Halls of Herrn

A small cave has been dug out and what must be the wall to the Halls has been exposed, with a newly created hole providing access.

Starting Room

The party enters the square room, 30’ to a side. The floors, walls, and 15’ ceiling are all made of stone. One wall held large wooden double doors, now destroyed and the opening filled with tons of rubble. On the opposite wall is a slab of blueish reflective metal ten feet wide and high that might be a door but no lock, handle, or hinges are visible. The room is bare but there are signs of recent traffic, it looks like anything portable was removed.

Zayn starts by casting his new favorite spell; gaseous form. Movement is quite slow in this form but he flies into the rubble to see if there is anything on the other side. Unfortunately it soon enough becomes either sheer bedrock or tightly packed soil, impossible for him to go through. Once he is back Izzy puts her hand to the door and speaks; “Tomorrow Will Be Kinder”. A seam appears down the middle of the perfectly smooth slab of metal and it folds to the side, opening the way.

Beyond the door is a ten feet wide corridor that leads to another room 50’ feet away. The floor and ceiling are inlaid with small tiles in square geometric shapes in grey and orange. The sides of the corridor feature tile mosaics showing slender beings with almost no ears, long fingers, and deep sunken eyes walking in the direction of the far room, during this journey they slowly change in appearance, at the end of the corridor they are now shorter, with rounder heads, and four arms. Everything is surprisingly free of dust.

Zayn floats in first, to check for traps, taking his time to inspect every inch of floor. And with success, near the end of the corridor he finds a ten by ten feet pressure plate. He manages to slip through the very narrow crack and finds a fifteen feet deep hole. A piston of holds the pressure plate up and some kind of reddish brown gunk is stuck to the underside of the plate. He can also see into the next room; it's only twenty by twenty feet and there is another reflective metal 'door' straight ahead. Two 50' long corridors lead off to the sides.

Using his Awakened Mind ability he communicates all this back to the party. There is quite some planning on how to overcome this obstacle but in the end Zayn uses his gaseous form to mark out the start of the plate and the dwarves both jump over it, clearing it easily. Izzy isn't as athletic but they have tied a rope around her waist, planning on pulling her towards them when she is at the apogee of her jump.

It's not a terrible plan but the seamstress manages to trip exactly when she wants to start her jump, face planting onto the pressure plate. Boldrek is very quick to react and he yanks the rope. This definitely saves her from worse as the pressure plate flies up to the ceiling. She's almost out of the way but her leg gets crushed and then she falls fifteen feet to the hard, stone floor.

That's not all though; everyone near the pressure plate is now covered in a dark red powder and a trapdoor has opened in the ceiling. From it come swarms of creatures, Izzy recognizes them as infernal hornets. Soon everyone but Zayn is covered by them and their bite is nasty. Odrik damages the swarm on him but decides it's better to run away, into the nearby room. Unfortunately he did not count on there being another pressure plate and he triggers it; walking straight into a blade barrier spell that has been cast into the exit of the corridor.

Fortunately Boldrek and Izzy manage to take care of the swarms without too much problem; the swarms aren't all that great at hitting their targets. They then decide to wait for the blade barrier spell to disappear. Odrik tries the pass phrase on the new door but it doesn't do anything. Zayn still has some time on his spell left so he goes down the left corridor, checking it for traps. At the end are double iron doors with a keyhole. They open into whatever is behind them.

Left Room

The warlock looks through the keyhole and then flies inside to get a better look. He finds a room of 40’ by 40’, a suit of dented and scarred plate armor in a style unknown to the party stands in the center of the room hoisted on a simple wooden frame. About a dozen brooms are leaning against the wall to the left. Stone animal head carvings are set into all four corners of the room at a height right between floor and ceiling. There's a sly looking coyote, a grinning bear, a solemn eagle, and a dour bison. Something shines from within the eagle's mouth.

Zayn floats closer and sees that there's a golden bracer laying in the mouth of the carving. He also notices that all four of the stone animal heads have a pipe opening up in their mouths. Those pipes likely stick into the wall and are what the statuary is mounted on. He then returns to the corridor as his spell reaches the end and turns back into his normal form.

The party gathers up and since more traps are expected, Zayn throws the doors open but doesn't step inside. Using a mage hand spell he pulls the bracer from the eagle's mouth. As he does so, the beaks snap shut and the doors slam shut as well. A hissing can be heard inside the room. The party waits and the noise stops after a minute or so. The dwarves break out their crowbars and lift one of the doors out of its hinges. The lingering cloud of poison inside wafts over them but being dwarves they can easily withstand it.

More waiting and then they throw a rope over the plate armor. As they pull it towards them the trap gets sprung again. But with one of the doors on the floor now, they just drag the armor out from the room and move away, they have everything they want from that particular room.

Right Room

Being very enamored with his new spell, Zayn turns gaseous again and now explores the other room, going through the keyhole again. He finds a room 30' wide and 60' deep. At the far end of the room there is a moat of sorts, 15' across, and beyond it is last five feet of the room. A reddish hue and heat radiates from the moat. Two identical metal chests stand on that far end of the room.

