Episode 30

After a ten day journey, the party reaches a clearing containing the ancient monument they were looking for. After closer inspection, they made their way down to the bottom of the monument where a voice calls out to them from the dark. Cade runs in after the voice.

Cade runs into a 100 foot wide circular room which seems to be a camp of sorts. There are four exits leading out the back of the room. He sees a small male human running into the second exit from the left. Cade stops chasing him and looks around the room. Cade sees some tents in the distance and supply crates. Cade decides to walk back to the party. Nok-Nok wants to leave him there and leave, but Galhaphé and Taman talk him into going after Cade. Avoiding the monument as much as possible, the rest of the group head into the tunnels. Exploring the camp, barrels and crates, the party realizes that who ever currently lives down here, does not seem to have anything to eat. All the food they can see is either rotting or too old to have been consumed recently. Cade sends Maya ahead into the tunnel the human ran into. She sends him some information about a second chamber with multiple passageways leading off of it. Cade tells her to stay there an wait for them. Cade checks for traps, as they enter the second chamber, while Galhaphé finds the fresh set of foot prints leading to the close right exit. The party hears some heavy metal thud sounds behind them. On inspection, it seems some bars have fallen from the ceiling where they entered the first tunnel. Cade leaves a ration and a note asking the person to speak to them. Heading into the close right tunnel, Taman confirms the second metal thud they heard was from some iron bars leading back to the third exit of the main room they initially entered. Taman tries to lift the bars, but it seems that something is blocking them from moving upwards. The party continues into a third chamber. Cade confirms there are no more traps. They quickly realize that this room is where the human stays. Nok-Nok opens the tent to find a terrified human, holding a makeshift spear, looking back at him.

After conversing with the human, proving that they are real and not ghosts, they provide him with some rations and learn that he is named Sydnoy. Sydnoy, tells the party that he is hiding from the creatures in the monument. Nok-Nok moves to keep an eye on the entrances based on the information received. After allowing Sydnoy to eat a bit, they resume conversation with him. Taman brews him some tea with the aid of Galhaphé. After giving him the tea, Taman realizes that Sydnoy is using the same recovery position that soldiers use when they are tired and expecting danger, but trying to regain some energy. Taman also notices that his spear is not his preferred weapon, there is a rapier sleeve hanging from the side of his belt and a quiver with some arrows lying behind him.

Cade checks out another room. He finds excavation sites which have been marked off and dug out. All of the rooms seem to look man made. None of these are natural caves. There are some copies of the runes carved into the walls. He moves to the other tunnel leading from Sydnoy's room and finds a square room which seems to have a water source on the one side. Some desks and crates stand around with some cages. The one cage has a skeleton inside. Cade realizes that everything in here has been abandoned for quite some time, with the exception of Sydnoy's living space. The water source does seem to be drinkable water. Cade shares the information with the others and heads to the bars Taman tried to lift up. He looks around and determines that the mechanism to unlock the bars seems to be on the other side. Cade calls Nok-Nok over and Cade proceeds to try and climb through the bars. He struggles, while Nok-Nok suppresses his urge to laugh at him. Confused Nok-Nok shakes his head a bit, but Cade does make it through eventually. Cade awkwardly falls to the floor and pretends that it was intentional. He looks around and notices that the torches seem to be levers. Pulling on one, the bars lift back up. After some time he figures out the trigger of the metal bars and how to bypass it. Returning to the group, Sydnoy commends him on figuring out the mechanism. He notes that it took him much longer to figure it out.

Galhaphé asks Sydnoy why he warned them when they touched the stone. They learn that Sydnoy has not been able to leave past the monument. He proceeds to explain all the ways he has tried to leave past the monument. He explains that he has fought mutants, illusions and ghosts. They learn that one can go into the monument and that it has many rooms with doors marked "enter" and "exit". The doors however do not function based on the marking. Sometimes the door marked "enter" is the exit. He has been inside and with a lot of luck has manages to guess his way out. Out also only seems to be back into the caves from his experience. Sydnoy has been trapped here for four weeks and he mentions that he left his bow and some arrows up top. Nok-Nok hands him his bow which he took up top. Taman hands him a longsword. Sydnoy cuts off his rapier scabbard and wedges the new blade into his belt. Taman questions him on why he was traveling this route. Sydnoy tells him that he used to be a town guard in New Port. He was on his way to Twin Guard to with a caravan which got ambushed by a fellow named Perin. Taman informs him of Perin's death. Cade wants to know what he did to get sent to Twin Guard. Sydnoy points out that he slept with the captains wife, but she was the instigator and he was too drunk to care about the consequences.

