4.2.5 YOU FAILED AGAIN, MISERABLE ONE! (Milestone - 5th Level!)

SESSION DATE: December 22, 2023
PRESENT: Maltrixxian, Zugg Zugg, Valric, Freya

Deep Dive

![[Maltrixxian - 4.2.5 YOU FAILED AGAIN, MISERABLE ONE!.wav]]

Adventure Photos

World Anvil Journal

Freya, Valric, Zugg Zugg and I decide to head back to the abandoned temple of The God of Guardians once more to finish off the job from before. We don't have Lim Dul with us this time so we'll replace him with Valric. At least we won't have to deal with his antics for now. We make it to the temple just outside of Thistlebriar safely.

We head inside, not knowing whether to expect more resistance since we were last here, but it was an easy trek into the heart of the temple. It appeared exactly as we left it, including the keys we left in a bag at the northern door and the eastern statue flipping the bird to the once-present Lim Dul. Who knows who, or what, it has rudely gestured to since our last foray into the temple. Oh well. I don't care. Before heading further inside, I pull out a fuzzy creature from my bag. It materializes into good ole King Louie once again, and I have him guard us from behind should that pesky vampiric mist make its presence known once more.

We pick up right where we left off, by going straight to the western side of the circular hallway and heading down the southwestern corridor. I suggest that Valric check for traps as they seem most adept at doing so. They find none and we open the unlocked door. Security doesn't seem to be a priority here. Not before, and certainly not now. Inside, there are several bookshelves lining the walls of the circular room with ladders that allow access to the higher shelves. There are seats in the center of the room near a desk, presumably to allow for comfortable reading and research. That's not something I do much of myself, but this room does feel rather cozy. Just then we hear a voice coming from above. It says "Show me your symbols." We never thought we might need one of the symbols so we just left them at the norther door after inspecting them to make sure they were all there (they were). Zugg pulls out one of his own symbols. I'm unsure of which deity his belongs to. I do know that it was the wrong one, however, as this creature clambers out from above the shelves walking on the ceiling. Suddenly we find ourselves in a tussle.

I quickly dash up the ladder nearest the creature and balance precariously while swinging my heavy greatsword. I make purchase once before it flees to the opposite side of the room. My companions are content with firing from afar while I attempt to bring down the creature using more conventional melee techniques. Unfortunately, it brings me down before I can bring it down as it knocks me off balance, causing me to fall from the ladder I've leapt to prone on my back on the desk below. Freya gets the final blow, causing the creature to fall, narrowly missing me in the process.

Relieved, I lay there for a moment thankful it didn't fall on me. While gathering my thoughts, the rest of the group search for useful items. We find a couple magical scrolls before Freya attempts to check the shelves for more. As she touches one of the books, several other books begin convulsing. Before we know it, books bound of what appears to be human flesh are flying off the shelves and swarming us. We're not done yet.

It doesn't take long for the books to begin making good contact with us, giving Mal at least a few good papercuts. I say to the party, "Whoever said 'Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was speaking some BS!" These were some heavy tomes to be hitting this hard. Without any way to set fire to the parchment, it took us a little longer than expected to fend off these testy texts, but eventually we closed the chapter on the encounter and finished searching the room. We find many more spell scrolls. In amongst the books, we find one that is hollowed out, containing a particularly well gilded totem. The moment I touched it, I felt that same sense of exhaustion that Lim Dul explained from before. It's a terrible feeling. I took Lim Dul's lead and headed straight for the other totems and left it there with them. Immediately I felt better and reconvened with the rest of my party.

Before entering the final western hallway, I take a quick look at the statue here. Similar to that on the eastern side of the corridor, this statue's hand is placed atop the hilt of a sword. And likewise, this statue's fingers are movable, one of which contains a ring adorned with three painted gemstones on its right ring finger, similar to the other statue's two-gemmed ring on its right pinky. As we figured out last time, the number of fingers which touch the hilt determines which door is opened. We quickly deduce that the final western door requires that a total of four fingers touch the hilt.

After unlocking that door, we venture inside to find really nothing at all. Notably, however, there is an image drawn in dried blood of the now-familiar symbol of a femur bone with a skull on top affixed to the wall opposite the door. Around it are what appear to be some mats, presumably for kneeling while praying. This looks to be a makeshift altar. Just then we hear a disembodied female voice calling out. "I don't think we've spoken before. I am Laura." Zugg leads the conversation, asking about herself and what we can do for her. It turns out this is the voice of the wife of Malek, who we're ultimately after here. She rightly assumes we're here to destroy Malek and put an end to his evil dealings. She says he has fallen deeper and deeper into his deal he made with Orcus. She said he was in the Sun God's grace before making this profane deal with Orcus, and now it seems he's too far gone for any hope of returning him to the light of the Sun God. She's worried that if he's allowed to continue further that he will just slip further into insanity, and must be stopped now. Freya asks how we might stop him, to which she replies that channeling divine power might be able to better deal with his servants and guardians. We make note of that and thank her for her help before heading out.

