This is not the Doom you're looking for While the party were still recovering from slaying the Feral Mindflayer there was a strange ringing sound from all around and a pale light appeared next to the party spinning and growing for a moment before expanding and becoming a confused looking human holding a small rock which turns to dust almost as soon as she appears. A long a tense interrogation, of both sides, happens with some party members not wanting to trust this human named Killia while others being more than happen to accept magical teleporting strangers. Getting tired of all the back and forth Corwin goes ahead and opens the door to the Sanctum of the Commander of the Mortal Bastions. (At this point I realise one of the dangers of writing these weeks or months after the events that I get things in the wrong order, the whole “room full of cups and magic fountain of alcohol” happened here) The main chamber also had strange holes above, the party guessing that someone had dug past the vault door, a sand filled fighting pit with empty weapon racks and a bunch of other doorways. Also along the east wall had caved in and a tunnel led off from there. After the drinks room, they went into a master bedroom, which had been emptied rather than looted, the found several magical items that Corwin claimed as his right as the Commander of the Mortal Bastions also because his face was on the armoured trench coat. While Aiken and Feanaro spent time doing rituals of identify the other party members wondered off one after the other down the tunnel out of the sanctum. |
The tunnel lead to a ruined library that is completely covered in slime and giant looking fungus, leave those untouched they went through the door of the library, which needed a solid push opened, to a number of corridors that looked extremely clean and from their map should link up to with where Feanaro and Torvad fled from the slime creature. Grimbol who was leading this exploration a good turn away from everyone else hears Goblin speech and goes rushing towards the sounds.
He runs into a wide hallway with stone carved busts lining the sides but a large mud and rubble barricade blocking the hallway with the goblins behind, wasting no time he goes into a rage and decides to burst through the barricade since it looks so poorly made… another natural 1 leaves him buried half inside the barricade as the rest of the group (apart from those still back in the bedroom) engaged the goblins. Killia moved with great speed and leapt into the back of Grimbol pushing him through the barricade and as Torvad, Corwin and Garlon caught up the goblins were quickly cut down (though many managed to dodge Grimbols axe) as the goblins fled down the stairwell they had barricaded everyone gave chase but before Grimbol could follow the others something large and translucent and very acidic.
Rather than call for help Grimbol took on the dreaded gelatinous cube solo both dealing and receiving a large amount of damage while the others still chased goblins. At one point Grimbol was totally engulfed by the cube but burst out and near the edge of death he smashed the gelatinous cube into a sticky burning mess.
Killia was the first to reach the bottom of the stairwell and killed the final goblin in the hall below, seeing the strange goblin writing all over the walls as well as a lot of goblin heads on spikes she decided to head back upstairs just as the sound of war drums was heard below. Meeting Garlon, Torvad and Corwin up the stairs they all headed up to find a burned and exhausted Grimbol.
Backing off the whole party retreated to outside of this dungeon to have a long rest on the island above, taking Dekin outside for the first time in his life, as tired as he was Grimbol piled up and burnt the corpses of the bandits slain the day before.
(I thought it very likely that Grimbol would die while solo battle vs the cube because he didn’t reduce damage vs acid and if had failed to break out not only would he have taken massive damage on the cubes turn but also his body would not bleed out but just melt… but this was not Grimbol’s Doom)