Session 36 Synopsis

Previously, on Phoenix Rising...
... And soon Zerak blurted out that maybe they should have put the coin into the hand of the old crone instead. No one else seemed to have any better ideas, so once again Blackwell cautiously approached the statues and place a gold coin into the old crone's out stretched hand. The fist immediately closed upon the coin and all three statues started to move off to each side and revealed a narrow, lightless passageway behind them stretching off into the darkness...

The passage through the earth was like it had been burrowed out of the rock by a drunken dwarf who knew nothing of mining for it ranged in width from just under five feet to seven feet and in height from five feet to eight feet but by no means did it stay level or descend or ascend with any sort of regularity. After what must have been a half mile the tunnenl opened into a seemingly large area. The area was now visible to some eighty feet or so, but after that everything was clouded by some misty vapor, similar to fog but not damp. Out of the tunnel the trail split into to paths, all surrounded by dense forest and brush. large trees, some with trunks as wide as three feet lined the paths and were spread out everywhere, but nothing grew more than twelve feet tall, in essence making the whole area some sort of dense forest populated with dwarf tree varieties. They first took a look at the path veering right and immediately saw a corpse just off the trail. the body had been there for what looked like at least several months for it was partially decayed with bones exposed. The studded leather armor was ruined with blood and deep gashes over most of it. The dead elven male held a scimitar in his had that, other than the dried blood on the blade, was not showing any signs of wear or weathering. A detect magic spell and a spellcraft check by Asphodel revealed it to be a powerful +3 scimitar and the party decided that Kel was the best one to wield the weapon.

They also found many different kinds of tracks in the hard, dirty ground. Some looked like they were from giant humanoids, others looked like horses hooves and some looked like giant webbed, three-toed claws kind of like dinosaur or some other large reptile type creature. After some debate, our heroes decided to follow the left hand passage to see wher it led. Zola decided to fly about thirty feet in the air to try to get a little more perspective on where they were headed, but the misty surroundings kept her vision no more effective than anyone else's and was only able to see about eighty feet as well. After about an hour of cautious walking they came upon a large clearing that had a very dilapidated shack with a bunch of wooden debris and rocks strewm about. they also saw some of the large webbed footprints just inside the clearing near the trail. Zerak approached the prints carefully and started to study them to see if he could better discern what kind of creature had made them. While he was contemplating this, he got his answer, although not in the way he was expecting. The prints belonged to a giant crocodile who happened to be invisible standing right where Zerak was looking and soon Zerak found himself in the jaws and doing the death roll with the creature.

Just after this surprise two other ugly humanoid female creatures emerged from the trees and attacked Kel and Jobi. It was immediately apparent that these new foes were some type of hag for their claw attacks caused Jobi to start losing her strength nearly every time they attacked. Kel's armor and good fortitude was keeping her safe from the strength drain for the meantime. Then the rest of the party sprang into action with Apshodel and Zola descending onto the giant crocodile in hopes of killing it before Zerak was officially renamed Lunch while Jobi, Kel, and Blackwell concentrated on taking out the green hags. The battle was relatively short with Zerak being the one that bore the brunt of the damage - nearly being killed by the crocodile but not before he had sent a lightning bolt or two through the croc. Jobi did lose some of her strength to the hag but nothing that truly affected her for now. Just after they finished healing their wounds, they heard a distant noise like thunder and felt a rumbling in the ground. It continued and seemed to be getting louder coming toward them from the north. Zola flew back in the air and saw the the trees were moving as if being pushed aside but could not see what was doing it since the top canopy was so thick. They all knew what was coming once the first creature pushed its way through the thick foliage and trees. It was a nine foot tall, bald and stinking, cyclops. In fact there were six of them coming to visit the area where the sounds of battle had rung out a few minutes ago.

The cyclopses (cyclopsi ??) were powerful, swinging their large sized great axes and determined to do the party in but in the end, they failed to kill our heroes and soon found themselves dying at the feet of the little people (awww). Something unuusal also happened though. Asphodel noticed it on the first one that she had killed. When the cyclops was falling to its death, it stiffened up and then righted itself and continued to fight for another round of combat before collapsing dead in a heap. Its large eye rolled back in its head so only the white was showing but it continued to see and go after its opponents. It was as if the creature had died and then something stopped it for a moment to continue on before death could finally have its reward. Of some note was the fact that one of the cyclops had an axe that could fully damage Blackwell, much to his chagrin. But now that same large axe (a +2 weapon at that) now was usable by Asphodel in her eidolon suit (this made quite a sight actually - a halfling girl inside a translucent eidolon wielding a large sized axe - kind of like those monkeys that stack inside each other - but I digress). After a thorough search of the area that only netted some platinum, the party backtracked to the fork in the road at the cave entrance and began heading west.

After walking for nearly a mile down the winding and twisting path, they came upon a large clearing that had what looked like a destroyed campsite with debris strewn all about. There were three large tents on the ground as well as several now extinguished campfires and various rusted tools (hammers, knives, etc) lying around like there had been some great battle here but no bodies or blood was to be found. There was also an octoganal black pillar with a large rusty iron ball on top. Zola and Zerak decided to go investigate the obelisk with the iron ball on it while the others were looking around the camp site looking for anything valuable. But as soon as Zerak was standing in front of the obelisk, chaos struck. the iron ball opened up like a giant eye and all the tents, campfire logs and rusty tools animated and flew into the air and began attacking our stalwart band! there were so many animated objects taht everyone was attacked by at least three things and soon the whole party was engaged trying to fight tents, logs and tools (oh my!). All these items proved very difficult to hit - they were very nimble and fast moving. Plus the tents had the ability to engulf their opponents and attempt to suffocate them. The obelisk/eye also had another power that was unleashed first upon Zola and Zerak since they were the closest to it. Zerak was knocked unconscious more than once while Zola's actions kept on being slowed down and hampered by the "eye's" magic.

The party soon discovered that "killing" the inanimate objects was not going well for as soon as they knocked one down, it would just come back up after them the next round. So once Asphodel extricated herself from the objects that had been attacking her, she took off straight towards the obelisk and began hitting it with that large magical axe she acquired earlier from the cyclops. She also was affected by the slowing magic from the obelisk but never succumbed and went unconscious. And speaking of, when Zerak woke, he was able to attack the obelisk for a round, but hten promptly succumbed again and went unconscious a second time. Blackwell was having a difficult time battling the objects and a tent and finally had to do a full retreat for fear of being killed by these strange foes. Jobi and kel were also kept preoccupied with the objects and it was all they could do in terms of contributing to the fight againts the obelisk.

Once the eye was destroyed, all the animated objects fell to the ground permanently and Jobi, Kel and Blackwell could heal and join in the rest of the battle. Two small electrical floating balls appeared and began attacking everyone with some type of shock attack. Blackwell, Jobi and Kell concentrated their attacks against these two new foes while Asphodel and Zola continued to beat upon the obelisk, slowly chipping away at its dense black rock. Those floating balls were extremely hard to hit and resilient to just about all magic attacks but when Asphodel struck the final shattering blow on the obelisk, those balls of electricity also winked out of existence and the entire clearing was now still and quiet except for the normal small forest animal sounds all around.

With everyone's magical abilities completely or nearly completely exhausted, our party decided to clean an area in this clearing and take a rest.

Stay tuned for next week's exciting adventures...