Freeport Campaign

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 10,000
• Treasure: Masterwork rapier, ring of protection +2, wand of summon monster IV (32 charges), bracers of armor +4, cloak of charisma +2

The party’s investigations regarding Chow’s eventual resurrection bore little immediate fruit, so they decided to push on and finish clearing Cresh Manor after an evening’s rest. They faced no opposition as they entered the manor and descended into the cellar. Taking care to walk in the middle of the hallway, they entered the alcove that Richard said contained some kind of transportation magic. One by one, they emerged in a strange pentagonal room that featured a door in each of the five walls and a stone pillar in the center of the room.

The group could discern no opening mechanism for the doors, but guessed that the five dials mounted atop the pedestal probably had something to do with them. Noting the twenty-six numbers that surrounded each dial, the group deduced that the dials needed to be set to particular values to open the doors, and worked quickly to solve Cresh’s little puzzle. When they turned the last dial to what they guessed should be its correct position, a brilliant light flashed in the room, and the party found themselves standing in a summoning circle on the floor at one end of a large cave.

At the other end of the cave, they saw a black-robed figure silhouetted by the sickly purple glow of a pulsing disk of energy emanating from a small metal box on the floor. Dozens of people lay bleeding and groaning on the ground around the box, while numerous demons on the other side of the gate writhed and tried to push their way into the cave. The black-robed figure, presumably Cresh himself, informed the party that they were too late to save Freeport and summoned a huge spider to occupy them while he busied himself around the gate.

The group dispatched the summoned creature without much trouble and turned their attentions to Cresh. Richard enclosed him in a zone of silence while Spike and Lumineaux approached along the walls of the cave. Fleeing the silence, Cresh ran around behind the gate. Richard wasted little time in sending a hailstorm after the fellow to prevent him from casting, but winced when he noticed a rather dramatic decrease in the amount of groaning coming from the people behind the gate.

Noting Spike and Lumineaux approaching with missile weapons drawn, Cresh placed a wall of wind between himself and his attackers. The two looked at each other across the cave, shrugged and kept going.

At this point, the relatively straightforward seek and destroy mission turned messy as a massive demon strode through the gate, crushing several prone townsfolk beneath its clawed feet. Richard tried a couple of times to send the thing back to its home plane, but the demon laughed and shrugged off the magical effects. Richard and Isaac gave ground before the demon, but it pursued them back toward the hermetic circle and the cave walls beyond. Richard uttered a final prayer to Harrimast as the demon’s pincers ended his life, but mercifully did not live to feel his skull being crushed underfoot as the thing turned its attention to Isaac. The former marine captain got in a final couple of crossbow shots before the glabrezu closed with him, but they bounced ineffectively off the demon’s hide.

Meanwhile, Spike had his hands full with a pair of small demons that had emerged from the gate. One of them, a small creature resmbling a cow, emitted a foul gaseous belch that dissipated almost immediately in Cresh’s wind wall. Lumineaux closed with Cresh, but not before he had drawn his rapier and finished off a couple of unfortunate townsfolk. Balama helped Spike with the demons attacking him and made her way around the gate to help Lumineaux and to try to stay out of the glabrezu’s reach.

With their concentrated attention, the party managed to kill Cresh before he slew any more citizens. At this close range, they noticed that the man appeared not to be completely alive anymore, but they didn’t have time to wonder what would have happened if Richard had tried to turn him. Balama quickly snagged Cresh’s former possessions, grabbed the corpse, and levitated into the air. She used the wind wall to propel herself over the gate, yelling, “Here he is!” at the glabrezu. She threw the body at the demon, who grabbed it in midair, bit clean through the torso, and jumped back through the gate as Cresh’s limbs fell to the floor.

Now that the immediate danger had passed, the group hurried to collect their fallen comrades and assemble on the hermetic circle. During the fight around the gate, they had noticed that the floor seemed somehow to be moving toward the gate itself. The motion wasn’t quite enough to interfere with their footing during the fight, but it was noticeable. Now, however, the rock walls, ceiling, and floor were draining quickly into the open gate.

