TAS Black Monastery: Day 1
Maddy was incredibly interested in the Monastery and happened to have some incredibly powerful goggles that she picked up while looking for relics in other places. She was a bit gruff to chat with but pleasant enough. These goggles allowed for her to see hidden doors, on our immediate right as we entered through the gates we came across a secret door and we couldn’t pass it up. Kihaul leading the way we went through and saw at the end of the hall a Donkey run through a wall. It was quite a sight but we chose to mostly ignore it, however as we got closer, a man came by asking about the donkey and we told him it went through the wall. He appreciated the advice and followed the donkey through the wall. We decided to ignore that strange invisible doorway and move on though regardless of the amount of people we saw go through.
The group decided on using the left-hand rule (for the time being at least) in which we took every left hand path until we had to backtrack. We found another secret door and went through. Eventually we came to a door, seemingly, finally, to a room. We stood back and I opened the door and saw 5 statues, one which had a black liquid inside, a large man in armor one shot out a set of magic missiles towards the party dealing a bit of damage. However, I turned my gaze directly towards a maiden who drew me towards her. I ran up and started dumping my magical items into the pond. I threw three wands in before kihaul came up to me and restrained me. They dragged me out of the room but I kept being drawn back. Eventually Dantoine stripped me down of everything and the curse was lifted. I no longer felt drawn but we stayed clear of that room.
Next up we wondered around some of the nearby rooms. Dantoine picked up some really cool swords from a room, we got a couple of other basic magic items. Some corpses of the villagers that matched the descriptions that Yohan gave to us. We heard some scratching in the hallways and heard some scratches along the walls but couldn’t see anything. There was a room nearby so we dipped inside and it seemed to be a candle making room. There was a vat of wax which we, of course, decided to remove the wax from and throw on the walls outside to hope to get marks from the invisible scratching around us. Upon getting to the bottom of the vat of wax we found a cap that made the wearer feel much more refreshed.
Going further into the Monastery we encountered more room using the left hand rule, one had 3 trolls inside of which we dispatched of fairly easily. They had some basic weapons and a single bracer which we left alone and continued on.
Just past the room with the trolls there was a huge cavernous room that we heard chanting coming from. I broke off from the party and snuck ahead to see a ton of cultists that were all wearing black capes. We decided not to engage the 30 or 40 cultists that inhabited that room and instead moved on. We passed by a couple of odd rooms. One had a creepy skull that was pouring water into a vase. There were other vases nearby that had some white powder inside. We decided to pour the water in with the powder and felix drank it. He all of a sudden felt quite a bit smarter.
The next area a man looking like a merchant told us to not enter, not to go past. We approached him but he disappeared as we got closer. Maddy, being her actionable self decided to go around the corner and we saw her instantly turn into a pile of ash. We were pretty sad that our newest member of the party was gone, but all of a sudden she returned to our plane and said that she had felt like nothing had happened. We decided to ignore this corner of the Monastery and move on.
We then approached a broom closet looking room. There was a key hanging on the wall inside, Kihaul stepped in and grabbed the key. Then Maddy entered and disappeared again. We were really confused as to what was happening but after the magic previously that reappeared her we weren’t as worried. Elric stepped through next with no effect, then I entered, instantly being teleported outside with Maddy. As I materialized we saw a Barbarian looking character charging towards us. It made a few powerful swings against us and both me and Maddy were getting pretty beat up. We pushed back. I was carving into him with my rapier and maddy was smacking it with her spear. However, the Barbarian got a really heavy hit against me and I thought I would die for sure, but then, out of nowhere a ghostly figure appeared and blocked the hit. I recognized her as Clara, or now the Jade Sorceress. She called out, “He’s mine” as she blocked the attack and then disappeared again. After another couple of good strikes me and maddy were able to take out the Barbarian. We decided to head back to town to heal our wounds, as we were doing so we encountered our party who had left the Monastery after having a couple of party members disappear.
Maddy didn’t know who the ghostly figure was luckily and didn’t scare the party too much but I was faint, both from the battle and seeing her face. I told Kihaul to ease my mind and warn her of the looming presence that we all still knew about. We didn’t last very long in our first go at the Black Monastery but we picked up some new toys and were ready to give it another shot tomorrow.
