The Timberlands: Session Four

Session Four. The Ziggurat of Enuk'Lun, finished.

An untamed frontier. Dark cults. Fickle fey gods. Ravenous fiends. Nothing black powder and sorcery won't fix... . Timberlands Campaign Diary

After a night holding up in the ziggurat's secret, treasure room, the heroes decided to strike back out into the ruin's dangerous corridors once more. Their path back led them back to the prophecy room. Once they entered, the geas hanging over Orym the gunslinger's head could no longer be ignored. While they weren't sure which of the three remaining prophecies clutched in stone hands was the second the party decided to break them open at random until their friend's enchantment subsided. By luck alone, the very first they opened was the one Orym was bound to unseal.

It read: "There is Always a Crop: The Coldest Rivers will dry up and the False King will stir. That Which Has Always Reaped will be revealed. Their knives will sharpen. Their horns will sound. The Ruin will rise once more, Golden as the Sun. Ruin is always hungry. Ruin never dies."

The heroes briefly considered opening the other two prophecies but the dread over what consequences they'd already started in motion stilled their hands. The party backtracked further toward the halls they'd yet to explore. They soon ran across a squadron of Braziers of Enuk'Lun (Magmin reskinned as iron constructs) and a Warpriest of Enuk'Lun (Drow Wizard reskinned as undead). The battle was tense for while the braziers were quickly dealt with the heroes were in a running fight against the Warpriest as it unloaded deadly spells onto them until they finally brought it down. They gathered its magic ring and platinum amulet bearing the Grim Visage of Enuk'Lun and carried on.

Deeper into the sprawling corridors the heroes went. Sykes, the rouge, was extra careful now as she scouted ahead for the heroes were already so battered and spent so shortly after their long respite. The ruins were thankfully quiet, save for ancient scythe blades and spear traps. Eventually, they came to a wooden door carved with the Grim Visage of Enuk'lun that was barricaded on the other side.

Within that room waited a wizard priest of Enuk'lun and his three mauls of Enuk'lun (a deathlock and three wraiths) who had been held up against some outside, unknown threat, for centuries. Orym and the valor bard Gwadd, smashed through the barricade while the ranger Wild sent arrows spiraling after them. The four undead were dispatched quickly. The heroes investigated the scroll room afterward and wondered what these ancient apparitions were hiding from.

Past another barricade and down a short hall, lay a door sealed by a golden, sylvan symbol. While the heroes were able to determine it was some manner of trap they weren't able to figure out what it did or how to defuse it. One quick and successful Dispel Magic later, the quintet cautiously explored the room beyond. They weren't ready for what they found.

The room itself was filled with shattered statuary and pots along with moldering pillows and grime-covered hookah. The floor was also littered with pixie corpses and those of fist-sized direflies. The majority of the south-eastern corner was covered with the dead remains of a direfly hive. Within the red morass were two fey knights forever caught in their death throes. One was clearly a golden-court knight clad in glass armor with a likewise glass ax with his side crushed in. The other, a knight of the waning court clad in chitin half-plate, his head half-sheared and a blood-amber mace laying nearby. Further investigation found a door behind the dead hive, likewise branded in sylvan.

However, this was no trap. It was a warning instead. "Magic will not kill it."

Past the door, the heroes found two more knights of the golden court, utterly pulverized and their glass spears nearby. At the end of the meandering, carpeting hall stood a Guardian of Enuk'Lun (A reskinned and powered-down clay golem) which guarded a shrouded altar. The heroes kited the Guardian down the hall and into the adjoining room. While the battle was pitched and Orym went down they were just able to down the construct. During the fight, Valor found the glass sword he'd taken from a fey corpse on the way here was ineffectual against the Guardian as were Siegfried's spells. Both hinted at why the fey knight's they'd found in the hallway had been felled so easily.

Once they got Orym back on his feet, the party investigated what lay beneath the royal-purple sheet. The lewd shelf of ivory ended up housing a staff of charming carved to look like it was wrapped with a devil's tail, a rope of entanglement, a phial of endless perfume, and a stone tablet chiseled with a spell to summon incubae and succubae. Clearly, the Empire of Enuk'Lun, at least the priestly class, was a debauched lot. The question remained, were the fey fighting over this profane material or something else?

Having explored the ziggurat, the heroes ascended to the top to signal their employer via the figurine of wonder they were given and settle in for the two days it would take for the expected survey party to arrive.