Standing on the circle, Spike, Balama, and Lumineaux uttered what they hoped to be the trigger word to get them out of the cave. They appeared back in the pentagonal room, which itself seemed to be draining downward. They rearranged the dials on the pedestal to read “L-E-A-V-E” and appeared back in the teleportation alcove in the cellar beneath the house. Again, the stone walls seemed to be melting into the floor, so they ran down the hallway, up the stairs, and back out of the house. From the front gate they watched as Cresh Manor shrank and collapsed into itself, eventually disappearing with a loud “POP” into the ground, leaving no trace that it was ever there.

Catching their breath, the party headed to Finn’s office at the Halfling Benevolent Association. Finn thanked them for cleaning a blight from his beloved Eastern District, paid them the agreed-upon amount for services rendered, and threw in a large diamond for use in raising Richard from the dead. To that end, Spike, Balama, and Lumineaux escorted the remains of their fallen comrades to the temple of Harrimast. Exhausted, they then went to their various beds and collapsed.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1700
• Treasure: None to speak of

Chow checked the door for traps and, finding none, opened it. The room beyond appeared to be Cresh’s summoning chamber, judging by the giant pentagram and magic circle scribed into the floor. Chow, somewhat sick of the manor’s disturbing decor, headed to the north wall to cut down the obscene tapestry hanging there. Before he could finish, a tangle of sticky web dropped from the ceiling and trapped him in the corner of the room. The rest of the party reacted quickly to the new threat, with Richard summoning a whirling wall of tiny razors to confine the huge insectoid demon on the ceiling while Spike, Balama, Isaac, and Lumineaux tried to dislodge the creature and free their comrade.

When the bebilith squeezed itself into a corner of the room from which it could strike the party in the doorway, they retreated back up the hallway to regroup at the crossroads. Richard dealt quickly with the poison the demon had inflicted on Chow and Isaac, and the group decided without much discussion to conclude their exploration for the day. They headed back into town to purchase some supplies (most notably anti-toxins) to help in tomorrow’s assault, hashed out some plans, and retired for the day.

The next morning, the party was a bit surprised and more than a bit relieved when Richard managed to send the demon back to its home plane before they even entered the room. As it departed, the thing telepathically growled something guttural at the party, which Will later explained was the closest approximation to “Thank you” that existed in Abyssal (something like “at least now I don’t have to consume you,” or “you will not die by my hand today”).

Still fresh and ready for action, the group searched the room for hidden exits, eventually finding small keyholes in the walls behind the blasphemous tapestries. Chow picked the locks without trouble, and Spike backed him up as he opened the doors. The eastern door led to a short passageway with another crossroads and what looked to be a temple or shrine beyond, while the northern and southern doors led to small alcoves. Richard analyzed the bones jammed into the north alcove, but (surprisingly, given the locale) didn’t find any indication that they would animate in any sort of undead parody of life.

The floor, walls, and ceiling southern alcove appeared to be covered with tiny, intricate handwriting that could not be deciphered from the summoning room. Chow stuck his head into the alcove for a better look, but before he could report his findings to the group, he seemed to disappear in the massive column of flame that engulfed the alcove. The party, suddenly more awake, searched and called for their companion in the cellar, to no effect. Muttering curses at Cresh and the sordid, disgusting business that his demense had drawn them into, the rest of the group decided to push on and finish their investigation, hoping that Chow could fend for himself wherever he’d been teleported, whether on this plane or the next.

They moved on to the intersection past the summoning room. Hearing nothing at the closed door to the north, and electing to save the three alcoves off the southern passage for later, the party approached the temple to the east. When they got close enough to discern the statues of writhing demon-women flanking the bloodstained sandstone altar at the other end of the room, they heard familiar oozing and farting noises emanating from between the rows of pews. At the first sight of another group of the Unspeakable One’s animated tumors, the party retreated into the hallway. Balama sent a fireball into the room with the dual purposes of torching the pwalgs and maybe damaging the temple itself. Richard created another blade barrier in the aisle between the pews, effectively pinning the remaining pwalgs for Spike and Isaac to deflate with arrows and bolts.

