Caverns of Thracia - Delve 10: The Big Fuck You Button
Featuring a Thing Which Blows Up Your Campaign.
Players
Players & Characters
Referee - Sully
Bomb, Halfling Fighter 3 - Me!
Ebane, Human Bard 3 - Tor
Strabon, Human Fighter 3 - Kut/wil
Epicaste, Human Fighter 3 - NPC companion
Events
From the journal of Bomb, written in a trembling scrawl. Drops of wine dot the page.
Don't know why I'm writing this. Don't know if there's a point to it any more.
We'd planned to search the temple of Athena some more, see what lay below the cache we'd found and what was wrapped up in those spiderwebs behind it. We took a different path.
Gods...
It started out so well. Ebane, the slick-tongued devil, had won a potion of some sort off a noble in the tavern and we were all feeling full of it. The warband hadn't noticed owt and our way down to the caverns was clear. We left that traitor among their number, thinking of some scheme to cook up against Orpheus when we had time. I don't know if time's a luxury we have now, and that kook is the least of our worries, besides.
The cultists were busy maintaining the entrance hall. Ebane whistled a jaunty little tune as we passed, to our amusement, not theirs. The cult apparently still held the temple and its teleporter, and no beastmen had tried coming through since a few attacks right after we secured it. We roped down into the chasm and saw they'd toppled a statue on top of the thing. We went to check the statue of Apollo and make sure it was intact, and that's where we should have stopped.
The statue was fine, covered in a sheet but fine, but Strabon noticed something in the wall behind it - a door, sprung. We opened it using a pole from behind the statue and a pair of spears - beastman make - shot out harmlessly. We should have stuck with the plan, but we went inside. It led to the big demon statue that the party had prised the eyes from months back, we were at its base. Frescoes around the wall depicted some ancient lizardman civilisation. We found another secret door to the south behind some spalled plaster. Ignoring the signs, we continued.
We came out into a room full of doors and stalagmites. It was old. Real old. Some reptilian footprints led from one of the doors to an altar at the far end. Two doors led to the room we'd found near where Epicaste and her partner had been frozen. We should have taken them. The footsteps led to a spot near the altar where something had been kneeling. Ebane checked out some old tapestries hanging it and they crumbled to dust - there was a door behind them. The room beyond bore a mural of a winged lizard, like a dragon, but stood on two legs like a man. Epicaste told us of stories her grandmother knew of the immortal king who ruled here before Thracia even existed.
Fools we were, we ignored that final omen and continued south. The corridor dipped down some stairs and we ended up in a room full of funeral ware and fine pottery, much of it broken but enough was intact that we gathered up a few pretty pieces, and even some of weird greasy blue ash we found in there. Like ants with sugar grains. There was a door north behind some stalagmites and Strabon set to breaking them.
Perhaps the Gods tried one final time to dissuade us. A marble statue, shaped like a man, was drawn towards the noise and stalked down the corridor we had come through. Epicaste thought it was lost - some Ancient Thracian device. It lurched towards us and we set about it, Strabon taking a blow but breaking its ankles and leaving it easy prey for us to finish off on the floor. We went north.
The room that was to doom us was small. A couple of desecrated sarcophagi sat among the dust and a door beyond them. This place was old. So old. Older than Thracia. We stepped across the threshold and two skeletal lizardmen reared up from the dust with nought about them but a gold ring each. They were no match for us. The first went down under a rain of blows, its ring crumbling to ash. Ebane, the sly trickster, was able to whip the other ring right off the finger of the last one, thinking to claim a prize. Instead, he sealed our fates.
The last skeleton and its ring crumbled and, for a moment, silence reigned. Then a rumble beneath our feet, as if the earth itself moved. A grinding of stone from the room beyond. A screech like a dagger of ice through the heart.
We ran. We ran as fast as we could. It wasn't fast enough.
Back in the room with the mural of the immortal king we saw an infernal glow around the door leading back to the altar. A terrible voice spat hissing commands in a tongue we knew not. We looked through the door to the east, finding it opened 25' up the wall of a room with a strange statue wearing a crown shining with light and violet flames licking up the walls. A door lay at the far side leading to parts unknown. We fought off a strange feeling of drowsiness. Perhaps it would have been better to succumb and suffer a peaceful death than what followed.
A an awful burning semblance of a face thrust itself through a molten hole in the door behind us, dripping magma in hissing spats on the flagstones. Beyond it we saw the silhouette of two great webbed wings. We made our choice - to await the beast's advance and race as fast as we could past it back to a known exit route. I do not know if this was the right choice.
