C2 Session 2

As they walk into the [[Rivendale Tower]], there is no feeling of a presence of anyone else, but there is a strong smell in the air, and the floor is patterned with green and white tile. There is a chest that looks half open across the room, and a seemingly innocent one at that. [[Koin]] looks inside the chest and sees nothing, but when [[Xodon]] looks inside, he notices that the bottom of the chest looks quite hollow. He lifts up the bottom and reveals a compartment with a singular skeletal arm, mostly bone but with bits of flesh holding it together. Henry stumbles across the room blindly as he cannot see well in the dark as Xodon and Koin can. He reaches in the chest and grabs the arm, frightening himself a bit.
   Xodon lights a lantern to hand to [[Henry]], and they continue on down the hallway to their right. As they enter the room, it is noticeable that it is a large mess hall. There are two 40 foot long tables, with chairs at the sides. The furniture is surprisingly well preserved, and on the tables and chairs are some corpses. There is a figure roughly 60 feet away, sitting in a chair parallel to a hallway to the left of the tables. They approach and see a skeleton in well dressed clothing, and is missing an arm, but the arm from the chest does not match, and neither of the other corpses match the arm either. There is a corner of the wall where the bricks are oddly distorted, as if something on the outside had hit it with a large amount of force, but the bricks are holding up. To the left of the entrance to the hall, there is a small wooden door that is slightly ajar. 
  Sir [[Rafwar]] Quoris notes that the bodies are not of familiar descent. Henry peers through the crack in the door and inhales a terrible smell, and sees a small chamber pot room. He sees a very old chamber pot and notices that it is not clean and has not been cleaned for awhile. Nothing else is noticeable, so he returns to the group who is going up the stairs. As they ascend, they see that the candles have been snuffed out. They put out the lantern, and as they do, they hear two things talking in a language none of them can understand. Koin begins sneaking up the stairs and peeks around the corner. The two creatures talking do not notice him, and he sees that the room is massive. The two voices are a younger, runtier voice and an older, raspier and mature voice. Koin informs the other members that it is okay to advance and they go up the rest of the stairs. 
  The voices are very faint and have a possibility of being in the room. Koin throws a small rock to the left, and the creatures stop talking. Xodon throws out a few ball bearings, and they roll across the floor. The talking resumes, but this time faster, as if they are rushing to finish the conversation. Sir Rafwar suggests that they go back down  the stairs, which they do. They return to the room and continue into the farther part. It is a multicolored room of red, green, white, and yellow, and there are multiple statues standing tall. 
  Henry notices that in the hallway to the right there is a small blanket of soot, and in the soot there are light footprints leading into the room at the end of the hallway. The statues look weathered and abandoned just as the rest of the building. Sir Rafwar is vigorously taking notes, but does not notice anything out of the ordinary about the statues. They wait for him to finish his notes, and continue on into the hallway. They enter and see a faint glowing of runes on the floor, along with an intense smell of blood. In the corner of the room is a small figure working with an object at an anvil, who does not seem to notice their presence. Henry approaches the creature, and as he does, it twitches, stops working with the object, and turns around. As it sees them, it looks surprised and lets out a small but loud shriek, and lets out continuous shrieks. The creature throws the dagger it’s holding at Henry and sprints towards the right of the room where there is another hallway.
   Henry barely dodges the dagger, and creates a shower of sparks in front of the creature's face. The creature stops, observes it for a second, and changes its footing in preparation to go around it. Koin then sprints in front of the creature, reaches in his bag, and attaches a bag of flour to the creature's head, and immediately strikes the bag of flour with a small katana blade. The bag explodes into a white cloud that neither Henry nor Xodon can see through. Xodon emerges from his hiding spot and approaches the creature, slashing it in the back with his shortsword. The creature appears unconscious, but the slash on the back begins glowing brighter and brighter before the creature explodes into soot, blinding Koin and Henry. 
