Session 42 — The Hollow House

Session Recap

The boss fight deferred at the end of Session 41 opens the moment the party pushes the sealed double doors of Laewendas's cave. Inside the burial chamber, six wights, the chaos-undead Wong, and the dungeon-lord himself — Halren, a white-haired robed spellcaster — heave out of the central sarcophagus. Halren is a menace: he bubbles the absent Lash out of the fight, chain-lightnings the whole room, and twin-casts a lesser Feeblemind that drops Silithane and Pimothy to 7 Intelligence (feral but loyal). But Fenric the spellbreaker bounces his Slow spells back like water off a duck, Magra rains crossbow death (a new crit-on-19 feature making each bolt galactic), and the trio allies — tank Pavid, animatrix Patricia, and the ghoul Rusty — grind the wights down. The Wong, hittable only by rolling low, spends the fight comically un-killable for Jex while it poisons itself, summons ten max-damage hyenas, and finally "explodes into butterflies." Halren's own panicked Fireball is his undoing: it downs Pimothy, very nearly kills Magra (orc-tough, surviving on 2 HP), and softens the room before Fenric finishes him. "Only 1.5 people went down" — a clean win.

The payoff is in the loot and the lore. A key pulled from inside Halren's ribcage opens a treasure vault holding a ~5,000-gold haul (gold bars, ancient un-spendable coin, gemstones, ectoplasm, a void stone), the dead gravekeeper's tools, and a clutch of magic items — a great ancient deciphering tablet, a gravekeeper's protective ring, a funeral censer, Halren's staff, and the two Candles of Torment from the main room. Silithane spends ten minutes translating the gravekeeper's diary: this place is the Hollow House, where four scholars — Corvian, Bael'Drakkor, Halren, and Jairus — once studied a pair of ancient tablets that granted them unnaturally long life. One by one they died across generations; Jairus was the last, spoke the ancient words, and may still be alive today. The party explores deeper, leaves a pair of noise-activated scholar-tombs alone, reunites the gorged greedy magmite with its Magmother, fails to talk a runaway magmite home, and beds down for a long rest while Gutricia spends six hours raising the dead wights as spiked puppet-soldiers. They wake the morning of the 30th for a 5 AM ambush on the riverside raider camp — next session. Still level 7; the promised pips wait on the cave being fully cleared.

