Adventure 78 – Deep Hold, the front door.

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

Is Cloverdung holding Kavis hostage?

The party makes it to about a Dwarven mile out from the front door of Deep Hold.  The road heads straight up to the a large pair of doors set in a metal and rock structure that looks to be somewhat  of a triangle shaped fort that acts as a defensive cap on the Dwarven subterranean complex.  The structure has three towers on it.  Two in front flanking the door and one in the back, at the tip of the triangle.   The structure is sitting in the middle of a valley surrounded by mountains.  

Othello flies by on Karcerat, his hippogriff at an altitude of about two thousand feet.  He is able to make out four extra large urns placed in a trapezoid shape in front of the door.  There are also a six yellowish a green spheres floating in a circular pattern parallel to the door.  The lighted spheres are slowly rotating clockwise  maintaining a rough circle a few feet in front of the door.

The party argues for a while on how to approach and if they should go try to find a back door.  Tetranac searches for tracks at the distance the party is currently standing from the door.  He does not find anything and comes to the conclusion that no one has been he in a very long time.  We know there was a scouting party but did they not go to the front door to even have a look?  Talin gets fed up and starts walking toward the door.  The rest of the party is still talking about what should be done.  Othello agrees to fly by at a thousand feet at the same time that Talin reaches that same distance.  Talin makes it a five hundred feet from the party and turns around and it like, why are you still standing around come on!  So the party starts walking but Pete cust his pinky off and Tetranac cuts a locket of hair to send back with Hammish incase they die.  Tetranac tries to look for tracks again but finds nothing.

Othello goes fine, He takes off with Karcerat and flies by at a thousand feet.  As he gets over the door a voice that he does not understand starts speaking in his mind.  It appears that it was speaking in Karcerat’s mind as well as the hippogriff starts wavering and acting confused.  Othello directs Karcerat down to the side just beyond the thousand feet mark from the door.  He then starts walking toward the door again and the voice starts up again once he reaches the thousand foot mark.  He continues on and sees three smaller spheres break off one of the large rotating spheres next to the door and start heading toward Othello at a rate of a hundred and fifty feet per round.  He gets out his shoulder goon and sets up a brace for it.  He shoots with a thunderous boom at one of the lights that is approaching him.  The bullet struck the light but does not appear to have wavered  the light as it and the other two continued on toward Othello.

The rest of the party sees the smaller lights head out toward Othello and see the cloud of smoke and the echoing boom from the weapon he was using.  The lights continuing toward Othello must have triggered Hammar as he starts flying toward Othello.  The others break out into a jog toward the door.  They hear the voice in their heads.  Pete and Tetranac activate understand languages items.  Pete hears, ‘what are you and why have you come’?  Where Tetranac hears, ‘What is one of under-kind doing here on the surface’?  Pete says that ‘we have come to lubricate,  ahh I mean liberate, Deep Hold!  Tetranac tells the voice that he is on a mission from his god Lolth.  The voice replies to Tetranac. ‘Helps us eliminate these and then we will talk.’  

Othello finishes off the three lights with a lighting bolt that hit all three of them but one survived long enough to attack him before he could finish it off with a sonic bolt. The orb of light seems to have done necrotic and cold damage.

As Othello kills the last orb of light, one of the large spheres near the door fades and sinks into the ground.  But five more of the small orbs of light break off and heads towards Othello.  At the same time hord more head toward the rest of the party.  With at least three per person except Tetranac that seems to have been left alone for now.

The party engages the orbs of lights in battle.  While Gubikla throws up a Leomund’s Tiny Hut around himself as the orbs approach him.  This cause them to fly over the hut and attack Pete.  Tetranace decides to join the fight by shooting one of the orbs near Gubikla as they flew around attacking Pete.  This causes the voice to yell in his head “Trator”.  Tetranac then joins Gubikla in the hut.  Hammar cast  flame strike that takes out several of them and pushes the other back.  This lines several of them up for Othello to use another lightning bolt from his wand.  Talin and Bone were smashing them with their weapons in melee combat as the orbs flew by for their attacks.  Gubikla cast a Fire Ball at several of the orbs but this caused his hut to disappear.  This causes Tetranac and Pete to be back in the fray.  Eventually the party is able to kill the rest of the orbs of lights and find that all of the spheres near the door have vanished into the ground.  The party heads up to the front door and Talin and Bone try to break the huge urns.  The Urns appear to be made out of some silvery metal and have skulls all over them, but they are not human skulls.  After some swings of axes and swords.  The urns seem to have taken no damage.  It is also discovered that spells directed at them vanish before the spell strikes the urn.  Hammar figures out that he can cast a spell that gives everyone some radiant damage to their weapons.  This seems to allow Talin and Bone do some damage to the Urns.  But it is only the Radiant damage that seems to affect the Urns. Should the party continue doing melee attacks and barely damaging the urns or is there a better method?

COD = Pete for telling the voice in his head the we were there to lubricate Deep Hold.