  Sir Rafwar walks in and commends the group. There are a bunch of random objects around, including multiple poorly built daggers, an iron chestplate similar in appearance to what the creature was wearing, and a cloak that looks purely black. They continue into the room that the creature was heading to, and notice that they are definitely outside, but it has been covered up with vines and animal hides that block all the light from coming in. There are some chests that look identical to the one in the entrance. There are bookshelves with very old books. Rafwar wants to stay in the room for an hour or two. On the ceiling, there is a sandy type of material, but not the same type that the creature exploded into. Henry checks the chests for false bottoms, and they do have false bottoms, but they do not contain anything. 
  There is a hallway leading into a room where there is a carving of the sky on the ceiling, and another, curved hallway, leading into the outside. Henry goes down the hallway and sees a 10 foot rope bridge that leads into a chamber that is too dark for him to see in, so he returns to the other room. After an hour, Rafwar is ready to proceed. Xodon has prepared a trap that he can set down anywhere. They all continue down the hallway and onto the bridge leading into the dark chamber. There are windows in the room, but they are covered with animal hides. There are eight statues, and another eight in front, and another two rows of eight statues. Xodon does not recognize this, but Henry sees that this is a giant chess board. On the opposite side of the chamber is another rope bridge leading off into another room. As they continue observing, one of the pawns looks at Henry and rushes at him with a dagger, but misses. Clearly the pawn was not a pawn. The bishop starts to move and jumps on to Koin, knocking him unconscious. Xodon attacks the creature nearest to Henry and it explodes. Henry then casts a spell, creating an illusory box around the other creature, which gets confused for a second before stepping out of the box and attacking Henry, missing again.
   Xodon attacks it with a sizable hit, and Henry misses an attack. The creature slides under Xodon’s legs and slashes him before Xodon rushes at it and slashes it, and it explodes the same as the other. Rafwar dumps a healing potion on Koin and he wakes up. Looking around, they all notice that there is a king missing from the board, and another piece on the board is missing a hand. Koin puts the hand on the statue, and it shakes before opening up and revealing about 100 gold coins, but they are not ordinary coins. Rafwar observes them and says that they are pre-xirian coins, and they have no worth. They all continue across the next rope bridge into another room. 
  The room has paintings depicting fields and crops, and Rafwar begins taking notes. In the center of the room there is a tome called “The Harvest Moon.” Koin opens the book, which contains a large collection of extremely valuable farming Techniques. As Henry reads the book, he notices that the page numbers are odd. Every seventh page has a page number at the top while the other page numbers are at the bottom. On these odd pages, there are hidden bits of spells. Henry takes the book, and they all continue on. As they cross the bridge, they see that part of one tower seemed to have fallen and crashed into another tower, which fell on the stables below. There is now a gap in the way, so they turn around and begin their way back. 
  They go back up the stairs that led to the talking voices, but there was no sound this time. Henry shines the light across the room and there is nobody there, but the room is filled with carvings along the floor of different species. Minotaurs, loxodons, and many different hybrids of humanoids and animals. On the wall there is a carving with each of the four elements. Next to each element is a carving of a humanoid creature with empty eyes, affected by its respective element. In the center of the room there is a [[Statue of an Elven Man in Beautiful Armor]]. There are [[Statues of Four Children with Empty Eyes]]. They all hear footsteps, as a short and a tall figure come into the room, speaking elvish which only Henry and Koin understand. 
  The short darkling creature says “ah, I see you’ve returned, and takes out his shortsword. The tall figure looks much more mature and continues to stand back. Koin sprints over to the tall figure and attacks him with his blade and his fist, missing his first two swings, but hitting a sneaky second swing with his blade, slashing its shoulder. Henry casts his one trick battle magic spell, but it misses the tall figure. Xodon dashed quickly to the tall figure and drove his shortsword into its shoulder, clearly injuring it. The darkling then flanks around to the back of Xodon, jumping in the air and flipping before shoving his shortsword into Xodon’s back and knocking him unconscious. 
