Summary of Events:
When we left our adventurer’s last, they had made camp in the nearby bunk area. That evening, Ren stares into the darkness with a disturbing sleeplessness. It’s his shoes. They must have gotten some of that repulsive garbage on them. How horrifying!
In what we believe is the morning, Chonka prepares herself for the challenges ahead. Chonka carefully uses one of her handaxes to shave her beard, staring into the reflection of her other handaxe with a steely focus.
Ren carefully removes a snowball and watches it roll downhill to the West. Convinced, he suggests the party head in that direction. Instead, Azu heads off to a room to the North and Chonka follows after a moment to ensure the safety of her new traveling companion. Azu searches the area, quietly pocketing a small treasure before finding some information on Skadi, the huntress from the statue upstairs.
Skadi: Goddess of Hunting, the Winter, the Mountains, and the Harvest. She belongs to the pantheon of the Jotunns.
Chonka enters the room to discover what appears to be Azu defiling a skeleton. Chonka, digusted by this sight, sternly directs Azu to “reclaim weapons and treasure. Not bones.” and storms off to rejoin the others.
Ren, trusting his trusty Prodfoot snowball, scouts the Westward path and finds a large pit easily 40 feet wide. He casts Mage Hand and lights a candle from his pack. As the magical hand floats over the edge of the inky black pit, endless swarms of bats explode from the void below. Ren uses his magical hand to collect a vial of Bat Guano from the wall of the pit.
Ren heads back to meet the remainder of the party and Ren tells them of his findings. As Rota approaches, the sound of clock ticking tolls loudly in his head and with every step towards the void, it gets faster and faster.
Standing at the edge of the seemingly endless pit, the symphony of noise ringing in Rota’s cerebral cortex suddenly stops. Everything seems to stop. From nowhere, a sudden brutish force shoves Rota into the pit. He deftly turns around and barely grabs the ledge at the last moment.
Rota sees the horror slowly begin to spark in Ren’s eyes as a mechanical and sonorous voice tolls in his head and says:
The great machine turns eternally. What is to come, in some regard, has already happened. In others, it has just begun. Everything is about to change, but you will persist. You are of the great machine and therefore, you will persist.
The invisible force shoves Rota into the pit. As he falls, Rota watches Chonka spring forward with a rope. She falters and nearly falls into the chasm, but grabs the rope just in time. As Rota is enveloped in darkness, Ren pulls Chonka to safety.
Rota falls for a very long time and eventually smashes into the bottom in a heap. Rota collects himself and settles into a meditative pose, searching for a connection with the darkness. Deep in meditation, the centurion’s mind is pierced with flashes of a city painted in gold and bronze. He sees dozens and dozens of buildings that are all comprised of giant gears and motors. He sees a golden city of machines built on the cliff of a towering mountain, emblazened in the sunlight of a setting star.
His visions are halted as he hears something approaching from the darkness. Pain rips through his side with a searing heat. The sound of the great machine rings in his head again and he focuses on his center in the darkness. Then again, searing hot pain, now on his other side. Then suddenly, Rota can sense the presence more clearly. His combatant is a vampire spawn.
As Rota swing his glaive at the beast, it feels as though time lurches forward again. Rota is falling from the cliff and the voice rings in his head once again:
You. Will. Persist.
At his hip, Rota finds a heavy chain wrapped in a coil. He swings the chain out, lodging it into the edge of the pit. Then as if it were a natural reflex, he yanks on the chain and it appears to retract and he is launched upward and onto terra firma. As he lands, a low rumbling sound rolls through the Undercroft and the ground shakes. Rota has magically acquired a Chain of Returning.
Curious for an explanation, Azu borrows some hempen rope, shoots a roped arrow into the wall, and repels into the inky void below. He reaches the end of his rope and not having reached the bottom, sends Quill to investigate. Quill dives straight downward. In his mind, Azu hears:
Darkness. Darkness. Darkness. Then silence. Then: BATS. BATS. BATS!
Quill flies upward past Azu and a massive swarm of bats follows shortly after. After clamboring up the rope to safety, Azu calculates that the pit is well over 400 feet deep with no end in sight.
The party sets their sights on the path across the pit and to the North. Rota and Chonka shimmy across a ledge to the path ahead. The rest dart across without much hassle. The northern path ends in a large candle-lit room that features three dusty and decorated sarcophagi.
The Tomb of the Three
As the group inspects the tomb, three vampire spawn burst from their stoney cages and attack with a wild hunger. Rota tackles one of the creatures to the ground, restrains it with his new magical chain, and drags the beast towards the center of battle. Chonka restrains another by hefting a large net over it. The room shakes again and a louder rumble rolls through the tomb.
Iolair casts Maximillian’s Earthen Grasp, restraining the last vampire spawn in an earthy fist. As the party finds their stride, Ren notices what appears to be a prisoner’s cell in the corner and Rota Misty Steps over to it. Inside is a ragged looking man in a locked cell. He locks eyes with the centurion.
The others move in to finish off their combatants and shove two of them back into a sarcophagus. They land a flurry of blows on the beasts before Rota yanks the cover back onto the sarcophagus, trapping them inside.
Rota meets the gaze of the prisoner and the ragged man cocks his head and smiles before looking at Ren and rattling the chains that bind him. The crazed prisoner rocks back and forth, repeating something over and over again. He begins to carve something into the wall with a sharpened rock. As Chonka attacks the third vampire, Ren casts Mage Hand and unlocks the gate.
As Ren approaches, the prisoner swings out at him with the dagger cackling madly. Then suddenly stops and says:
Donar, Hodur, Bragi, Modi
They wake, they come, they leave you bloody.
Vingthor, Baldur, Magni, Ran
Run far, run fast, run as quick as you can.
Aegir, Ziu, Hlorridi, Thor
Death for all, all for war.
They stir, they wake, they’re coming, they’re here.
The end is coming, the end is near.
Behind the prisoner on the wall is a familiar sight; the inscription that the Troll King Kurgar carved all over his throne and into his crown of antlers.
The prisoner looks at Ren and with an eerie calmness, says “You know, you really shouldn’t mess around in their business. They see everything.” and slams the sharpened rock into his eye, cackling wildly still.
As the prisoner dies, he does so with a smile on his face and the cavern lurches yet again. This time, the rumbling sound is thunderous and cascades through the entire Undercroft. Ren snatches up the stone that the prisoner made his carvings with and retreats his companions. They dash for the exit.
As the party exits the Undercroft, larger and larger pieces of stone start to fall from the ceiling. They scramble up the stairs they came from as the walls begin to around them. They sprint across the temple and burst through the front doors as the temple at Kaldrfjell turns to a pile of rubble.
After a few moments, the adventurers realize that they are standing in the shadow of an object that was not present in the courtyard when they descended into the Undercroft.
Hackles raise as the towering object begins to sway. The previously obscured sun peeks out from behind the tower as it sways back and forth illuminating a pair of bright yellow eyes, sharp as daggers, that frame a mouth filled with rows of fang-like teeth.
With lightning-like speed the gargantuan serpent strikes, swallowing the adventurers whole and surrounding them in a world of darkness…
Session End.
Copy Link