Discretion is the Better Part of Valor: The Annals of Stonehell Dungeon – Season 2 – Eleventh Session

The Annals of Stonehell are the weekly record of the semi-seasonal game of D&D that I run using the brilliant Michael Curtis’s Stonehell dungeon.  (Go and buy it now; it’s worth every dang penny.)  All installments are indexed here.

August 24, 2017

The following old-school heroes were taking matters into their own hands:

• “Hot Pot” Sullivan (halfling thief) and her henchman, Yellow Yiminy (magic user)
• Fast Fist Forbinn (fighter)
• Nevuch the Gesticulate (cleric) and his henchman, Hortensius (hobgoblin)
• Cominus (orc) and his henchman, Brother Serious (cleric)

This week, the Cobalt Cobras began by trying to negotiate with Fulkth and his bugbears in the Hall of Lenses, with the goal of getting past them in order to negotiate the labyrinth and find the Black Library, where Lachesis told them they could find the answers they are looking for.  The negotiation went poorly, and the player characters were seriously outnumbered, so they decided to back out and try a different angle.  Here’s what they managed to find:

A scintillating hall!  Battling with bugbears!  Casualties, and a retreat!  The party found their way to a room covered with rainbow-colored glyphs and paintings of magic-users.  Unfortunately they also caught the tail end of a bugbear patrol.  And worse, it was the same bugbears that the party had tangled with previously at the top of the stairwell, so there was no fast-talking.  Hot Pot dry-gulched one of the bugbears in the throat with aa crossbow shot, but then one of the bugbears cut Fast Fist Forbinn in half with his nasty chopper.  The party beat a hasty retreat.

Playing it cool and acting natural!  On their way back to the stairs, the party came across yet another bugbear patrol, but this one was mostly disinterested and indifferent.  So the Cobalt Cobras played it cool and then booked it back to Kobold Korners as soon as the bugbears were out of sight.

Resting, recharging, and re-supplying!  And some new companions!  Not that one, though!  Back in Kobold Korners, the party rested, ate, bought some supplies, and then started trying to replace fallen comrades.  Hot Pot hired a magic-user named Yellow Yiminy as her henchman.  The party was approached by a filthy gnoll looking for a group to adventure with, but the mange, the stench, the drool, the visible parasites and the crazy eyes were just too much for the Cobalt Cobras, no matter how big and capable the gnoll looked.  Instead, they took on an orc warrior named Cominus and his human cleric henchman, Brother Serious.

The elf with the black eyes!  While shopping for low-quality arrows and dented knives, the party had the ill luck to encounter, once again, the elf with pitch-black eyes.  He coolly let the party know that he knew that they had been through the Ouroboros Gate, and that his assassins were sure to end their lives as soon as they stepped out of the safety of Kobold Korners.  The Cobalt Cobras started talking fast, and they spilled the beans that Lachesis had hired them to find the information.  This gave the elf pause—he admitted that it was, in fact, Lachesis who had recently sold him the knowledge that the Cobalt Cobras had gone through the gate.  The elf told the party that, if they found out who bought the secret of the gate from Lachesis and brought the elf Lachesis’s head (in a bag, of course), he would consider showing them mercy, but for the moment he was not going to call off his assassins.  “Maybe we should just get new jerkins, guys” said Nevuch, after the encounter was over.

Poking around the dungeon!  A weird obelisk!  And a secret door!  Not confident that they had the numbers to go after Lachesis or Fulkth, the Cobalt Cobras headed back down to the third level of the dungeon to poke around in some unexplored areas.  After taking a quick nap in a room with a cantilevered floor and some bunkbeds, the party found a large hall with pillars and a large obelisk covered in runes, and holes that were blowing out a steady gust of fresh-smelling air.  Yellow Yiminy cast read magic and determined that the runes were connected to the Elemental Plane of Air.  The party thoroughly searched the room and found a secret door leading into an alcove with an alien symbol on the wall.  (Some of the players who had been in the game last year had a very bad feeling about this…)

The teleporter nexus!  The alien symbol was, of course, some kind of teleporter.  When the party touched it, they were transported to a round room made of some kind of smooth, glossy stone with a matching symbol and an iris doorway.  The player characters pulled a brass lever to open the door, and it led them into another room made of the same kind of stone, with five other, identical iris doorways and sixth door made of some kind of metal.  The Cobalt Cobras marked the iris door they had come through with chalk and opened one of the others.  It led to another teleporter, so the Cobalt Cobras gave it a spin.

Treasure!  Crystal statues!  And a retreat!  The teleporter transported the party to a small storeroom with a matching alien symbol on the wall (ostensibly the way back), a wooden door, and two locked boxes.  The room looked, felt and even smelled very different from anything in Stonehell they had encountered so far.  Jimmying the boxes open, the party found a substantial cache of gold coins and a set of scroll cases with magical scrolls.  The party headed out the wooden door and started exploring.  They found a few empty rooms, and then some kind of living quarters with four imposing crystal statues.  Not wanting to see if the statues would come alive or not, the party withdrew back to the teleporter nexus.

And that’s all they had time for.  On to the next session!