  The tall creature then attacked Koin, knocking him unconscious as well. Henry casts chromatic orb and hits the small darkling. The tall creature's eyes turned black, and Henry became surrounded in darkness. Henry then spun around in a circle with his dagger, and managed to kill the small darkling. Suddenly, Rafwar swooped in and dumped his last healing potion on Koin, waking him up. Henry walks out of the darkness and Koin heals Xodon with a spell. Xodon sees footprints leading down the stairs and sees the two darklings going back into the room with the circle of runes. 
  Xodon throws a dagger at the elder darkling, piercing it, and it explodes with a bright light, dropping a pouch containing 8 gems: two blue, two red, two yellow, and two green. They go back up the stairs and insert the gems into the eyes of the statues of the children and their respective elements. The large statue of the elvish man in armor begins to glow with colors of all the elements, before crumpling and revealing 4 onyx shards with runes that say, princes will return the king. Rafwar puts them in his bag and they all continue on to the rooftop. Koin sees a long rope on the ground which is attached to something. Xodon also sees this, but Henry is clueless. Henry keeps walking forward and suddenly the rope tightens around his leg and he is yanked upwards, now hanging in the air by a rope.
   Koin and Xodon share a laugh before taking Henry down. They see the top of a tower ahead, it has four windows cemented over with animal hide and a campfire that has been doused out. Xodon and Henry walk in, as Xodon gets yanked straight upwards and from a distance a dart fires towards him. Henry gets yanked by a rope as well, but Xodon leaned up, dodging the dart and sending it straight into Henry’s abdomen, knocking him out, but Koin heals him. They begin to observe the firepit, and Rafwar pulls out a key from the ashes. They continue to the next bridge and see a figure lying down, and it looks wounded. They all approach and see that it’s a pixie with a dagger in its leg. 
  Where the dagger is, there is corruption spreading through the leg, and it appears as if the pixie is slowly turning into the small creatures the adventurers fought earlier. Xodon wraps cloth around its leg before removing the dagger from its leg, which caused enough pain that the pixie died. They all sit for a bit in silence before continuing. They see a free standing door with a free standing staircase that winds up the side of the tower. Koin walks up to the door and it looks like he could go around it but he tries to open it anyway. The door is locked so Xodon walks up and uses his thieves tools to unlock the door. As they open the door, they see an enchantment disappear from the staircase, and they all walk up and into the tower. On the side of the tower, there are carvings with small pockets. 
  One of them had a rock in it, and had the door not been opened the rocks from each pocket would have rolled down the stairs, as well as pins that would’ve spat fire. When they get to the top they see a door with “princes will return kings'' inscribed on it. Rafwar puts the four onyx pieces in and the door glows and they enter. It is a rhombus shaped room with a mural on each wall. In the middle of the room there are two staircases with one wall and a larger mural at the top. The four murals depict the ocean spanning the distance between [[Aezraghn]] and [[Dragol]], but the ocean is on fire. The second depicts a giant chunk of floating land, with lighting bolts crashing down. The third is of the sky, but the sun is blacked out. And the fourth is of the moon, but it is a blinding, emanating white light. The fifth mural up top is of an angel among the clouds holding a large greatsword with only the word “Avenger” engraved on it. At the top of the mural there is a door, and the key from the firepit begins vibrating. As the key is held close, the door vanishes and the tower shakes and begins to collapse.
   A vibrant shimmering green doorway appears in place of the other one. All of the adventurers feel more vibrant and alive, as a group of pixies flies into the door, with one last pixie thanking the group for making it so they can go home, and the last pixie goes through the door, and it vanishes. The mural of the angel falls and collapses the floor below. Rafwar grabs a large chunk of stone from the mural. That piece being the sword with the word “avenger” on it. The tower is almost completely collapsed, and they all are stuck on a balcony almost 100 feet in the air. Koin grabs the pixie dust and sprinkles it on everyone. They all fall safely and stand among the rubble of the Rivendale tower.