Abyss Modified session 4

OUT OF THE ABYSS SPOILERS AHEAD  

Our adventure started a little differently tonight. Dinak the drow ranger, Xanaphia the human wild sorcerer, Orion the tiefling monk, Fione the human druid, Fula Anahata the aasimar draconic sorcerer, Godric the half elf bard, Lady Hestia the tiefling bard, and the pseudodragon Penelope had finished up with their odd demon quest due to Dm combining two mini adventures into one adventure the week before. The party was rested, fed, and hanging out at a local road side inn and were approached by a stranger. Pale skin, human looking, fancy clothing of a mage of high station within Waterdeep or another similar local. 

“Greetings travelers, it seems you have been caught dealing with issues from beyond this world. You may call me Companion and I have a favor to ask of you, one of my agents, an eladrin ally named Telegar has been compromised and is in the hands of the drow. These drow have an outpost in the Underdark that I need you to investigate and if possible, liberate my ally and any other prisoners that are trapped there. The outpost is called Velkynvelve, shouldn’t be more than fifteen drow and their allies, but for a group like yours this should not be much of a problem. Just free the prisoners and you should have more than enough power on your side to return them safely to the surface.” They were given provisions to last the group about a week, a bag of holding full of adventuring gear for anyone they rescue, and a wand that should lead them to Telegar, having been keyed to a pendant he wore on his mission. The group was also guaranteed boons worthy of nobility if they could return Telegar to Baldur’s Gate. 

The party accepted his offer and made their way to an old silver mine abandoned by the humans that used to live there. They found the town broken and battered and full of kobolds. Their cover was blown when a cloaked kobold wearing cobalt colored robes saw them and four kobolds ran out of the mine and engaged the party while even more kobolds slung stones from the shrubs. Godric had been investigating the broken-down bar as fragments of the wall peeled off, revealing more kobolds using the wall chunks as shields. Godric was attacked by the ambushers but magically defended with a shield spell, and later escaping the bar. The party broke down into their ranged tactics, Anahata, Xanaphia, Fione, and Dinak launching attacks at the monsters while Godric and Orion taking on the melee chaos. Xanaphia also fell victim to her own wild surge, the energies of chaos and fate misread found her the center of a fireball of her own making. She distanced herself in the moment and the explosion knocked her out, also roasting a contingent of kobolds that were sneaking up on the party. Anahata threw a few firebolts into the kobolds as well as started the old bar on fire. When the last of the armored kobolds fell the other kobolds ran into the mines, giving the party a few moments to collect themselves and plan. 

The kobolds took this time to summon reinforcements and gird against this dire assault on their home. The group charged in, noticing terrible craftsmanship of the kobold engineering, crude leather straps reinforcing ancient pillars of rotten wood. The party slaughtered as many of the kobolds as they could until the kobolds made a strategic withrawl deeper into the mine. The party, headed by Xanaphia sued for a parlay, peace between them, only seeking passage. The kobolds had only attacked, thinking the party bandits or demon cultists. As peace was negotiated the ground shook, the kobolds shied away from the disturbance until the living leader proclaimed “it is as the prophecy foretold” as a huge sized bulette burrowing monstrosity came out of the cavern floor, starting a cave in. the party ran past the cowering kobolds, heading down into the mines. 

The party had to use their wits and abilities to make their way past the storm of rocks cascading behind them. Orion was able to leap and point out a series of traps the kobolds had in their tunnels, Xanaphia recognized the kobold religious iconography of Kurtulmak, the god of kobolds, and in a split second found a secret door in their temple that lead deeper into the mines. They came upon a group of zombie kobolds and Lady Hestia told them to bugger off and it took them a moment to process intruders but the party was already gone. They found further down a sleeping wolf sized brown scaled dragon sleeping and as they approached Fione started singing, lulling the beast back to sleep. They could still hear terrible things crashing behind them and came to a troll/kobold hybrid creature on a bridge and Godric told him “We have no time for riddles bridge troll” and it let them pass, fleeing the rush of stone and dirt, running down a different tunnel itself. Dinak attempted to sneak by burial urns in a tighter bit of tunnel, knocking most of them over and covering the party in bone dust and fragments. They made their way almost to the end, finding a solitary guard, who Anahata informed that they were in a hurry and he let them pass, fleeing as well. Horribly loud crashed filled the corridor they fell into, and when the dust settled, they found they were lucky, large boulders blocked the path they just came down. 

