The party traveled on a bit, and Stealth set up a shelter for the night. Shortly after dark, something knocked on the door. While people started prepping for trouble, Stealth took a peek out the window. Then he ran to the back of the shelter and gibbered for a few rounds.Whoever was knocking wanted to talk face to face but eventually agreed to have a conversation through the door. It warned the party that a pair of dreadnaughts and sundry escort spiders were "accidentally" headed their way and would consider the meeting a "fortuitous opportunity" to attack, and said that it was there to aid the party in the battle, "for we must unite against the spiders."
Zenig really wanted to see what was out the window (which was still wizard-locked), so Silvana picked it open for him. Then he went and hid in the corner too. Whatever was outside caught on that it was being watched and offered to turn off its fear aura; it also said the attack was coming within 5 rounds, leading to some minor precasting.
- Voice:
- "So am I with you or against you?
- Silvana:
- "You answer that. How would I know?"
Stealth recovered and reported seeing a hooded figure with an insect's face, but Zenig's fear continued.
- Voice:
- "Ready?"
- Silvana:
- "Is it cheaper if we say yes?"
- Voice:
- "Actually, I just heard that the spiders are experiencing delays. Maybe you should go back to bed."
- Ganeth:
- "Shocking, isn't it?"
After three rounds of fear, Zenig screamed briefly and stopped breathing. Silvana burned a scroll of minor mastery - protection into a remove paralysis, and Zenig recovered. During the ordeal, he'd felt something in his mind feeding on his fear. Silvana wondered if almost killing a non-combatant was allowed under the visitor's visa.
- Voice:
- "Well done."
- Frankel:
- "Shove it."
- Voice:
- "Save your excitement for the spiders."
- Frankel:
- "Oh, I have enough to go around, you self-satisfied fool."
- Voice:
- "We'll have to take care of that. I must get going now. Take care."
- Silvana:
- "Your visa expired, eh?"
- Voice:
- "Hardly. My job is done."
- Ganeth:
- "What, you came all this way just to try to make us burn a couple of spells?"
Several hours passed, and people guarded and slept. During Frankel and Thorongil's guard shift, something big thudded against the side of the shelter. While the guards were waking people, a pair of phase spiders walked in and started munching on Ganeth and Zenig. A third phaser showed up, lots of fighting happened, a few more thuds came against the walls, and then dispel magics starting raining down on the shelter. Another phaser, more thuds, more dispel magics. Eventually the phasers were killed (without explosions or other retributive garbage), the spellcasters ran out of dispels, and the dreadnaughts got bored and wandered off -- but they were back ramming away a few minutes later.
- Silvana: [in spider]
- "Go home. You are in the wrong place."
- Dreadnaught:
- "You lie, fly-maggot. You not spider. Come out and be eaten."
- Silvana:
- "Someone has tricked you into coming here. We were warned of your attack by a fly creature who came to our door."
- Dreadnaught:
- "We know that there are many maggots inside and we are hungry. Come out, little maggots."
- Silvana:
- "Tell Rakni to leave us alone or face retaliation."
- Dreadnaught:
- "We tell Rakni. She tell you to come out and then we eat."
The opposition, realizing the dreadnaughts had been reduced to diplomacy, called them off, and things were quiet again.
At dawn, Ganeth received a sending from the Bridge.
- Bridge:
- "I have been asked to advise you. Return that which is not yours and avert the tragedy that will engulf those who you hold dear."
- Ganeth:
- "Nothing I'm carrying fits your description, sorry. And who does an evil body hold dear? Since you can't mean the spirit...his number's unlisted. Ciao."
Half an hour later (while lots of people were memorizing), three waves of five 30# red spider-like creatures with big red-hot pincers tunneled up through the floor of the shelter (trying to interrupt memorization, presumably). Ganeth, being extra-paranoid, noted a faint glow around them after they died. One round after dying, they were hot enough to cause a point of damage to someone picking them up and tossing them, and detonated into a little fireball on impact. Left alone (or tossed earlier), they blew two rounds after death. Meanwhile, two invisible imps took stabs at Silvana and G; when killed, they exploded into clouds of spellfire poison (d6 damage per level of highest memorized spell). After a lot of explosions and carnage, all the bad guys were dead, and all the party's spellcasters were able to finish memorizing.
Our heroes teleported to the Hollerith Temple without further incident.
- Nomistrus:
- "You're a little late. The festivities are over, but we haven't finished cleaning up yet. Not that you can't help with that..."
While the party was busy fighting misdirected arachnids, a shator and a pair of farastu crashed the Hollerith library, burning books, smashing stained glass windows, and trying to reach the temple's inner sanctum (where the Vault was held). To cut down on visa costs, the 'leths confined their attacks to Nomistrus, Lady Ylena, and Nitya (who'd been dispatched by the Wind Temple after Silvana's sending). Nitya and several dragons (secret allies of the Hollerith Temple) were able to hold off the shator, who eventually fled; Ylena, Pepper, Rogroc, Lorcan, and Kelmin took out the two farastu (with a big boost from a well-timed charge by the pointy-headed one); and Nomistrus was able to watch the Vault and ensure that nothing bizarre happened to it in the confusion. After the attack, Nitya took off -- turned out she had still more crises to deal with that night.
