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After Action Report: Strata Under the Temple Sessions 2 & 3

This is completely from my recollection, and so likely full of errors.

Session 2

The party had ended last session by resting on the mountain outside the caves, taking Boop's corpse outside, where his brother Beep was watching their things. 

They returned through the tunnel to the circular room, entering on its north side.   About fifteen feet across, the ceiling glowed with a warm yellow light, illuminating the whole room.  Strange script was inscribed in a circle about seven feet across located in the center of the room.  A door is set to each of the other cardinal directions.  They chose to go through the door to the east.

The room to the east was unnaturally dark, limiting the light of their torches to only about fifteen feet.  after exploring, they noted that it was square, about twenty-five feet across, with a well in the middle, a door  in the center of the east wall, and another five feet from the west end of the north wall.  They checked the depth of the well by dropping a large piece of rubble, about sixty to sixty-five feet down.  The party thieves could not pick the lock on the north door, so they started to pry apart the masonry on some berths, starting in the southwest corner.  The party non-thieves, Steve, Zaphiel, and Zago, continued west.

The west room was another circular room, similar to the first room out of the tunnel, but twenty-five feet across, with a circle of pillars.  Glints of brighter light were identified by Steve as likely being stars from major constellations, although some of the stars were out of position.  There was a doorway to a set of stairs at the north end.  The non-thief crew went down these stairs.

They came down to a room which was lit by a pair of fire goblins by a door to the east.  Zago spoke with them in goblin while Zaphiel and Steve went through a door to the south.  They  entered a branching corridor, taking the left branch, and coming to a circular room with a large number of crypts and no obvious exits.  

They turned around, and followed another path which turned to the west and lead them to a rectangular room.  The crypt berths had been torn open, as though by enormous hands or paws, and some of the bodies had been partially eaten, apparently by a creature with enormous jaws, and strewn across the floor.  The south wall was entirely taken up by a mural depicting two lithe crested saurians, with a robust one in between them, reclining on a chaise lounge.  The left crested saurian has a halo and a glowing aura.  The one on the right has a faint black aura, carries a sleek onyx-headed spear, and has seven bees flying around it.  The three seem comfortable together.  A forest is depicted in the background, on a hillside, with a cave behind the central crested saurian, showing a pool inside the cave.  A door on the opposite side of the room depicted two Saurians, engraved in a cycle.  Inspection shows they are likely the two lithe crested saurians of the mural.  The glowing one climbs on a pterodactyl, flies up the left side of the door frame, glowing brightly, or maybe burning as they travel across the top of the door frame, before falling from their mount, and crashing into a crater at the right end of the base.  The saurian with the dark aura picks the glowing one up, puts them in a wagon, tends to their wounds, then takes them through a jungle back to the left side of the base.  The darkness beyond this door frame shows stairs just ahead, but swallows any light beyond five feet away. 

Zaph and Steve go down the stairs.  The thieves upstairs eventually follow, then Zago.

Session 3

The party wakes up on a tropical beach, under a warm and dawning sky.  The air is humid, and seems energizing.  All plants in half a mile in either direction, and within about 300 yards of the beach have been trampled. The party is confused, but decides this is not the safest place to be, and heads away from the beach.  As they look back, they see a giant turtle coming out of the ocean.

They enter the jungle, and decide to travel north, occasionally following game trails.  After about five hours, they come across a road roughly crossing their path.  In the distance, they see slim rising pillars of smoke north-northwest of them.  They make towards that.  Five hours later, they are ambushed by a giant spider.  They dispatch it with little struggle  A few hours later, they encounter a shadow in the shape of a crested saurian.  It weakens one of the thieves just by its touch, and is impossible for them to hit, but they destroy it with magic missile.

