Adventure 75 – Dwarven Rejection

Hammar – Dwarf: Cleric (lvl 9)
Pete – Dragonborn: Cleric (lvl 8)
Tetranac – Drow: Ranger (lvl 8)
Talin – Dwarf: Fighter (lvl 9)
Othello – Gnome:  Thief (lvl 10)
Bone – Human: Fighter (lvl 10)

Cloverdung got rejected by the bear.

Did we forget Kavis turned to stone and now he is a statue somewhere?

Othello heads down the stairs disappearing into the darkness below.  Talin and the rest of the party follow a little behind hoping that Othello will spot or trigger any traps along the way.  The stairs lead past a nice dwarven carving that Othello completely ignored but Talin find that fourteen Dwarfs are receiving gifts from several god.  A different gift for each Dwarf.  The hallway leads to a ledge in a large cylinder room.  The room is completely dark and Othello can’t see the other side of the room and does not see anything above him.  The ledge has a circular ramp leading down, hugging the outside wall but seems the ramp is only a couple of feet thick.  Othello heads down the ramp a little but decides that to start searching the wall and heads back up toward the ledge while waiting for the rest of the party to show up.  Just about the time the party makes it to the ledge and is looking around the room is engulfed in light as a beam shoots up from the center of cylinder room.  This blinds several members of the party.  There is a cry from three Dwarfs that apparently are hurt and a getting shot out of the room in the beam of light.  The party also sees green and blue beams getting shot out of the wall at the Dwarves.  

Talin calls out to one of the Dwarfs asking what they are doing.  The reply was “We are dieing” and throws Talin a KEY.  Othello shoots the last one heading up as he thinks the other Dwarf was hostile and throwing a dagger or an axe.  As the last Dwarf flies by he tosses a metal plate at Talin but he fumbles it and so does Hammar.  It heading for the edge of the ledge and Talin jumps for it but misses it before it falls off.  Pete Dimension Doors down into empty space hoping to time it right and chetch it.  But fails get close enough to grab it and is forced to Dimension Door back up to the ledge.  At this point the party sees the plate floating up at the edge of the beam.  Tetranac says he will levitate up and get it.  Talin ties a rope around him and he stars levitating up and is getting pulled up as well when he gets near the beam.  He cases the plate up but it seems to stay just out of reach as he can’t seem to get a grip on it.  Talin runs out of rope and has to hold him back a second while Othello ties his rope onto Talin’s.  This allows Tetranac to go farther up but this was a mistake as he was already been hit by one of the beams and another one hit Tetranac and it vaporized him.  Luckily his equipment does not seem to be destroyed like the other Dwarves stuff was, but it is floating up.  Talin activates his cloak and flies up and gathers up Tetranac’s stuff.  Luckily he found that he had gathered the metal device as well.  In the process he gets shot several times almost dieing himself but he is able to drink a healing potion.  He manages to fly up to the outside.  He searches around to see if he can find any of the Dwarves stuff but does not see any of it.  He takes Tetranac’s stuff to the wagon in the quarry and tell them to guard it.  He then threatens one of the men, Cleve, to come back with him.  He was thinking that we needed more people to help represent the number of Dwarves he saw in the carving.   Talin makes it back down with only getting hit once but cleve gets hit and gets disintegrated.  The party heads down the ramp and come to a pair of Magic Dwarven mouth doors.  The party does not know how to open them at this point and heads on down and come across a set of three of these doors.  The party keeps going down and come across one more door but this one is larger the the others.  

At the bottom the party finds a bronze bear that is walking around the base of a set of cylinders in a tiered fashion that ended with a gem floating above the in the center and tallest one.  The light was coming from the gem.  The bear would stop and watch anyone that would appear to be a threat.  At the base of the ramp is a large vase that looks similar to the one the mage was carrying in the fog of Highvail. The vase is has been cut part way through with a sword and it is still lodge in the vase.  Beside the vase is a set of plate armour and a shield.  Bone tried to take the sword but gets a odd feeling when reaching for it.  Talin is able to take the sword without any odd feeling or effects.  He goes ahead and cuts the vase in half to make sure it did not create the beam effect.  Othello creeps closer to the center pad where the bear, while the bear is distracted by the others.  Othello pulls out a bear trap and places in on the circular pad and the bear turns around and swats the trap off the pad.  Pete tries to jump and grab the gem but it does not move and the bear smashes Pete in between his two paws.  Othello ties to use his grappling hook to hook the gem and the bear slices the rope.  At this point it looks like the party is going to have to attack the bear to investigate the beam device.  After attacking the bear and it almost tossing Talin into the beam to reject the dwarf from the chamber he is able to notice and tell the party that the metal device that Talin was able to retrieve looks to fit in the bear’s forehead.  After a couple of attempts and much damage dealt from the bear Bone was able to insert the metal device that turns out to be the control device for the bear.  Talin finds that he can control the bear now with spoken dwarven commands.  

Now that the bear has been subdued Othello find that there are smaller cylinders sticking out of each tier of the beam device that look like they can be twisted.  But how does one get close to try and turn them without floating away.  

Hammar figures out that he can open the magical dwarven mouth doors by placing his hand on the metal plate next to each door and saying the command word in Dwarven.  The command word was one of these three words; Open, Moradin, or Sentinel.  The three doors  lead to three shrines,  two doors lead to the same armoury, and the big door leads to a forge.  The forge has three large unlit furnaces and two great anvils.  

Talin check one of the anvils and finds that it is magical.  

Hammar inspects the shrines and finds the shrines are to Clanggedin, Dumathoin, and Dugmarin.  In the shrine for Clanggedin there is a roughly Dwarven sized statue made of marble but painted to look lifelike and it is holding a large horn with gold enlays.  In Dumathorin’s shrine room there are two statues of marble and painted to look life like as well. One is holding a fist sized gem of amber colored stone with occasional sparkles seen in it.  Behind this statue is a large tapestry depicting a deep river canyon.  The other statue has a bright blue cape on it.  They are three of the gods that were carven into the mural in the hallway.  

Pete finds a pair of boots, a chain shirt, and a dagger from “pile 2” in the armoury.  Bone start digging through the piles in the armoury for two handed weapons.  

Talin goes to each shrine and prays to each of the gods.  Asking Clanggedin for forgiveness for using the cleve the stonecutter as a human shield.  

Othello ties himself off to the bear and floats up and tries to turn the cylinders to turn off the beam.  After a little trouble he is able to turn the cylinders on the top tier and that tier moves down into the one below it and the beam effect is decreased.  He then can turn the cylinders on the next level and those now turn and that level drops into the floor and the effect stops.  He also hears a rumble from above and now he can’t see the stars so it looks like the opening has closed.

Bone and Talin try to move a avail and find that it is close to two tones and only can shift it slightly.  They decided to look at the furnaces and find them really old and are filled with some volcanic stone and at the bottoms have seven red glass like crystals. There are some tools hanging on the wall but find some of the tools are missing.

As far as the party can tell no one has been in these room in ages.  Talin also determines that the items with the statues look the same as the one in the carving.

COD = Tetranac for reminding the party that Talin has his ass from when the Umber Hulk bit it off on the trek down here.  So we have to “drag his ass back to town and get him raised. ‘Saving his ass!’”