Discoveries at the Terrace of Broken Horses

This session happened Friday, June 18, 2010, and was the only session I ran this past weekend.

I had two new players join the group this week, raising the number of players in the pool to eight. Due to character creation and the real weather making folks late, we did not get as much in, but some significant things were learned by the player characters.

Adventuring Group:

Su Bel (human cleric)

Sal Ty (elf wizard)

San Ti (dwarf monk)

Sinn (gnome bard)

Mog the Doomed (half-orc barbarian)

Agnes Sunbeard (dwarven rogue/barbarian)

Tycho von Helmont (elven alchemist)

The rainy season arrived, pinning the adventurers in the Iron Keep as the plains turned swampy and difficult to move through. During this time, another supply ship arrived from the mainland. In addition to the supplies necessary to keep the Keep running, two new adventurers arrived, San Ti, a dwarven monk, and Sinnseyeceeingthis (this is usually as much of her name as she gets out before it is immediately shortened to "Sinn"), a gnome bard.

With an unusually large number of adventurers available, the group decided to make another attempt at the Terrace of Fallen Horses, hoping to defeat the air elemental that drove them off last time. When the rains let up, the group headed west.

It took them two days to make it to the Ruined Hills, during which dime they defeated a dire lion, a giant scorpion, and a cockatrice while avoiding a ghost roaming the hills (they distracted it by moving past a small herd of goats). The morning of the third day they discovered they were lost in the Ruined Hills. It took half the day to work out exactly where they were and how to get to the place they wanted to be. The second tomb was once again resealed.

While being shown around the site, Sinn recalled a bit of knowledge that she once heard about a plains civilization that strongly associated with horses. She remembered that they marked the burial sites of their leaders with life-sized horse statues, so each broken horse statue on the lower terrace once marked a tomb. Sal spent some time with his mend spell partially assembling the broken statues to get an idea of how many tombs there are. He was able to assemble the statues enough to verify there were 16 statues. Yet the adventurers had only located 8 possible tombs. This meant there were eight other tombs to be located! Valuable information indeed.

After casting several spells to prep for facing the air elemental, including Mog drinking a potion of growth, Mog moved the stone slab sealing the tomb and entered it. Peeking into the Queen's Tomb, Mog spotted two re-formed skeletal champions who attacked him. Mog lured them back out of the tomb and the group quickly dispatched them. Mog then returned to the Queen's Tomb and opened the queen's sarcophagus, summoning the air elemental.

Mog was able to overpower the elemental's DR, nearly destroying it himself. However, if Su Bel had not been there to heal Mog several times during the fight, he would not have survived the fight or defeated the elemental. In addition to the treasure in the Queen's Tomb, the adventurers found a map to a magical treasure inscribed on a dragon scale. They carefully wrapped up the treasures and placed them in the bag of holding. Then they made camp for the night in the King's Tomb (which was fairly defensible).

The adventurers decided to return with their treasure and so they could consult the Table Map to determine where the Dragon Scale Map leads to. On the way they had to avoid a pride of dire lions but little else. They returned to the Iron Keep on the fifth day of adventuring. After converting the treasures they found to coin, they split the fairly large sum evenly amongst themselves. Everyone was very happy.