Twenty feet into the room and about two and half feet from each wall stand two obsidian pillars that seem fused with the floor and ceiling. A soft humming seems to be coming from them. This has the warlock quite concerned but eventually he dares and flies through the space in between them and nothing happens.

He then crosses the moat, which turns out to be filled with lava, and eventually goes inside the left chest through its keyhole. It is at that point that the mimic, for that's what it is, decides to see if it can have a taste. It sucks our friend into its stomach or whatever these creatures have that goes for it, and closes its mouth. There sure is plenty of acid in there, which is no good news for Zayn.

The others see what happens but are still weary of traps, not to mention the moat. So from the entrance to the room they fire arrows, bolts, and daggers at the mimic. At first to little success and the warlock gets to deal with the acid a second time before some good hits are scored and the creature opens its mouth. This allows the half-orc to escape and slowly float across the moat.

There he turns back into his rather solid form and immediately puts a thorn whip spell to very good use; hitting the fake chest and pulling it into the moat, where it burns up immediately. Which is great cause he just triggered another trap. A trapdoor in the ceiling opens over the middle of the room and from it falls a large dark blob. It rears up and the black pudding look for prey, but it's quite slow, everyone else reacts more quickly.

Boldrek and his maul do good damage. Izzy's spell not only works to harm the creature but for some reason her defenses get better for a few seconds. Odrik is less lucky; the creature's corrosive form damages his axe, and to make things even worse; instead of harming it, he has just split it into two creatures! But the party has plenty of mundane and magical damage to bring to bear, soon one of the two is destroyed. And the remaining black pudding can't make its attack connect when it tries to slam its pseudopod into Zayn.

With the party victorious they can now carefully have a look at the other chest and it contains just a scroll with a short message:

I’m sure you expected this chest to be trapped, but no. If you made it this far then you might as well know that the second door is the inverse of the first.

Back to the middle room they go and after some linguistic attempts they hit upon the right phrase: "Yesterday Has Been Meaner". The door opens and a short corridor leads to a much larger room. Traps are checked for and then they enter.

Correct Room

This is a huge hall with pillars rising to the 25' ceiling. Stone statues and pedestals stand between the pillars and along the walls. The middle of the room holds a pool filled with a shiny, celestial blue liquid, hovering over the middle of the pool is a suit of empty plate armor. It looks quite like the plate armor they recovered, but it's not the same.

Many of the other pedestals in the room hold interesting items, though some are empty. There are unfortunately no descriptions to go with any of the items or the statues; they are all of humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings. This is what they find on the pedestals:

• An iron gauntlet that is hot to the touch. - liquified
• A troll finger, still wriggling. - Izzy
• A life-sized wooden statue of a gnome.
• A human skull with on it a snake-faced, feathered mask that functions as a hat of disguise. - Izzy
• A small vial of black sand that glows slightly in the moonlight. - Boldrek
• A deep blue piece of flint, that when struck with steel produces not a spark but a drop of water. - Zayn
• A pouch made of flesh, with a sinew drawstring. - Izzy
• A gem-studded ivory toothpick. - Odrik
• A blown-glass cane capped with a black marble orb. - Odrik
• A sealed glass jar filled with a pale, reddish liquid. A small, deformed humanoid floats in the middle of it. - Boldrek
• A small rectangle of a silvery metal inscribed with the word ‘Zayn’. - Zayn
• A piece of frayed rope about a foot long. The ends are slightly burned. - Boldrek
• A vial containing clear red liquid that has tiny bubbles of light in it. An elixir of health. - Zayn
• A hunting horn. - Boldrek

At the back of the hall there is a dais with a few steps leading up to it. There is a single pedestal on there and a pewter chalice rests upon it. Zayn checks everything for traps and is quite sure there aren't any. Still... he uses a mage hand spell, better safe than sorry, and pulls Reverie’s Chalice towards him. He takes the chalice and wraps it up carefully, no traps have gone off.

Padded Room

Unfortunately that's not what actually happened. The moment Zayn touches the chalice his mind is taken over by the chalice and his body goes into a kind of stasis, impervious to any outside force. The others see him standing there and try and break him out of his reverie. As they do so, the chalice builds up an imaginary world in the half-orcs mind and Zayn thinks all the following is really happening.

They have a look at the other items in the room and when Zayn lifts up the metal rectangle with his name on it, the hovering suit of plate armor moves towards him and attacks. It hits quite hard and fortunately a thunderwave spell from Izzy pushes it away from the warlock. Who then quickly casts an invisibility spell as he is close to death. The dwarves then attack but when it's the armor's turn, it moves unerringly to where Zayn is, fortunately the attacks miss. The party manages to do quite a bit of damage and soon the armor clangs to the floor in pieces.

Now they look at the other items and decide what to do with them. Izzy puts the gauntlet at the end of her rapier and holds it into the pool of liquid where it almost immediately dissolves, together with the pointy end of her rapier. Zayn throws the troll finger into the lava moat and the rest of the items are divvied up. A short rest is in order and they identify the magic items, and learn the gold bracer is a Bracer of Locking.

