Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 33 [RPG]

[Starday, 30 Desnus, 4708 A.R. continued]

Deep under Arkona Palace, the Harrowed Heroes face a dilemma: one of their number has fallen under a magical slumber and can’t be awakened!  Yraelzin makes several attempts to remove the enchantment, but meets with no success before proclaiming that his “nearly inexhaustible” reserve of magical energies are running low.  With Anorak still wracked by pain from another magical trap, The Reckoner says the group needs to retreat.  Goldcape is bundled onto Rocky’s back.  The explorers backtrack to the original chamber where they pulled the lever, and pull it again.  But although the room slowly spins as before, it doesn’t return to its original position!  Instead, it rotates only 90 degrees to reveal a new series of chambers.  The Reckoner quickly tries to pull the lever again, but the mechanism must have a built-in delay!  He tries to force it nonetheless, but the gearwork behind the lever is too complicated for him to adjust.

Mere seconds later, the danger of being stuck in the Vivified Labyrinth in its current configuration becomes apparent: the darksphinx has been set free!  The dangerous foe has the body of a lion, wings of an eagle, and the upper body of a comely woman.  She smiles at having found her prey so easily, and conjures forth a cloying gray miasma of dark energies that roils through the group, and even the unconscious Goldcape and his companion Rocky are harmed by it.  The darksphinx then retreats the way she came, and when Anorak rushes to follow, he sets off another magical symbol trap!  Fortunately, his innate dwarven resistance to magic sees him through the danger.  Thanks to Glorio Arkona’s earlier warning and The Reckoner’s foresight, the group has come prepared with vials of magical oils to coat their weapons with.  The darksphinx lands one deep cut on The Reckoner, but his battle-maul proves devastatingly effective and Anorak finishes the battle with a powerful swing of his dwarven waraxe.

The group pushes forward into the darksphinx’s throne room.  Manacled to a tiger-headed statute is an unconscious man covered in bruises, barely-healed cuts, and tattered rags:  Vencarlo Orisini!  The Reckoner smashes the manacles to free the man, and the judicious application of a magical healing wand brings the fencing instructor (and noted critic of the monarchy) to consciousness.  Despite the obvious pain he’s in, Vencarlo manages a smile when he recognises fellow allies of Field Marshal Kroft.  But he also realises that the labyrinth is no place to linger, and asks the group if they’ve found Neolandus Kalepopolis yet.  When he hears that they haven’t, he explains that there’s an illusory wall near the entrance to the labyrinth—and he saw Neolandus being dragged through it.  The Reckoner lends Vencarlo a pair of short swords so that he can contribute should there be a need for more bloodshed.

This time, when the lever is pulled, the room rotates—but to a configuration that sees the chamber’s only exit completely blocked by solid rock!  The Reckoner spends the following minute trying furiously to speed up the built-in delay mechanism, knowing that the group’s magical defences are ebbing with each passing moment.  When the gearwork finally resets on its own, another pull of the lever appears to have restored the labyrinth to the configuration that the group first found it.  Vencarlo shows The Reckoner where the illusory wall is—it leads to a tunnel and a set of stairs that descend to a door.  Sobbing—and gentle murmuring--can be heard coming from the other side of it.  When the door is opened, the relief of finding Neolandus is tempered by the realisation that he’s stretched out on a torture rack!  The entire room has been furnished with torture devices, and its stranger master is present: a six-armed woman whose head has three fanged faces!  A whispered spell temporarily paralyses Anorak, but his willpower is strong enough that he’s able to break free seconds later.  Meanwhile, The Reckoner and Vencarlo rush in to surround her.  But the torturer is too wily to be surrounded so easily and dashes away, leaving a bloody gash in The Reckoner’s jerkin from a sharp-edged kukri.  The room is small enough that she’s quickly cornered—but it’s Yraelzin who wins the battle.  With his most common enchantments depleted, he recalls a necromantic spell he had almost forgotten about.  Overcoming his foe’s resistance to magic, Yraelzin forces her bones to shatter!  But when the sagging corpse falls to the ground, the group is horrified to realise that the flesh is slowly knitting together!  Nothing seems to work to stop it until another vial of blessed oil is applied to The Reckoner’s hammer.

As the group is freeing and rousing Neolandus, rumbling can be heard from the north and from above, and the ground itself seems to shake.  The group race up the stairs and towards the illusory wall, but then they hear a voice on the other side of it pleading for help—Vencarlo Orisini’s voice!  The Reckoner peers through and sees a second Vencarlo who looks almost exactly like the one that is with them.  The “new” Vencarlo and the “old” Vencarlo argue and are questioned, and both give plausible accounts.  The Reckoner is torn on what to do until he notices some of the “new” Vencarlo’s skin looks like it’s flaking, and that the figure’s voice is higher in tone than the “old” one.  But before he can confront the newcomer, Yraelzin’s voice calls out from the tunnel saying that there’s been a betrayal!  The others rush back to see that the silver dagger Goldcape took from Verik Vancaskerkin’s office weeks ago has somehow turned into a snake—and it’s poised to sink its teeth into Yraelzin’s neck!

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GM Commentary

In-game, the group is rushing from place to place so that their short-lived buffs don't expire.  This has become one of the most notable features of the group that I'd never seen before: at points, they might each have literally a dozen low-level buffs (from wands, potions, and spellcasting) going.  Keeping track of all of these bonuses and their durations is a logistical pain in the butt.

What became the group's favourite spell for Yraelzin, boneshaker, made its debut this session.  Whenever there's indecision about what the character should do during an encounter, the chant "boneshaker!" starts up pretty quickly.

The "two Vencarlos" worked pretty well!  I might have even carried it further, except The Reckoner has a pretty high Perception score.  I was also thrilled to reveal that the "silver dagger" Goldcape has been carrying since mid-way through Chapter 1 is a shapechanging monster that has been spying on the group for House Arkona.