes his breath frosts in the air.

The first step forward and says in an unnatural voice, “We are Death.” The third greeted Dillius and Liam and said, “I know who you are.” The second greeted Yonah, calling her sister. We looked around and figured out that Splug was missing, and the second told us “He has returned to his master.”

The first then told us that we have two choices, “Join us or die” but another interrupted, pointing out, “If they join us, they’ll die anyway.” Though Dilius mumbled something about looking for the easiest way out, we told them that we would never join them.

The 4 spread out and each yelled out calls to their minions to come.

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The loot:

Bracers of Escape [Dillius]
Ritual book w/ 3 pages (last sight visions, explorer fire, transforming enchantment ??) [Dillius]
Shroud of Gloaming (+2 fort/ref/will & bonus to stealth) [Gareth]
Sylvan hide armor +2 (bonus to athletic & stealth) [Yonah]
Footpad friend’s dagger [Kellisa]
Holy Gauntlets [Liam]
Cloak of Resistance [Dillius]
Bracers of Defense [Kellisa]
Boots of Free Movement [Liam]
Mindiron Bracers [Yonah]


XP:
3117