It didn't take long for the monster to finish its work and we sprinted through as soon as there was space. It burned like the fires of the earth, singeing us as we passed. If we thought we had passed through hell, we were wrong - it awaited us. The Immortal King stood in all his terrible glory, wings spread and trailing the ancient shroud of bandages which had been his resting place until our fool endeavours. We ran as fast as our legs would carry us, but it wasn't fast enough.
I remember from my time at sea, when I would climb the mast and gaze yonder, looking down at the dark ocean on a calm day. In the right light, from the right angle, it was like gazing into a pit of endless night which called to you, the tiny speck floating on a thin film of foam atop it. So it was looking into those terrible eyes as it caught us. Yellow eyes shadowed with a black, unfathomable depth that encompassed your whole being. I will never forget it.
Some sorcery took hold of us. I could hear nothing but my heart hammering in my chest and my vision greyed. Those terrible eyes were all I could see. Epicaste and I were still standing when whatever horror had passed, Strabon and Ebane keeled over. The King raised a single bony finger and levelled it at Epicaste, uttering what might have been a word. I heard only the ringing of a great bell in my ears and our brave companion crumbled to nothingness. The last to go were her eyes, their use barely recovered after her long slumber. I pray that brave woman is at peace with her husband. I thought I was next, but the King uttered another word and vanished in some arcane light. That light was replaced by the fires of its burning minion, which came to finish the work of its foul master. I looked at the pile of ash where once stood Epicaste. At my axe, pathetically small. At the creature which desired my life. At Strabon and Ebane.
Dead. They must have been dead.
Gods I hope they were dead.
I ran. I pulled the shroud of my kind forth and ran unseen to the door leading back to where we had found Epicaste. I didn't hear the burning hiss of boiling blood. I didn't smell charred flesh. I didn't hear the screams. I didn't.
The exact events of my flight escape me, or perhaps my mind hides its memories from itself. In shame and fear I scrambled wildly through the dark. I remember emerging from the trapdoor out of the icy passage. I remember brandishing a bone charm at a lizardman as I stumbled through a doorway. I remember seeing the Immortal King laying waste to the cultists at the temple of Athena. More dark hallways, a lit oil flask granting some small light. Dark armoured cult warriors recoiling in fear as I passed. The men at the entrance fleeing as I raved at them about our fates.
The Roost feels empty now. Ebane talked big, often too big, but he filled the place with cheer and tall tales. Strabon was a stick-in-the-mud, but he had a good heart and truly cared about the folk here and in Minos. Epicaste saw our world as if through a child's eyes, so much had changed since her day, but she too wanted what was right for the people of this land. Me? A callous drunkard more worried for her own coinpurse and what passed for honour than anything else. Some honour now, and what use will coin be when that monster completes its work?
I know not what awaits us down in the caverns. I know not if we will survive down there. We need allies. Weapons. Something...
I'll tell the others in the morning. For now, may wine wash away my shame.
Gods, what have we done?
Thoughts
This might be the best session I've ever played in. There was a constant ratchet of tension as we explored deeper and deeper into the tomb that I don't think I even realised at the time - I was blinded by thoughts of treasure and exploring the place. Absolute masterclass Refereeing from Sully, and I can see why Thracia is considered Jennell Jaquays' magnum opus. Sully at one point uttered that it was wild we'd even found the place we were exploring. I'm torn between the agony of knowing that there's so much to find and also that the caverns now have what is basically instant death for the party running loose all about the place.
We ended up not electing a caller for this one as there were only three players and we did a good job of getting consensus. We all agreed to deviate from the plan and delve greedily and deeply, and we paid the price. Sully gave us just enough rope to hang ourselves, and that we did. I feel genuine survivor's guilt being the only one to make it out - I had 2hp left after the Immortal King has done its work and the magma beast would have incinerated me. Strabon had been in the game since the first session and was an absolute stalwart of the group, and Ebane was also a regular participant in the delves. Kut and Tor took the hits with absolute grace, even if they were gutted, and it was great fun playing with them.
Grief aside, I'm intrigued as to what direction the campaign will go in. I've not played in a game where a shift of this magnitude has occurred in the world before. Sully mentioned adding some hexcrawl elements as the caverns may just be too dangerous for a low-level party to explore now that the Lich That Kills You Instantly is unbound and on the loose. We were a little concerned that the cult was getting too dominant in the faction game, but I don't think that'll be so much of a problem now. Fittingly, I'm having to take a two week absence from the campaign - I think Bomb is going to be sitting in a dark room drinking and hugging her knees while rocking back and forth - but I can't wait to get back in.
Absolute peak session - great work from all involved.