The Aldelle Group – Session 19 – The Devil's Cave

This session happened Tuesday, March 22, 2011.  This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training.  I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)
Wednesday (female elf rogue)
Sahar (female human fighter)
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Luna (female elf sorcerer)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)


[This session ended with a cliffhanger.  I am writing with the advantage of having played the following session already, otherwise this entry would have been very brief.]

April 9, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, for His light makes all things visible.

Over the week after the attack on Terranor by the demons and devils, we gathered each evening in the common room of the Murdered Manticore after assisting in the recovery of the city to discuss our options.  We could go to the vrock cave and search it further, we could go to the university to seek Professor Walsh, or we could seek new trouble to get into.  We all agreed that it was very unlikely that Professor Walsh would be available if he was in and if he wasn't back yet, he likely will not be back for a while.  New trouble did not seem appealing (we were also uncertain as to which way we wanted to go), so we eventually decided on the vrock cave.  Plus, there was still a reward for defeating the vrock.

We contacted Guildmaster Jarr (now in the guild's temporary headquarters within the walls of Terranor) and informed him of our plan.  We also suggested he attempt to get a better fee for defeat of the vrock, as it seemed much more dangerous than a week ago.  We then paid Short John for the previous week and the next week and had him lay in supplies for another trip into the countryside.

We have traveled half a day to reach the vrock cave.  Once we arrived here, we scouted the area and then set our camp in a secluded and defensible spot.  We are about to enter the cave and put an end to the vrock and hopefully stop the attacks on Terranor.


[In hurried handwriting]

Blessed is Ra, whose light protects us!

The cave was both better and worse than we expected.  Magic had reshaped the tunnels and caverns past the barghest side caves.  Those side caves were now home to a pair of bearded devils (now defunct). 
Most of the rest of the caverns were empty.  The evil shrine was once again malevolently active and I once again purified it.  This time we were determined to turn over the altar and possibly break it.  Instead, Sahar, Frankie, Aziz, and I lifted the top off and found a hollow underneath containing a skeleton that radiated evil.  These bones were also cleansed with holy water and blessed, hopefully purging the shrine once and for all, but I do not expect to be able to verify that for some time.

The final length of the cave was achieved through a set of secret doors, starting in the shrine.  The passage beyond was trapped, with the trigger was at the far end.  Wednesday missed it and triggered the release of a lightning bolt down the corridor, catching Sahar and Aziz (Frankie was able to avoid the bolt and the rest of us were out of the area effected).

Behind the door at the end of the passage was the vrock's chamber.  The vrock was sitting in a pentagram, chanting - a pentagram similar to the gate in the Delve.  Frankie charged into the room, hoping to use a tanglefoot bag on the vrock to keep it from dancing (a method of generating a large area attack according to Tre-ba), but he discovered two quasits and two things that looked like very large quasits (later identified by Tre-ba as nabasu) were also in the room and invisible – or were invisible until they attacked!

Sahar and Aziz charged into the room, also seeking to close in on the vrock, but were unable to reach it before being swarmed by quasits.  Sahar was able to kill most of the quasits with a mighty cleave of her holy longsword, freeing Aziz to reach the still chanting vrock.  Aziz and Frankie flanked the vrock, but not before it gated in a pig-like demon.  The pig-demon concentrated attacks on Aziz while Aziz and Frankie concentrated their attacks on the vrock.  I moved into the room to keep everyone as healed as I could and to cast bless.  Luna used an elixir of fly from Tre-ba to move in and cast spells from relative safety – until the nabasu took flight and started attacking her.

We were close to killing the vrock, we all knew it, and were possibly going to win the whole fight – until the vrock finished its chanting and opened a portal to a terrible place.  After the portal opened, a demon of smoke and fire with a burning whip stepped through, filling us all with dread.  We might kill the vrock, but we were now too late to stop its mission and surely the demon of smoke and fire would not let us escape alive.

Then a miracle happened.

The whole room was infused with light – a light so bright that none of us could see.  When it finally dimmed, our entire group, including Short John, his donkey, and all our supplies were standing in a clearing in a forest somewhere.  I immediately healed everyone in case we were attacked again, and then we took stock of our surroundings.  Tre-ba is scouting around right now, under the influence of a fly elixir.  I am taking this time to update my journal for – she's back.  More later.

*End of Session*

[The actual session ended with the bright light and no other explanation – a classic cliffhanger.  The actions afterward (including finding ourselves in a forest) actually happened at the beginning of the following session.  Due to my switch to a character journal format, I'm stealing a little from the following session to explain when Harkaitz had time to write all this down.  I thought about just ending the entry after the third paragraph, but thought that would be cheating - fun, but cheating.]