Round 5!
You can see from the doorway an enormous hall as large as a castle keep. Much of the chamber is open to the level above, allowing anyone there to look down on the lower area. Two large winches, their handles carved to resemble striking cobras, flank the double door. Just past the winches is a contingent of yuan-ti, their bows drawn taut and their leader, a large snake with human arms, directing their actions. At the far end of the room, another pair of yuan-ti these lookling a lot more like snakes than people (snake heads instead of human heads), are also far above in a gallery, looking down at you.
Blank takes on a full run and stops next to Herzog, panting slightly, “I might could use a touch up before going into that.” Trying to look over the summoned creature into the room beyond.
Syl realizing there is a fight going on, double times to the group to get in on the action!
Sephira follows up the stairs, quickly, so that she can fire a magic missile at one of the yuan-ti. Kedri says hiding behind the pillar in the air.
Sephrias missiles fly through the air and….the missiles slam into him. He looks nearly dead, but not quite.
Kara dashes to the right, and punches the orange-red yuan-ti in the chest.
Kara hits, hears that satisfying crack of rib bones, and her yuan-ti’s eyeballs bug out in surprise…but he’s still up.
Herzog casts cure moderate wounds on Blank.
Blank, “thank you.” as he prepares to continue charging into the room.
The guys near you are all clearly purebloods yuan-ti, IE mostly human with a few snake features, the guys in the gallery above at halfbreeds, and in the middle o the room is a much larger snake man, whose only humanoid feature is a pair of muscular arms. Like everyone else, he has a scimitar (a falchion, really), and a composite longbow, although mostly he is just standing there directing the others.
The five purebloods nearest you start shooting back, except for the one nearest Kara, who has dropped his bow and taken a swing at her with his scimitar. He misses, as do most of the arrow shots. One hits the centipede. The centipede looks injured!
The two halfbreeds also fire at the party. One aims for Kara, while the other hits the centipede once. The centipede dissolves into nothing.
Kara grabs the arrow out of the air with her superior monking skills. Then she drops it.
One of the two purebloods in the second rank just moves up to fill the gap the looks like it’s about to appear on the yuan-ti’s right.
The other one, several of you notice, is not wearing armor, unlike anyone else. Next to him stands what looks like the skeleton of a human, although the skeleton is slightly blurry and moves very quickly. The skeleton moves up and takes a swing at Kara. In the grandest of cliches, the skeleton is armed with a scythe. Buuut it misses her.
This round, the giant abomination just stands and watches while you all fight.
Round 6!
Blank charges Red-Green Yuan-ti, attacking and using his healing crystal. Blank hits him and he crumples like an easily crumpled thing. Super dead.
Syl still being at the bottom of the stairs, runs up behind Herzog. He can see through his legs and yells, “WATCH YA ASS! ARROW COMING THROUGH!” and shoots one off at red/pink creature.
Herzog- “Whooo tingly!”
The yuan-ti is shocked and burned, but still up.
Sephira moves just inside the door so that she can’t get shut out, but otherwise just watches the fight, grumbling about getting low on spells. She flicks a ray of frost at a yuan-ti.
Kara gives the yuant-ti in front of her an uppercut to the jaw, and feints past its head with her other fist.
Her uppercut snaps its neck and it dies.
Herzog casts recitation, and everyone in the party now gets bonuses to attack, AC and saves. He also moves up to inside the doors as well.
The yuan-ti press the attack. The three pureblood mooks drop their bows and draw scimitars, and move up.
Kara is hit once with a scimitar slash.
One of the two guys attacking Blank has a breastplate, shield and mace, instead of the studded leather and scimitar the normal troopers have. He smacks Blank once, but the other one misses.
Blank uses his Counterstrike bracers to attack the Yuan-Ti that hit him, also using the healing function of his Crystal. Managing to return the favor.
The skeleton swings at Kara twice, missing badly once, and by the width of a hair the second time.
