Shattered Star

The party advances past the cells after a search for loot ends in disappointment. They head further west and downward into a strange room. Stairs descend into the room from the north, a heavy stone door blocks passage to the west, and an eastern corridor exits between cells blocked by doors of rusty iron bars. Scattered about the room are a number of instruments of torture from bygone days, now mostly gone to rot and ruin. The moment Ana becomes visible from the cells, a creature in the north cell begins banging against the rusted bars and scratching its arms through. It cries out with angry growls. The cell seems to be effective at keeping it contained, however.

Anastasia recoils back as the creature jump scares her, gripping her scimitar. "... I know this. A sinspawn, they were Thassilonian shock troopers. They're ageless so you still run into them in Thassilonian ruins sometimes. They're sniff out anger and afflict you with rage."

"Sounds like something we don't want to just leave in a cage," Meliora says grimly, raising her bow. With confirmation from Ana, she shoots it until it is dead.

Cade winces as the abomination succumbs to Meliora's barrage of arrows. "Terrible creatures, sinspawn," the historian hisses as the monsters lies dead. "I truly loathe the tales these monsters leave behind. Nothing but horror and suffering. May the monsters that conjure them rot in the afterlife."

The party then heads east into a circular room. The room is empty save for a ten-foot-wide circular pool filled with clear water. The water appears to be only six inches deep and is crystal clear, leaving the tiled decoration of a swirling vortex plainly visible on the pool's basin.

Cade steps forward to investigate the pool of water by casting a simple detection spell.  After gauging the arcane aura surrounding the pool and tasting the water, Cade concludes that the shallow basin imbues the water with with healing and restorative properties.  He then glances back to the previous room and grimaces, sensing a morbid connection between the two rooms.

The party advances to a wide hall lined with pillars, between which hang thick sheets of webbing. These do not seem to be the older, dusty cobwebs of the corridors, but rather fresh webs. The brittle carcasses of several albino crickets the size of small dogs hang among the tangle. As the party approaches, several spiders descend to attack.

Once again, the spiders are dispatched to the efficient combination of Cade's and Naomi's magic, Ali's hammer, Ana's blade, and Meliora's arrows.

The party continues south into a chamber that opens out in a wide half circle. Giant brick ovens have been built into the curved wall, and fire pits outfitted with multiple spits for roasting are set nearby. Off of this kitchen area are a set of storerooms, though the contents of the smaller storerooms are long since rotted away. The largest storeroom holds a group a skeletal servants that immediately attack the party. They are no match for the heroes, who quickly defeat them.

From the storeroom Anastasia finds a secret door which leads out to a damp natural grotto, its stone ceiling rising forty feet above. Fat columns of brick support the northern end of the room, and the floor of the southern end has been carved into a low dais upon which stands the mold-slicked statue of a beautiful woman wielding a ranseur. As the group enters they see a particularly large arachnoid creature that quickly attacks.

Anastasia and Ali lead the charge into the rough-hewn room; Anastasia gracefully slips around the beast while slashing at its legs while Ali crashes its blade into its front.  From the crevasse, Meliora looses another flurry of arrows which pin into the towering insect's chitinous hide as Cade slips out and presses himself against the wall.  Muttering an incantation and gesticulating towards the albino beast, the wizard splays his hands outward and calls forth a searing wave of clashing colors.  The beast recoils with a screech as its vision fills with stars and darkness, disoriented by the garish assault, which gives the opening Ali and Anastasia were waiting for.  With two more deft strokes of bladework, the monster lies dead on the shallow steps.

With the creature defeated, the party decides to rest for a while, retreating to the fountain room to make camp. As the last watch of Cade and Naomi comes to a close, though, a spider attacks the party. Its scuttling and the resulting girly shout of alarm from one or more of the watchers wake Ali, Anastasia and Mel, and Ali and Anastasia both make quick work of the spider with two well placed blows.

