Stone Soules Summary: Last of the Spawn
Part I:
We went to the GOC after training Cassana, Ludo, Dari (in both classes) and Canstin. Alegra and Tesla are close to further levels.
We found that the beihir was gone and decided to investigate the teleporter portals we had discovered once upon a time. These teleporter portals were not similar to the one-shot teleporter at the theater battle. These were double-sided portals with a pedestal before them that you had to insert a magnet in to start them (there are a large number of magnets in the GOC).
We went through the one we had found and chopped lots of bugbears to pieces. Ceydric got suggested to attack Snag a couple of times but made most of his saves. The remaining demonspawn (Silla) was doing this. Alegra "hold person"ed her and we chopped our way to her. She's dead now. She was "Viola." Anyway, we were in this room we did not know where with two double doors in front of us and everything around us dead but for one captured bugbear. Gerald is guarding the door of the room with the portal in it. He and only a couple of others are there right now. (We did not know where the teleporter took us, but we did end up somewhere.)
Part II:
At the double doors, we examined how the portal worked (teleporter) and discovered that it brought you to different places based on polarity of the magnet inserted into the pedestal. We then marked polarity and moved everyone to the double-door room and removed the magnet from that side.
We then interrogated the bugbear we captured -- using Nym's bugbear skills. We discovered that he remembered nothing from during his charming. After we got information about him, we set him free on the other side of the teleporter with a message for the bugbears opposing the snake people in the city -- that we would leave them alone as long as they did not interfere with us destroying the demonspawn (he freaked out when I said demon -- so I used his term "snake people"). We gave him Silla's head as a sign of goodwill (he had said that they had killed two from when the spawn first came to the city from the jungle to the northeast and had kept the heads). We then explored the rest of the place -- which was deserted. Except for a few startled bugbears. There were a lot of traps, though! When we got to the roof, the Sphinx found us. And we looked out and discovered we were over in the northeast corner of the city, north of the bugbear tower, with jungle-like plants between here and the castle.
The bedrooms of the spawn (apparently) were variously trapped. In the first bedroom, we found some beds. Elowier checked under a mattress for secret compartments. It was flame trapped and exploded into flame, killing him instantly. He was an elf. We shot an arrow at a bed later and it did the same thing. We then did not touch anything until we have some trap detection and removal spells. The beds contained documents in some sort of cipher. They were burned beyond recognition -- hopefully the intact beds we come back for will be different. When we went to explore one last corridor, Alegra sensed a "palpable evil" coming from a huge vaulted chamber with thick shadows on the walls. It was "at best, consecrated unholy ground." We then left, but noticed that shadows were following us. One drained Snag of strength. Alegra tried to turn them and managed to hold them off, but could do no better than that. It was their turf.
We then tried to reflect sunlight at them, but there were at least half a dozen of them, and they broke the turning and attacked the mirror holder. Ludo was drained of strength. When he dropped the mirror, Alegra tried to drive them back, but failed. Aria also attempted it. We were forced to fall back to the teleporter because if we stayed longer to get spells (as we originally intended), it would be night and the shadows could attack us as they wished and we could not then escape. We then left, and headed back to base camp. During the night we were attacked by three trolls while still wounded from our previous encounters. It turned out okay, though.
We then headed back to Middle.
Kyle