S10E11 - Watching from the Ethereal Plane

The heroes start the session fighting the four-armed gargoyles. Fionghan reminds the group that the gargoyles just want money. First Sophi, then Ellie, in raven form, and then Avilos insert gold coins into the slots set into each pillar and the gargoyles stop attacking and return to their pedestals.

After the battle is over, Chos bends over in pain and starts vomiting black blood and permanently losing 1 CON point. The cleric has hours of life left before the curse stops his heart.

Trying to speed things up, Ellie wild shapes into a raven, flies down through the shaft to take a peek at the next level where she sees a pentagonal room covered with sickly looking plants and two corridors sprouting out of it. Before delving deeper, she decides to fly back up and update the rest.

The heroes then take one of the two corridors still on the gargoyles floor, looking for this level’s skeleton key and also looking for a trickster god to possess Chos. They find one corridor and Krariak looks for traps, finds one on the ceiling and triggers it releasing a massive granite ball that almost snaps his neck and then rolls down the corridor’s stairs destroying a treasure chest that was at the bottom. The heroes go inside the room, find the remains of this level’s skeleton key, grab its head, and Sophi, who accidentally finds an invisible key, pockets it.

Silas then tries to open the crystal-like sarcophagus that stopped the granite ball and is still in one piece and unlocks it with a natural 20 roll but pays little attention to the treasure inside. Krariak does pay attention and grabs an amulet that gives him “nine lives”, Ellie grabs a magic robe but the trickster god inside is unable to possess her.. Krariak, Sophi and Avilos, who have preferences for the trickster gods they want, try various combinations of swapping their respective gods, but all fail and Unk, this tomb’s god, eventually ends up possessing Chos.

Equipped with everything they needed, the heroes then secure a rope to one of the pillars in the large central staircase and climb down to the next level through the shaft in its middle. Once they’re down, Fionghan, who continuous to remember this whole area of the dungeon vividly, explains that they need to find a control room and also explains where they need to get to and what they need to avoid. The heroes then go to the control room and try to figure out how to rotate the three large pentagonal rooms in a way that avoids releasing the monsters in this level. Krariak and Silas meanwhile go explore a side corridor and end up in a very creepy room on level 4 where three zombie-like creatures are painting murals around a throne made out of bones and stitched flesh. Krariak explores a bit further, finds a secret room with a black sarcophagus and a big gold orb hanging above. He’s tempted, but avoids touching anything and goes back with the party.

Back in the control room, the heroes use the controls to rotate the cogs a certain way opening one of the corridors to the cavern surrounding the network of rooms they have been traversing. Ellie transforms again into a raven and explores the underground cavern which is filled with a lake. The heroes find a way to walk around the outer edge of the cogs supporting the network of rooms, bypassing all their dangers, and directly head into the exit corridor.

Once there, Avilos finds out that the final corridor is cursed and he losses all his man-made non-magical belongings. The rest of the party crafts a plan to get fully naked, give their belongings to Fionghan and Ellie, who then wild shape, making all the stuff they carry become them, and then all cross the dangerous corridor safely to the stairs that lead to the sixth level. During the naked excursion, Sophi insists that Avilos goes in front of her, not behind.

Once inside the room at the bottom of the stairs, they find three rocking chairs, a cauldron, a doppleganger-like clone of Krariak who has been tortured and caged, five wooden doors and a massive green door covered with goblin-skulls and shapes resembling the skeleton keys they got. In the room, they also find three friendly animated dolls that contain the trapped souls of three children. Fionghan and the dolls explain that there are three witches very close by, and tha tthe heroes need to go through five trials to unlock the large green door through keyholes that will show up as the trials are completed, then insert the skeleton keys they’ve collected through the dungeon, and finally face whatever terrible creature the witches have been tending to for months. Fionghan, visibly enraged, also tells the heroes that he lost Seoirse in this room, at the hands of the three night hags.

Silas solves the trial inside the first room they visit, the triangular one, by misty-stepping into a glass cylinder and pulling a lever. Sophi then solves the ritual for the square door trial room by using the etherealness charm that the straw doll gave her and pulling an ethereal lever in the room. She also sees, within the green mist that covers the room in the ethereal plane, three figures near the cauldron, whom she assume are the night hags prying on them.

The session ends as Sophi goes back to the material plane and updates the party.