Vanrakdoom III

…The party heard human voices chanting in the chamber (12) to the east. The party would have never anticipated what they found, however: Six human cultists knelt on rough woven mats in the center of this area, chanting in low tones.  Amidst them was a man draped in rats. Dozens crawled across his flesh, roaming across his body like it were virgin countryside. His arms were outstretched, T-posed, his brow furrowed as he endured whatever macabre test of devotion it must surely have been. The cultists were chanting a somewhat-familiar verse over and over in Common:

“Darkness quench the sun.
Darkness swallow the moon.
We are nothing but the night.”

The arrival of intruders prompted the cultists to take up arms and attack. The fanatic in the center seemed to panic, and was swiftly devoured by the rats while the cultists fell to steel, arrow, and spell.

When Shady cracked open the door to the south (13), they saw a dead male human laying naked on a chaise longue in the center of the room, his castoff black and purple robe draped over a small table nearby. Two vampire spawn loomed over the body, one slurping ferociously at the corpse’s wrist while the other sunk her fangs deeper into the corpse’s thigh. With the addition of Nym‘s arrows, the party made quick work of the vampire spawn and inspected the room. Close examination of the dead cultist revealed no signs of a struggle, suggesting that he offered no resistance as he died from exsanguination. Situated between the purple-flamed torches lighting the room were fancy wooden chairs with red-cushioned seats and backrests. A secret door was found on the eastern wall.

Shady carefully checked and open the door to a room (14) lightly obscured by fog.  As he cautiously entered the room, the fog enveloped him and draped his mind in a misty wreath as he experienced another vision:

The world was black with darkness. Neither stars nor moons hung over the sky. His boots echoed out across the room as his voice shouted, “This is madness, Vanrak! Madness!”

A nobleman loomed out of the gloom, whirling to face ‘Shady’, his eyes brimming with madness. The noble leveled at him a longsword whose blade was made of pure sunlight. The noble’s voice was like shattered glass: “What have we to gear from darkness, you and I, Glyster? Undermountain is where we belong! It calls to us—can you not hear it?”

Waving his luminous blade about like a lunatic, the noble continued, “Together we shall see the Moonstar name elevated to glorious heights my father couldn’t dream of! Waterdeep will shudder at the very sound of it!”

The last Shady saw was the waving sunlight shed from that sword as the mists swept in to pull him back to standing in the secret room.  It was then that he noticed the shiny hilt of a longsword–carved to resemble a bronze dragon with its wings spread and its mouth agape–lying on the fog-shrouded floor.  Picking up the hilt, Shady returned to the party and shared the vision he had just witnessed.

Making their way back up and safely through the next doorway, the party entered a large room (15) that was clearly the cultists’ quarters: six empty wooden bunk beds lined the north and east walls. Between the bunks were stone shelves stocked with rations, casks of water, wooden dishware, and steel utensils. Embedded in the south wall was a stone arch, its sides carved in the form of scantily clad elves (one male and one female) holding fingers to their lips in a gesture of silence. While searching the area around the stone arch for some type of a hidden door or mechanism, a hidden door was found, on the eastern wall.

The small secret chamber (16) was lightly obscured by fog and decorated with bas-relief carvings of human skeletons—a macabre furnishing indeed. As Shady waded through that clinging mist, a vision gripped his mind:

‘Shady’s’ eyes fell upon a jungle steeped in shadow. At a campfire sat several men and women, their expeditionary gear heaped at their feet. Tents loomed like leathern peaks over the barren jungle floor. He faced a nobleman whose leather gear was wet with mud and bristling with captured thornbuds. ‘Shady’s’ hand crept out from his coat as he handed the nobleman a polished coral ring.

“A token,” ‘Shady’ heard himself say in a voice that was solid but strange. “…of our friendship, Vanrak.”

The nobleman cradled the ring and slipped it on his finger. It glimmered with a rainbow of color. “I will treasure this gift forever,” Vanrak said, his smile shining in the firelight.

When the vision ended, Shady’s mind was hurled back to the gloom of Vanrakdoom. With his next step, Shady stepped on something small on the floor. Picking it up revealed the ring from his vision: a polished coral band that glimmers with a rainbow of color. Stepping out of the foggy room, Shady shared his vision with the party before they continued on.

Heading back up to the northwest to head east along the wide northern hall, the party came to and passed through doors into a chamber (17) with 10-foot-high ceilings and floors covered with dust. There was only silence here, heavy and omnipresent like the fog that continued to cling to their ankles. Not even their steps upon the stone were enough to pierce the mute canopy. It’s almost as if the dungeon itself would rather slumber or wallow in the gloom. Thaminor, maybe uneasy by the silence, had an strong feeling like there was something else in the western portion of the room, and spent the next few minutes searching for some sort of hidden door, cure for undeath, or other meaning of existence. Eventually, Thaminor gave up and moved on, as everyone else already had.

Heading to the southwest, Shady entered 10-foot-high chambers (18) and corridors lined with with shallow niches that held more black wax candles burning with a purple light. When he noticed that the bare walls and floors were covered in bat guano, he looked up to the rough-hewn ceiling in time to see swarms of bats shriek and descend to attack. Their nuisance was nothing but a momentary distraction, however, before two packs of vampire spawn encircled the monk!

The vampires came from both east and west, with a couple coming across the 10-foot-high ceiling to strike from above. Shady was quickly surrounded, and took a few solid hits. Thaminor fulfilled his role, moving up to engage while Nym filled the air with a spray of arrows. Shady seized the earliest opportunity to make a strategic withdrawl, where Molish healed some of his wounds. Leo thorn whipped one of the vampires, pulling it away from Thaminor and into the hallway where he was easily dispatched. Before Pix could move up from the chamber and fully engage, he was alerted to two vampire spawn coming in from the southeast to flank the party… at least until the gnome dropped a wall of force to stop them.

The tide turned, however, as Leo shifted into the form of a fire elemental, and took the fight to the vampires. Quickly passing through their ranks, the druid left the undead engulfed in flame. Half the remaining creatures broke off their attacks, attempting to snuff the fires before they were consumed. The party systematically reduced the threats one vampire at a time, until the final trio fled the battle, heading both east and west…