Seemed like a lot of artillery for some elven history tomes and a decent research lab...
...so Nomistrus recommended dealing with it as quickly as possible.
After some debate on the merits of clearing out the Vault versus trading it away (possibly in return for Tremere or Tubbins' clone), the party decided to see what was inside before finalizing their plans. As it happened, a gnomish specialist locksmith named Fzink was in the area and available to consult on the Vault's construction and defenses.
- Nomistrus:
- "Lord and Lady Rogtubbins first met him while he was robbing their safe. They have since become good friends."
Nomistrus thought Fzink might consult for free if the job was interesting enough; apparently he "makes budgeting incredibly frustrating." Tubbins is currently paying him to research devices for restraining snakes. (Expecting problems with the yuan-ti?)
Frankel passed on the Vault exploration to revert to centaur form and check on Pepper (who was fine).
Visual inspection revealed that the Vault showed no signs of tampering. In fact, there were no longer signs of Elbret's attempt to crack the Vault the previous year; the acid burns either had been repaired or healed on their own.
According to Kelmin, Streck and Kalek acquired the Vault while adventuring near Gnomonsland shortly before the undead hit Silverton in AK 578-9; he later hired some gnomes to adapt it for his use. Fzink noted those mines held a lot of interesting items, some thousands of years old, and passed on this legend about the Vault (since G had taken the trouble to learn his language, he said):
"Once upon a time, there was a very rich gemcutter, named Zebun, or something like that. A mysterious visitor came to him one day, and requested him to cut a very unusual jewel (supposedly from a meteorite). The gemcutter greedily asked the visitor (who was obviously a powerful mage) for a Wish in exchange. Much to his surprise, Zebun was granted the wish as payment for this job. Anyway, Zebun is said to have wished for some kind of impregnable safe. I don't know some stuff in the middle, but the wish seems to have created a set of blueprints. Anyway, Zebun became obsessed with building this safe, and spent all his money on it. Eventually, the work was finished -- but by this time (hundreds of years later?) Zebun was old and penniless. The gnomes believe that this safe is deeply cursed and will infect the owner with terrible greed. There's a bunch more to the story, but this covers the essential details."
The black gem anti-elf trap of insanity, death, and extreme hosing was likely to be easier to disarm from inside than from outside, so the eventual plan was to have Ganeth open the entryway (the combination dials appeared to be untrapped) and send Silvana inside to handle the trap (along with Thorongil, who volunteered to hold off whatever showed up to try stopping Silvana -- Kelmin would probably get toasted, and Ganeth's elfness was a matter of some debate). To know when the trap was down, Silvana needed a non-elf to imbue with find traps so they could report when the entry no longer registered.
- Fzink:
- "Cast it on me!"
- Silvana:
- "Are you Good?"
- Fzink:
- "I'm excellent!"
- Nomistrus:
- "He is Good -- he just pretends not to be out of some perverse desire to be troublesome."
But since the trap finder was also expected to go in and check on whatever else was inside, probably amid combat, Fzink rethought his position.
- Fzink:
- "Sounds like Beeel's our guy. I'll hang back and loot."
- [Nomistrus sighs.]
- Fzink:
- "Just kidding, your agedness."
Ganeth entered the combination, the ethereal extension of the Vault manifested, and the door opened, revealing the same black curtain that was present last time. Beeel detected it as a trap, and Silvana and Thorongil went through -- right into a violet 12th level dispel magic field set a few microns behind the curtain, backed up by a spectre with a glowing blue spear.
The spectre spoke elvish with what Thorongil thought was an Auramkil accent; Silvana thought it bore some resemblance to Streck. (A pact for Streck's extra-evil dad Sonek? In principle only things with souls can be spectres, but drow spectres are rumored to exist.) The spectre had at least 25% MR and took half damage from +1 weapons, but it took double from +3 (including the effect of Thorongil's bracelet), so it backed off behind a batch of glyphs and started blasting spells. Silvana started working on the trap, trying to get some reinforcements in, while Thorongil tried out an unidentified sun patch on a recently acquired scabbard.
- Silvana:
- "G would be so proud of us, trying an unidentified item in a stressful situation."
The sunlight rendered the spectre vulnerable to normal weapons, Silvana got the black curtain down, and the party destroyed the spectre with missile fire. (Attempts to cast spells at it were blocked by either the planar boundary or the dispel magic curtain.)
Silvana dropped the dispel magic curtain, Fzink wiped out the glyphs, and the party moved in. A normal wooden door had been installed at the back of the entryway, and neither Beeel nor Silvana detected it as a trap. G activated the detect illusion ability of the Zzifl circlet (which burned out) and saw that the door was really a big metal construction with lots of spikes for injecting poison into people trying move-throughs on it.
Fzink tried some explosives on the door, but it resisted. Silvana examined the door and saw that it was wizard-locked shut, so Ganeth knocked it open, and the party reached the heart of the Vault.