They eventually arrive at a stockade-walled village on the side of a mountain.  It is populated by crested lizards.  They show they are peaceful, and are allowed in.  After establishing they cannot speak with each other, one of them, a stocky crested saurian with two left feet and wearing strange beads in her frill pokes at the mud with a stick, then offers it to them.  Zago takes the stick, and starts puttering with it, eventually writing with it.  That crested lizard casts a spell, and starts reading Zago's writing, pointing at particular statements, then gesturing, hopefully conveying an answer.

The next morning, they get up, and she is waiting nearby, watching, but holding space for them.  Eventually, Zago again approaches her, and she casts another spell, but this time, not requiring them to write.  It seems like she's reading Zago's, and then later the rest of the party members' minds.  She seems to suggest that they could make a difference by going north, taking another stocky crested saurian armed only with a dagger, and carrying books, and a more lithe one wearing leather armor made of animal hides and wielding a spear with a silver head.

The six of them head up towards the mountain, then up into them.  They get to an impossibly tall mountain with stairs carved into it, which they start climbing.  Along the way, they see pterodactyls nesting in the cliffs.  They climb up uneventfully, camp about three-quarters of the way to the cloud layer at the only plateau along the stairs.  The next day they continue up.  Their saurian companions are mostly quite, with the spearsaurian leading the way, and the other at the back.  The next day is more of the same, until they break to the top of the cloud layer, and come out at a flat top, with cloud extending in every direction.  To the west, they see a large fiery pterodactyl ridden by a crested saurian, but it flies high above and to the south of their lookout.  Some of them gain a sense of enlightenment, but none of them feel any closer to closure.  After the fiery pterodactyl and its rider fall below the cloud line, they rush down the stairs, and see a burning object falling to the ground, and can make out an impact crater it's heading towards, and about to form into again. When it impacts, night immediately falls.  They head down the stairs the next morning, and return to the fortified village.  During this trip back down, Zaphiel and Red (one of the thieves) make a pact to get out of this world as soon as they can, regardless of anything else.

When they return, they have another session with Lefty, and come up with a new plan, to travel to the northwest, where a large gate is supposed to be, similar to the door they came through to get to this world.  They sleep and set off the next morning.

They leave at dawn, with the spearsaurian carrying a bag full of jerky.  After most of a day of travel through dense humid jungle, they meet another robust crested saurian, this one in soiled beige armor and carrying a spear and shield.  After a brief discussion with the party's saurians, she joins them, and guides them to a camping spot.

They set out the next morning through more jungle terrain, they arrive in the late morning at some more mountains.  The spearsaurian blazes a trail, until they get to a peak, and see a plateau on the side of a mountain across a valley.  There is a giant doorway at the northern edge of this plateau, flush with the mountain, and guarding it is a giant lizard, what those of us in the real world would call a Tyrannosaurus rex. They consider what to do.  One of the thieves shoots arrows at the monstrous guardian, but it doesn't react to them, even when it's hit. The rest of them spread out in the valley around the plateau before coming up.  The new saurian removes a giant set of reins and headpiece from her pack, apparently made for just such a creature. The Guardian, seeing them spreading out, responds by moving back to guard the gate.

The spearsaurian steps up first, charging the Guardian and attracting its attention.  The other members on the plateau spread out and start trying to flank it.  The new saurian gets close, and when an opportunity arises, jumps up onto the Guardian.  Against all odds, she succeeds!  She whips the headpiece towards the Guardian's head, and it again is amazingly on target, falling on the Guardian's head, and magically assembling. 

The resulting ruckus is bizarre and ridiculous, as people line up to climb on the T-rex Guardian while and exert their will through the reins while spearsaurian and some of the thieves slowly but consistently degrade the T-rex's health.  Zaphiel and Red step through the portal, rather than continuing to fight the Guardian.  In the end, Zago overwhelms the Guardian with his will, and the rest of the group including the T-rex walk through the gate.  

Every non-Saurian who goes through the gate is asked "You have done me a service in awakening me.  Do you want to become one of my crested saurians?"  Additionally, Zaphiel is asked "Do you wish to switch your allegiance to my service?"



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