Shadowdark in the Lost City - Session 1, Pt. 2
Our characters for this session included:
- Belit, Human, Fighter, 1st Level
- Dagon, Human, Thief, 1st Level
- Samira, Elf, Thief, 1st Level
- Uras, Human, Priest, 1st Level
- Zippo, Human, Wizard, 1st Level
Sun‑scorched, tongues swollen with thirst, and stomachs ravaged by hunger, the five adventurers cautiously peered through the partially opened stone doorway. At their feet lay the withered remains of an orc, impaled through the chest with a bronze javelin. The door was held open by the foul creature’s booted feet.
Placing a foot on the orc’s shoulder, Belit worked the javelin free. Bronze weapons were relics of an older age, long surpassed by the superiority of cold steel. The warrior pushed the door further open, revealing a thirty‑foot dusty corridor. The far wall held a chest‑high, two‑inch‑wide hole—likely where the javelin had been fired from some sort of trap. The corridor turned left, disappearing into darkness.
Zippo removed a lantern and flask of oil from his backpack while Uras, priest of Marduk, drove two iron spikes into the stone doorjamb to keep it open. With the lantern lighting the way, Dagon and Samira took point and advanced down the hallway. After turning left, they found the corridor ending at a closed stone door twenty feet ahead. The thieves examined it carefully. Finding nothing of note, the companions stepped up and heaved it open.
The highest tier of the pyramid was a single 40‑foot square room. It smelled old and musty. Dust on the floor had been disturbed, though nothing specific could be made out. Three large bronze cylinders rose from floor to ceiling in the center of the room. Each cylinder had a bronze door at floor level, complete with a handle for pulling it open.
Samira and Dagon advanced slowly, senses sharp. The rest of the party followed, and behind them the door began to swing shut. In front of the center cylinder’s door, Dagon found a splatter of dried blood. Samira completed a circuit of the room and, kneeling by another cylinder, detected a faint hissing noise. When they mentioned it, Dagon straightened and scanned the room. Suddenly the chamber seemed to spin; Dagon swooned and shook their head. The group quickly guessed that invisible gas was filling the room and propped the door open with the javelin.
With the room airing out, the party regrouped in the hallway. Once recovered, Dagon examined the doorjamb more closely and found a hidden trigger that must have released the gas. After a few minutes, the adventurers returned inside. Uras pulled one of the bronze handles and was met with a volley of four bronze darts from the wall behind him. One found a gap in his armor. Grimacing, he yanked it free and cast it aside. Grasping his holy symbol, he spoke a prayer to Marduk, Father of Storms, and was healed.
Dagon gave the center cylinder a thorough inspection and, feeling as confident as possible, pulled the door open. A metal ladder ran both up and down inside. Downward was pitch black; upward was faintly illuminated. Climbing up, Dagon quickly realized they were inside the statue of the child god. They could peer through eye holes, speak through a tube in a booming voice, and raise or lower the statue’s arms using two levers.
After climbing back down, Dagon shared their discovery and resolved to explore downward. Zippo leaned into the doorway to shine his lantern below, revealing a small circle of dusty stone floor twenty feet down. Dagon descended the ladder with Zippo following carefully, lantern in hand. Dropping to the floor, Dagon saw movement as large shiny segmented insects scurried out of the light.
The other adventurers followed and began to fan out across the square room. The party found the room to hold spare parts for the machinery inside the statues as well as several large, covered clay pots. In one corner also stood a portable bronze foundry with assorted tools. As party members began to poke about, four blood-red segmented worm-like creatures as long as an arm attacked. In a quick combat, the giant centipedes were dispatched but not before Belit took a minor bite to the leg.
The others followed and fanned out across the square room. It held spare parts for the statues’ machinery, several large covered clay pots, and a portable bronze foundry with assorted tools. As the party poked around, four blood‑red segmented worm‑like creatures as long as an arm attacked. The giant centipedes were quickly dispatched, though Belit suffered a minor bite to the leg.
Zippo examined the oozing carapaces, his stomach growling. He looked at the others and shrugged—why not? Hunger overcame their disgust and perhaps their better judgment. The party lit a fire in the foundry and cooked a few choice segments. They each sampled the “meal,” and three of the five soon found their stomachs in revolt. Still well enough to continue, they surveyed the room, finding two doors on the west wall and one on the east, along with faint footprints leading through the southwest door.
Choosing the northwest door, the thieves examined it but found nothing concerning. Belit pushed it open, revealing a 40‑foot dark, dusty corridor. Dagon and Samira, working as a team, inched along the hallway searching for hidden threats. Thirty feet in, Dagon detected a faint seam in the southern wall. Tracing it with a dagger tip, the thief found it outlined a concealed doorway. After some testing, Dagon located a triggering mechanism, and the door slid aside to reveal a faintly lit room.
Inside, seven large orange leathery‑winged insects with long needlelike beaks darted through the air. They reacted instantly, zipping toward Dagon. Before the thief could draw a blade, one drove its beak deep into their neck. Staggering back into the hallway, Dagon collapsed at their companions’ feet, the Sting Bat greedily sucking their blood. Zippo reacted almost as quickly, evoking a spell. With the final syllable, all the Sting Bats dropped from the air, fast asleep.