Galhaphé suggests using her talents to travel through the hole in the water pool as it may lead to an alternate exit. The party decide to tie a rope to her to make sure they can pull her back. With the party watching, Galhaphé turns into a octopus and slithers into the water and through the hole. She enters into a massive underwater cavern. The cavern is covered in giant crystals which could be mistaken for diamonds. The crystals give off a 1 foot faint light and vibrate softly. She realizes that the group will not be able to use this as an exit. Galhaphé picks two small clusters of the crystals and tugs on the rope to get pulled back. Once she reaches the surface, she transforms back into her human form. She relays the information and shows them the crystals, giving one to Cade.

Sydnoy explains that the water here is drinkable and that foods is only available inside the monument. He explains that there are five starting rooms when you get sucked into the monument. The party decides to go check the store room. Cade elegantly opens the bars. In the store room, Cade notices some crates containing human remains which suggests cannibalism. There is also a small depression in the back wall which Cade easily finds. After pressing it, a door slides open revealing a passageway ending in an room. A small square room with bookcases, tables and bottles. A skeleton sits at the table with ink blotching from the pen onto the paper. Nok-Nok notices a wax seal of The Black Shield. Nok-Nok runs to collect all the papers to safeguard information. He reads the notes and passes them out once he has confirmed no sensitive information is on the papers. The notes cover the stay, attempts, and information relating to the monument. Some notes towards the end reveal that they had to resort to cannibalism to survive. A name signed on the pages is Ethoni Eldenspire. Nok-Nok recall some of the stories relating to Black Shield agents which went missing. Ethoni Elden Spire is a human who is mentioned frequently in these stories. Cade finds a book on archaeology. Some notes explain the crystals dissolve after three months of being removed from the water. The excavation site at the back room used to be submerged in water and they plugged the hole and drained the water to excavate the larger crystals in attempt to use them to pass the monument. There seems to be some effect, but the quantity required to affect the monument is too great. More notes suggest that they tried to dig around the entrance to the monument, but they were unsuccessful. Some notes about the rooms and exits found inside the monument. Information detailing various creatures which need to be faught as well as the exists they managed to mark for each room. Glyphs inside the rooms resemble the runes on the outside of the monument. Taman studies the notes on the enemies which were encountered (aberations, constructs, elementals, undead and mutated humanoids). Cade and Galhaphé both take some of the crystals. Taman takes a crystal sealed in glass and some loose parchment.

Cade decides to send Maya past in attempt to see if fae creatures can bypass the monuments defenses. Nok-Nok and Taman will follow and attempt to end up in the same room if Maya returns with no information. Cade adds some notes on his adventure into Jeffel's diary, drawing the rooms with their exists and adding notes on all of the information they have found thus far. Maya gets pulled into the monument by a spectral hand as she tries to fly past. After a short while Maya emerges all beaten up and sends a flood of images to Cade. She seems to have fought a copy of a herself in room four. Cade and Nok-Nok gets into a fight after Cade tries to explain that illusions do not do damage. Cade throws an illusionary rock at Nok-Nok and explains cantrips to Taman. Galhaphé tries to dispell the magical barrier around the monument. Taman throws a rock which passes through. Nok-Nok and Taman try to run past but get sucked. They end up together in room five because they were holding onto eachother. Taman and Nok-Nok face off against copies of themselves. After they kill Nok-Nok's copy, a table with food appears. After they defeat Taman's copy, another table with food appears. This time however an additional small table appears with healing potions. Enough to heal each to full, but not enough to take with. They drink thier healing potions and eat some food and decide to head out.

Cade starts to convince Galhaphé that Nok-Nok and Taman has died and that it is only them left. Sydnoy is adamant that he is not going to go after them if they don't return.

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