Before leaving, she asks us if we know how to properly use the totems we've found to open the locked doors. We tell her we haven't tried yet. She gracefully tells us that she only knows how to open the door to her and her husband's quarters, and to the very chamber in which we can surely find him toiling away at his evil plans. She says to open Malek's chamber, we are to place the gilded totem into the hole three from the left and four from the top. We gratefully thank her for her assistance and move on.

Before heading to Malek's door, we decide to take a quick detour to try to figure out the two doors in the center of the circular corridor. There appear to be hand-shaped cutouts surrounded by magical runes. The door is magically sealed, and no amount of lockpicking will open it. Freya has a great idea to use a Mage Hand to see what happens. However, when it approaches the door, the hand appears to have no effect. It was definitely worth a shot. I thought it'd be a good idea to try to place a hand with the same number of fingers held up as the number of gems on the respective statues' ring opposite the door. Valric places his hand into the door. The runes flash and glow. It seems promising, but just then Valric yelps as he is stabbed by a poisoned spike. I decide to try placing two hands simultaneously on each door to see what would happen. Freya asks if I can summon another ape to try that with, to which I reply I can try, but I can't control what fuzzy creature materializes. I pull out a fuzzy creature, which turns out to be a giant weasel this time. I named it Daxter. It's too bad Dexter's hand won't fit fully, so I volunteer King Louie to try in my stead on the eastern door as Freya places her hand on the western one. They both were stabbed as well. Ouch.

At this point, we decide it's a good idea to take another short rest before heading to Malek's room. I leave King Louie and Daxter outside to guard the room and alert us to any trouble. While resting, we were interrupted by some loud stomping and an alerting sound only a giant weasel could make. Before we could open the door, poor Daxter had been immediately splattered along the wall, lifeless after his short-lived time with us. Rest In Peace, Daxter. We hardly knew ya. Turns out a minotaur had somehow found its way into the temple. It's always something! After a fairly tough battle, we decide to cut the short rest short and just head back to Thistlebriar where we could fully rest up in relative safety. After the short trek there and back, we're rested enough to continue on to meet Malek.

By this time, the magic of the Bag of Tricks had ended for the night. King Louie is gone for now, but I'm sure he'll be back. Once we arrive at the temple, I pulled out another furry creature. This time we met a new friend, a baboon I named Rafiki. I know, the names are pretty creative. It just felt right for some reason. Anyway, Rafiki'e job is to alert us of any trouble from behind as we make our way to Malek's chamber. We make it safely there.

All that's left to do now is unlock the door. I take out the special totem and place it into the hole three from the left, and four from the top. To no one's surprise, the door unseals and I push it open.

Standing before us now are six quite tall zombies and Malek himself down a small set of stairs in a rather small room. With the seven creatures inside, the room seems even smaller. Malek stands atop an altar of skulls as the zombies watch, as if they're a congregation at a religious service. They turn to look at us as Malek welcomes us. Malek appears to be not quite human anymore, as his spine is twisted in ways it shouldn't be able to twist, looking as though he shouldn't be able to walk. But there he is, doing just that. It's time to end him.

Zugg starts by attempting to turn all the undead. He's able to turn four of the six zombies, which is more than enough to be helpful to us. That gives us enough time to make our next move. Rafiki and I try to hold off the two unturned zombies, which are the two closest to us, while Zugg prepares his next move. Just then, Malek casts a Fear on Zugg, buying himself some time to escape into an adjacent room, from which he continues to peek out of and pester us with spells. I pull Zugg out of the room, allowing him to come back to his senses. I guard the door before stepping out of his way to allow him to cast a Shatter ability. This was able to severely wound many of the zombies, causing them to come back to their own senses. But they were on death's door at this point. We retreated slightly to coerce Malek out of his hiding spot, but that wasn't enough to fully prevent him from casting his spells on us. It also allowed the zombies out of the room, but this actually worked in our favor as we used this as a choke point. And it worked well. Freya was able to get a Faerie Fire off on the zombies and Zugg was able to cast a Thunderwave to take out some of the zombies at once. Valric unfortunately was caught up in the blast, but he was thankfully okay. Only one zombie remained, and it was still turned from Zugg's divine power. Things were looking to be in our favor. We marched quickly into the room to meet face to face with Malek. I step aside to make room for my comrades to enter the room, stepping on a nearby bed. We do our best to get him down quickly. But he was able to escape with a cheeky Misty Step. Just then, the bed began shaking under my feet as another ugly ogre awoke from his slumber from under the bed. He said his name is Riggles. Turns out Wiggles has a brother? Son? I don't question it, and just begin whittling him down just as we did his kin. At this point, it's no holds barred as we try feverishly to catch Malek while holding off Riggles. However, with the distraction caused by yours truly, Malek was able to make a full escape. We could never find him. I can't help but feel this is my fault, but how could I have known someone, or someTHING, was sleeping UNDER the bed? I will not hold this against myself, nor let anyone else should they try.

