Session 28: Player Perspective

Synopsis

We are already locked in combat with the former Lady Fidatov, her spirit enraged by our attempt to steal her treasure.

Glimmerald throws a fireball to destroy the faint spirits, but as the hedge walls burn away they release a noxious cloud of yellow smoke. When we push through it, the Lady has vanished.

Ireena tries cutting the hedge wall with her axe, but the chunk of foliage that drops to the ground quickly animates and attacks her! Happily, it is easily killed.

Fidatov’s lesser spirits appear and drain life from us yet again. We destroy them and push on toward the center of the maze. There we find a large sarcophagus where we find a spot to insert the key from the house, which we do. We hear the grating of stone on stone.

Before we can move past, a large plant animates and moves to attack us with its tendrils. It draws corpses from the ground around it to fight us as well. We defeat them and move on to the mausoleum.

Within the tomb’s sunken interior, we are confronted by Lady Fidatov’s ghost as well as animated coin piles and suits of armor. The fight is dangerous, but we again prevail. We then take some time to catch our breath.

We discover that when the key is removed from the sarcophagus, the treasure becomes ethereal. There is a good amount of loot here, but it is too heavy to easily carry. We end up leaving much of it as we found it, and bring the key with us to make the treasure inaccessible to nearly anyone else.

After our short rest, we prepare to move on to try to reach the gallows, and Madam Eva, before midnight.

The Goings On

We begin the session already in combat with the ghost of the Lady Fidatov. Three faint spirits are visible to us, waiting to drain us of life. Glimmerald casts fireball, which interacts with the hedge walls by creating a thick, yellowish, noxious cloud of gas. Turk is enveloped in it, and we cannot see her or anything else inside it. We push through it, but Fidatov has vanished.

We push on, waiting for the Lady to reappear but she does not immediately do so. We make our way through the maze. Ireena chops at the hedge wall, and a chunk of living plant matter falls and animates into a tendril-waving shrub! Happily, it dies quickly under our panicked attacks.

Fidatov reappears and reforms as her lesser aspects who immediately drain life from us. We destroy them and push on again.

Entering the center of the maze, Cereus finds a large sarcophagus. He notices a spot in the side where the token key might fit. He also sees a big plant next to the sarcophagus, with three large tendrils and a number of corpses on the ground around it. Nothing suspicious there.

Luccaria uses mage hand to insert the token key into the slot, and when she does so we see a glow coming from the mausoleum on the other side of the hedge wall, and hear the grating of stone on stone.

The plant animates, propping itself up on its roots and it moves toward us! It whips its tendrils around to attack, poisoning us with each hit. It animates one of the nearby corpses into a plant-like zombie. It chews up another corpse to recover some health. We defeat it eventually and move past to the mausoleum.

Glim sends Alabaster down into the sunken interior of the structure. It is fairly plain inside, with four braziers providing dim light around the edge of the room, six sarcophagi to the sides, and a stone altar at the far end of the room. Lady Fidatov’s ghost awaits us at the altar, and when Alabaster sweeps into the room she calls Nicholai (we assume) a coward for sending us to steal her treasure.

Two piles of coins leap out of the treasure pile and animate as a swarm of coins to attack us. The suit of armor animates to attack us, drawing its electrically charged greatsword! The coins rush forward to swarm over Luccaria and Accalia. Accalia scoops up her pile of electrum coins in her cloak. Luccaria suggests that Lady Fidatov simply give us her treasure, but succeeds only in confusing the spirit briefly before her coin swarm breaks her concentration with a solid blow.

As Lady Fidatov’s bewildered spirit fades away, her necklace drops to the ground, once again corporeal. The coins and treasure at the far end of the room, however, are still ethereal.

The altar has an indentation the right size for that token key. Inserting the key causes the coins and treasure to become corporeal again. Yay!

Four silver incense burners (@ 25gp each). Each contains unburned incense (@ 100gp each), suitable for spellcasting components. Her necklace is made from diamonds and rubies (1x 500gp diamond, 2x 300gp diamonds, 2x 100gp diamonds, 2x 50gp rubies, 100gp worth of silver. Intact, the necklace would be worth more.) Coins are 5,000ep (2,500gp), with some silver mixed in. All coins are stamped with the Devil’s face, of course. Armor is full platemail in relatively good shape (not magical). The greatsword is also non-magical. In one of the chests is a suit of studded leather which is magical (moderate and minor illusion power on the armor).

After an hour, we discover that its ability is that when worn it shows as an illusion of normal clothing or other types of armor. No matter what form it takes, though, the wearer’s appearance draws the eyes of those around them. It always appears rather tight and immodestly cut.

We rest briefly.

As we exit the hedge maze, we discover that the time of day is correct. The hedge is overgrown, but not sporting evil tendrils and the stinking cloud has dissipated. The house is in ruins, as we’d seen it the night before. The time-shifting effect appears to have abated.

We step into the house and collect the items we’d missed before: wig, knuckle dice, bouquet of gilded flowers, silver dragon pendant, jeweled dagger, and saffron.

There is still fog on the lake, though it is not as bad as when we arrived the previous night. There are some boats down at the docks. We briefly look for signs of Bluto, in case he came here before disappearing, but find nothing. The boats are all three years old and showing signs of decay.

Ireena feels there is still a powerful evil agent acting here. It is weakened, but it seems to be regrowing.

We check the sarcophagi in the mausoleum. All six have names and contents. We bring the body of Lady Fidatov from the house to the mausoleum, and Ireena conducts a Morninglord ritual. Hopefully that will put her evil spirit to rest for good.

The coin weighs about 125lbs, so we leave most of it and remove the token key to cause the remaining treasure to become ethereal again.

We start to head back to the gallows to meet with Madam Eva before midnight.