20th day of Ready'reat, CY 580 - A drow vampire? Really?

Yes, it was a vampire. Specifically his name was Belgos, not that he introduced himself. He wasn't happy that the party just sent his lover back to the Abyss. Belgos swiped twice at Shan-Ju, who was invisible to him at the moment, with clawed fingers. Both attacks missed. Belgos tried and failed to charm Fen, the paladin, but failed. Now it was the party's turn, and the melee fighters did over 60 hit points of damage in a single round - despite that fact that hundreds of bats were swarming around Belgos to give him additional defensive cover. He soon went gaseous, and disappeared under a nearby boulder.

The party decided to go after him, and managed to push the boulder out the way, revealing a circular staircase going down. At the bottom of the stairs was a plush bedroom with lots of fine treasure, but no sign of a coffin. The party began searching for secret doors and eventually found what they were looking for, and opened a passage into what looked like an ancient crypt.

Coming up to a T intersection, there was a room down the right hallway with an eerie green light emanating from it. That must be what they were looking for. But as the party turned to go down the hallways, twelve wights rushed at them from the hall to the left. For any other party, this would have been frightening. But for the badass motherfuckers, it was a lightning bolt followed by a couple of sword swings and it was all over.

Moving into the room with the green glow, there was a coffin in the middle of the room and spider webs all over. Before the party could approach the coffin, a giant black widow dropped down from the ceiling, surprising everyone. The spider could not connect its fangs through the superior armor classes of any of the PCs, and they soon hacked the spider up into bits. But the spider wasn't the real threat. It was primarily acting as an alarm for Belgos, who was now fully regenerated within his coffin. The lid sprang open and Belgos leaped out. The party pivoted and responded with nearly 100 points of damage to the vampire lord before he even had a turn. He turned gaseous and reformed in his coffin and Dalron immediately staked him through the heart, cut off his head and shoved garlic in the stump. The party then burned the corpse. It was possible that some of the steps were unnecessary, but it gave everyone great pleasure.

Within Belgos' chambers the party came across a golden idol of a spider with a woman's torso attached. This was most definitely Lolth. Sebastian picked up the idol and instantly gained several powerful abilities. . . though likely at a price. He placed the idol in a bag and the party went about their way. Searching the rest of the place they found some treasure, some interesting goggles with pink lenses, and a basin full of what they identified as Oil of Etherealness. The latter had been used recently, and Sebastian put it on himself and walked through a wall to another part of the crypt. This part eventually led to another exit elsewhere in the underdark. It seemed like someone else may have been here with Belgos and escaped before the party made it down.

Among Belgos' clothes were some fine drow clothes, which the party took, and a Cloak of Protection that Sarril thought looked odd. Sebastian figured it might be another Cloak of Poisonous, and understood that the only way to know for sure would be to put it on, and so he did. And promptly died. Sarril removed the curse and the poison and cast Raise Dead on him. Down another con point, but just a little bit wiser, Sebastian relayed a harrowing tale.

While dead, Sebastian was unable to move on to his proper afterlife. Instead, he found himself among a sea of lost souls in an empty waste, marching toward a figure upon a rock. Vecna. Sebastian was certain of it. He knew the legends, what little there were, mostly about the eye and hand, but this skeletal creature was most certainly missing an eye and a hand. The fiendish being looked at Sebastian with his one glowing eye and spoke through his mind "you escaped me once before, but now you have returned. I am inevitable." That's all that he saw before being snapped back to life.

It turns out that this bedroom was the perfect place to rest, and so the party spent the night, safely and comfortably. The next day they headed out toward the drow outpost, another three day journey, but this time unobstructed.

The party was interested in getting through the outpost quickly and safely, and let Sebastian talk his way through, saying they wished to trade in Erelhei-Cinlu. The drow agreed to let them pass through, and so they did. On the way through they passed multiple slave pens with dwarves, svirfneblin and human slaves which were being sold to the Kuo-Toa. Sir Fenius, being a Paladin of St. Cuthbert, was appalled, but kept his cool, knowing that they had to get through to accomplish their mission, but there was no way he would not be coming back to rescue these prisoners. After moving through the outpost, it was three more days to Erelhei Cinlu and the party arrived on the morning of 28th Day of Ready'reat.

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The party emerged into an enormous cavern known as the Vault of the Drow. The cavern itself is thousands of feet high at the center and several miles across, all lit by a soft green glow. Underground rivers and fungi forests gave the place an alien outdoor feel. Donning the pink goggles, everything came alive with color - reds, oranges, yellows and greens. It was a sight to behold. Ahead of them loomed a large black tower on a mesa. A paved road led left and right in front of the tower. Sarril's familiar scouted overhead and could see the road to the right led to the city gates, and so that's where they went.

