RPG Recap: Beyond the Temple of the Abyss, 2015-03-14
Saturday, 4th day of the Frost Moon, 937
Knash, Brenda, Mumford, and Wim — their host — connected the party’s scrying screen to the village’s antenna, and Wim got in touch with his superior: an androgynous floating head. Wim gave the head a quick summary of his situation, and they agreed that the likely solution would be to enact “the contingency plan.” The head said it would communicate again in twelve hours.
Wim didn’t really know what the contingency plan was, when asked. He just figured it would be something very likely fatal to the “atheist” who’d been hanged in the village center. He started packing up, and told the party they might want to do some looting.
The party did loot, loading up on food, dry goods, and a few expensive knick-knacks. They finally found a use for the heavy rainbow-colored coins they’d been carrying: a building in the village housed a machine that would process the coins into anything, it seemed, that could fit in its output space. They conjured up explosives, a magical staff, and healing potions.
They raided the library, and found a catalog listing numerous hard to find arcane librams (Hebram’s Thesis on Abdesius’ Commonplace Book, for example!) but almost all the books had been destroyed by Halewin, the hanged man. All that was left were some novels: Sense and Centurions, To Love a Wizard, Finnegan’s Wake, The Cyborg’s Lament, and other works of no interest to the adventurers.
In the library, and indeed all through the town, they found lifelike statues in various states of horror or surprise. Wim confirmed that these were the former villagers, turned to stone by Halewin’s gaze.
While looking at the village graveyard, outside its walls, the gang saw that the scrying screen was pulsing, and fetch Wim. Wim came to communicate, but the call wasn’t the floating head, but one of the goblins who’d expected the party to show up and fight the vampire. While he laid into the party, though, the floating head did contact Wim. With Wim out of the village, the plan was ready to be enacted immediately. The presence of other humans in the village didn’t sway the head.
A dome of blue light began to form over the village walls, and the party members inside them hightailed it to, and over, the fence, while the horses struggled to make it to the gates, spurred on by bowshots from across the fence. Only Burdoc the cook, already weakened by an accident the previous day, didn’t make it.
The contingency plan seemed to involve deploying a lumbering metal death machine, which emerged from beneath a pile of stones and engaged Halewin with powerful blasts of energy. Halewin was injured, but survived. The horses made it to the gate, but by then the dome blocked all but a few feed of the exit. Knash, then Rago, made daring rolls back and forth under the dome to salvage the party’s bags. Quite a bit was left behind, but the most important things were saved.
A massive explosion occurred within the dome, and as the group regathered to decide how to proceed, it collapsed, and movement within suggested that Halewin had survived. The party fled east.