Editing Session013 (section)

====LONG VERSION====
 - <u>[[Media:The_Demonplague_-_Session_13.mp3|Link to audio file]]</u> - 

=====Day Thirty-Six - Arriving at Gardong Marhold.=====
As morning dawned, the new day saw the party awake feeling somehow more powerful from their albeit interrupted rest. (''In other words, they had levelled up overnight'').   Cormir, having slept the second part of the night in his armour, was still feeling the after effects (''aka didn't get rid of his level of exhaustion''), and as the group broke camp, settled onto the driving seat of their undead-horse pulled cart-wagon to continue supervision of Morthos as the tiefling rogue manoeuvred the vehicle back towards the trail they had left the evening before.

Continuing their journey across the wasteland from under the glacier, the group noticed occasional ruins sticking up out of the mud - broken buildings for the most part with only the ancient dwarven built ones looking even vaguely still standing.   

With the weather an overcast, but warm day, visibility was good, and after barely an hour of travelling, as the trail passed through a particularly muddy area dominated by large boulders sticking up out of the mud, the group encountered some bandits that had failed to hide well enough to launch an ambush.   Realising they had been spotted, the bandits opened fire, some hurling flasks that burst into sticky strands.  

As the battle got going in earnest, Morthos and Cormir jumped down from the front of the cart, landing in the mud to hide behind nearby boulders.  Drex initially remaining in the cart, taking potshots with his eldritch blast through the front as Mogadon exited the cart by the rear and stood to its side.  Spotting the possible leader, Drex cast a spell making the man flee in panic.  Deciding to also exit the cart via the rear, Drex suddenly spotted Chillwyrm the wyvern arrowing in from the sky towards him.  In a desperate move, Drex pulled out the recently acquired iron flask, and ripped open its brass stopper.

Instantly, with a swirl of hot smoke, a large figure, an efreeti, materialised in front of Drex and looked down at the warlock cowering under the rear of the cart, the smoking bottle still in his hand.  With a gravelly voice full of spits and crackles, the figure said something.   Spank responded in an excited chatter, gesturing at first Drex and then behind the Efreeti towards the imminently arriving wyvern.   Spinning on his heel, the efreeti turned to defend itself from the wyvern.   

As the wyvern and the efreeti battled, the latter enlarging itself to tower over the now grounded wyvern, several of the bandits, who had obviously been aligned with the wyvern, turned and fled.  

When the battle finally ended, three of the bandits and the wyvern lay dead, the rest fled.   Drex, worried that the released efreeti would turn on them, thanked it for its service and told it to return to its own realm, which it promptly did.

Searching the dead, Mogadon noticed that the wyvern had a necklace on - which once it had been removed from the its neck (''by the expeditious method of decapitation'') - proved to be magical.   Apart from finding a few more gems (''including one more pearl'') on the wyvern (''I told you it had a marsupial-like pouch! exclaimed Morthos''), and a few coins plus bits and pieces on the deceased bandits, the heroes found nothing else of importance (''the bandit's abandoned equipment included: 1 light crossbow, a warhammer, a scimitar, a jewelled goblet, a pair of iron gauntlets, some minor trinkets, a portion of iron rations, a cracked crystal ball and a potion of something magical - probably healing'').   Moving on, Drex took the time in the back of the cart to perform the ritual to identify the necklace, deciding to wear it once he realised how good it would make him look (''+2 to Charisma score but DC15 to give up/use a gem in future'').

As the group continued on their journey, it was clear that the bandits that had fled were heading in the same direction - towards Gardong Marhold.  When the tip of the ziggurat appeared in the distance, the group parked the cart and started to make their way via a round-about route to approach the ziggurat from another angle.   Once they could see more of the structure, they could see that it was half-buried in mud, and appeared to only have one entrance.   Sending Spank ahead to scout it out, the group waited for the fire-monkey to report back, which after tense interlude he did - reporting that there appeared to be two entrances.  One at the nominal "front" - was a dark opening on the face of the stone - within which he had smelt the presence of several humanoids - more of those bandits no doubt - especially as the tracks they had been following led directly to it.   Spank had also climbed to the top of the structure, and seen that there was an entrance on the top, a hole leading down into the top chamber of the ziggurat.

Making their own way to the pyramid like structure, taking care to keep out of line of sight from the entrance, the group clambered up onto the top of the ziggurat, and peered down into the hole Spank had informed them of.   Drex sent some dancing lights in, and told Spank to go down.   Looking through his eyes, he could see that the shaft led down some 30 feet to a wide corridor stretching north south.  To the north end of the corridor there were two doors opposite each other.  To the south (in the direction of the entrance), stairs could be seen heading down.  A shimmer in the air made Drex suspect an illusion of some sort.  

On to <u>[[Session014|Session 014]]</u>

Back to <u>[[Session012|Session 0012]]</u> 

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