Mission 5 - Beneath Vanthampur Villa

[!abstract] The Job
Go below Vanthampur Villa, end the family's schemes, and find out what became of Elturel's High Overseer.

The Temple / Basement

The air grew heavy as we descended into the basement, thick with the stench of sewage and a dry, desert-like quality. We unlatched the eastern door. As I stepped into the hallway, my companions in the landing room were ambushed by spined devils, bursting from crates in the center of the room.

I spun back, delivering two critical hits to the devil assailing Thomus - Thomas. Baktha Tassup - Ryan quickly discerned that radiant damage was far more effective against these creatures. Thomus - Thomas landed the killing blow on that particular fiend with a burst of sacred flame.

Baktha Tassup - Ryan then felled the second of the three spined devils while Salah Secumber - Hal and I combined our efforts against the third. Finally, Thomus - Thomas dispatched the last of the infernal creatures.

Into the Sewers

The stench of this place clings to me like a bad debt. Beyond the landing, the sewer opens into black, churning water spiraling toward a central drain, and the reek is so thick it nearly knocks me flat. Even I retreat. The only other door in the landing leads somewhere more civilized: a silent, 20-foot-square wine cellar.

Back at the sewer arch, we head north. The passage bends west, lined with vicious rat traps. Two robed figures swing censers ahead of us, trailing a sweet perfume that is almost an insult to the sewage, and duck around a corner before I can reach them. Nobody smells that good in a sewer unless they're up to something.

The hall branches into three doors, two north and one south. The first north door is a larder: three rusty hooks on chains, one holding a gutted pig. The second is a dining hall, with six iron candlesticks, two trestle tables and benches. Cultists eat, apparently. Just not as well as me.

The southern door is where the muttering is coming from, a guttural tongue I don't know. Salah Secumber - Hal swears he heard the name Zariel in it. That name is going to follow us. Baktha Tassup - Ryan and I kick the door open.

A Dance with a Fiend

Inside is a shrine soaked in infernal devotion. Two rows of iron candlesticks light a towering statue of Zariel, its eyes burning. A six-foot spined devil stands guard before it, and four cultists in gold devil masks kneel at its feet.

I take the first cultist apart in a spray of black ichor. Iliran Tilorri - Mike scorches another to ash with a scorching ray. My critical strike turns the third into mist, and Salah's mace crushes the last. Then we turn on the devil.

It's no pushover. Its spines sink into Baktha again and again with a wet, sickening sound, and he's a bloody wreck by the end of it. But we keep hammering, and when Salah delivers the final blow, its light goes out. Mike and I swallow healing potions, and we patch Baktha up.

We pull down the statue of Zariel. It shatters on the stone floor and, inside, a hidden mace. Two secret doors turn up in the southeast corner. One leads to a short hallway and a ladder up to a wooden hatch, probably the stables. The other, on the south wall, we save for later.

The Ambush

We rest in the secret hallway. Then we open the door back to the shrine and are met by a hail of spears. Ten guards were waiting for us. I knock back a potion of fire breath, and so does Thomas. He torches one guard to ash on the spot. Mike's thunderwave slams the rest. Salah swings his mace like a man possessed. I breathe fire on another and the scent of cooked flesh fills the room. Twelve seconds, give or take. Then it's quiet.

Thalamra Vanthampur

Behind the second secret door, Thalamra Vanthampur is waiting like a spider in a jar. Her first eldritch blast comes before I even see her. We pile on. My shortsword bites deep for a critical hit, and her hellish rebuke burns me for it. Thomas and Baktha keep me on my feet, and I push the attack. A few more blows and a flash of radiance, and the matriarch is dead. Two keys on her corpse, purpose unknown.

Baktha throws holy water on an altar where an angel-shaped flame is dancing. The flame dies. The altar cracks in two. Another secret door leads deeper into the sewers, and we find a little prison guarded by a purple devil with tentacles for lips. It doesn't last long.

The Prisoners

Two cells. In the first, a short, lean, bookish human in his fifties with a crimson goatee: Falaster Fisk, agent of Sylvira Savikas, a tiefling scholar of the Nine Hells based in Candlekeep. He's been investigating why the Vanthampurs are sheltering Thavius Kreeg. In the second cell, a snooty noblewoman, Satiir Thione-Hhune, kidnapped as leverage in case her family found out the Vanthampurs had stolen the Shield of the Hidden Lord from their crypt. She's insufferable. We free her anyway. Even the unpleasant deserve a door.

We lead them out through the stables. Fisk warns us to watch for Kreeg. Thune doesn't bother to close the stable gate behind her, so Thomas has to do it.

The northwest room has iron candle holders, two ugly paintings (lemure devils from the River Styx, and a corpse hung like a marionette), a woodstove, a bed, and a chest holding a silver holy symbol of Torm. A barracks next door gives us 40 gp and a pile of dull clothes.

South of the barracks, a pitch-black 10-foot hallway. The moment we step in, it floods with light and two masked acolytes at the far end fire rays of fire at us. Mike answers with a triple scorching ray that incinerates one. Salah finishes the other with a mace and a guiding bolt.

Thomas spots a crack in the wall hiding a chamber: four iron candlesticks lighting a nine-pointed star in black stone, ringed in red candles. Baktha opens another door to an empty room with four wooden wardrobes.

The Shield of the Hidden Lord

The last room holds a middle-aged man whose shadow on the wall tells a different story: pudgy, horned, with small leathery wings. A golden shield glows on the wall beside him. I kick the door in and nearly cut him down in one swing. Salah steps up to question him, but Reya bursts in, steps between us, and starts defending him. Her paladin's heart sees an injustice. Baktha points out the devil's shadow, and her face goes hard.

Thomas casts see invisibility to check for tricks. Mike bars the door and senses two magical auras: one from the man's ring, one from the shield.

The man is Thavius Kreeg. He tells a tale of being captured by the Duke and forced to inspect the shield. I'm not buying it. It doesn't match what Thurstwell Vanthampur told us, that Kreeg helped bring down Elturel and was working with Thalamra to take Baldur's Gate. I take his ring and toss it to Mike.

While we question Kreeg, a voice speaks in Baktha's head from the shield. It claims to be the Hidden Lord of the celestial plane, begging to be freed to help restore Elturel, and warns of a cult that wants to stop him. Salah looks at the shield with his divine senses and says flatly that whatever's inside is not celestial. When I pick it up, the voice is in my head too, saying the same sweet things. Thurstwell said it was a devil, Gargauth, promising to help Thalamra conquer the city if freed. I know a liar when I hear one. I'll find out what the shield wants. Just not by freeing it.

We hand Kreeg to Reya's wrath. He sputters his last words as her sword takes his head from his body.

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#session #mission