Wealday, 6 Sarenith
Well, yes, as luck would have it, there were a couple of more guards … and a strange dwarf named Dolland who was more of a leader than a guard. He was tougher to subdue and came within a whisker of being killed, but ended up surrendering just in time. From him and the 1 dead guard and 3 guard prisoners we retrieved
[1374] Studded leather armor +1
[1375] 3 vials acid
[1376] 2 vials antitoxin
[1377] 3 vials blue whinnis
[1378] 2 vials Terinav root
[1379] MW Shortsword
[1380] book of recipes – Alchemical
[1381] MW thieves tools
[1382] med bag of holding
[1383] bejewelled holy symbol w/peacock feathers
[1361] potion of barkskin
[1362] potion of bulls’ strength
[1364] potion of cat’s grace
[1365] potion of dark vision
[1366] potion of invisibility
[1367] potion of protection from arrows
[1368] potion of reduce person
[1369] splint armor +1
[1370] scroll of protection from evil
[1371] MW cestus
Still badly injured, Dolland turned out to be a font of information. He had been tasked with opening the mysterious locked door inn the room we fought in, but had been unsuccessful. More immediately he claimed his assistant had died here from a trap and became a ‘mechanical ghost’. She continues to install traps in the conference room, for reasons only she knows. Fixers, we are, all of us and so we felt we needed to put this right.
Dolland also mentioned that there are – or rather, had been – three main leaders for the RoadKeepers: he himself, Lullaby, and Mother NightThrush. That left only Lullaby unaccounted for – and she, he said, has a reputation for holding a grudge.
He also revealed that Cristella, of the Peacock house, owned a rapier with an invisible blade … as we’d suspected.
He told us there was probably a couple dozen students at the Peacock House.
We decided to disarm any traps and then proceed to find the body of his dead assistance. That went pretty well, except the ghost came and found us and proceeded to toss Dolland against the wall and start throwing rocks at the rest of us. We defeated the haunt but felt like we could have done better.
Didn’t take too long to discover Sharlise’s body, We also found 44gp and
[1372] ring of feather fall
[1373[ boots of elvenkind
We returned to the room with the puzzling door. We had secret weapon – we had a sihedron pattern from the back of one of Sir Roderic’s maps that looked a lot like an insignia on the door. While Dolland went on and on about how the door was impenetrably sealed, and secure, and incredibly hard to force open, it was Droste, I think, who walked over to the sihedron, adjusted a few symbols, and opened the door.
Dolland is a dwarf so his jaw didn’t have far to drop but it was still rewarding to watch it happen.
Inside was at least one smooth white marble wall but also an impenetrable fog. We tied a rope to Droste and he walked in. We heard nothing from him until he returned, claiming that inside, the fog was gone and vision was clear. He found a pair of [1384] gauntlets which radiated/shone/blinded us with strong magic, and there were Thassilonian symbols on them. We remembered Sir Roderic’s admonition that we needed the gauntlets. Whatever they could do, we at least now had possession of them.
Droste remarked that the evidence inside the chamber suggested there had been a powerful fire trap there but it had been triggered and thus rendered harmless. And while inside, he’d been completely isolated from the outside world – no sound, no light, no indication of anything happening. Curious.
Nearby there was another room which seemed to be another teleport room. Dolland emotionlessly told us it went to a ‘meeting room’. So … since it sounded harmless, Yanor, Droste, and Vlad tried it out. And they did end up in a room with a force wall separating one side from the other. There were two goblins – one, a very hungry goblin and one dead – and a dead goblin dog on the other side of the force wall. First thing the goblin asked for was food. His name was Murkel. Droste said he’d bring him food. But since reaching his teleport platform likely would involve a longish journey around to the goblin lair again, they expedited the rescue by destroying the force wall and pulling him across. Sigh.
We decided to spend the night here and head back in the morning.
Oathday, 7 Sarenith
Things were uneventful, up until the point we reached the ferry. There, three RoadKeepers tried to insist on a toll. However, we surrounded them, and told them if they came quietly, nobody would get hurt. One of them tried to run, and Shimsa cut him well. The others hesitated but when Dolland suggested it would be in their best interests, they conceded. Three more prisoners. We collected their short swords, daggers, and potions of CLW.
And headed into town to turn everybody over to the guards.
We then visited Audrahni and brought her up to date, including news about the gauntlets.
We decided to rest or shop the rest of the day, and head out to Roderic’s Wreck on Fireday to see if he was feeling more restful now.
Fireday, 8 Sarenith
Well, the visit was largely uneventful. Roderic was, I’d say, pleased with our progress but to call him restful would be a travesty. We cleaned the Wreck of a poltergeist and some spiders, but other than that we made little progress. Yanor, however, was apparently more bored than the rest of us, and so simply put on the gauntlets to see what they might do.
He became instantly aware that while wearing them, he could be shielded from the influence of a single intelligent artifact.
Like, maybe, a rapier with an invisible blade?