Bioluminescent fungi illuminated the tunnel they found themselves in faintly. The wand pointed them northeast, which appears to be solid wall. There was a southeastern path that might hook around, or a northwestern path that goes down and away from the blip. They chose to take the path to the southeast finding odd cubby holes in the wall, as if something eroded the path strangely and within the cubbies, they found more kobold skeletons. Eventually they stumbled upon a strange chamber with a domed ceiling and loose bones making up the floor. There were two ledges directly across the chamber from each other, one with the exit, the other with the tunnel they came in from. They were about a hundred feet apart. There was a strange island that rose ten feet out of the bones in the center of the chamber that looked untouched by bones or dust. The party decided to wait around resting and toss a few things in the pit to see if anything happened but only heard the sound of wind, but were unable to find the source. They also heard the sounds of bones shifting together, which was creepy enough to warrant caution. Once rested the group had Godric sprint across the bones with a rope tied around his waist. They used numerous ropes just in case, his run made a slight snag when his rope got stuck on a rib cage. The party tensed expecting something terrible to happen. Godric used eldritch blast to wreck the ribs and continued his sprint across, climbing the other side and holding onto the rope. Fione threw caution to the wind and sprinted across as well as Dinak. Xanaphia made it about halfway before her leg sank deeper into the bones and when she got across she could see fingermarks on her legs. Lady Hestia and Penelope made the run next, and again at the halfway point something happened, Penelope saw something and fainted. Lady Hestia looked up and saw a small girl, wispy and slightly gaunt sitting on the lip of the island, giggling. For a moment the party held their breath, the girl’s face was completely smooth and, on her neck, a series of strange gills, she giggled again and then screamed. The party was buffeted with sound, Lady Hestia, Dinak, and Orion fell down and started dying. Godric spared no time, blasting the small ghost child with an eldritch blast, driving her to dive into the stone and disappear. The party healed the wounded and fled the chamber, sending a few good blasts for good measure, and Lady Hestia left chalk and a beet for the girl, scolding her with a vicious mockery and giving her a time out. 

The group left that chamber quickly, finding the air getting more damp and the walls wet as they started traveling down. Anahata tried the wand again and the wand pointed what might have been northeast still but the blip came back as them being closer to the target. They found some bark like mushroom growing on the walls and took a few pounds for the road. The next chamber had a series of ponds within, the central pond had water dripping from a crack in the ceiling and an alarming amount of light rising out of it. Fione, not wanting to waste time walked right up and looked right into the pond. Below the water she saw a human sized creature with glowing eyes, she waved and it waved back and two more swam out from below it. She went to the second pool and looked in and the same creature swam up to her, the pools having underwater tunnels connecting them. It broke the surface and blinded her with its gaze. The three monsters started sniffing Fione and touching her clothing. Dinak rushed over to help, wondering if these creatures knew what a drow was. It turned out they did, they did not like drow one bit and all turned their gaze on him, blinding him and hissing. The party tied to figure a way out of the situation, the others were fanning out, both Godric and Xanaphia noticing the last pool was full of eggs and a rotten chest and chose not to tell the rest of the group, knowing they might force a fight to get treasure. Fione started singing and the monsters fled into the water and the party rushed over to grab their blind friends and flee the chamber. Once they got to safety, they found a nice side cave to hide in and heal up. 

Once rested the group made their way into a large multilevel chamber with a wide array of tunnels, an odd nexus of ways. One of the tunnels had loud booms and buzzing coming from within. Loud footsteps followed by a group of bloodied and battered figures limped out of a tunnel. A dwarf, a derro, a drow, a deep gnome, a koa-toa, and an orc being led by an eladrin scanned the chamber looking for threats. They looked like they have scavenged some gear from the drow but look like they have had some trouble escaping. The orc looked down and the gnome it was dragging and said aloud “Turvy died” and threw the body back the way they came. The party addressed them, the eladrin being their spokesperson asked who they were. Lady Hestia told them that a gentleman known as the Companion had sent them with gear and food to help them under promise of great reward, the rest of the party facepalmed, not wanting to give everything away. The eladrin said very plainly that he knew the Companion, and the buzzing from the tunnel behind them got louder. We stopped there for the night.