While they waited for the pwalgs’ noxious emanations to subside, the group heard a faint noise at the other end of the cellar complex. Still in battle mode, they crept back into the summoning room and arrayed themselves for an ambush. Fortunately, they recognized Chow’s shouting voice as he approached. He reported that he had been undamaged by the flame strike trap, but had been teleported to the front steps of Cresh Manor. None the worse for wear, he accompanied the rest of the party to the temple to look for hidden exits. Finding none, the group headed south to investigate the three alcoves at the end of the hallway.

Uneasy about the leering demon faces carved into the rock at the end of each alcove, the party discussed their options. Chow inspected the floor to the left of the intersection, and finding no signs of a trap, he decided to check for a hidden door in the demonic visage. As he took a couple of steps into the short hallway, though, the party watched in horror as the rogue’s flesh seemed to dessicate and collapse into a pile of ash, which itself dissipated into the air, leaving only a pile of equipment behind.

When their initial shock passed, the group quietly collected Chow’s things and said a brief prayer for their fallen comrade. Richard asked Harrimast for the ability to detect magical auras, and quickly deduced that the trap that took Chow had reset itself, and there seemed to be another trap of similar power in the opposite alcove. The southern alcove, however, looked to contain some sort of teleportation magic, though Richard could not get a read on a destination.

Rather than continue into further danger in their shaken and distracted states of mind, the party trudged back to town to mourn their friend and investigate any possible options available to bring him back to the world of the living.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 800
• Treasure: 400 gp, silver serving tray (100 gp), black leather scroll tube with arcane scroll (command undead, false life, CL 3rd)
• Unidentified magic items: potion, ring

The party decided to rest up before taking on the tendriculos. When they returned, they hacked their way through the overgrown garden outside the house to a stuck door that opened into the manor’s pantry. Spike and Isaac smashed the door open on the first try, thereby earning Spike a beer at Chow’s expense the next time they hit one of their favorite dives.

The opened door revealed a dozen flour-covered halfling-sized humanoids with white flames where their eyes should be. Each creature wielded a wicked looking razor knife that turned into a puddle of blood when its owner inevitably fell. The party mowed through the demons with very little trouble.

After clearing the pantry and the adjacent kitchen, the group discussed whether to take on the tendriculos or to explore the cellar at the bottom of the stairs in the pantry. Given their previous encounters in nasty basement temples and other underground locales, the party reasoned that they’d be more likely to find the cause of the children’s disappearances in the cellar, so Chow scouted the way down the stairs.

The group saw a brief flash of blue light in the corner of the storeroom as they entered, and were surprised to see a young man emerge from the shadows. He shared his story with the party – he didn’t remember how long ago he’d been caught at the house; he’d been trapped in a black void for a long time, and had somehow come out of the darkness when he heard the party in the storeroom. Chow provided the naked boy a cloak, and the group decided to take him to the Scriptorium of Tinel for healing and to Will Teach for magical investigation into his background.

When the boy emerged from the hired rickshaw in the Temple District, he turned invisible, cackled, and ran away. Grumbling, Spike, Chow, and Richard composed quick notes to Will and Stannis, conversed briefly with High Priest Egil at the Scriptorium, and returned to Cresh Manor.

A thorough search of the storeroom turned up a secret door behind a stack of barrels. Chow once again led the way into the tunnel behind the door, and was first to discover a disgusting heap of rotting flesh in the middle of a four-way intersection twenty feet into the tunnel. Avoiding the swarm of flies buzzing around the corpse, the party investigated the remaining passages leading away from the interection, discovering a collapsed tunnel to the north, a series of cells to the east, and a water-filled cavern to the south.

Aside from some disturbing scratches, fingernails, and piles of broken bones in the cells, neither the north or east passage held much of interest. The waters to the south, however, hid a sentient mass of mouths and tentacles that set upon Chow when he got too close to the shore. Chasing him back up the tunnel, the creature began a maddening babble that caused some of the party to act in manners that were wildly out of character – Balama attacked Lumineaux with a series of spells, while some of the others fled upstairs.