With Malek having escaped, we could certainly all feel the pit of our stomachs churning with regret and dread as to where he could have gone. We have no time to search for him before we must get back to Urithiru once more. We search his chambers as thoroughly as we can. We find some coin, a painting worth some cash, yet more spell scrolls and a couple weapons. The greataxe we found appeared to be magical. We agreed to have it identified once we returned to Urithiru. We do so safely, and the greataxe turns out to be a Greataxe of Remembered Rage. This is perfect for me, so I take it and leave the rest of the loot to my friends.

I can't wait to venture outside of these walls again to try out this new greataxe. It feels well balanced. Until then, I shall think about what to do next.

Private Notes

• We make it to the Abandoned Temple of The God of Guardians just outside of Thistlebriar safely.
• We go around the room in the center of the circular hallway for now and head to the southwest hall instead. Mal leads the way, but suggests one of us check the door at the end of the hallway for traps. None found, so we open it.
• Inside are some shelves and ladders that allow access to the higher shelves. On the tables are books and inkwells. It actually seems to be a rather pleasant area to read.
• Suddenly we hear a voice: "Show me your symbols." We forgot about those. Oops. Zugg Zugg pulls out his holy symbol. The voice says "That's not the symbol I was referring to." Just then, a hidden creature clambers out from above the shelves. INITIATIVE!!!
  • Mal climbs one of the ladders and precariously balances while swinging his two-handed greatsword. He hits just fine.
  • Mal then leaps across the room onto another ladder after the creature shuffled around. Success! The swing didn't land though.
  • Then the creature tried to shove Mal off the ladder, which it was successful at doing, causing Mal to fall to the desk below, taking some fall damage.
  • Freya fires up at the creature, knocking it off the ceiling to its death. It thankfully lands just next to Mal rather than onto him. Combat over.
• On the creature are two scrolls. One is Longstrider (1st), and the other is Silence (2nd).
• As we look for other things around the room, Freya touches a book, causing other books to begin shaking. A bunch of books come flying off the bookshelves. INITIATIVE!!!
  • A couple of the books make contact with Mal, giving him a good papercut.
  • Whoever said "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt." was speaking some BS.
  • We closed the chapter on this combat. Combat over.
• After checking the books for any hidden objects within, we find a book titled "My Beloved" which is hollowed out on the inside. Contained within is another holy symbol/totem that is warm to the touch. Mal picks it up and immediately feels that exhaustion that Lim Dul described from when we were here a couple weeks ago. Mal will take it to the door and leave it.
• Within the books is an additional scroll. This time it's a scroll of Fog Cloud (1st).
• We take a short rest while looking around and find tons more spell scrolls: Healing Word (1st), Shield (1st), Cure Wounds (1st), Divine Favor (1st), Hideous Laughter (1st), Jump (1st), Aid (2nd), Flame Blade (2nd), Magic Weapon (2nd).
• We take the totem to the three northern doors and leave it there, where the others still are in the bag we left from before.
• On the way back to the western hallway, Mal checks the statue near the hall. Similar to the other statue, its fingers are movable above the sword's hilt.
  • As a bit of a recon between adventures, we find out that moving the fingers of the statues are what unlocked the rooms we've been in so far. If we use the two statues together and put the statues such that there were only three fingers touching their respective swords, the library opens. Five fingers open the door to the reanimated party. Eight fingers touching the sword opens Mr. Wiggles' door. Seven fingers opened the mist room, and six fingers opened the break room. The western statue has a ring with three painted gems on the right ring finger. The eastern statue has a ring with two painted gems on its right pinkie finger.
• We quickly deduce that four fingers total on the hilt must open the western hallway door, and it does.
• King Louie stands guard at the end of the hallway while we investigate this room. Val checks for traps and finds none.
• We open the door to a mostly empty and silent room. On the far wall is a femur bone with a skull on top drawn in dried blood. There are some mats around it.
