Session 17: No Mrs. Bard, I expect you to die! Report

General Summary

The party is trapped in a room of stone! Loud mechanical sounds can be heard and the room shakes violently as rocks tumble. Much of the party manages to dodge the rocks that are falling off the rock piles as this happens. Rothgar quickly casts a Detect Magic spell to check the room for anything magical, he does not however he sees the shape of a man of illusion magic moving away from the secret door they had just come through. Hanz begins to try to break the door down with his hammer however the wall is sturdy and between the shaking of the room he is not quite able to bring his full power into the swing to damage the wall. Diala notices a small hole on one side of the room, she quickly begins to climb through it but quickly gets stuck right at the entrance. Seeing this Ganbold pushes her through so she is able to work her way down the tight passage. On the other end she comes face to face (literally) with a man dressed a grey robes, bald, has a scar going down his left eye, and brings his pinky up to his mouth. Hanz continues to batter against the door causing severe damage while Rothgar and Jorin begin to assist. Elitessa concentrates on dodging rocks while she cheers on her party. Ganbold now seeing Diala through the tunnel uses his limited magic to teleport through the hole. Diala and Ganbold quickly dispatch the operator who is quite upset they have escaped the room. They begin to try and figure out how to shut down the machine....   Meanwhile the room begins to tilt and on the wall opposite of the wall with the secret door the wall opens on a hinge. Revealing 2 large crushers beyond, that begin to smash the rocks that fall into it, into small particles. The group doubles their efforts trying to escape realizing they will perish if they fall into the crushers below, they manage to break through the door and all quickly jump out of the room before the floor raises further to empty what rocks that remained in the room into the crushers beyond. The party survives this trap. A quick investigation reveals this is a rock crushing apparatus attached to a masonry factory. Coincidently, a factory owned by Verlaine who owns every masonry business in Freeport.   The party decides to quickly follow the man that lead them into the trap. Rothgar is able to quickly pick up on his trail through the sewers and they manage to catch up in only a short ten minutes. The group charges the man, who has now dropped his disguise. He is a man dressed all in black clothing with grey steel eyes. The exact same description of the man that slain one of their crew members just the previous day. The battle is quick as the party very quickly overwhelms him.   As Diala begins to look through his pockets but as she does so she notices the fact there is another hidden door right in front of them! As Ganbold drives the kukri that slain his elven crew member and then dumps his body into the sewage flowing beside them the party opens the door and finds a long, long sloping tunnel that extends almost 95 ft. The party decides to push downwards when Rothgar notices the fact there are tracts of serpent people leading down below. With the party at the bottom of the ramp, with a few new injuries given the fact how dangerous that ramp was. Hanz finds more tracks as well as evidence of what appears to be large objects dragged through the hallway they find themselves in.   Ganbold scouts ahead and finds a storeroom, and a library around a couple of bends in the hallway. He reports back to the party and the rest go ahead to investigate. Rothgar ritual casts Detect Magic while the group explores the storeroom, once they arrive at the library he detects nothing of interest. Searching the room the find a slew of complicated books, worth something. But unfortunately only the entire collection complete might be worth something to a collector. Rothgar does find a book however within the desk. In it shows some disturbing information that the Freeport's Temple to Odis is in fact a front for the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign! Diala notes though that the ink is quite fresh as if it had only been written a few days prior.    Ganbold scouts ahead once more and finds himself in a temple dedicated to the Unspeakable One. In here he sees a cultist standing by the altar and strapped to the altar is Egil! Ganbold tries to sneak into the room to take the cultist out quietly and he is almost successful. However the cultist turns around after Ganbold accidently kicks a rock on the floor. The cultist in surprise starts calling out Intruders! Intruders in the temple!   The battle that follows was not overly difficult for this band of adventurers, even as some snake folk joined in the manage to quickly dispatch them in kind. The party after a victory go and check on Egil, they are determine for fact he is indeed the real Egil. He is heavily injured, unconscious, but stable. They would have to wait until he comes to, which they gladly do. The party takes a quick breather while the rest of the party begins to search the temple. They find a couple interesting things of note. First thing they find a hidden door behind the statue that leads up another 95ft tunnel to a stone door. They also find a document stashed away. Diala realizing this document is not readable by anyone in the party. (The alphabet shares origins with Draconic), ritual casts Comprehend Languages. She unfortunately realizes the document is not only in a foreign language but heavily coded. She attempts to decipher it however, she can tell that a comprehend spell might have ruined any possible way to solve the cypher used on the document. They would need to find someone who knows the original language it was written in to solve it.   About an hour or so since they had started their rest, Egil awakens in a panic seeing the party around him. He is quite convinced it is another plot by the Brotherhood. However he realizes after seeing the dead bodies that these are indeed his real friends. He is quite happy to see them and tells the party how he was captured while running an errand for the temple. He was then tortured for a few hours, was going to get branded by a symbol of the yellow sign, and even the cultist was making remarks how "After tonight, your kind and temple will be out of the way for good."    Diala happens to show Egil the document they had found and Egil recommends taking the document to High Priest Thuron. As he specializes in decoding cyphers in ancient codes. With a goal in front of them will they follow through? After all why would the brotherhood go to such lengths to hide the document and write it in a very difficult cypher.