So after dividing up the loot we did some trading and then took some time off for a well deserved rest. During this time, several of the party members went carousing with the usual zany results. Cyrcla and Gradwin both met their soul mates and fell in love (not with each other but someone else) but managed to put off the weddings until the winter. Taleth had a fling with a tavern serving wench and narrowly avoided getting the clap (fortunately, he made his CON save). Bellinorn got completely smashed one night and woke up naked somewhere in an unfamiliar place with no idea how he had arrived there. Apparently, he thought it would be fun to streak across the town while inebriated which earned him a well deserved reputation in Medea’s Gate as a drunken lout.
And last but not least, Teth-en-Aire went to a gambling house and once again lost all of his money – he even had to empty out the money he had in his savings account with the Devoted Brothers of the White Caduceus to repay his gambling debts. This is the second time that he has had such a result at the gaming table (it also happened in Limus Town while carousing), which either makes him incredibly unlucky, very gullible and easily taken by card sharks, or perhaps he imbibed too much during the game which could have befuddled his wits. So after all of the drunken revelry and shenanigans, we purchased provisions for a return trip to the Vault of the Dweomerblade. Before we left, Gradwin contacted Wilfred, our Surgeon’s Guild contact in Medeas Gate. He wanted to know when they wanted us to repay our debt to them for having Teth-en-Aire raised from the dead after our disastrous encounter with the three Chimera’s outside of the shrine of Zingalis. Wilfred told him that it was too late in the year at this point for us to undertake that task, so we would have to do it in the spring after the snows melted.
Once we were ready, we set off through the woods to the ruined tower which was only a day or so away from the City of Medea’s Gate. We arrived at the ruins during a light snow which was a bit early this year. We knew little about the wizard who built the tower aside from what was whispered in ancient legends and stories. Three to four centuries ago in the period before the Republic was united, a powerful wizard named the Dweomerblade disappeared and his final whereabouts were never fully explained. The Dweomerblade was a strange figure from the distant past that was active in and around Lykaedia during "the struggles" – the wars between Grand Oryx and the men of Lykaedia and the Trench.
The tower itself was almost completely destroyed but the ruins of the structure remain. We found out later that the tower was destroyed during the struggles by the forces of Grand Oryx as retribution for the Dweomerblade siding with the men of the Anvil during the wars. We ventured into the ruins of the tower and searched a bit on the snow covered floor until we located the hidden trap door that we knew was there. We opened it up and went down the stairs to the room below. Previously, we had looked into the room from the staircase and had seen the statues but didn’t adventure further into the complex.
We entered the room and took a look at the statues. They were of strange looking creatures and one of them depicted an alien being with tentacles on its face. One of the clerics recognized it as the visage of one of the Elder Gods (Cthulhu no doubt). As we searched the room, we noticed that there were strange glyphs carved into the right hand wall opposite one of the statues written in a strange dialect of Brimbahri (demonic). When translated, the glyph said “Greetings worthy journeymen and followers. Congratulations on your daring journey to the Vault of the Dweomerblade. Your reward for daring can be found behind you. Go no further for you will be entering the dire realm of the masters.” We then searched the statue directly opposite the glyphs and found it to be hollow. We broke it open and found a large stash of gold and silver coins and some gems hidden within which we promptly placed in the Bag of Holding.
We continued searching the long rectangular room, in particular, a small 10’ x 10’ niche in the back left corner where we found a secret door. We opened the secret door and it led into a rough stone cavern. On the floor of the cavern, there appeared to be some sort of summoning circle or something with glyphs carved into the circle at different points. The circle also surrounded a 6’ wide perfectly cut circular hole in the floor. The dwarves took a look at the stonework and couldn’t determine exactly who or what made the circle and stone shaft. Kaira cast detect traps and we determined that the stone circle was not a trap so Gradwin peered down into the shaft to have a look and all he could see was darkness below as far as he could see. So he pulled out one of his stones that had continual light cast on it, and lowered it down into the shaft using his Ring of Telekinesis. The shaft appeared to be a perfectly carved cylindrical hole that went through the rock about 120’ until it opened up into a larger cavern. He let go of the rock to see how far down it would go and it appeared to travel another 120’ or so before he heard it splash into some water below and disappear.
The arcane spellcasters looked at the glyphs and determined that they were written in Brimbahri and contained some sort of spell, but couldn’t determine what it was without casting read magic on them which none of them had learned that day. We also found a rectangular panel mounted on the wall at about shoulder height with bas relief sculpture on it in the shape of raised dots and dashes. It appeared to be some sort of control panel for the summoning circle, although we had no idea how it was supposed to work. Since there were no other doors in the chamber, and we didn’t want to just start randomly pushing buttons on the panel, we decided to rest up for the night so we could cast read magic on the circular glyphs carved into the floor to try and determine what they said or were for. So we returned to the previous chamber, setup our lookouts and went to sleep for the night.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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