Stonehell Session 16

~swamp stompin~

~orc parley~

~crypt clearing~

a pair of lizardfolk from Heterogenia Linguistico

5 of Bloom

Sunny

William the merchant

Fjord the beastmaster

Thorn the spurned noble

Rival adventuring party the Excavator’s Alliance has sent a squadron into town. The Goblin Occupation Army has moved into the southwest plains. Breagle’s trade expedition to Forttown has a week left, and Sagging Jonas has returned from the Capitol and has begun building the Militia Fort. Stonehome has officially been upgraded from a Hamlet to a Village.

The party commissioned a building, and ordered a safe from the capitol, to start up their “bank”.

The Hellseekers set out for the valley. About halfway through the swamps, they saw some lizardfolk passing through. They stood back and watched, and followed from a safe distance. Right when the swamp turned to foothills, the lizardfolk headed deeper into the swamps. The party saw that there were many young and a single elder, and then let them go as the Seekers continued up into the foothills.

They stopped by their base, paid their guards, and entered the dungeon. 

Starting out, they left for the Stone Oracle to get in a few questions, but some kobolds had beat them there. Since they’re friendly with the kobolds, they shared some rations for roast pillbug, and the kobolds let them have the last question for the day. They asked about undead and curses they’d need to worry about, and finally got a truthful answer from the oracle.

Continuing on, they wanted to finish exploring the rest of the first quadrant. They listened at a door and heard the simian sounds of berserkers making camp, and moved on after deciding to leave them alone. 

They came to a recognizable space. The orcs set up a base in the 1st quadrant, and filled a room with a rubble wall to keep their camp secure. The party greeted them, and based on their past exploits with the goblins were warmly welcomed. They shared some dwarven brandy with the orcs as they sat about the fire, and learned a few things. 

The Orc Chief was offering his daughter’s hand as a reward for clearing the the goblins, someone from the Seekers just needed to claim her. They asked for gold instead, and the orc captain Snork seemed relieved, and said that the Chief truly loves his daughter and would hate to lose her to the surface, and would happily part with gold instead.

They also learned of some crypts in the Quiet Halls that were pretty likely to hold treasure, but were told to be wary of the Ghostly Funeral Skiff that wanders the halls.

They weren’t prepared to deal with the undead, so they decided to hit up Kobold Korners and purchase some fire oil and holy water. They traveled there without a hitch, and luckily both items were in stock, but pricey and of poor quality. Oh well.

Back to the Quiet Halls, they encountered some giant centipedes that were hungry but didn’t want to pick a fight. After opening the Danse Macabre door, the centipedes filed in and began eating some lichen.

The Seekers approached some crypts, and as they got to the doors they crashed open and 11 zombies poured out. Fjord and Thorn acted first, Fjord transforming his bottom half into a spider thorax, retreating, and building a webby wall to trap the zombies in. Thorn grabbed William’s collar and dragged him free before the zombies began munching him. At this point they were out of combat and waited for the zombies to all shamble into the web trap. It managed to hold all of them, and right as the webbing was about to snap, they let the fire oil fly. It immediately burnt all but 2 zombies, which Thorn and Fjord dispatched quickly. Looting the crypts they found them decorated with symbols of the Lord of Death, and the cult that had sprung up around him in the prison. They grabbed some jewels and moved to the next set of crypts.

At the next one they guessed lucky and placed a stone coffin lid to block the eastern door, preventing 2 banshees from ambushing the party as they passed. The western crypt was empty, so they decided to clear the eastern room and leave the dungeon. They heard slamming on the door, and incorrectly guessed that it was a single ghoul. They opened the door, using their Magic Feather to lighten the coffin lid and throw it, while William commanded one to lay down. The banshee let loose a horrid scream which knocked Thorn unconscious, and nearly killed him with its claws. In a panic, Fjord rushed in grabbing the holy water off of Thorn’s belt and threw it at his feet, where it shattered and coated both banshee’s. It wasn’t enough, however, to kill the still ferocious banshee, but Fjord and William managed to beat it into oblivion with their ineffective weapons. They then did the same thing with the banshee laying down, and brought Thorn back to consciousness.

The Seekers recovered another piece of jewelry, and fled the dungeon back to Stonehome.

It went fine, except they saw a weird time distortion in the swamp. The air was thick and repelled anything that touched it with double the speed it came in at. Inside the distortion, they saw the lizardfolk from the morning passing through. It kept rewinding and repeating. Over time it slowly faded. The party shrugged and continued their journey back to Stonehome.

Here's the current party map!! Its turning out to be a fun little artifact.

map of the first floor of stonehell, across multiple pages