Key Events

• The boss wakes. As the party pushes the reinforced doors open, the disturbance registers: the six wights ("whites") rise, the limping Wong stands, and the central sarcophagus lid grinds aside as Halren climbs out — knee-length white hair grown over an impossibly long life, hood, robes, a staff in both hands, and a palpable aura of dread. As a free action he seals the absent Lash in a containment bubble (a roleplay reason for her not to fight, Kadie being away), then points his staff and looses an arc of chain lightning that jolts and bounces across the whole party. (See Combat.)
• The Wong, and the rule of rolling low. The odd intelligent seventh undead (the "Wong" of Session 41) can only be hit by rolling under ~9 (a nat 1 is a crit) — everyone who tries shooting it "rolls too well." It runs a negative surge table: it poisons itself (granting itself advantage), "gains 20 health" that is really losing 20, briefly "knows what everything tastes like," and turns from violet to blue as it charges. Jex adopts it as a personal nemesis and finally drops it; it explodes into butterflies. (The GM later reveals one more Wong turn would have petrified the whole room — a near disaster.)
• Feeblemind on Silithane and Pimothy. Halren spends sorcery points to twin-cast a 6th-level lesser Feeblemind ("Fumblemind") at Silithane and Pimothy, both of whom fail the Intelligence save and drop from 17 INT to 7 — unable to cast, read, or speak cleverly, but still fighting "like a cornered rat" for their friends. Silithane loses his Blade Song AC and can no longer see through his bat. Patricia later restores both with Dispel Magic.
• The spellbreaker walls him off. Fenric identifies Halren as the room's boss the instant he sees 5th/6th-level magic flying off the staff, then spends the fight reflecting his Slow spells (advantage on the saves as a spellbreaker) straight back, ripping the magic from his body with every claw-strike (forcing Halren to burn Shield slots) and chasing him around the chamber as Halren blinks away again and again, cursing in Old Common — "a World War I trench fighter being strafed by an Apache helicopter."
• Magra, MVP. Newly 7th level, Magra reveals a feature making her crit on a 19 at point-blank, and turns her sharpshooter crossbow into a wrecking ball — splattering wight brains, finishing the Wong's neighbours, and stacking 24–30-damage bolts on Halren. Hasted by Gutricia, she fires three shots a turn.
• The Fireball, and two-and-a-half down. Cornered, Halren lobs a Fireball into his own room — killing one of his wights, downing Pimothy (stabilised at 1 HP), nearly ending Magra (she's an orc with 53 HP; the blast does 51, leaving her on 2 and her undying trait in reserve), and dropping Silithane as well. Both downed PCs ride the system's down-rules and potion themselves back up.
• The kill. After Thalia's whip pulls Fenric across the room turn after turn and knocks Halren prone, and Magra's bolts bleed him out, Fenric lands the finishing blow. The hyenas wink out, the tomb music returns, and the chamber is theirs. "Only 1.5 people went down — not the end of the world in this system."
• The key in the ribcage. Searching the boss, the party finds his burial robes, his staff, and — nested inside his half-decayed ribcage — a great key, twin to the vault door at the back of the chamber.
• The treasure vault. The key opens a hidden chamber and then a circular vault door, lit by a greedy magmite (three times normal size) that slipped under the door and gorged itself on melting gold until it passed out in a food coma. Within: gemstones, 40 lbs of gold (~50 gp per 1-lb bar), copper, ancient un-spendable coinage (a dead economy's money — meltable only), a jeweled dagger, silver surgical instruments, vials of preserved ectoplasm (~800 gold, and edible for Jex), and a void stone (invisible yet tangible). The total runs to roughly 5,000 gold — the very hoard the skeleton businessmen of Session 41 were squabbling over how to invest.
• The gravekeeper's grave. A plain commoner's slab in the vault holds a skeleton buried with his trade-tools — thick leather boots and gloves, a wool cloak, iron pegs, grave-twine, a giant two-handed shovel, a warded bell — and a small diary in Old Common at his head. Fenric gets the gist; Silithane uses Comprehend Languages to translate it in full.
• The lore of the Hollow House. The diary is the work-log of the gravekeeper of a research-house that changed names over the years from plain "Hall House" to the dreaded "Hollow House" ("full of dead people"). It records four scholars — Corvian, Bael'Drakkor, Halren, and Jairus — studying a pair of ancient tablets of the vanished Elder race, which granted them unnaturally long lives. They argued whether the tablets warned of "sunlight" or of "danger." Corvian died first; a black-haired, unaging woman (Laila) — who looked the same age to the gravekeeper's grandfather as to him — died second; Halren (also "Halren") died later; and Jairus was the last to survive, spoke the ancient magical words, and may still be alive today. Kids once broke in and smashed one of the tablet copies.
• The deciphering tablet. The vault's back wall is a single giant engraving — a Rosetta Stone of all the scholars' progress translating the Elder tongue, plus a vase of 10–20 smaller work tablets. It comes as a multi-year puzzle: each in-character year a character spends studying yields one clue; solving it unlocks the ancient language (and with it the warning text of the Prison of Seven Cells). The GM warns it is unsolvable as it stands.
• The Candleman, left alone. Pimothy confirms he has passed the Candleman "a dozen or two times": he never leaves his shrine and never attacks unless attacked, so the party resolves not to disturb the "representative of a demigod." Fenric's Arcana (21) deduces the shrine's trade — kill a creature of your own type on the altar to take a sliver of its life — and that the killer's soul may (at the Candleman's whim) be bound into a Candle of Torment; the two looted candles hold previous victims' souls.
• The scholar-tombs, noise-activated. Crawling on, the party finds two more coffins (likely Bael'Drakkor and Corvian, matched to the two unopened statue-sarcophagi in the boss room). They prove noise-activated — Thalia's "delivery!" knock and creaky-door antics make skeletal hands push the lids up, then lower them when she goes quiet. One tomb is disturbed and a tougher wight fights free (a curse trap on the lid, which Fenric saves against; Jex crits it for 51); the party kills it and leaves the rest sleeping.
• The magma family. Jex scoops the gorged greedy magmite into a fireproof lantern and carries it back to the grateful Magmother. The party then tries to coax the pot-washer's magmite home, but it's a stubborn runaway determined to "see the big wide world"; it leaves with the now-liberated pot-washer skeleton (Jax's nat-20 gesture-warning at least steers the skeleton safely past the traps). Two magmites remain unaccounted for — one held by a fire mage in the river camp, one possibly in the skeletal woman's jar (never checked).
• Rest, and the puppet army. The party takes a long rest in the boss chamber (Rusty stands watch tirelessly; the undead chambers keep the raiders away), recovering hit dice and abilities. Patricia spends six hours raising the slain wights as her own spiked puppet-soldiers, Thalia druidcrafting thorns through their flesh and rebuilding Gutricia's destroyed broom. They wake at ~4:50 AM on the 30th, primed for a 5 AM ambush on the riverside raider camp.
• Loose ends to the surface. Silithane sends an Ascension/Sending to Wetzel ("Wetzel's Pretzel") — his alchemist-spymaster at the leatherworking store, reporting what the experimental potions did and asking whether Wetzel's wife (in "salt water") has been recovered.

