The barbarians, impressed with Mashito’s valour, have a brief sit-down in which our adventurers partake of Halfling pipeweed and catch up with tales of Titanius.
UPDATE: In the previous treant battle in the great hall of the monastery, Mashito, Gunther, Titanius and his barbarian kinfolk also crushed a living golden statue of a revered meditator that had attacked them. Tonito said there must be evil energy to animate such an idol to a sage ancestor. Mashito took a jade medallion and the sliced ribbon that held it around the statue’s neck.
Two monks are sent to parley with the Order of Eustatius at the front gate. Two knights of Eustatius are allowed in to the monastery – if they can be trusted. Magical energy, generated by group meditation, keeps the front gate closed to outsiders.
Arabal’s animal companion, a young wolf with a glassy black rock on its collar, alerts the group to the Order of Eustatius gathering outside the rubble of the monastery’s southeastern wall. The Order is holding Master Wǎnzhéng captive; he tells them not to worry, all will be all right, and they have everything they need with them. The lead knight says that they can besiege the monastery for many days; if the creatures inside the monastery don’t kill them first, the party will surely die of starvation.
Mashito, Titanius, and Gunther go underground to work with the monks to close the portals. This involves removing or disturbing the models and artifacts on the pedestals in various caverns. Mashito takes a piece of each model with him. Gunther notices that most of the magical portal energy swirls around the floor until the artifacts are moved and the energy disappears – except for one purple beam that flows into the cavern ceiling and beyond, out of sight.
Two monks were dispatched to the front gate to parley with the Order of Eustatius, to see if two knights can be trusted to enter the monastery. The barbarian kinfolk of Titanius are either securing the southeast corner or defending meditating monks in the courtyard.
The jade medallion from the golden statue has the symbol of a trigram (Chên/thunder) carved into the pale green stone in bas-relief. Mashito is carrying a jade medallion looted from a gilded zombie (the body of an ancestor embalmed in gold whose spirit is re-animated by evil magic). In addition to the trigram’s meaning of Chên (interpreted as thunder in the I Ching), the symbol is also a door key for the pagoda. This carved gemstone gives Mashito a sense of the number three.
The party walks up the hallway to the right and kills another statue and Gunther gets trigram key #1… Arabal entry, where from…
At this point notes are sketchy and incomplete. Remainder of notes are from months ago. Compiled here for reference but they stop short of the end of the campaign.
…Pagoda of Worlds: gilded zombies holding jade keys are in shrines around monastery guarded by rabid demon dogs; the first level of pagoda contains a Sage Statue which should be larger/tougher than gilded zombie; this Sage Statue got up and sat down without attacking hopping ghost, GM said it just didn’t want to be disturbed. PL: like a parent with kids around. RLeC: monsters’ motivation.
End of notes for this campaign. Next blog post will start new campaign with new journal.