Post by hubertbartels on Oct 2, 2018 13:57:16 GMT -5
It was a lazy eight days for Summer. On this rainy afternoon, while Summer was sleeping, Alric had an appointment with a highly placed member of his guild, Keylis Tayla. He arrived at the “Silver Vines”, her estate in Ivy Towers, when she takes him aside and showed him a corpse. The corpse, a young man, died setting off a magical trap in her house. Poorly dressed in clothes a 100 years old, with the tattoos of a Reaver, he was part of a gang that took one item from the house – a finely sculpted hand of a half-elf male.
The corpse is nondescript with only feature of interest – a crudely inked depiction of two hands holding a bowl, dinner plate, or stone. Alric volunteered our group to look into the crime. She wants her sculpture back – or the whole statue if that is possible. Keylis offers 1000 crowns for the recovery of the hand and 1000 sovereigns for the statue. She offers us the name of a contact in the Fallen District – a priestess of the Silver Flame named Fayla. She can be found at the Blackstone Church.
After gathering our gear, we descended through Lower Menthis , Downstairs, we entered the ruined district known as Fallen. Once the center of Sharn’s temple district, it has come down to becoming a slum area, quartering the workers of the Cogs. And then, the Crystal Tower fell, showering the remaining buildings of the district in a shower of deadly glass and destruction.
The Blackstone Church stood on the edges of the Fallen. We entered the quiet, dark and dusty building to find a young woman dressed in gray. Fayla listened to our description of the young man and identified the tattoo as belong to a group of the Ravers known as the Stone Keepers. They can be found in a mansion known as Coldrack Hall. But to get to the former Dwarven estate, we would need to cross the area belonging to the Blood Drinkers.
It wasn’t too far – just up the street. But within moments of walking down the street of ruined buildings and abandoned temples, we had the feeling that we were being watched. A group of Ravers jumped us and and almost killed us. We retreated into a nearby structure where we found another younger group of insanely strong Blood Drinkers. After killing them, we paused in an empty room and caught our breath.
Maybe the deaths of the Blood Drinkers stopped further attacks, maybe they needed to gather their forces but we were able to leave our refuge and hurry to Coldrack Hall without another attack.
Coldrack Hall was of Dwarven construction – solid and heavy. Ruined dwarven statues still stood watch over the front entrance. A spire from the Crystal Tower had crashed through the roof and stuck in the front hallway, upside down. After passing through the entry hall, we found ourselves in a hallway to the left. The first room we explored was a library, vandalized and ruined. The adjoining room was a fest hall with four Ravers with their wild and disturbing tattoos. We cleared them out. The kitchen was in little better shape but it had 4 Horrid Rats. Roscoe found a wooden box with silver cutlery. From the kitchen, we wandered down a long hallway which was broken by the glass walls of the Crystal Tower spire. The sheer amount of broken glass led us to believe that here was a way into the spire.
There was doorway here – it led to a pantry. The pantry held more Horrid Rats. Roscoe put most of them to sleep so we had an easier time to clear them out. Adjoining the pantry was a servants’ barracks. It was currently haunted by an Allip, a powerful spirit of death. Cypher’s divine smite destroyed the ghost before it could seriously hurt us. It was getting late so we decided to rest here in the barracks.