House of Constructionist Necromancers, Part 1

 

This Week's Bad Decision Guild Adventurers

• Silvermist Biggins: (she/her) half-elf/half-halfling drunken master monk.
• Nimrod Crowguile, esquire. a Corporate Lawyer of Kas Enterprises, a charismatic male Vuman warlock of Kas the Bloody Handed
• Devora -- a sword of valor bard who is a student intern at the Bad Decisions Guild for college credit, she/her
  
  

  

  Devora

  
  
  
  
• hooti-hoot -- Devora's owl familiar
• Nimbat/Nimowl, Nimrod's enthusiastic, ever-helpful bat/owl familiar
• Jax the investigative rogue dhampir (she/her)
• Dormin -- Nimrod's trusty shadow spirit, who Nimrod did not invoke this time

The party is currently at level 7.  This is the start of the first level 7 adventure.

The Adventure

The team followed the evidence of their Orchid Society investigation to #3 Sto Helit Lane in the city of Welton.  They were looking for necromancers.

The Bad Decision Makers -- minus Silvermist for now-- were nearing the address with only a few yards left of their journey when they heard screaming on the street and saw a injured and legless flesh golem clawing its way towards them as ordinary people fled in all directions.  A battle ensued in which Devora and Jax fought the creature at close quarters as Nimrod inflicted psionic damage from a safer distance.  The team dispatched the golem quickly, but not before it managed a deadly swipe of hooti-hoot.

The team proceeded cautiously the suspected around the nearest corner to address of the suspected necromancers.  They first tried the front door.  Then they inspected the wooden deck in front of the front door.  There they found a trap door to a room under the porch.  Opening the trap door revealed steep stairs to a small underground room that appeared to be a workspace.  Therein they found

3 silver keys

1 wooden key

1 jar of elbow grease

a jar of glass eyes and a jar of real eyes

Closer inspection found a hidden door within the small room that had three keyholes: a central keyhole, wood & decorated with "M"; leftmost keyhole, brass, decorated with a V (key jammed in lock); rightmost one's black steel, & decorated with a "P"

In this room the team (mostly Jax, the professional investigator) also found notes or diagram detailing strange lightning-powered machine (called "the apparatus") and describing the process of its development.  This had two sets of initials: "M." on it, "P." as well

The front door of the house was locked and could not be lock picked.  So Nimrod used misty step to get inside while looking through a front window.  Then Nimrod took 20 points of fire damage from fireplace, which was trapped to expel a tongue of flame when intruders step in front of it.

When everyone was inside, they examined the family portrait above the fireplace.  It had a red haired woman and her two identical twin brothers.  Names on the portrait indicated the woman was Vohild, and the brothers were named Pravok and Mazus.

The team continued exploring the house's ground floor.  In the kitchen they found a flesh golem that the household used for preparing food.  It was not aggressive.  It started chopping onions while they were there.

The team explored the back yard.  There was a planter that had many buried bones.

The team re-entered the house through the kitchen and went upstairs.  There they found many doors, each marked with an initial of one of the three inhabitants.

They entered a bathroom first.  It had a strong putrid smell coming from the bathtub which was filled with red, cloudy water.  A clay golem sprang out of the water and attacked.  The team dispatched it with some difficulty as it was immune to some of the team's attacks and may have regenerated a bit since it was in a highly acidic solution.

Then they entered Mazus' room.  This small room had a rat on a bedstand next to a bed.  A child's corpse under was under a blanket. The corpse was a sentient composite flesh golem that called itself "Alex".  Under closer investigation the rat was found to not behave like a rat as it did not fear Nimbat and was unresponsive to Jax's telepathic communications.  "Alex", when Jax took the rat using her mage hand and was about to drop it into the acid bath slammed Jax for 13 pts of damage and gave up all pretense of being a harmless child corpse. Now "Alex" freely admitted to being Mazus.  Nimrod, Jax, and Dev attacked until mazus was dead.

In Mazus' room, the team found a wooden trunk containing 5000 gold pieces, 1 scroll of mending , and 1 brooch of shielding.  The group gave Nimrod the brooch since it afforded him resistance to force damage and immunity to magic missiles.

Silvermist caught up with the rest of the team as the team exited Mazus' room.   With Silvermist present, the team had renewed confidence in their ability to explore this house. 

A team member opened another door and found a small closet in which a marrionette was sitting on the floor.  Even though the doll appeared inanimate and perhaps harmless, Nimrod immediately blasted it.  But somehow the marrionette redirected the attack to its strings. The doll immediately retaliated with a charm spell on the party.  Nimrod, Silvermist, and Jax successfully resisted the charm.  Nimowl, Devora, and Jax succumbed to the charm.

An invisible necromancer chose this moment to silently bound up the stairs and attack the party.  Fortunately, Silvermist's true sight allowed her to see the invisible necromancer before he attacked.  But rather than immediately capitalize her true sight, she instead used a flurry of blows to slap Jax and Devora back into their senses so they could have a chance to defend themselves.  This was fortuitous because the necro's first action was a cone of cold and everyone was in its zone of effect.

Nimrod took full damage from the cone of cold.  Everyone else was able to dodge at least some of the damage.  But everyone except Nimowl survived.  

Silvermist fought the Necro with her martial arts as everyone else attacked and destroyed the marrionette.  The Necro used a poison spray to fight back against Silvermist.  But this kept his attention solely on Silvermist, which gave Jax the chance to land the killing blow on the doll.

Nimrod made everyone in the party except Silvermist invisible to gain some safety from the Necro. The Necro decided he would start speaking, perhaps to lure or goad the party out of the invisibility.  It turned out Provak was the Necro. Some trash talk between him and Devora gave Silvermist the clue to his identity. A cone of cold sent Silvermist back into blackness; but Jax poured a potion down Silvermist’s throat so she could rejoin the battle. She came to consciousness as Devora insulted Provak’s education & need for student loans.  The battle was fairly even until Nimrod casted bane on Provak.  Now that Provak was burdened with a bane, the fight quickly and decisively ended with Provak's demise.

Provak was carrying a collection of severed toes, a small brain in a jar, a class ring from the "Unseen University", and a spell book.  Nimrod eagerly clutched at the spell book with the intention of copying Provak's ritual spells into Nimrod's own book of shadows.  The spells Nimrod could copy were detect magic, find familiar, identify, and unseen servant.

The team then entered Provak’s room where a corpse that was manacled to a bed by a long chain immediately attacked. Everyone beat the corpse until it was weak enough for Nimrod's mind sliver to destroy it. In this room they found a key ring with 2 keys, 1 small manacle key, and 1 black steel key. The team also found Provak's journal and his notes about the mechanism.

Provak's Room at the end of the session