For
their second mission, they were hunting down a group of orcs that had stolen a
Tabernacle of Ogram’s Insight and followed their trail to a creepy blasted out
tower. They made the orcs feel uncomfortable and then defeated them, finding
their way up the tower to witness a shaman place the Tabernacle into the chest
of a golem like creature while a larger orc and a strange shadowy figure
watched. Combat ensued and the shadow man, Mr. Shade, escaped, his minions and the
automaton both were defeated, the large orc being tossed from the top of the tower and the golem destroyed in the pit of green fire, and the artifact recovered.
For their next
mission, they were assigned to figure out what was attacking the caravans
headed north out of Rhadamanthus. Someone also had stolen a lantern from the
museum. They were joined by Rogos, a halfling bard/rogue and made their way
along the worn path. About a day north they were attacked by skeletons on the
road and were able to follow them back to a system of caves. After navigating
the caves and seeing a big spider they found themselves traveling up and found
themselves looking upon a small farmstead with a farmhouse and a large barn. In
the farmhouse, they found a zombie eating the recently dead body of a farmer,
the party murdered the hungry zombie and moments later the half-eaten zombie
rose up and attacked them as well. Out in the barn they found a group of
skeletons and a pale and gaunt Tiefling necromancer in the midst of a ritual.
The party intervened and the necromancer broke the lantern, summoning a shadow
to help fight the party. The party won the day with the help of magic. They
returned to town mending the artifact the best they could.
The
next session started with the party enjoying a night off in the Faulty Portal,
a local drinking establishment and inn. While in the midst of rabble-rousing strange ruby adorned cultists started attacking bar patrons, not expecting to
be overwhelmed by adventurers. The group attempted to interrogate the leader,
only finding out “if the Ruby Lord knew I talked he would kill me anyways” and
the monk threw him out the window, which happened to be three stories up. The
group collaborated with the town guard and decided to go meet up with their
boss at Tower Artifacts, Robank. Following a lead Robank gave them, the group
headed to an abandoned curio shop and defeated its guardian, an angry rug of
smothering. Under the trap door it was covering they located a rudimentary
printing press duplicating a pamphlet for the Ruby Lord’s upcoming gathering.
Once pleased with their efforts they left the shop and found two more serpent
men perforating a town guards throat with daggers. The party gleaned
information from one of the attackers to look under the sewers for the deep
city, which was supposedly guarded by “bull men”. They worked with the town
guards and entered the sewers finding three ghoul like creatures in fancy
garments with rubies eating a few corpses from the water. After destroying them and
stealing their clothing the party encountered a small pool in an overly ornate
room with an old man with bandages over his eyes feeding lizards swimming in
the water chunks of dead chicken. The mage approached the man and saw one of
the lizards jumping out of the water to catch a chunk of chicken and noticed
its strange form. The rest of the party noticed small stone animals in the area
as well as small goblin torso made of stone. The mage felt his body go ridged
as his eyes met with the basilisk’s eyes, and his friends jumped into action.
The cleric dropped a radiant burst of magic on the basilisks and the old man,
incinerating him immediately and wounding the basilisks. After a few harrowing
moments, the party was able to destroy the beasts and bind their wounds before
heading deeper into the tunnels. They found themselves in front of the “maze
city” with a large gateway and two minotaur with ruby jewelry arguing with a
red skinned sorcerer. They attempted to sneak by and the monk stole the
sorcerer’s satchel and went to start punching a minotaur. People were seen and
combat ensued, lighting was thrown by the sorcerer, minotaur called for help
and got a half elf foot stuck in his ass, a troll with a gem in his chest
showed up, more violence, the party used fire against the troll and all was
good. His ruby fell out and the cleric broke it with a flaming sphere. The
party talked with Drogo, the sorcerer and found out their employer had also
sent him down here with a secret plan that meshed with theirs. They made their
way past a few other guards and met up with two of Drogo’s rogue allies that
were hiding above a throng of cultists. The cultists were awaiting their living
god, the Ruby Lord, and did not have to wait long. The party and their allies
watched as the Ruby lord came out and addressed his collected masses and
preformed a “miracle” by crawling his glistening old body inside the mouth of a
prone elf laying on the ruby altar. The party had been given some magic items
by Drogo and they took this chance to throw the items, bombs full of glitter both
magic and mundane, into the crowd. The party then took this chance to rush the
stage to fight the goons of the Ruby Lord and to try to take him out before he
could catch his bearings. They made their way to the stage and Drogo tried to
fireball the Ruby Lord, but it was counter spelled. The party made quick work
of his goons but the Ruby Lord proved much more difficult, he was healing the
wounds they gave him and was able to wield magic much stronger than
anticipated. The warlock and the rogues worked to push him off the platform,
goading him with the clerics burning sphere. The Ruby Lord fell, gathered
himself, and teleported away leaving his people to their own problems. The
party had accidentally started the stage on fire and everyone ran out of the sewers.
When the party returned to the surface they found town guards rounding up all
the glitter covered cultists and were in the process of arresting them.
