Rappan Athuk: Mouth of Doom: Bees, Wolves, Slimes, & Snakes

 Session played on 3/14

Nick the Pike, Fighter 6 (Me)
Darryl, Cleric (NPC)
Biffin, Fighter (NPC)
Ulmo, Halfling (NPC)
Cassandra, Sellsword
Cory, Sellsword

Wanting to continue to explore the Mouth of Doom, but finding that both Borumar and Karl were off doing… something, Nick rounds up who he could and heads out. Shortly after leaving the village, the party hears a loud buzzing coming from the tree line, and then giant bees are spotted flying straight for them! Panic sets in and most of the party is swinging wildly and ineffectively for what feels like hours, but was in total around a minute. The bees on the other hand were deft with their stingers and managed to pierce even the thickest armor the party had.

Eventually… the bees were killed, and the party collapsed in exhaustion and embarrassment at how badly they’d panicked. Tending to their wounds, they collectively agreed that the bee’s poisoned stingers had done enough damage for one day, and the party returned to the village to recuperate.

2 Days Later they set out again.

Once again, before reaching the dungeon, they were attacked by wild animals, this time a pack of wolves led by a warg. Nick directed the archers to focus fire on the warg, while having Darryl and Biffin ready vials of flaming oil. Several arrows hit the warg, and it dropped back to the rear of the pack. The flaming oil hit 2 of the wolves, causing them to howl in pain, and Nick killed one with his ax just as it reached the party. The pack quickly decided that this wasn’t a fight worth having, and ran off.

Reaching the Mouth of Doom without any other encounters, the party headed in, and immediately began exploring the southern section. As they open the door to that section, a mouth forms on the door and exclaims “

The party takes a deep breath, and pushes on. Beyond the magic mouth is a corridor with several doors. Taking the nearest, they find a room lined with battlefield tapestries. Upon them are scenes of human archers battling against ogres and horned robed figures with skull headed maces. “Orcus cultists” Darryl informs the rest of the party. “Total buzz kills…”

Beyond the tapestry room is an irregularly shaped room that hides a pit trap. Ulmo finds the pit trap, with his feet, and falls in, landing badly. Darryl quickly grabs a rope and drops in after him, using his healing magics to save the halfling. There’s another body, long dead, with some adventuring gear, some gold, and some fancy boots. The boots are tossed into the backpack and the backpack tied with the rope and hauled out after Darryl and Ulmo are pulled out. Some giant centipedes crawled out of cracks in the walls, and the party fled, rather than fighting vermin.

Backtracking they try another door, which leads to another corridor with a single door at the end. The door was nailed shut from the inside, and within were 3 skeletons, 2 in bedrolls, 1 leaning against the door. There was an air of peace and safety in the room. Nick checks it out, and begins to feel sleepy. He recovered the bags and chest of clothing from the long dead adventurers, and handed it off to Cassandra and Cory. He also finds a secret door. Ulmo checks the door, and opens it, revealing a large green slime clinging to the ceiling of the smallish room. As it seems otherwise empty, they close the secret door, and check out the regular door. It leads to a long winding corridor. Following it to the west (generally) leads to an old large and long abandoned barracks. Beyond that, to a large ritual space. 3 rows of pillars carved with horrific gargoyles (demons?) with a pair of large brass brazzers burning merrily away. Carefully making their way along the wall, approaching the brazzers, they’re a little surprised when a brilliant emerald cobra snaps out of the fire and bites Ulmo, whose scream is cut short as he flops twitching to the floor. The snake was killed, but not before it managed to bite Nick too. Thankfully the cobra seemed to have used up the venom when it bit Ulmo (or more likely, Nick made his save). Taking the corpse of the snake and stuffing it in one of the bags of adventuring gear they’d recovered, they check the rest of the room, discovering a secret door that led to the back side of the skeleton statue with the 2 wolves. Nick, while checking it out, gets bitten by another damned leech.

Deciding enough was enough, they gather up Ulmo’s body and head back to the village. There they sell a copy of the map to the owner of the general store for 2,000gp, and the snake for 1,000gp. Back at the keep, they’re offered a 25gp reward for Ulmo’s body. Nick felt bad about that, and donated the cash to the temple at the keep.

Gains: fancy boots, 3203gp
Kills: Leech, emerald cobra, bees, wolves
Losses: Ulmo