Wydda Eskwin then comes to find them. She tells them; "the golem doesn’t want to move; you know how it is, people take you for granted and you don’t feel appreciated so you just go on strike and don’t answer any question. I’m sure she’ll be better tomorrow, hope you brought some nice food though." So they decide to have an early night. Boldrek sits down in a corner of the room, where he hopes he and his belongings will be safe.

Zayn casts an illusion of a wall in front of the barbarian when he wakes up but Boldrek just walks through it, not even noticing it was there. They go back to the golem and it is ready to convey them back up to the mansion. When they arrive there they find quite a few people there. Elgur Boarsund looks a lot different from yesterday. He wears a very colorful one piece outfit with vertical stripes in red, white, and blue. His peaky blond hair is now red and combed back. He still has his sing-song voice though.

There are four men standing there, they look like adventurers and one of them steps forward for introductions. It's a thin elf with short hair and a large axe on his back. "I'm Preacher, this here is Quicksilver," he points at a human man with dark hair and a small mustache who wears dark leather pants and sleeveless white top. "That's Outfitter," he indicates another thin elf, this one with long hair and two slender wooden wands in his belt. "And that's Sir April," he finishes as he motions towards a dwarf with a huge head of hair who is feeding a pet badger, a large spyglass sticks out of his backpack.

“Excuse me one moment as I finish up with these gentlemen,” Elgur tells the party. “So, are we in agreement?” he asks the other group. “This our last dance,” Outfitter tells him, sounding dejected. “Can't we give ourselves one more chance?” Preacher asks the others and they look at Sir April. “Ee do ba be,” he proclaims and the others all nod, apparently he said something very profound. “It don’t work,” Quicksilver tells the priest.

Elgur sighs, “these are the days it never rains but it pours.” He looks at you: “it seems I have more work for you.” He pulls a flag from a pocket, it’s all slashed and torn. “Please keep this safe, I will send a messenger when the time is right to tell you what to do with it.” The other adventurers leave and the priest pays our friends the agreed upon amount before they leave as well.

It’s still very early in the morning, stars shining bright above you. Birds singing in the sycamore tree. Stars fading as you reach the inn. The party decides to have a hearty breakfast and right after they finish it, they see a familiar face. It's Heiner Garsunkel. He tells them that Rudi has gone off again; he left a note saying he's going to Mount Grabb, first to the village of Dogbourne which Zayn happens to know Neske Horthor is from. The merchant wants to hire the party to go looking for his son, again.

The party accepts and return to their inn, only to run across Three-Ring, Twitch, and Neske Horthor. This is rather surprising as all three should still be at Peca M3. When asked, they tell of some huge wave on the river that somehow helped them escape across the river. They go and have a beer to celebrate their good fortune.

At some point Odrik orders Zayn to get some more beer, which leads to the warlock telling him that he's not his servant. Things seem to be a bit weird to Zayn and then he starts hearing a weird sound, as if someone calling out from afar. He goes outside and walks down the street to try and pinpoint the source but it seems to be originating inside his head, though there is clearly a left and right side to it.

He decides to go to the the Pride of Labor, the temple to Ulaa, where they have been before. He sees the same priest they spoke to last time and asks if there is a quiet room where he might meditate. He does so but the weird sound doesn't become any clearer. He then returns to the inn and sees his friends still sitting at the table. When he sits back down himself, the door opens and the three people from Peca M3 walk inside and everyone acts as if they are meeting for the first time since the party left the camp, like the meeting less than an hour ago never happened.

Zayn goes back to the church and meditates more, but now Odrik is suddenly outside his door, demanding he comes out and gets ready for their next mission. The warlock locks the door and yet Odrik is inside when he tries to meditate again. So many strange things are going on, Zayn is convinced things are not as they seem but he can't seem to peer behind the curtain, as they say. Once back at the inn again, he decides to cast a gaseous form spell and he floats up, higher and higher. Once he gets over the city things start to look really strange, the building turn into strange grey boxes and he can't see towards the horizon, a weird mist is covering everything.

This finally breaks the spell and Zayn's consciousness manages to eject the chalice's influence. All of a sudden he is back in the hall with the pedestals, the Chalice of Reverie dropping from his hands, clanging on the floor. The other three party members are standing around him, yelling for him to snap out of it, or wake up, shaking his body. Once he recovers he quickly tries to tell them all that just happened to him. It turns out for the others only a few minutes of time passed.

Recovery Room

It's a lot to take in, the armor is still hovering over the liquid and the items remain untouched on their pedestals. Boldrek careful wraps something around the chalice before sticking it into his backpack. They have another look at the items, it seems the chalice showed the half-orc their true nature. Even though told of what happened, Izzy still puts the gauntlet on the end of her rapier again and holds it in the liquid, to the same effect.

When the warlock grabs the small rectangle of a silvery metal inscribed with the word ‘Zayn’ inscribed, his patron speaks into his mind, telling him to put the metal on top of the Tome of Sedar. When he does so, the metal melts and gets absorbed, giving the tome another ability.

The party then returns to the golem where Wydda Eskwin is waiting for them. They are conveyed back up to the mansion.