Approaching the gates of the city, they were halted by the guards there, who stated that outsiders are not allowed within the city without the express permission of one of the twelve great houses. Sebastian explained that they were merchants who wished to trade within the city. The guards explained they would need a merchant medallion. Sebastian asked what house the guard represented and he responded "Noquar." Sebastian then asked who within house Noquar he could talk to, and flashed some of the party treasure at him. This piqued his interest, and he directed the Sebastian to speak with Raerna of House Noquar a the envoy compound outside of the city and gave directions, so that's where the party went next.

While meeting with Raerna, Sebastian cut immediately to the chase. Without further negotiation, he presented the Golden Lolth idol, which turns out to be a lost artifact of great power and importance to the drow. He offered it as a gift in exchange for a merchant medallion. Of course the deal was accepted and the party was given permission to trade within the city as representatives of House Noquar - with 10% of all proceeds to the house, of course. Sebastian was all too happy to be rid of the artifact, as he began to notice strange black hairs growing on his neck. Evil artifacts always have a way of changing people, Sebastian knew.

Inside the city, the party was directed to the foreign quarter where non-drow are allowed to stay. They found an inn run by a duergar and purchased rooms for the week. Their instructions were to enter the city and then get word to Eclavdra's agent in the slave pens that they were in the city. So after settling in, they went to the slave pens (without the paladin, who was already struggling hard to avoid killing everything in sight) and gave a message to the drow they believed was the right contact. "We are from the surface and we are here to trade with House Eilserv" followed by where they are staying and where they will be setting up shop in the merchant quarter. The drow did not respond, but Sebastian walked away, confident that the message had been delivered. Now there was nothing to do but sit and wait.

The party did set up shop in the merchant quarter, trying to sell their wares. Business was not great the first day, as most of what they had to sell was jewelry collected from various dungeon exploits, and jewelry is a matter of taste. But Shan-Ju managed to find a mind-flayer merchant selling the most exotic, high-end magical equipment the party had ever seen (thanks to some excellent rolls of the dice). We are talking about magic items that cost 100,000 gp or more (+5 weapons and unique named magic items). It just so happens that the party has been accumulating a lot of wealth in the portal hole for many years, and this looked like a great time to spend some money. Most particularly, the party had an item, the Book of Vile Darkness, which would be hard to sell on the surface, but a more perfect market could not be found than here. The mind-flayer recognized its value to the drow and offered a full-value trade for two magic items. A Holy Sword for the paladin and some special Bracers of Defense for Shan-Ju which appeared to be an artifact from his ancient order and, if he can figure out how to use them, would provide additional benefits.

This is where we left off. The party is still talking to the mind-flayer and intent on making additional purchases while they wait for Eclavdra to contact them. It is the 28th Day of Ready'reat, CY 580.

17th day of Ready'reat, CY 580 - The Shrine of the Kuo Toa

As the party approached the Kuo-Toan city, the Svirfneblin guide bade them farewell. He explained that, while the svirfneblin do trade with the kuo-toans when necessary, they don't like to spend too
much time with them. They worship a demon-goddess and are very unpredictable. He advised the party to use caution when dealing with them, then went on his way.

The party continued north into an area where the walls were carved and everything glowed in an eerie green light. Large slugs were moving across the walls and ceilings and the air had a salt tang to it. Up ahead they could see what looked like a large nude woman with a lobster head and claws, which was revealed to be a malachite statue as the party got closer.

Passages to the right and left showed many doors, and the party decided they would open the first door and attack and kill anything inside. It turned out to be a barracks housing some low-level kuo-toa soldiers. Sixteen of them, to be exact. They were minding their own business when the party started slaughtering them. A few ran out the back doors while the rest stayed to fight. The battle took some time due to the sheer numbers, but these kuo-toa were no real challenge for the group.

Dammac opened a large door at the end of the room and took a look through. At the other end of a very long hallway to the east was a kuo-toa, who looked surprised to see a dwarf looking at him from the barracks. He decided to throw the door the rest of the way open and run down a southern passageway, leaving room for Dalron to run out and start throwing daggers at the now screeching kuo-toa. This kuo-toa was tougher than the others, and Dalron was not able to kill it in a single round. This gave enough time for its screeches to be heard by others from another passageway intersecting the long hallway from the north. Soon, Dalron and the others were dealing with five kuo-toa in the hallway.

