Heather Under Moonlight

Saturday Group, 30/11/2025 and 6/12/2025

30/11/2025

The party confronts the assassin with the crossbow, who fires a single magic bolt before being pursued and captured alive. He is taken to Tor, where they meet with King Sigurd's castellan and hand him over to hang in the morning. They then continue taking their goods to the refugees from Kelling, finally delivering them, and going out to search for some missing fishermen. They find the fishermen and hear that one boy had run off, looking for a tower in the forest where he thought he might find gold. The party pursue the boy and find a ruined tower sunken into a cenote. On the cenote's rim, they slay a group of stirges, then descend into the pit and explore the tower. The first room they find is filled with dripping acid slime; using the stirges' corpses to shield them, they walk through and search the building, slaying more stirges and finding a silver mirror.

6/12/2025

The party continues their exploration of the dungeon. There's some subterranean structures around the cenote, as well as a cave with a waterfall, and the party decides to ascend that way. Edith nervously scouts them, finding a big room full of purple mushrooms that she avoids, and then heading up to the highest point to find a rough-hewn room with a bed of violets and a door covered in herbs. She calls her allies up, fails to check the door for traps, and gets blasted by a Fire Trap; then, as the smoke clears, sees seven undead figures clustered around a marble obelisk on a pile of bones. Three of the seven wear gems in the foreheads of their skulls. Thistle shoves her out of the way, hacking down one of the creatures, and Serenity drives them back. The badly wounded Edith is healed and then blasts the cowering figures with her Ring of Shooting Stars, enabling Thistle and Audrey to mop up.

The party collects the garnets and takes a sketch of the scene for later; they then sweep around to another entrance, a stone platform projecting out into the cenote, and begin to clear the thick brambles which have overgrown the two exits. Suddenly, they are attacked by a pair of corpses overgrown with vines - needlemen! The needlemen inflict minor wounds; one is slain by a magic missile and the other hacked apart by axes. The party fires the brambles and searches the rooms behind, finding a couple of empty rooms, two corridors, and a room with twelve silver plant pots. One of the pots contains a large spider, which attacks Audrey and reduces her to 0 HP with its poison before being destroyed by Lucius. There was a potion of Extra-Healing concealed in one of the pots, so the party continues on, only a little the worse for wear. They clear out a few more rooms, finding more needlemen, and finally a large room with a great bush of needle-bearing vines and ten needlemen. The party retreats hastily beyond the door and lets the creatures trickle through; they slay all of them, but Harald the Crossbowman is knocked unconscious and a number of the others are wounded. They cut the bush up to make magic arrows and withdraw for the night.