The World of Yön

Session Date:  August 24, 2007.  Campaign Date:  4 Brighor 1460 TR.

1. While Krall is recovering from spider poison, the heroes bring the crate of cold iron they recovered to Gerston, the Harvale blacksmith, so that he might fashion some cold iron weapons for them.  He discovers a dirty object lodged between the thick wooden slats in the crate bottom.  Discovering it to be a strange gold object perhaps five inches long resembling a human skull with a skeletal arm extending from it, he takes it to the heroes, wanting nothing to do with creepy and possibly dangerous magic items.  Sinjiin and Marick both recognize it as a tomb key, a strange artifact, seemingly nonmagical, that nevertheless can open any mundane lock three times a day.  More importantly, when inserted into a lock and twisted while saying the words inscribed upon it, "Turn and call Æshagon", that door will then open into a vast tomb of some sort in an unknown location.
2. Naturally, the heroes, being adventurers, can’t resist trying it.  They use the door of one of the rooms they are renting at the inn to invoke the key’s legendary power and find that the legend is true:  the door, rather than opening into their room, reveals a dusty old chamber of filthy granite covered in spots with the eroded remnants of bas relief along with old scratchings left by other travelers.  The door slams shut behind them with a definite click.  They take the righthand of the three visible three exits.
3. Down a short corridor, they find a chamber with a small sarcophagus, like that of a child or a halfling—which, they were unable to determine.  At the end of the sarcophagus is the mummified remains of a hratt, obviously killed by a spring-loaded bar deguised as a rail along the side of sarcophagus, that snapped out from the top to swing over and down and smash its skull.  The trap is long since rusted but the hraat’s masterwork thief’s tools, scattered around his corpse, are still in usable condition.
4. Leaving from the other exit from the room, the heroes travel down a long, ten-foot-wide corridor covered in an inch of dust, when Allyrianna hears the rustle of many things ahead moving through the dust.  Sinjiin casts a flaming sphere down the corridor to reveal a swarm of skeletal rats (3 CR 2) skittering through the thick dust toward them.  A brief fight ensues as the heroes crush and burn the bony little horrors.
5. Further down the corridor, the heroes find a narrow door—no more than 1½ feet wide—that opens into what appears to be space.  They see what appears to be twinkling stars in the shadowy darkness above and below the narrow doorway and no apparent way across it.  Sinjiin gathered some dust and flings it out into the room, revealing a narrow invisible path, no more than a foot wide, crossing the room.  He follows that with a coin enchanted with a light spell, revealing a floor covered with obsidian shards about 20 feet below the path.  Allyrianna squeezes through the door and walks out onto the path, where a gargoyle (CR 4) attacks her.  Sinjiin cleverly casts a floating disk spell (one plot point) to give her better footing as the creature swoops down on her.  Missile fire and spells pelt the creature as it attacks and Allyrianna brings the wounded creature down.  The “stars” turn out to be gems magically emitting light worth about 50 gold pieces each.  Eighteen of the gems are recovered from the floor, along with Sinjiin’s coin.  The heroes have no way to recover the gems above the path and decide not to explore the corridor through the door on the other side of the path.
6. The heroes continue down the dusty corridor.  Cart notices the floor “feels different” under the his feet.  Sinjiin carefully blows some of the dust away revealing that the floor now seems to be made of smooth iron.  The heroes are suspicious but continue forward, stepping past the fulcrum on which the iron slab was balanced, causing the slab to slam forward.  Most of the heroes keep their footing but Maeve slides and stumbles down the ramp, plowing into the hungry ingester (advanced, CR 4) at the bottom of the ramp.  Its secretions quickly numb the hapless sorceress.  Cart and Allyrianna rush forward to cut her free, but the monster engulfs Cart as well.  Despite the reduction in their fighting effectiveness, the heroes destroyed the gooey monster and rescue their comrades with not much more than blisters and peeled skin to show for it.  They decide to continue down the corridor, bypassing the ramp.
7. The heroes come to a fault in the corridor, a place where it fractured and sank about nine feet, leaving just a one-foot gap at the bottom of the wall.  They slide through the gap, drop down to the floor and continue onward.
8. The cooridor floor is laced with cracks, some which emit tiny wisps of steam.  They pass by several rooms that have been clearly destructively searched, possibly by other adventurers, many years ago.  The air becomes humid and the floors somewhat scummy.  One large room whose wall and door collapsed out into the hallway to formed a chamber.  Here, walls are covered with mold and the floor has shallow puddles of water.  Before the heroes are able to investigate the room, they are attacked from behind by something large and invisible (CR 4).  They drive it off but never really find out what it was.
9. Upon searching the room, Sinjiin finds the body of a dead adventurer covered with yellow mold (CR 6), which he disturbed causing it to emit poisonous spores to which he did not succumb.  Cart tried to kill the mold by pouring alcohol on it, which just disturbed the mold again.  Fire was finally used to burn it off, and the party managed to rescue some of the contents of the backpack:  a wand later determined to be a wand of bull’s strength (10 charges), two art objects appraised at 300 gold pieces each, and 3600 in gold coin.
10. The heroes make their way back to the entrance door and back to Harvale inn, startling the innkeeper.