The Rainbow Stronghold
| The Rainbow Stronghold | |
|---|---|
| Date | 06/20/24 |
| Storyteller | Foster |
| Tier | Legendary |
| Player Characters | Grist Vanafeld, Zeal, Serene Leyvald, Shadefrost |
| Rewards | 280 xp, 5000 gp, 2000 platinum, prismatic plate, aeon stone (rainbow prism), radiant prism, retrieval prism (greater) |
| Result | Success |
| Author | Zeal |
| Downtime | 20 |
Log
It was a ten day trip to the stronghold, a place of stone walls and large, wooden doors. Encompassing its form was a barrier of prismatic energy, likely dangerous to the touch. Satori identified that the prismatic energy wasn't as strong on the wood as it was the stone, and as we went through the doors we were unaffected by any sorts of magic. Past the door was a message, "Reverse your path to lessen her wrath", written in white paint. Clearly just an attempt to repel us, but Satori tried walking backwards for a time, just to see if it made a difference.
The first room before us was crackling with electricity and a yellow light, with corridors going both ways around it. Though Serene was resistant to electricity today, we decided it best not to hurt ourselves to enter this room when there might be a way to disable it ahead of time. So, we headed left and down the first of two corridors beyond it. From there we passed by a green-lit room with bone naga statues and a well full of green mist. Not particularly inviting, we kept going, down to an indigo room. Seeing statues of medusas, we decided it best to leave this room for later. Heading back and to the upper corridor, we found an orange-lit room. In it were six longswords on pedestals, dripping with acid. Past them was a female elf standing on a plinth adorned with multicolored gemstones, though most were orange.
We went past that room to a split in the road, heading right first. There we found a blue-lit room with frosted over paintings, the room clearly dangerously cold. On the far wall were five beacons as well. Satori headed in to look at the paintings, causing the beacons to glow. From each one a Gellugon appeared, an ice devil. We killed one, then two more appeared, then another two. After killing all five, the blue lighting left the room, deeming it "completed". The paintings on the wall turned out to be of an unhappy-looking elven woman, same as the statue we previously saw. "Ceatha", as she was called, was likely the previous, or current, owner of this suddenly-apparating fortress. Satori also observed the beacons seemed to be slowly resetting themselves, though it would take quite a while to complete that process.
Going to the left of the split instead, we found a red room. Elven skulls and burnt skeletons adorned the room, and the team elected to leave that one for later as well? Some sort of color theory Grist was invested in testing out, so we went all the way to the green room instead to see if doing the "opposite" color (no idea how the opposite of blue is green, it's obviously red) made a difference. It did not, as when Shadefrost entered the room it began spewing poisonous gas into it all the same. Serene cut a chain, but no changes showed. I pulled the other up, revealing a key. Realizing we just lost a different key for the two tarnished chests in the room, Satori looked inside the well to find the key had indeed fallen about forty feet down. Once the key I held up was grabbed, I flew down to grab the other and fly back up. Satori unlocked one chest, I unlocked the other, and the gas stopped. Inside the chests were some surprisingly in-good-shape items, which we stowed away for investigation later.
We headed to the indigo room next, since it was the closest and we now knew there was no opposing-colors situation going on here. Nothing happened immediately, but as Shadefrost moved ahead and up some stairs to scope it out, an iron bull head at the top of the stairs filled the stairwell and room below with a petrifying gas. The statues of medusas also came alive, which we were forced to try and quickly fight. Shadefrost immediately felt the effects of the gas, while the others endured for some time. Luckily there was a path beyond the bull head, so Shadefrost stayed up there while we fought, eventually disabling the trap. By the time that we defeated the three statues and completed the room, all of us but Grist were heavily weakened by the gas. Serene peeks up ahead at the next room, a violet room, but we head back to rest for an hour. After healing up and getting rid of the petrification, we decided to deal with the yellow room since it was closest to the entrance.
Serene kicked open the door to the yellow room, revealing an altar and multiple statues of masses of petrified branches. We couldn't figure out what the challenge of the room was immediately, but Serene put a bottle of holy water on the altar, triggering it. Electricity destroyed the bottle, reviving two of the masses as some ancient, powerful shambling mound. Boosted by the strikes of lightning coming from the altar and aided by the waves of electricity that wore at us, these creatures caused us no shortage of trouble. As we killed them, it prepared to revive the other two, but Shadefrost quickly hurried in, found the runic source of the electricity under the altar, and destroyed it. The room was completed, so we healed up briefly before heading to the orange room.
As we entered, the acidic swords flew to the awakening statue that transformed into a Marilith. It was powerfully aggressive, but we killed it quickly. Next we headed to the red room, Serene stabbing the skeleton on a throne from outside the room to see if that triggered any sort of trap. It did not. Instead, three powerful wisps appeared and attacked us. Luckily the others had ways of handling invisible creatures, so it wasn't too much of an issue. We then headed to the violet room. Inside, a message read "Restore that which is lost. You must walk half blind on each side in order to recall." Accompanying this was three statues, and two amethyst gems in the middle of the floor. The left statue had two ruby eyes, the middle had none, and the right had sapphire eyes. It was an easy puzzle, putting replacing one eye of each with an amethyst from the middle, then putting those two in the middle's eyes. The trick came when Grist picked up the first amethyst, going blind. Shadefrost led him through the process while Satori noticed a barrier beyond the room with only a violet layer to it. As we completed the puzzle, said barrier vanished.
Beside that path was another, a room with two chests. "Only safe as the eighth!" written along the wall to the small room, two cabinets were presented to us. Both say they are safe. We open them, and sure enough they are safe. We then head to the last room, with a broken corpse in a room filled with crystal statues wielding bastard swords. "Heed my first warning" is written, which we quickly determine to be the one at the front of the building. The body on the floor seems to be slowly being fixed by rainbow colored electricity, which is concerning. With our combined memory, Serene breaks the colored crystals in the reverse order of how we did the rooms. The body on the ground fails to regenerate and looks to be the familiar form of an elven woman, long-dead. Satori and I both knew immediately that this "Ceatha" woman had been trying to conduct a complicated lich ritual here, and if we had failed in this last step she would have been revived. As the stronghold began to crumble, we grabbed what items we could and hurried outside. The stronghold was destroyed, unlikely to be an issue again going forward.