Amid blinding streams of acid spittle from the mouther, Richard managed to place a zone of silence on the wall near the creature, negating the effects of the gibbering. Thus able to regroup, the party drove the creature back into the water and finished it off with volleys of mundane and magic missiles, with some help from a summoned shark.

Tossing a sunrod into the water to help verify that the creature was dead, the group noticed a stone plug at the base of the cavern wall beneath the water. After a bit of a strain, the party removed the plug and watched the water level move only an inch or so. Richard sent the shark into the watery tunnel, but it returned without incident.

After collecting their breath, the group gathered in the hallway with the cells and prepared to open the door at the end of the hall.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 2000
• Treasure: Masterwork dagger, 4 normal daggers, wand of summon monster II (36 charges, CL 3rd), bracers of armor +2, brooch of shielding, periapt of wisdom +2, Yellow Sign pendant, pink and yellow robes (slightly used), various books and papers

Spike charged past the demon and ended the older man’s insane ramblings in short order. He then joined Richard, Isaac, and Lumineaux in convincing the vespertiliac to leave the room with its prehensile tail intact (Balama and Chow having fled the house in a panic when the thing emitted a terrifying shriek of hatred and fury).

With the eastern half of the first floor cleared, the group moved on to the west wing after Balama and Chow returned. Richard dispatched another group of ghost children who were playing kickball in a hallway, and the party elected not to investigate a blood- and excement-filled claw-footed bathtub in an adjacent room.

When the group entered Cresh’s nearby game room, they were attacked by fat blobs of oozy, leaking flesh that various written sources speculated were living tumors plucked from the Unspeakable One’s skin and flicked into the Material Plane. Disgusted by the remnants of that battle, the party paused uneasily at the entrance to Cresh’s indoor conservatory. Spike and Balama recognized the large living plant in the center of the room as similar to the vegetative creature that had nearly digested them in the canal outside Rana Mor several months ago. Grumbling about the noisome denizens and horrifying decor of the manor house, the group discussed their options.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1000
• Treasure: 180 pp, 462 gp, 350 sp, 600 cp, ring of protection +1, arcane scroll (bull’s strength, invisibility, rope trick, all caster level 3rd), oil of invisibility, ring of counterspells (banishment), periapt of wisdom +2

Based on Will’s advice regarding devils, Spike armed himself with a matched cold iron rapier and dagger after the group left the house. After another restless night, the party assembled in the Eastern District and headed back into Cresh Manor. Checking the remains of the chain devil a little more closely, they discovered a trio of magical trinkets they had overlooked in the post-battle sweep the previous day.

As they investigated the former play room next door, Balama seemed abruptly puzzled when she heard a child’s voice whisper, “Mommy?” in her ear. When she picked up a toy and held it out in front of her, a ghostly apparition of a child rose from the floor and grabbed her hand, while seven other ghost children emerged and struck at the rest of the party. Richard informed the children that their parents (not to mention Harrimast) were probably severely disappointed with them, to which the kids gave a screech before disappearing.

The party collected their breath and checked out the remaining rooms in the east wing before approaching the fire-dancing devils. Chow approached the shattered tea room with some trepidation, fearing that the slowly oscillating chandelier overhead and broken glass on the floor implied a trap or creature that he couldn’t detect, so the party avoided the room. Instead, they positioned themselves around the door to the living room and prepared to face the devils.

The next few moments were a blur of combat, seeing Spike’s nice cold iron weapons dissolved by contact with one babau’s skin, Richard banishing one devil to what appeared to be a plane of water, and the other devil teleporting away from the melee. Once again the party caught their breath and searched the room. Chow spotted some strange holes in the western wall that further investigation revealed to open into a narrow secret tunnel, presumably used in Cresh’s day to spy on guests in the living room.

The group next moved on to the great room where Richard had been accosted by the allip. This time around, they formulated a plan and took out the undead apparition with minimal fuss. With that room cleared, they turned to the only unopened doors on the east side of the first floor. The first revealed a storage room containing a mass of gore that may have been a corpse at one point, and the second opened on a man in pink and yellow robes rifling through piles of books and papers among the toppled bookcases on the floor. As the door opened, the man’s demonic companion leapt at the party.