Tales from the Yawning Portal: White Plume Mountain, Part 9

The previous post is here. The start of the adventure is here. The start of the campaign is here.

Having successfully retrieved the trident Wave and the warhammer Whelm, the adventurers headed back to the sphinx and then took the one remaining branch from the entrance.

The first obstacle they encountered was an open pit (location 18), which they easily jumped or climbed across. When the halls were filled with water, this might have been an issue, because one presumably wouldn’t be able to see the pit. But even if you fell in, you’d take no falling damage because it was filled with water. So it’s not clear what the point was, other than to stay alert.

The long hall turned north, and as the group rounded the corner they pulled up short. The way forward was lined with big copper discs on both sides of the passageway (location 19), for a full 70 feet, which just screamed TRAP! But what kind of trickery awaited them?

Sadir the warlock tried throwing a dagger down the hall, thinking that might trigger whatever was supposed to happen. But there was no obvious effect. So he invoked the armor of Agathys (which gave him 20 temporary hit points) and started to jog down the foreboding hallway. At first, nothing happened, though Wave complained of feeling strange. At about 20 feet in, he felt the metal shaft of Wave grow warm. At 30 feet holding the trident grew painful, and he quickly passed it from hand to hand. At 40 feet it burned! Wave commanded Sadir to turn back, but the warlock was grimly determined to reach the end without losing the priceless weapon. And so he held on, trusting in his icy armor to protect him until he reached the end.

Once clear of the copper discs, Sadir promptly dropped the red-hot trident, which did not take kindly to being treated so! Sadir knelt and buried his burned hands in the cool muck covering the floor, and tried to apologize to Wave. But he was interrupted when the wall behind him slid open and a pack of ghouls rushed out!

So here was a clever trap! The plates pushed one to discard armor and weapons, but then at the other end there were flesh-eating undead waiting to feast on those who made it through unarmed and unarmored. The ghouls swarmed poor Sadir, taking him from full health down to 14 hit points and paralyzing him, with the first ghoul getting tagged by a burst of cold damage as it tore away the last remnants of the armor of Agathys.

The other PCs couldn’t see what was happening as their darkvision did not extend far enough, but they could hear Sadir’s cries and the ghouls’ slavering howls. Jheronimus the gnome cleric tried to dimension door past the hall, but not knowing how far to go to overshoot the monsters he guessed at 120 feet, and briefly ended up in a wall before being shunted back to where he began. Theodoric the plate armor-clad fighter jogged forward, getting badly burned as his armor’s temperature reached intolerable new heights. Fires the tabaxi fighter/rogue had more than enough speed to clear the heat induction discs with Cunning Action and Feline Agility, and he hoped to avoid the fire damage by keeping his blades sheathed until he was clear. But they burned through their scabbards and he had to zip back to pick them up, getting hurt in the process. Still, he managed to arrive at the fight with his weapons.

The paralyzed Sadir was soon being feasted upon by one ghoul while the others turned their attention to the new arrivals. As Theodoric cleared the copper discs, he grabbed his white-hot greataxe and cleaved the head of one ghoul, used his Action Surge, and then cut another in half at the shoulder. Fires followed suit, eviscerating two more and then a third with a Riposte. Jheronimus braved the hallway, going as far as his little legs could carry him, and then buoyed the group with a mass healing word. The last few undead were sliced up by Theo and Fires as the cleric made it past the discs.

A prayer of healing restored burnt skin while metal weapons and armor were cooled in the muck. Then the stinking ghoul gibbets were dragged into the secret room where they had been lying in wait (location 20), and the group took a short rest. Phew.

Next: slip’n’slide!