Already woken, Mel, Naomi and Cade begin their daily spell preparation, while Ali catches a few more z's and Anastasia does her morning prayers. In the midst of her prayers, Anastasia notices a... change, for lack of a better word. Akin to awakening and realizing you have a third arm, except on a spiritual level. Magic. "... why would you give me this power, Dawnflower?" She furrows her brow as her prayers turn less rote and more personal. "This, this is not what you taught us magic is meant for, harm and corrosion. You teach of healing, and purification, and... oh." She has her realization, and it chills her to the bone. "... thank you, Sarenrae, for blessing me with a way to heal myself if... if... when..." unable to finish the thought, Anastasia breaks her prayers off, brushing a stray tear away from her eyes, and stands. "Whenever you're all ready, we should press on. I'd like to be finished, or at least able to leave here, by tomorrow night."

Ali yawns and dons their armor and straps their weapons to their belt. They then spend the rest of the time fussing with their mane and teeth in their mirror. "I suppose that's enough beauty rest."

The party heads back through the caves to a room that seems to have once served as guard barracks, but the beds and other furniture here have long since crumbled into almost unrecognizable ruins.

As they head down the stairs, Anastasia's ears perk up at a booming echo that sounds a lot like an explosion. "... Flynt's here," she growls.

Ali readies their blade. "We should hurry then, we cleared out a lot of this place"

The dull roar of the explosion subtly shakes the stone of the Crow, with Cade's head snapping upwards towards the sound.  "Those damnable fools!" he hisses in a mix of anger and exasperation.  "This is a historical Thassilonian monument!  Using crude explosives here would do nothing but damage what few artifacts remain!  --Like the runed door!" he laments as the group continues downward.  "I was planning on examining that!"

"Don't think they care much about the archaeology of the place, Bennett," Anastasia growls. "They're treasure hunters, not Pathfinders."

The group comes down into the chamber below. A red statue of a beautiful woman armed with a large ranseur stands in the center of this chamber. Slime cakes the floor. The source of the slime is a large, hideous maggot-like creature with a fanged maw. It lets loose a wretched roar upon spotting the party. The party makes short work of it, though it does manage to briefly sicken Ali by barfing maggots all over them.

Heading into the next room, the group easily dispatches a couple of Nupperibo devils. They then continue down several hallways before coming to a room with a statue of Alaznist. As they pass through, the statue begins to spark and they run back the way they came. As they run fire engulfs the room and the statue topples. Deciding it safe, they pass back through.

They come to a large hall lined with pillars, between which lie the ruined remains of what was once an immense magical laboratory. Crumbled tables, broken stone urns, rusted cauldrons, and ancient fragments of broken glass lie scattered throughout. The south wall contains many half-cylindrical alcoves lined with Thassilonian runes. The northern wall depicts a vast mural of armies of deformed monsters and demons gathering on the shores of a mountainous island. Above, a woman's face has been carved into the mountaintop, and an immense bridge arches out from just below this woman's face. Below the mountain, at the end of a side view of a tangled network of caverns, lies a vast underground vault in which an immense monstrosity of tentacles surrounds a central fanged mouth; within the mouth glares an angry red eye.

Cade looks quizzically at the half-cylinders, then in awe at the mural on the northern wall.  Recognizing what the mural depicts, Cade marvels "A scene of the Irespan when it was whole!  It even depicts Hollow Mountain on the shores of Bakrakhan!  Were we not pressed for time..."  The wizard trails off as the group maneuvers through the ancient laboratory and continues their search.

Upon leaving the laboratory, the party tries to speed up their search, yet they find themselves navigating a roughly-hewn labyrinth of twisting corridors.  Stalactites of various sizes hang from the irregular ceiling of this cavern, dripping slowly onto the stone floor to form a pair of shallow pools. Sheets of fungus grow in a riot along the walls and floor of these dank caves, while what appear to be the fossilized bones of some huge monster lie slumped to the northwest.  Quivering in one of these shallow pools is an ooze, which the party swiftly step past to avoid disturbing.

