Abomination Vaults – Session 48: The Challenge of Despair

Highs and Lows

Starday, 26th of Neth, 4722 AR

GM’s Note: Trulk’s player was back. Rasp’s player was out.

The party pressed into the room of alcoves they had only been able to glimpse while battling Nhimbaloth’s cutters, large glass effigies that attacked our heroes as soon as they opened the doors. Trulk led a scouting pass through the room. The alcoves were filled with the wreckage of what looked like lab tables and instruments of torture. In one of the alcoves, they found a small glass orb with a green flame flitting around inside it. Konnor and ShaiLu identified the objects as trapped souls. They debated what to do with the globe and then smashed it to set the spirit free. The green flame flitted into the air, disappearing to the Boneyard and its final destination. They continued searching and found two more globes. These were also smashed and the souls were set free. Rasp would have been proud.

They found a set of double doors leading west from the torture hall. The door was carved with images of the dread wisps they had seen in various places in the Abomination Vaults. They were pretty sure what they were going to find, and they pressed ahead. Angrael waited behind. Through the doors, they were greeted by three dread wisps, larger than any they had encountered before. One of them addressed the party and told them to present their souls. The group realized the purpose of the globes. Even so, none would have been interested in giving the souls over even if they had kept the globes and they told the wisps as much. The monsters screeched at the party and attacked!

While these were the largest wisps they had faced, the group was well-versed in how to defeat them. They ignored the wisp’s flickering auras and swarmed them while ShaiLu bolstered her ally’s attacks with a vitality damage boost. One of the wisps tried to go invisible and she thwarted this with a Revealing Light spell. The group mowed the dread wisps down. When the last dread wisp fell, a disembodied voice announced, “Congratulations, you have passed the Challenge of Souls. Your approach was unconventional but effective.”

The group retreated to the room where they had fought the specters. They remembered the room with the magma pools and decided to explore those before pressing on.

Jorne and Trulk entered the magma room and were immediately assaulted by the oppressive heat. They crossed to the other side and were ambushed by four large magma scorpions from the pools. Jorne still had nightmares about scorpions. This was just worse. The elemental beasts were deadly but not very intelligent. They launched barrage after barrage of pincer and poisonous tail attacks. The creatures were trying to grab targets and drag them into the magma pool, but they couldn’t nab anyone. Even ShaiLu and Hound were too quick for the blundering scorpions. The adventurers slowly pressed into the room and slew the scorpions methodically until none were left to threaten them.

They fled the room before the heat overtook them [through the new door they had not explored yet]. This opened into a short 10-foot hallway to another door through which they found a washroom abandoned long ago. Three of them were on fire as they fled. Stop, drop, and roll! Despite their best efforts, it took some time to put the flame out.

GM’s Note: After a few rounds of attempts, I called it narratively and put everyone out of their misery. The outcome would have only affected how long it took to heal themselves which they were quite proficient at. There was no reason to drag it out further, especially knowing what was about to happen. They spent 30 minutes tending their wounds and as the third round of healing came to an end, the clock ticked past 6 AM.

The structure around them vibrated and the air filled with static electricity. They felt a surge of power rise from the structure and flow up through the Abomination Vaults to the Gauntlight far above them. The weapon fired again. They had no way to know what the target was, but they suspected it was Otari again. Some of them wanted to rush to the surface to help with whatever harm was done on the surface. Others said it would take an hour or two to reach the surface, even with the teleportation circles, and their help would come too late. They felt their efforts were better spent pressing forward. They decided to follow that course of action.

The small washroom had a locked door [which ShaiLu realized would open to the specter room]. Jorne unlocked the door while ShaiLu and Hound went around the long way to greet them by the time Jorne got the door open. Lady’s Whisper guided them into the next chamber. She motioned to a door leading west and said, “Now begins the second task, the Challenge of Despair.” Jorne tried to check the door but everyone moved forward so quickly he couldn’t do so. Fortunately, this door was not trapped.

The door led to a long hallway, illuminated by a strobing plethora of colors. The effect was beautiful and worrisome, but the group was not going to hold back now. As they walked through the room, each of them experienced visions recalling their favorite memories.

