The Temple Andrussia
Episode 13, descent into the depths of the temple.
- mtb playing Manqoba
- CaptainSabatini playing Esgorman
- Igneous playing Fiske
The Crab Wranglers came upon the Silver Blades encampment the next day, which stood facing a massive temple carved into the cliffside. Neat rows of tents, guard patrols, and a cannon demonstrated a level of organization not found elsewhere in the basin anymore. They were quickly approached by someone who turned out to be the local commander, Guildmaster Reanna Saur. She'd heard of them and was excited to see them for reasons yet unexplained. She invited them to camp and so they set up and immediately got to washing off the seabed grime.
Exploring the camp, they first went to see the medic tent where they met a mute surgeon named Belgrin, a shortsighted chemist named Yolla, and a hard-of-hearing anesthetist named Spindle, who revealed that they didn't have any solutions for sea rot but they were very good at cutting infected bits out.
At the Guildmaster's tent, they attempted to work out how they could gain access to the temple only to for Reanna to jump at the opportunity to send them in. Her camp was practically mutinous (led by Sergeant Gerhold Umber) at the thought of sending further people in to die and her bosses were similarly displeased with how much they'd profited from the expedition. She assured them that if they'd scout the place for her, they could walk away with what they found before it being inventoried, and recommended they speak with the dwarf engineer twins.
The pair, Torgrad and Doldan Bristlebeard, seemed to do everything around the camp, running The Blasthouse taproom out of their tent as well as tending the cannon and manufacturing staggering amounts of poorly-handled explosives. The twins promised not to blow up anything in the temple for a week if the Wranglers were going in, and after telling them their theory about a landside entrance to the temple, gave them a big cask of explosive powder and instructions to find an internal exit to the surface.
They also revealed that a potential alternate entrance had been found into the temple, a massive grate on the sea floor nearby which they'd found wrenched open. The Wranglers didn't like the sound of that and chose to enter the front door.
The party geared up and headed in and down. The inside was a cool, smoothly sloping tunnel that spiraled downward in a very large diameter, winding into the earth. Occasionally they found evidence of the Blade's prior expeditions, bits of kit, spilled blood, mail links, and broken blades, but never any bodies.
After a significant descent, they came to a large marble-covered circular chamber bisected by a ribbon of inlaid gold...circuitry?... across it, with the bodies of two Silver Blades cleanly bisected on either side of it. They spent a while testing it out, messing with the gold, especially where it seemed to have been already somewhat pried-up, and tossing things across the boundary, before eventually just risking it.
The other side proved to be less human, but whatever might have killed those mercenaries didn't activate as the rest of the group rushed through. They noticed that the floor on the other side of the chamber was more visibly worn and that the passage continued as stairs and speculated that this was some sort of magical diaphragm that kept water from flooding the place.
Continuing downward, it eventually brightened before widening into a massive room, shaft that rose up out of sight and down far into the depths. A wide staircase spiraled around the outside of it and displayed bas-relief scenes of alien figures in various scenes that were clearly religious stories. The humanoids in the sculptures weren't men, mermen, or elves, and in fact, looked like nothing the group had ever seen. The scenes depicted felt familiar but unplaceable. The creatures depicted looked strange.
The party took the stairs upward, winding up the shaft and finding the place very empty. After some time they approached what looked like the sky, but upon closing was revealed to be a mosaic on the ceiling at the top of the chamber depicting a very unfamiliar set of stars. Slightly unnerved, the group stopped at the platform at the top to rest.
Statistics
Days Passed: 84
Kegs Recovered: 11
Total Party Members: 8
Hexes Explored: 26
Caves Explored: 4
Dungeons Explored: 2
Players Participated: 8
Megafauna Captured: 2
Skirmishes Survived: 12
Foes Vanquished: 1 feral dog, 9 anglergoblins, 4 anglergoblin shaman, 1 albatross, 4 sea-plagued, 1 sea monk, 5 waterlogged revenants, the sea speaker
Total Party Members: 8
Hexes Explored: 26
Caves Explored: 4
Dungeons Explored: 2
Players Participated: 8
Megafauna Captured: 2
Skirmishes Survived: 12
Foes Vanquished: 1 feral dog, 9 anglergoblins, 4 anglergoblin shaman, 1 albatross, 4 sea-plagued, 1 sea monk, 5 waterlogged revenants, the sea speaker
Treasure Obtained: 3746 previously + 2 kegs of rum + 1 shaman corpse
Tragic Deaths: 2 (Crabcakes the Giant Hermit Crab and Albert de Manc, Hedge Knight)
Map
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| The map after episode 13 (no updates). |
Episode 13 Notes
Finally linking up with the Silver Blades. I bet the author considered that the primary leash on the party was food carried and so consciously included various spots far into the basin where the adventurers might make friends to refresh their supplies. But I noticed that even when I first read the module, the Silver Blades seemed mostly disconnected from everything else, save a random encounter or two. How else were they to know to seek out this resource?
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