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Previously on “Storm King’s Thunder”
The inside of the tower was eerily quiet. Faces of anguish on frozen statues greeted us as we walked inside.
Beyond them, a pair of creatures turned toward us. They looked like someone had forcibly melded a dragonborn and a crossbow. Their gaping maws held giant crossbow bolts, and they kept them pointed at us while we step inside.
A pair of braziers suddenly alighted on either side, and a circle inscribed on the floor of a podium at the end of the hallway glowed green. In a puff of smoke a satyr appeared.
“Is the master expecting you?” it asked.
“Who are you?” T.I.M. asked.
“I am Innslow, farrier of the master of this tower. Whom may I say is calling?”
T.I.M. and I glanced at each other, both of us blurting out different, random answers. The satyr paused curiously, the disappeared back into the circle.
Moments later, it returned. “The master has need of you,” it nodded to T.I.M., “but not at this moment.” The little goat-man suddenly looked around and addressed the whole room. “Gentleman these guests will be staying awhile until the master can decide what to do with them. Please make them comfortable.”
We heard a few metallic creaks and whispering groans as the statues around us lurched to life, the nearest one bashing me across the head as I narrowly avoided its grasp. Half a dozen statues lumbered toward us as the bolters began to fire.
The documents we recovered from The Grand Dame proved doubly fruitful. We gained the location of two important destinations: The Sculptor’s Tower, the infamous tower where T.I.M. was ripped from his body and forcibly transformed into a Warforged, and The Morkoth, a ship employed by The K Society with schematics for giant chains. Could this be where King Hekaton is being held?
Unfortunately The Morkoth orbits a cluster of islands called The Whale Bones, hundreds of miles west of the Sword Coast. The Sculptor’s Tower, meanwhile, was a two-day hippogriff ride east of Everlund. Given that we also saw several of Korinn’s former clanspeople on a manifest of captured test subjects, we opted to teleport to Everlund and head for the tower first.
Before we left, Kazin got into some shenanigans while trying to purchase potions at a shop in Everlund, and Bryseis met with Felgolos, who wanted us to return the rest of his Yondalla’s Delight. We agreed, if Felgolos agreed to help ferry us across the water to The Morokth, after we shut down the Warforged operation at the tower.
Approaching the tower from the air easily got us over the 20-ft tall wall that surrounded it. There was no flat landing spot, however, and the grounds were patrolled by a pair of mechanical bird-creatures with tank treads for legs.
We spent an embarrassingly long time trying to plan our approach and attack. At least that’s better than our usual strategy of splitting up and stumbling into things.
Bryseis used Mage Hand to place the lightning trap we had recovered from the Weevil’s safe house, and Halfred cast Web. Both traps were effective in stopping the creatures, and a barrage of follow-up attacks from us cut them down before they had a chance to act.
Around the outside of the tower we found two colored orbs, two empty pedestals, and a pair of riddles, one written in Giant and another in an unknown language.
Halfred randomly placed an orb in each pedestal and the stone walls slid open, revealing the entrance, along with another puzzle plaque.
Inside the tower were rows of humanoid statues with agonizing expressions frozen on their faces. A pair of metallic dragon-creatures shaped like giant crossbows pointed their bolts at us, but they didn’t make a move until T.I.M. strode further into the chamber, seeing if anyone, or anything, would recognize him.
A pair of braziers lit up at our approach, and a satyr appeared in a nearby teleportation circle, inscribed with runes. The satyr was not terribly happy to see us, making references to a ‘master’ which we assumed to be our blue dragon foe.
The satyr was willing to keep T.I.M. around, but had no use for the rest of us. It summoned the guards, and the frozen statues suddenly animated and attacked, the first one hitting me with a crit.
Thankfully only the one had a surprise attack. We quickly followed up by downing the satyr, including a hilarious flying harpoon grab from Halfred.
Both sorcerers were able to fry an entire row of statues and bolters with big AOE blasts while the melee attackers could wrap up the rest, though a final explosive blast from each bolter proved painful for all of us, and unfortunately killed the satyr whom Kazin had wanted to leave alive for questioning.
Bryseis checked out the teleportation circle, and with an Arcana check was able to activate it. She zipped around to several different rooms throughout the dungeon, seeing a large four-armed mechanical skeleton thing, an army of Warforged, and a library of metal mages.
She Nope’d right out of there and before we could ask what she had seen, she quickly defaced and shut down this end of the teleporter. Hopefully we won’t be needing a quick escape later on…
From there our only path lay to the west. Hallways lead west on either side of the teleporter. Both contained nasty traps that leeched our souls and reduced our hit points, though Halfred and Kazin made their saving throws to resist it. Beyond lay another riddle-puzzle with more pedestals and orbs.
The Sculptor’s Tower may seem small on the surface but so far it’s already densely packed with baddies, traps, and puzzles.
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