After a few more guesses, the group finds themselves in a room partially submerged with water.  Two flights of steps descend into a wide pool of murky water in this room. Pillars carved to look like coiling tentacles support the vaulted roof, rising from the pool to the north and south.  Inside this pool of water lie three sinspawn in wait, their forms twisted and contorted to have crude gills flaring from their necks and spaces between their digits filled with webbed skin.  Cade, retrieving his arcane focus from his robes, invokes the element of fire and gesticulates menacingly at the three glaring aberrations.  The water around two of them erupts into a searing explosion of steam and flame from underneath the water, badly burning one while leaving the other singed.  In retaliation, the monsters surface from the water in an attempt to drag them into their terrain, but Anastasia and Ali easily overpower them and slay them with little difficulty.

The party advances toward a short flight of stairs which leads down to a thirty-foot-square chamber with a cistern filled with dark water taking up most of the floor. Troughs of this dark water run east, west, and south through hallways alongside five-foot-wide walkways. Soggy timbers have been draped over the gaps to provide unstable looking bridges over the troughs. An ornamental torch made of onyx burns in a sconce next to a hallway heading east.

The group attempts to head south, but encounters a room filled with flammable poison gas and decides to head west instead. There they pass a collapsed sewer channel and a pool of ooze as they rush forward.

Eventually they hit a much larger room. Blue, glowing fungus grows in numerous patches across the walls of this large chamber. To the east, a shadowy balcony overlooks the room at a height of ten feet, while in the center of the room a wide spiral stairwell descends into the darkness. A second flight of stairs descends along the western wall. Inside the room are 3 derros moving erratically and arguing with each other in undercommon. They all spring to attack upon seeing the intruders.

The derro get the first shots in, but with Ali and Ana charging into the room, supported by arrows and magic from Meliora, Cade, and Naomi, two soon die. The third runs away, and Meliora gets in a few parting shots.

Having no inclination to give chase to the derro given the group's goal, they begin to head to the room's southern end and near a door.  However, as they approach, Cade feels a distant, strange thrumming sensation coming from his left side.   Though it feels completely alien to him, Cade experiences an unnerving sensation of familiarity--as if he's seen this before.  Voicing his current experiences to the group and motioning to where the droning originates, the group stumbles upon a set of stairs hidden behind a false wall.  Laconically, the group elects to descend the flight as they follow the wizard's intuition.

The room below shines with a golden light emanating from crystals embedded in the domed ceiling. The entire dome is painted in reds and golds depicting the glory days of ancient Thassilon and remains as pristine as if the pigments were just laid. An altar shaped like a seven-pointed star sits in the center of the room. A smaller seven-pointed shape has been carved into the center of this larger block of stone. Sitting in one of the star's arms is a shard of black metal. Floating above this altar is a strange spider-like creature that appears to be in suspended animation. Once the party approaches, however, it quickly springs back to life and attacks.

The group enters the room, spying only the beast in this room. Ali charges in and Ana isn't far behind as Mel sings. The beast tries to web Ali but she avoids it. It smacks around Ana but Naomi goes in to heal. Cade sets it ablaze, causing it to flee. Ali and Ana follow and manage to slay it. "Fucking...spiders" Ali curses in dwarven

As the monstrous spider lays dead in the far corner of the splendorous room, Cade slowly nears the alter in the center of the room, eyes aglow as he marvels at the murals adorning the wall.  As he reaches the top of the stairs, however, his attention returns back to the jet-black metal resting in the seven-pointed engraving.  Performing a simple divination on the metal's arcane properties, Cade blinks in surprise and adjusts his glasses.  "...I may have to revise my earlier theory," the wizard admits as he cautiously nears the shard.  "Originally I had suspected the Crow to belong to Alaznist due to her depictions across the structure, but now... well, this Shard is aglow with an aura of Transmutation.  The Sin of Greed."

Taking a moment to scan the room's surroundings, Cade murmurs "That would explain the ostentatious of this room and the earlier murals... but what of the depictions of Alaznist?  Hrm..."  Cade ponders in thought for a moment before shaking his head clear of the thought.  "Regardless, we've done it."  Cade says this casually at first, then slowly begins to beam as the moment truly hits him. "...Aha!  We've done it!  The second Shard of the Sihedron!  An archaeological breakthrough and a cornerstone of Magnimar's history!"