Tuesday Knights - Age of Worms

  The party collapses at their Observatory, resting and bathing for a few days while discussing profits and plans. Mesmer animates the taxidermied goblin butler and names him Jeeves, and starts setting up his laboratory and library. Finally, somewhat rejuvenated from their adventures below, they decide to head into town for a warm meal, some shopping, and most importantly, some good carousing. They discuss hiring Kullen as a guard for their new shared home and loot while they travel abroad, and send for him. He arrives the next day, looking somewhat conflicted, and when Mesmer expresses faith and fairness in him Kullen suffers an emotional break and insists they accompany him into town where Smenk is engaging in a power move to seize the Dourstone holdings. Smenk has successfully lobbied the mayor into executing Dourstone for harboring the cultists in his mine, but the party casts suspicion back on him with the use of some illusions, and disavow the credit he claims for rooting the...

  Having successfully defeated the last overlord of the Temple of the Dead Three, the party set themselves to the task of returning to the surface. They elected to take a long rest to replenish spells, but were interrupted by strange tremors and the sound of distant screams. Finally feeling fortified, they left the Faceless One's chambers and headed south, but not before deciding to check out a few unexplored chambers along the way. One of them, a huge cavern, contained a fiendish looking wizened monkey trapped within a magic circle of protection. Suspicious, they questioned it a little and it introduced itself as Torgrodd the Wise , summoned to reveal secrets of divine animation. It bantered a bit back and forth, until the previously seen Crawling Claw snuck in to disrupt the protective magic, upon which Torgrodd reverted to a more demonic form and attacked. It managed to fell Mesmer but was ultimately brought low by attacks, including a rare thornwhipping from a non-beastformed A...

Mesmer rejoins the party outside the laboratory of Vecna, and they cautiously open the door to the inner sanctum of the master of this underground cult. It's a spare chamber, reflecting an obsessive ascetic who clearly cares little about finery. A thaumaturgical voice booms across the walls: “If you’re here, then the rest of my brothers and sisters must have fallen. They were always going to die, we all will, but you denied them the chance to die for something better, something greater. “You will hinder the Ebon Triad no longer. Your corpses will be the final submission to the slumbering aspect, to awaken it in the glory of murder and in its wake I shall rebuild this world anew.”  The party offers their thoughts on that and begins exploring the room, but when enough of them line up, a vicious lightning bolt arcs from wall to wall, doing considerable damage to the front line. Dravej charges the source of the bolt to discover that one of the walls is illusory and the Faceless One him...

Summer, 1970, Portland, Oregon. Government anti-occult task force Delta Green calls for a crack team of agents to eradicate an infestation of deadly crypto-amphibian creatures infesting the decrepit tunnels beneath downtown. However, they’re in a hurry, so what they get is Kirin (an all-American straight-arrow FBI agent, Max (a German-emigree Reed College Professor and occult expert) and Jason (a 6’3” Navy Seal whose hobbies include psychedelics, blowing stuff up and blowing stuff up while on psychedelics). After a briefing at the jankiest dive bar in Chinatown , Kirin and Max investigate the fish-monster corpse (rubbery, diseased arm), while Jason holes up in his hotel room perfecting his demolition kit. The next day, Max and Kirin interview the psychologically broken agent who led the previous expedition into the tunnels while Jason wanders downtown to score a handful of assorted recreational pharmaceuticals. Descending into the old19th-century cargo tunnels they poke around until th...

The party started the session separated, and the gnomish dungeon hiccups seem to have replaced Mesmer with Vodja, but fortunately the replacement gnome had enough extra rope that they were able to lift the Kyuss victims out of the 100 foot pit and regroup to try to figure out where to go next. They decide it's worth chasing the escaped Kenku, and follow it into a gathering room with illusory clouds and winds blowing around. Wanda, Amonon and Deacon Fry tentatively begin exploring, only to discover the clouds gathering into some ethereal spirit that begins shrieking with a form of insanity. The Kenku reappears to take a pot shot and then flees further to a laboratory to the north. The party manages to defeat the enemies, and explores further, defusing a magical trap, and the session ends as they discover the inner chamber of the Faceless One, who begins to monologue at them, promising their deaths.

The ornamental key the party combined proves pointless as the cult of Bhaal has opened their doors in a foreboding invitation, and the party cautiously approaches down the entrance, stopping when they notice the murder holes in the ceiling. Some sleuthing uncovers zombies ready to pour something caustic on trespassers, and Deacon Fry pops them with a powerful Turn Undead. They find a magically dark passage leading to what appears to be a spider pit, and decide to press on into the Main Hall instead. Kenku appear on scaffolds and up higher and begin taking shots at the party, particularly wounding Dravej who had bravely pushed forward into the room. The party begins grinding through them despite the height, but Deacon Fry vanishes through the floor, falling into the pit below. He finds himself trapped in the darkness not with giant spiders, but with a dreaded Spawn of Kyuss. Wanda feather falls into the chamber and despite several brushes with the insidious worms, they manage to burn th...

Dravej the monk reappears to assess the slain Lasher Kull, and once again Vodja has slipped off somewhere. The party pokes through Lasher's witching den, finding a magical staff, a strange goblin-skulled amulet, and a Cloak of Elvenkind; as well as the other half of the ornate key to the ornamental door behind the Temple of Bane. They then cross the rope bridge to explore the Grimlock caverns to the west, and encounter numerous grimlocks - but while the blindsighted creatures are immune to Mesmer's illusions, the party's new 5th level skills are more than a match for them, and they drive the Grimlock tribe back to their main cavern, and eventually broker a truce and a renunciation of the Dead Gods. They then retire back to the Vecnan library to rest after their grueling triumph over the Myrkulian Underworld.