• When Zugg enters, he hears a female voice saying "I don't think we've spoken before." Zugg introduces himself and asks about her. Her name is Laura. Zugg asks if they're good or evil. If she's evil, we need to kill her. She says that's actually kind of comforting. She asks if we can help her and her husband. Zugg asks about the help they need. She says she assumes we seek the destruction of her husband Malek. We are indeed. He has fallen from the Sun God's mercy and has made a profane deal with Orcus on her behalf. It wounds her to see her husband has fallen this far and believes that he will slip further into insanity if he continues. She needs us to stop him. After Val's insight check, we feel that the woman's voice is genuine. She's truly upset and wants him stopped. Freya asks how we go about stopping him and about his weaknesses. She answers, "I know if you can channel divine power, you will be able to better deal with his servants and guardians." Zugg Zugg says he can do that. "But I need your promise. I need you to end him. I need you to separate his soul from his sins so that we may be together forever." She asks if we've figured out the use of the totems. We say we haven't. She says "You have to place a totem in the correct hole for the door to open. I only know the combination for the one into our chambers, the north door, but it requires a special totem. To open Malek's chamber, place the special totem in the hole that is three columns over and four rows down. Sorry that I can't help with the other rooms, but that one I can." We thank her, and ask about the rooms in the middle of the circular hallway, to which she doesn't know anything.
• We leave to try to figure out the doors in the middle. These doors are covered in arcane runes. On each door is the outline of a hand, an indentation into which we presume we place our hand to unlock it.
• Valric determines that the runes are of the abjuration school of magic. He deduces that the type of magic makes the doors more or less impenetrable unless the correct mechanic activates the locking mechanism.
• Freya casts Mage Hand and has it approach the door first just to see what, if anything, happens. It doesn't appear to have any effect.
• Mal has an idea to place our hand into the door with the same number of fingers held up as the statues have gems just opposite the respective door.
• Valric place his hand into the hand hold. The runes flash as if they were magically activated. As the runes flash, a spike jabs out from the door, dealing some physical and poison damage. Ouch.
• We have the idea to have King Louie and Freya place their hands simultaneously into the doors to see what happens. Freya asks if Mal can pull out another ape creature from his bag. Mal explains that he can't choose what comes out, but that he'll try anyway. He does so and ends up pulling out a Giant Weasel, which he names Daxter. Doesn't look like Daxter will be a good match for the door, so we just stick to our initial plan. We both end up taking damage. Ouch again.
• We decide to take another short rest and just get on with what we know how to do thanks to the voice's help from earlier.
• While resting, Daxter and King Louie alert us to a loud noise coming from the end of the hallway. Looks like a Minotaur has somehow found its way to us. INITIATIVE!!!
  • Daxter gets outright splattered on the first attack. RIP Daxter. We hardly knew ya.
  • We finish him off easily enough. Combat over.
• We decide to make a quick trek back to Thistlebriar to take a safe rest.
• We come back to the Abandoned Temple of The God of Guardians and find it as we left it. Mal pulls out another fuzzy creature from the bag. This time, it's a baboon, which he names Rafiki.
• We make our way to the north door where we put the ornate totem in the correct hole. It hisses as if it has been unsealed for the first time in a while, and we push it open. On opening it, we find several enemies inside. Down the short set of steps are six 7-foot tall zombies not moving. On the opposite side stands a figure surrounded by skulls. He welcomes us. He's not quite human anymore. His spine is twisted from dabbling in this evil magic. He probably can't walk anymore without being carried by his six caregivers. This is Malek himself. INITIATIVE!!!
  • Zugg Zugg is able to turn four of the six zombies. Anything helps!
  • Malek casts Fear on us. Zugg Zugg is the only one who failed that roll unfortunately.
  • We slowly whittle away at the zombies. Now it's time to focus our energy on Malek himself as he cowers away behind cover while his zombies do all the hard work.
  • As Malek is VERY near death (literally a single hit point remaining!), he casts Misty Step and runs away. However, Mal, in his infinite wisdom, steps on the nearby bed, waking Riggles, the smaller version of Wiggles, from his slumber as none of us happened to notice the corpse under the bed. Welp.
  • Malek successfully escapes from the encounter. Oh well. At least we can take down Riggles and the zombie entourage.
  • Combat over.
• We quickly search the room for loot. Inside Riggles is 1000c 25s 130g inside his chest cavity. We also find a drawing of Elysium worth 50g. In the bookshelves are four spell scrolls: Scroll of Shield of Faith (1st), Goodberry (1st), Feather Fall (1st) and Hellish Rebuke (1st). Riggles had a Morningstar on him. The zombies had 3p, 14s, 17c, 14s, 14s, 10g. Minotaur had a magical greataxe. We pay the 20g to identify the greataxe. It turns out to be a +1 Greataxe of Remembered Rage, which when attuned, allows its wielder to use the Reckless Attack barbarian class feature 3 times per day as if they had that feature. Nice! Mal takes it.
• With Malek nowhere to be found, we decide it's time to head back to Urithiru for a while.

That's it for this session!