The two archers in the gallery continue shooting; they seem to have divided the room in half between them. Blank and Kara both get missed, while Herzog takes an arrow and one arrow meant for Sephira smacks in to the door mechanism.
The caster behind the skeleton tries to fire a ray at Kara, but misses cause he’s firing into a melee (and also rolled really badly).
Round 7!
Blank starts swinging at the Yuan-Ti in the different armor and weapon, also using his healing function from his Crystal. Managing to heal himself twice while hitting him.
Snake Mace Guy looks stunned that you can hit him that much, but he is still up.
Syl takes a five step forward up the stairs, sees the red/yellow creature in the corner and yells “CORNER POCKET SHOT!” and shoots off three arrows at it!
The halfbreed archer collapses when the Syl’s second arrow hits him.
Sephira summons a pair of hawks, and sends each of them after an archer. They both attack!
Kara turns and decks the red-pink yuan-ti. The yuan-ti’s face caves in after the first punch. Kara then kicks the red-purple yuan-ti that is now to her right. Kara cracks this guy’s skull too. He also drops.
Herzog moves up to help Kara with the skeleton, but misses his one attack.
The abomination finally decides to act, and moves up toward Blank. It casts something at him. Blank feels the oddest sensation of magic trying to force him into the form of a garter snake, but he overcomes it.
The Yuan-ti in the gallery tries to fire his bow at the hawks.
Mace Snake man swings at Blank, missing twice.
The last mook also swings at Blank, but misses.
The skeleton swings laboriously at Kara, missing once and crit threatening…nevermind, normal hitting her one time.
Round 8!
Blank continues to swing at the mace welding Yuan-Ti, using the healing function of his crystal, keeping half an eye on the abomination that seems to be coming his way.
The mace-wielding yuan-ti dies at the first hit, and the last mook yuan-ti dies the second time Blank swings at him.
Syl seeing the big snake creature moving, takes aim and shoots three arrows right at its face!
Syl pegs the large snake man twice.
Sephira throws an acid arrow toward the big guy. The remaining bird attacks.
Kara throws a roundhouse kick at the skeleton and follows it up with a second leaping kick.
Kara shatter’s the skeleton’s rib cage, but it’s a skeleton, and so it doesn’t really notice. Some pieces of bone rattle around the inside of its full plate armor.
Herzog swings twice and misses twice against the skeleton. He considers that he’s a spellcaster, not a melee person, and should really stick to his job.
The abomination, seeing how fast you all are burning through his minions, moves up and swings at Blank… but still misses.
The archer in the gallery firest at the second hawk twice. The hawk gives the archer tis but a scratch, and the archer kills the bird.
The spellcaster decides discretion is the better part of valor and flies up to the gallery above.
Round 9!
Blank takes a five foot step in towards the abomination, and starts swinging.
The abomination collapses, hissing curses at you.
Syl sees the other archer in the corner the red pink and lets off three arrows at it!
The yuan-ti collapses, but only because the now dead celestial hawk gave it but a scratch.
Sephira waits, observing the room.
Kara continues to smash bones, doing a couple of sweeping kicks to the skeleton’s legs.
Kara breaks its legs, and the skeleton collapses and stops moving.
The wizard up in the gallery disappears down a hallway you can’t see, shouting the alarm.
Herzog- “Keep going? Or loot these guys and retreat for the day?”
Kara shakes her head “To retreat is to allow the enemy to set better defenses.”
Blank, “we should continue in. We leave and they might lock us out again, though we should loot before going farther.”
Herzog- “Yeah, but now that I’ve been in here I can dimension door in without getting us killed. But I’m game for whichever. If we run they’ll probably come after us.”
Syl - “well we could loot them now and get some rest. They should only have a finite of soldiers here and we can just keep letting them come back and we keep killing them in this room.”
Sephira - “I’m almost useless at this point, spell-wise. So we should rest. That said, if you want to sit here at the door killing anyone that comes into view until you run out of arrows, I’m fine with that.”