Samira moved quickly to Dagon’s side. Removing the now‑sleeping Sting Bat, she was met with a sudden spurt of blood from the open wound. She clamped her hand over it, stemming the flow. Uras rushed forward, holy symbol in hand. The healing power of Marduk flowed through the thief’s body; the bleeding ceased, and the wound closed. It had been a very close call. After a moment to recover, the group dispatched the sleeping Sting Bats. Perhaps hoping to improve upon his centipede poppers, Zippo cleaned three of their small corpses for a potential future meal—maybe they would taste like chicken.
Dagon and Samira explored the room and discovered that the Sting Bats must have been coming and going through a small crack in the wall. Just enough light seeped in to glimmer on the facets of four gems scattered among the dust and bat guano.
Gathering back in the hallway, the comrades proceeded around the corner to the right and advanced forty feet. The hallway turned again to the right, with a stone doorway on the right wall twenty feet ahead. Moving with a bit of extra caution, the party opened the door to find a room filled with rotting bales of what might once have been cloth and dusty crates. The air smelled as though the room had been sealed for ages. Finding nothing of use, they continued down the corridor as it turned once more to the right, where they came upon a door in the left wall.
This room was tightly sealed and extremely dry. In the center of the floor sat a small stack of dry‑rotted crates. After searching for traps and other dangers, the party investigated the crates. Most of their contents disintegrated at a touch, but Zippo managed to pull several ancient fireworks from the pile—skyrockets, packets of flash powder, firecrackers, and roman candles, some of which might still work.
Returning to the hallway, the group rounded a corner to the left and saw three large clay urns against the far north wall, along with a door to their right. One urn was filled with sand, while the other two held crusty salt deposits—likely left behind by long‑evaporated water. The sight only reminded them of their terrible thirst. Turning to the stone door, Belit pushed it open, and their lamplight revealed a glistening substance covering half the floor. Otherwise, the room appeared empty.
Wisely, the fighter hesitated and looked back to the others. Zippo stepped to the urns and grabbed a handful of sand. Lobbing it into the room, the bulk of the sand landed in a heap on the wet‑looking stone. Upon contact, the gelatinous substance reacted, snapping away from the sand in all directions. Translucent tendrils formed as the mass began to pull itself together. Belit pulled the door partially closed while Zippo uttered an incantation and thrust his hand into the gap. Jets of flame erupted from his fingertips, lighting the room as fire engulfed the space. Just as quickly, the flames receded, only slowing the writhing jelly‑like mass now oozing toward the door, larger tendrils feeling their way forward.
Belit slammed the door shut, and the party retreated a short distance down the corridor. The ooze began to seep into the hallway beneath the stone door, slow but relentless. Zippo, with Uras’s help, toppled the urn of sand in front of the door, burying the creature beneath a pile. The sand was quickly pushed aside as shining, slimy tendrils emerged and struck out. Belit and Uras stepped forward to engage, dodging the attacks. As the gelatinous mass continued to form, Uras invoked the power of Marduk and imbued Belit’s blade with holy energy. Belit thrust the glowing weapon into the mass, which recoiled before surging back at him.
Stepping beside their comrades, Samira and Dagon notched silver‑tipped arrows and let fly—two solid hits as the arrows sank into the writhing creature. Pressing the attack, Belit slashed the otherworldly beast with his thin, sharp elvish blade, while Uras brought down his mace but missed as the two jostled for space. Two more arrows were loosed at near point‑blank range as the ooze rapidly withdrew beneath the closed door and disappeared.
Cracking the door open, Belit saw the creature shrinking in on itself and quickly disintegrating. He opened the door wide and scanned the room—absolutely nothing remained, the chamber scoured clean. Breathing sighs of relief, the companions regrouped outside. Having reached a dead end, they decided to retrace their steps to the central room where they had first descended. Upon arriving, they chose to try the southwest door, through which humanoid tracks appeared to lead.
They traveled down a forty‑foot corridor that turned left toward a stone door before turning left again. Trying the door, they found it opened into a dark stairwell winding downward. Deciding to continue exploring the current tier of the pyramid, they closed the door. The passage extended only twenty more feet before turning right and ending at a stone door on the eastern wall. Opening it, the party found a sparsely furnished room with rotting furniture—a sleeping pallet, a standing desk, and a small table. On the floor lay the body of a dead orc, and on the far wall, a closed door.
Carefully entering, the party fanned out. Belit moved to inspect the body while Zippo poked through the remnants of the desk. Belit determined that the orc had been dead for several weeks, similar to the one at the pyramid entrance. Its left arm was blackened with putrefaction and badly swollen. Rolling the corpse over, the fighter spotted a waterskin. Meanwhile, Zippo barely touched the ancient desk before it collapsed into near‑sawdust from dry rot. Among the decayed wood, he found a silver necklace bearing a stylized lightning‑bolt medallion. Without hesitation, he slipped it around his neck.
Equally without hesitation—or at least not much—Belit unstoppered the half‑full waterskin and offered it to his comrades. Each savored only a single mouthful before once again feeling dry as sun-bleached bone.