Combat & Encounters

• The boss chamber. The session's centrepiece fight: Halren the dungeon-lord (a high-level spellcaster — chain lightning, twin-cast 6th-level lesser Feeblemind, 4th-level Slow, Fireball, Shield, Blink, 1 resistance to Silithane's first strike), the chaos-undead Wong (hit only on a roll ≤9; a reverse "wild magic" surge table — self-poison, "gain/lose 20 HP," 10 max-damage hyenas, a near-miss room-wide petrify), and six wights (claw, bite, and a necrotic "Bad Touch"). Party present: Thalia, Fenric, Silithane, Magra, Jex; allies Pimothy, Pavid (tanking and taunting), Patricia (Sphere of Darkness, Haste, Long Strider, an upcast wind-blast, and a 37-damage radiant triple-beam), and Rusty (crossbow + sneak-attack daggers, Feast and Famine to heal off a hyena, immune to the wights' necrotic). Lash is bubbled out.
• Casualties. Halren's own Fireball killed one of his wights, downed Pimothy, and downed Silithane; both were stabilised by potion under the down-rules. Magra survived 51 fire damage on 53 HP thanks to her orc constitution. Halren died to Fenric; the Wong "exploded into butterflies"; all wights fell.
• The scholar-tomb wight. A separate short fight against a noise-woken, slightly tougher wight in the lower scholar-tombs; a curse trap on the lid (Fenric saved) and a 51-damage crit from Jex settled it. The party left the remaining noise-activated wights asleep.
• No level-up, no pips yet. Still level 7. The boss chamber and its vault are cleared, but the riverside raider camp remains; the GM's promised 8+ pips await the whole cave being taken next session.

NPCs & Factions

• Halren (new) — the white-haired robed dungeon-lord of the cave's burial chamber, a high-level spellcaster and one of the four ancient immortal scholars of the Hollow House. Slain this session. See Halren.
• The Wong — the chaos-undead "seventh," hittable only by rolling low, running a reverse wild-magic surge table; killed before it could petrify the room. Kept to the session note (dead, one-fight).
• Pimothy — leads the raid in Snatcher plate; Feeblemind'd to feral loyalty, then downed by Halren's Fireball and stabilised. Confirms the Candleman is passive and best left alone.
• Pavid — the catman tank, soaking wight hits and taunting the boss; guards Patricia while she works her necromancy.
• Patricia — the trio's animatrix: Sphere of Darkness, Haste on Magra, a radiant triple-beam, two Dispel Magic to cure the Feeblemind, and finally six hours raising the dead wights as puppet-soldiers. Her broom is destroyed by the chain lightning and rebuilt by Thalia.
• Rusty — fights from the shadows with crossbow and sneak-attack daggers, heals off a hyena via Feast and Famine, shrugs off necrotic, and keeps tireless watch through the party's long rest.
• The Varian Trio — Pimothy, Pavid and Gutricia, now fully fighting alongside the party through the cave.
• The Candleman — not engaged; reframed as a passive demigod-avatar who never leaves his shrine. His trade (kill your own kind for a sliver of life; soul perhaps bound to a Candle of Torment) is deduced by Fenric.
• Laewendas — her cave's undead half is now cleared; the riverside camp of her agents is the only obstacle left.
• The greedy magmite, the Magmother, the pot-washer, the runaway magmite — one-scene cave residents kept to this note (greedy magmite reunited with its mother; runaway magmite and pot-washer left to "see the world").

Locations

• The Snatcher's Cave — the undead half is cleared. This session adds the boss chamber (Halren's central sarcophagus, two flanking statue-sarcophagi of the other scholars, two Candles of Torment), the back treasure vault (the ~5,000-gold hoard, the gravekeeper's grave, the deciphering tablet), and the lower scholar-tombs of noise-activated wights. The riverside raider camp remains for the dawn ambush. The day turns over to the 30th.
• The Hollow House — the in-fiction name (once "Hall House") of the ancient research-house / tomb-complex the cave is built around, where the four immortal scholars studied the Elder tablets. Captured in the Halren note and Canon Questions rather than its own page for now.
• The Prison of Seven Cells — referenced: the deciphering tablet, once solved, would translate the ancient warning-text guarding that prison.
• Cathalon — still the river back-door target, unvisited.