Meanwhile, down south, Tyril joined Dammac and saw five kuo-toa coming up stairs at the end of another long hallway. Tyril started throwing daggers of his own, but before long, both dwarves found themselves magically held by a kuo-toa priest who had come at them from another passage to their southwest. It began to dawn on the party that they just entered an entire city full of these strange creatures and attacked them without provocation, and now might have to deal with hundreds, potentially thousands of them. An escape plan would need to be hatched quickly.

While Dalron and Sebastian finished off the five kuo-toa to the north, Sarril moved south the dispel the Hold Person on the dwarves. That's when he noticed that the priest was surrounded by six more kuo-toa and, from the western passage behind the priest, at least a dozen more were on their way. Dalron and Sebastian also heard more coming from the north, and decided to run south to recombine the party lest they get permanently separated.

Sarril let loose with a Boccob's Rolling Thunder to take out the priest and as many of the surrounding fighters as he could. This bought some time as everyone began running down the east passage toward the stairs going down. Soon the passage behind them was full of dozens of kuo-toa. Sarril, having just cast Protection from Normal missiles on himself to avoid the bow fire, waited until as many were in the hallway as he could get, then unleashed a fireball. The fireball killed half of the fishmen, and the other half were running around screaming on fire. He then ran down the stairs to join the others.

The stairs led down to a narrow hallway going north. All along this hallway for hundreds of feet were cell doors. Inside the cells were humans, dwarves, some svirfneblin and a few humanoids. Dammac picked the locks for the humans, dwarves and svirfneblin and left the rest. Among the human captives was Fenius Agrivar (Fen), a paladin of Saint Cuthbert who was investigating the black bubble around Istivin when he was captured by drow. The drow must not have wanted a paladin amongst their slaves and sold him to the kuo-toa to be sacrificed to their demon goddess. The party equipped Fen with some pretty good equipment, and now there are seven members of the Sarril-branch of the Bad-Ass Motherfuckers.

This dungeon appeared to go to a dead end in a storage room to the north, which effectively meant the party was trapped. They armed the prisoners as best they could and prepared for a full frontal assault to fight their way back out. Then someone had the brilliant idea to search the area more thoroughly. It turns out that there was a concealed escape tunnel in the storage room, which led a few miles north of the Kuo-Toan city. Everyone was able to safely escape.

The Svirfneblin were able to calculate the bearings and figure out the way home, to the south, which would put the party back where they started, having to go through the Kuo-Toa city again in order to get through to the Vault of the Drow (the name for the area that includes Erelhei-Cinlu and the Fane of Lolth). The party was left with a few choices:

1. Try to follow unknown passages to the north and west, hoping that they might find a path leading to the drow city (but possibly getting lost along the way)

2. Go southwest back to the Kuo-Toa city and take their chances

3. Go south with the Svirfneblin back to their home, and take another passage northwest that they were told goes around the Kuo-Toa. This alternate passage leads to a drow area that the svirfneblin avoid at all costs. These drow appear to have some kind of cooperation going on with the kuo-toa and the house symbol was described as a brass bar/rod. This was where the party decided to go.

After travelling south for a couple of days, the party was on their own. Trying their best to follow the vague map they have, they eventually came into a large open area where the stars and moon were visible. Trees and flowers were fully in bloom and the whole area smelled wonderful. In the middle of this "garden" was a statue of a beautiful woman plucking a rose. Sarril saw through the illusion immediately and recognized a succubus in place of the statue. The ceiling was actually covered in bats flying around and there were numerous giant rats all over the cavern. After Sarril shouted a warning, everyone else attempted to disbelieve the illusion, with some amount of success.

Shan-Ju immediately went invisible and rushed up behind the beautiful demon. Dalron, however, was enraptured by her, and yelled at Shan-Ju to leave her alone. Soon, Sebastian fell to her charms, just as Shan-Ju struck her from behind for 52 points of damage, nearly killing her. Sarril unleashed a lightning bolt at her that would have finished her off were it not for a lucky magic resistance roll on her part. Dalron then grappled Sarril to prevent him from casting again, but Sarril had his ring of spell storing which requires only a mental command to work. He unleashed magic missiles from the ring, which struck and killed the succubus who disappeared in a flame, breaking the charm on Dalron and Sebastian.

Just then, one of the bats from overhead flew down and landed behind Shan-Ju, transforming into a male drow. This is where we ended the session.

It is the 20th day of Ready'reat, CY 580. Is this drow a vampire, or maybe just using a Cloak of the Bat? Either way, he looks pretty angry.