Trulk’s vision was tied to the Cosmic Caravan and his growing faith in the echelon of deities. Jorne fondly remembered Konnor’s one-man victory in the Battle of the Bands in the Strange Brew Tavern. Konnor recalled the feeling of performing in front of the people of Absalom and the adoration they showered on him when he revealed his newest single. Hound remembered being called a good boy. ShaiLu’s fondest memories were of Hound, a good boy. Their memories were comforting and warm, a devious trap. Konnor realized they were being distracted and used a Counter Performance to save himself and his companions. They reached the far side of the hallway safely.

They opened a door into another room, this one filled with darkness and more subdued floating red lights. Each of them disappeared as they stepped into the gloom. They were immediately assaulted by their worst memories! Trulk’s woes with his people, scorpions, Angrael’s death, and worse. With each step, they were mentally attacked and a voice offered salvation, “Let me take something from you and I can stop the pain.” Only Trulk accepted the offer and he was freed from the torment of the visions. It remains to be seen what was taken from him, but the pain stopped. The rest of the party pressed forward. Jorne stubbornly refused to give in. Konnor saw himself as a tortured artist, he needed his pain. ShaiLu enjoyed the experience. Weirdo! Who knew!?! LOL

Belcorra reserved special visions for Konnor and ShaiLu. Their final hallucinations were not about their past but about failures in their future. Each saw the coming battle with Belcorra and their imminent defeat. These were nasty, but both of them rejected what they saw. They had come too far to turn back now. Angrael emerged from the visions last shaken by the experience. He expressed, “Angrael does not like Belcorra…” The group agreed. Once again, the disembodied voice congratulated them. They had passed the Challenge of Despair.

Lady’s Whisper greeted them as they returned to the central chambers of the testing rooms. She offered to allow them to rest for a bit if they so wished, but Trulk did not think the offer was an altruistic one. She wanted to delay them, so they pressed on again. Their resources were running low. They knew they would need to rest before facing Belcorra, but that meant the Gauntlight would fire again before they struck. How many would suffer and die while they prepared for their final battle?

Lady’s Whisper used her dark powers to raise a massive stone slab blocking passage into the final testing chamber. This room also had pipes coming from the eastern wall. These were large enough to pass through if they wanted to, but no one wanted to go that route. They followed Lady’s Whisper into the last chamber and she lowered the stone slab behind them.

This room was later than the previous ones and had four sets of double doors, two to the east and two to the west. A channel of fetid water flowed through the center of the room from the west wall to the east wall and through it. Far to the south was a large dais and on it sat an enormous giant’s skull. None of them had ever seen a giant so large. It must have been a giant among giants when it still lived. Lady’s Whisper motioned to the eastern doors and said, “This will be your final test, the Challenge of the Swamps.” Jorne checked the doors to make sure they were safe and opened them.

Beyond both sets of doors was a square room with a large circular pool in the center, but the entire room was covered in a foot of swamp water. In the middle of the pool was a large patch of infested reeds. Konnor, master of swamp lore, recognized the reeds as an Isqulug in hiding/disguise. Isqulug are bipedal amphibians with tentacles instead of arms and a head composed of an undulant mass of what appears to be shifting, slimy transparent eggs filled with writhing larvae. Truly disgusting! The group slid around the exterior of the room. They wanted to avoid provoking the creature, but it came out of hiding and attacked when they approached a door leading north from the square room.

The beast lashed Jorne and Konnor while the heroes surrounded it. It was powerful, had regenerative powers, and its attacks were bolstered by disease-covered appendages, but it was only one creature facing an experienced party. They pummeled the beast and Hound tripped it. Once prone, it tried to crawl away, but the heroes overwhelmed it. They were about to move on when ShaiLu suggested they ensure it could not regenerate to attack them again. Jorne burned the body down. ShaiLu’s suggestion was a good one. In fact, the creature was regenerating and would have attacked again if they had not finished it off with flames.

They opened the northern door and saw a very long cavern filled with swamp water, strange mechanical boxes, and guarded by three enormous chuuls covered in crackling void energies.

END OF SESSION