Loot, Items & Rewards

• ~5,000-gold vault haul — 40 lbs of gold (~50 gp/lb in bars), copper, gemstones (mundane, but usable as spell components), ancient coinage (a dead economy's money; meltable only), a jeweled dagger, silver surgical instruments (silver for Lash), preserved ectoplasm (~800 gold; edible for Jex), and a void stone (invisible yet tangible).
• The Deciphering Tablet (new) — the giant Rosetta-Stone engraving of the Elder language plus a vase of work-tablets; a multi-year puzzle yielding one clue per character-year studied, unsolvable as-is, key to reading ancient Elder-race texts.
• Two Candles of Torment — the dark continual-flame candles from the boss room; each binds the soul of one of the Candleman's prior victims, tormented while the candle burns. Carried off rather than lit.
• Gravekeeper's ring — a protective ring the gravekeeper wore against the paranormal; good against undead (possibly the "ignored by undead" ring the party discusses).
• Funeral censer — a priestly incense-burner with an enchantment effective against undead.
• Halren's staff — a minor magic spellcasting focus (light enchantment, not exceptional), kept by Silithane; his robe carries only trace residual magic.
• No bounty, no pips, no level-up — the haul is the reward; the GM's 8+ pips still await the full cave being cleared next session.

Decisions & Open Threads

• The dawn ambush, next session. The party long-rests in the boss chamber and wakes ~4:50 AM on the 30th to hit the riverside raider camp at 5 AM, while the agents are half-asleep — with Gutricia's six raised wight-puppets in tow.
• The two unopened scholar-tombs. The flanking statue-sarcophagi (an elderly man with a hammer, a younger man with a two-handed axe) and the noise-activated lower tombs likely hold the other immortal scholars (Bael'Drakkor, Corvian). Disturbing them risks two more Halren-like mini-bosses; the party left them sleeping. Whether to open them remains open.
• Jairus, possibly still alive. The diary's last surviving scholar spoke the ancient words and may yet live — a fresh immortality lead, and a name to watch.
• Bael'Drakkor the scholar vs. the Baelheim warlord. One of the four immortal scholars is named Bael'Drakkor — identical to the Baelheim tribute-warlord. Coincidence, namesake, or connection? Logged in Canon Questions.
• The deciphering tablet, a long game. Translating it (years of study) would crack the Elder language and read the Prison of Seven Cells warning — a multi-session investment.
• The Candleman, deliberately spared. Left undisturbed as a passive demigod-avatar; whether to ever seal or destroy the shrine (and free its candle-bound souls) is still open, tied to the dead-gods / immortality threads.
• Carryover: the claw weapon and wyrm-bone crafting; the imprisoned Caressa and her deferred hoard; the dragon hand-in to Sheriff Jeremiah Falconer and Dominus; Jex's legal non-existence; the lumber mill and the mushroom folk; the missing mothers; Wetzel's missing wife; the longer heading to the Veilwood and the eventual assault on Laewendas.
• Roster. On screen: Thalia, Fenric, Silithane, Magra, Jex — with NPC allies Pimothy, Pavid, Patricia, Rusty, plus Salamandine, Tony and the familiars. Lash is controlled-present but bubbled out of the fight (Kadie absent at an out-of-city birthday). Ashlyn's player (Vale) absent; Draak is gone; Valmora has left. Still level 7.

Memorable Moments

• The Wong, the white whale. Jex missing the Wong for an entire fight by rolling too well — "how do I train myself to do this again?" — and the GM hyping a nat 1 as "the worst thing you could have got" only to realise it was a crit.
• Ten max-damage hyenas. The Wong waving its arms "trying to do real magic" and producing only a pack of cackling spectral hyenas that immediately dog-pile Thalia in the open sarcophagus — "you've never met anyone that's ever summoned 10 hyenas before."
• Matching besties. Both Silithane and Pimothy Feebleminded from 17 INT to 7 on the same spell — "17 to 7! Matching besties!" — and Silithane "turning to gelatin."
• The spellbreaker's wall. Fenric catching and flinging back Slow spell after Slow spell, Halren cursing him in Old Common — "this isn't fair, what's going on with the state of Warcraft?"
• Saved by 2 HP. Magra eating a 51-damage Fireball on 53 hit points and standing there grinning — "I am still alive!"
• The postal undead. Thalia knocking on a tomb door shouting "Delivery!" and discovering the wights are noise-activated, then imitating a creaking door (performance 20) to lull a skeleton back into its coffin.
• The runaway magmite. A baby fire-elemental refusing to go home — "I'm gonna see the big wide world, I'm running away" — and out-arguing Jex about whether energy ever runs out ("what the fuck is rain?").
• The key in the ribcage. Reaching into the dead boss's chest cavity to pull out a "key to the city"-sized key that fits the vault door exactly.
• Happy birthday, Grass. The table closing out by wishing the GM a happy birthday for the next day — and joking that the absent Lash will wake from her bubble inside a sealed tomb wondering "how the fuck did I get in here?"