session 11

Been Caught Stealing¶

No sooner had we felt the first sigh of relief in making it past the stone guardian that our overconfidence led us astray. A seemingly innocuous stone throne proved to be our undoing. Ryalith, with prompting from Gwenahlya, took a seat and in doing so sprung a trap that summoned eight spectral warriors. Their ethereal forms, shimmering with malice, surrounded us. Our attempts at diplomacy were pure folly and, in hindsight, utterly hilarious. Karel tried to calm things and assert authority, but seemed unable to offer a convincing reply to the simple question from the spirits: What business have you here?

With options dwindling, we fled deeper into the crypt, stumbling upon the ossuary of House Tethys. This chamber, a repository of ancestral wisdom, could have been our salvation. Alas, our curiosity was as absent as our luck, and we bypassed the opportunity to glean insights from the bones of the past. Our focus remained fixated on our prize: the book we’d come to steal.

Securing the tome was the easy part. Escaping with it, however, reignited our confrontation with the phantom warriors. The specters, unyielding and relentless, blocked our path to freedom. Karel again tried to bluff us past, while Gloopwing peppered the spirits with questions. In a frenzied attempt to use the communicative ritual to speak with the animating spirit of one of the phantoms, Ryalith opened a sarcophagus while Stigs wrenched off the occupant’s skull off to start the ritual. Unfortunately this triggered a cry of “Desecrator!” from the phantoms, which then attacked, and the battle was joined.

In the thick of battle, tactics and sheer willpower became our allies. Stigs’s steel companion proved its worth, repeatedly shielding us from certain doom with its deft deflections of incoming blows. Meanwhile, Ryalith, embodying the indomitable spirit of a champion fighter, weathered a storm of blows. Each time she was knocked down, she rose again, a testament to her unbreakable will (and to her love of tubthumping). One of the more memorable moments came when Stigs spider-climbed along the ceiling to give a healing high-five to a battered Ryalith.

The tide turned once the group was able to reassemble – Karel and Gloopwing, along with Reason, defeated a couple of phantoms and moved up to protect our flank, while Gwen blinded several of our foes. Ultimately victory was ours, but it was a pyrrhic triumph. Our resources depleted, our abilities spent, we now stand at the threshold of escape, the daunting expanse of House Tethys’ grounds before us. As we prepare to tread the fine line between audacity and recklessness, one question looms large: Can we evade the watchful eyes of House Tethys and make our great escape?