Kara: “Perhaps we could find a defensible room.”
Herzog- “Well I’m going to start looting their bodies while we’re waiting for a counterattack.”
Blank goes to help with the looting.
Sephira - “Kara, that’s a good idea, just be careful not to get ambushed.”
They find:
5x masterwork scimitars (2x given away)
5x masterwork composite longbows (1x given away)
5x masterwork studded leather armor
4x mwk heavy wooden shields
1x mwk falchion
1x large mwk heavy shield
1x mwk heavy steel shield
Magic Mithril breastplate
Magic Belt
Magic 2x Potion
Mastework mace
410 pp
1700 gp
500 gp gem
Magic wand
Magic Necklace with three small red gems
Heavy darkwood shield
4 flasks alchemist’s fire
Magic 2 spell scrolls
Magic Gauntlets
Mithril full plate mail
Magic scythe
While everyone else is looting, Kara ventures down the right hand hall to see what’s there.
This hallway slopes up (ie, it’s a fairly steep ramp instead of stairs), as if the place was build for people for whom stairs are an uncomfortable inconvenience. She can hear shouting in the distance, but it doesn’t sound like it’s getting closer at the moment.
Kara returns to the main room and starts going around the room counter-clockwise, checking doors.
The first door isn’t locked. Behind it she finds….a room. The walls of this rectangular chamber are covered in carvings. What first seems t obe a group of serpentine figures reveals itself to be a single, impossibly long snake with numerous heads along the length of its body. Near the west wall stands an altar, a slab of black marble atop an iron stand in the form of a coiled cobra.
Kara ignores the altar and tries the double doors on the east end of the chamber.
This door isn’t locked either. Beyond it lies a large open chamber that appears to be an audience hall. A raised dais sits against the east wall, complete with a stone podium adorned with serpentine carvings.
Kara retreats to the main room, skips the second set of doors since that lead into the big audience chamber, and proceeds to the third set of doors.
Blank looks up from looting, “anything of interest, need me to check for traps?”
Kara shakes her head “At the moment, only empty rooms. No sensible creature would set traps in places they frequently use.”
Blank nods.
The door to this room is locked.
Kara mentions this to Blank adding “It may not be worth opening.” She moves on to the next door.
Blank stops the looting and comes to check the door she is working with, “or it could lead to more we want.” Blank checks the doors for traps. He doesn’t find any.
Blank attempts to open the lock.
Blank pops open the lock.
Herzog- “Sephria, how much of this stuff can we fit into your Haversack?”
Sephira - “All the small stuff, but the armor is probably a no-go.” She starts tossing stuff inside.
Blank calls over his shoulder, “I have a bag of holding if we need more space.” As he opens the door he just unlocked.
Herzog is shaking skeleton parts out of the suit of plate mail. “This is mithril, it’s worth a lot of money.”
Syl mozies on over to the rest of the group to see if he can pack in the armor.
Beyond the doors lies a true chamber of horrors. A rack and and iron maiden stand next to terrible contraptions of cables, needles, and cuffs whose purpose is best not guessed at. The floor is stained with dried blood, a red-black pool spreading around a rusty iron grate in the center of the floor.
Blank, “I found the torture chamber.” Then goes and checks around the coroner he cannot see.
Blank sees a slope heading down, again in place of a staircase. He doesn’t hear much of anything, but even here he can smell garbage and rot wafting up.
Herzog casts detect magic on the pile o’ loot; the potions, wand, scrolls, belt, necklace, mithril breastplate, gauntlets, and scythe are all magical.
Blank comes back to the rest of the party, “there is a path leading down, and it smells of garbage and rot, possibly where they keep all their waste.”
Syl gives a gross look on his face at hearing the possibility of being waist high in someone else’s waste.
Sephira looks at Herzog. “I don’t suppose you have like a detect life spell? To see if anyone is alive down there without actually going down.”
