Thanks!

Session 34, 11/26/2022
We are closing in on 2 years! One more meeting this year and then a 4 week break due to the Christmas holiday. Today’s session was only around 2-2.25 hrs due to time.

At this point, the party has cleared all of the active threats. They explore the sitting room, and with the Investigation check I mention that the furniture is well-made. “What kind of wood?” “Roll a nature check” as I buy time…. “22”… “umm, Red Ironwood.” It turns out that’s a real wood, and a very hard and expensive wood. Later on, Ratel spends some time cutting up some chairs for wood to sell or use to make stuff because it’s so valuable. Lesson learned: If you improvise an expensive sounding wood, make sure it’s a real one, or that nobody in your party has actually worked with exotic woods.

The party cautiously proceeds down one of the two fog-filled corridors after checking the door for traps. They find two guest rooms (nice furniture, apparently untouched but clean), and a partly empty library. Searching the library, they find 1200gp in spell scribing supplies, two empty spellbooks, and an array of 12 wizard scrolls.

Exploring the other hall, they found the master bedroom, which contained a Robe of Eyes and Cloak of Elvenkind. Right now, nobody has suitable attunement slots.

From there, they proceeded to the wizard’s study, picking up a couple of high-level scrolls, a Staff of Charming, and a Wand of Paralysis. Again, attunement slots. While Ratel starts cutting up some wood, Teador decides to open the other door in the back, ignoring the fact that furniture arrangement indicates it was rarely used. The door is not locked, but is “stuck.” He yanks it open, and a Magic Mouth yells in elven about hating thieves, right before a Glyph of Warding (fire) goes off, destroying all the papers and any un-held items in the room, plus damaging the party.

Luckily, they grabbed the valuable stuff before the door was opened, so nothing of value was burnt. A greedy or speedy group may have tried the door first, and lost the items in the room.

After this, they decide to take a long rest. Despite having three good, comfortable bedrooms, everyone but Teador decides to rest in the library. Saqwam doesn’t need to sleep, so he reads, Ratel reads and then trances for 4 hours in a wingback chair leaned against the wall, and Troudar just finds a comfortable corner. Paranoid PCs are gonna be paranoid.

The party proceeds back to the long fog-filled hallway, making sure to specify that they float to avoid the pressure plates and lightning bolts.

However, this does not prevent them from passing through the area with a DC 20 Suggestion effect to check the sides. Unlike when they came in, two PCs failed.

Troudar went to the eastern room, a 10’ triangular room. The door slams behind him, and two Symbols light up on the walls… one of Death (10d10 necrotic) and one of Insanity (INT save or insane for 1 minute). There’s a second Death symbol on the door that he triggers when he turns around and sees it in the following round. Before getting pulled out (below) he spends a couple of rounds moving randomly in the room and takes somewhere around 150hp of damage.

Ratel, meanwhile, turned west, and walked down a short corridor. The floor at the end of the corridor is an illusion leading to a 100’ fall. He falls, hits the ground unscathed (monk) and has a dragon pop into existence in front of him. He fails his Wis save against fear and his Int save against the breath weapon, and uses his turn to run away back upstairs to tell everyone there’s a dragon. He sees the closed door and opens it, subjecting himself to two of the three Symbols. He fails his save against insanity as well.

Saqwam, meanwhile, thinks there’s not much he can do. “I walk farther away.” DM: “You walk further away?” “Yeah.” Pressure plate triggered, lightning bolt saves from everyone except the insane guy locked in a small room.

Ultimately, Saqwam uses Bigby’s Hand to grapple Ratel and pull him out of the area of effect, then Teador uses a Paladin ability to end the ongoing spell effect. Ratel wants to go back for Troudar, and insists that he be dropped where he is.
Ratel was being held right over the square with the pressure plate. Lightning bolt saves from everyone except Troudar…again.

Ratel makes his saves and pulls Troudar out, then Troudar is healed by Teador. The Paladin +5 aura (30’) helped a lot with this.

They then decide to go back and confront the dragon, triggering Suggestion again. Luckily, the only one who failed was Troudar, and since he’d already checked one side, checking dragon-side was his reasonable choice…and he was headed there anyway. He starts floating down at 30’/rd on his broom.

Ratel runs down, punches the dragon, and misses with 20-something and 30-something to hit. This is fishy. He yells something up the 100’ drop about waiting, but the other PCs decide they don’t hear him.
Teador casts Haste, and then uses a Hasted dash and his flight speed from his ring to Magneto-hover down past Troudar to reach the bottom, coming into view of the dragon at the end of his turn. Ratel then decides to just leave, wall-running/dashing back up the 100’ drop past Teador and Troudar.

The dragon breathes fire on Teador and moves. Teador makes his save, then Hasted-floats back up past Troudar.
Troudar eventually catches up, and the party exits without further issues.
A triggered Illusory Dragon can be a fun thing. It’s a nice spell.

DM note: The wizard’s library contained some basic scrolls to refill a spellbook in case of catastrophic loss. I don’t think anyone picked up on this.

The illusory dragon and death room both threw them for a loop and required some problem-solving. I may stick this little dungeon up on the DM's guild as a 1-1.5 session mini-dungeon for high level parties. The potential damage output from the traps is too much for low level PCs. It's not the tomb of horrors or anything, just ....wizard spells with lots of prep time.