Herzog- “No, I don’t.”
Sephira - “Alright, I’ll do this then.” She summons a celestial dog, and tells it to go check if there is anyone down in the trash alive. “Bark if you find anyone, come back if you don’t. I hope you’re the type of dog that likes gross things.” The dog tilts its head at that, and scampers off down below.
Within just a few seconds, you hear excited barking.
Sephira sighs. “Welp, down we go. Better get them now so that no one takes our murder of their compatriots out on them.”
Herzog- “Fharlanghn commands his followers to free slaves, so we must go down there.”
Blank shrugs and checks his weapons, “lets get dirty, Sly first.”
Syl looks at Blank “why do i have to be first?!” he says mortified.
Kara follows the group down the ramp.
Down the ramp the stench of garbage just increases. This level is lit by a single dim torch halfway down the hall, and on each side of the hall you can see locked doors.
Blank moves up and starts checking each of the doors, “well we found cells, Sephira?”
The first door on both sides of the hall have a human inside them. At the sound of someone speaking common, there is immediately a murmur, and the people in the cells on each side of the hall stand up quickly.
Blank, “and they are occupied.”
Man on the party’s right- “Who are you?” He sounds excited.
There is also a woman on the left, who hasn’t said anything yet.
Blank looks at the man, “I am DeBlanc, Phillin DeBlanc, Hias Secret Service. What are you all down here for?”
Syl who is in waste and the smell is freaked out at the sound of the man “It’s the cave monster, run for your lives!” as he wails and throws his hands up in the air and runs in circles.
Sephira just rolls her eyes. “Anyone know where the keys are? We’re here to let you out.”
Man (male human)- “We were captured by the yuan-ti, to be eaten or sacrificed or turned into one of their slaves! How did you get in here?”
Sephira - “To be short, by killing everyone in the way. We’re planning on eliminating all the yuan-ti here.”
Blank shrugs and nods, “she is the boss.” and moves to the side for Sephira to talk to them.
Woman- “Oh thank the gods! Can you let us out?”
Sephira - “If no one has seen a key yet, can you get to opening these, Mr. DeBlanc?”
Woman (female elf)- “I’m Selirra, pleased to meet you, we don’t know where they keep the keys, so please just start picking locks or whatever you do!”
Blank looks at Sephira, “open them all?”
Sephira nods. “When you’ve gotten a small group out, Herzog and Kara will escort them to the exit, then come back for the next group.” She calls Kedri “Can you see if you can spot the keys? Both upstairs and further down the hall.” Kedri harumps but obeys.
Blanks starts working on the doors.
Sephira also adds - “Give a scimitar or bow to anyone who knows how to use them.”
Blank can get the first two doors open easily, but the third, which has a halfling woman behind it, doesn’t work the first time.
The human man, who introduces himself as Aldros, hugs whoever is nearest to him.
The elf woman, Selirra gives both Blank and Syl kisses on her way out. She takes a scimitar and masterwork bow and 20 arrows.
The halfling watches Blank and starts giving him suggestions on how to work the lock. “I’ve looked at it pretty thoroughly and I’d pick it but I don’t have anything resembling a tool.”
Blank tries the third door again, “oh, I just had a bad run that time, I am pretty good at this.”
This time it works. “Oh good job!”
Blank moves to start looking at more cells.
Sephira signals for Kara and Herzog to escort those 3 out.
Kara gestures up the slope “Follow this way please.” and leads the way to the main floor.
Selirra also gives Kara a hug. “It’s so wonderful that other elves came to rescue us!”
Kara pats Selirra’s shoulder and disengages herself. “One must be grateful for any rescue.”
Herzog inspects them for injuries, but not wanting to spare his spells if they don’t need it, just takes them out.
Illira the halfling also takes a scimitar, but the bows are too big for her.
Herzog and Kara manage to get back without getting ambushed by any other yuan-ti either, although they again heard voices of groups wandering around.
