We sit together in a pew towards the back of the Church of All Good Things. The priest walks up the aisle as we wait. Kiya notices that the churchgoers on the side they are sitting on, who also shook hands with the priest, are more subdued and watchful than the other attendees. Tyener, with his knowledge of Bahamut, thinks it’s odd that despite Bahomut’s aversion to opulence, the church is quite resplendent. And instead of dragonborn in attendance, there are mostly humans. 🐲
The priest stands, holds a goblet high, and rings it with a ceremonial knife. At this noise, the room quiets. He welcomes the parishioners and thanks them for their devotion. He asks for everyone to drink a toast, and attendants come out with cups of wine that they begin handing out as the priest launches into a spirited sermon. At each pause of his sermon, the priest exhorts us to drink from our glasses. Kiya uses prestidigitation to clear our cups of wine and we pretend to sip from the empty cups. At the end, everyone drains their cup, and we pantomime doing the same.
A woman then comes out to sing a homily to Bahamut. She is richly dressed. A bard plays as she sings. After a failed wisdom save, Kiya and Vistra are transfixed, mesmerized by her song. Tyener, on the other hand, is unimpressed and thinks the song seems inaccurate. He notices that Vistra and Kiya are distracted and they don’t budge when he nudges them. He starts to cough loudly but can’t break them out of it.
Tyener looks up and notices that the head priest has left, as have the others around us. He sees a swish of their robes disappearing quietly around a statue in the corner. Tyener has a moment of inspiration and covers Kiya’s and Vistra’s ears, which seems to shake them out of it.
We walk over to the statue, which protrudes from the wall. Tyener whispers, “Open trap door!” Vistra notices that it is dwarven-made, and she fiddles with it until a stone door swings open!
We step through the doorway and close the door. Kiya summons dancing lights in the darkness, which illuminate a flight of stairs and a door at the bottom. We open the door at the bottom of the stairs and step through. When we have all entered, the door closes with a click of a lock.
Uh oh.
The room we stood in was plain stone with another door along the opposite wall. It had no visible seams, and we weren’t able to get it open. The only other thing in the room was a platform in the center with a red button on it.
As we watched, a string of numbers from 01 to 20 magically illuminated above the door, and slowly started to dim one by one, starting at 20 and working downwards towards 01. We found that by pressing the button in the middle of the room, the numbers would reset and begin their countdown again.
We debated letting it count down to zero but Tyener had difficulty letting it go all the way. We finally convinced him to wait, sweating, while first 03, then 02, then 01 dimmed. And as the last number dimmed, the door just… opened. Whew!
We pass through the open door to stand in a T-junction with two double doors in front of us and one door on either side, and a glowing symbol on the floor that looks vaguely spell-like but Kiya can’t identify it.
We stick an ear to each of the doors and hear some quiet, distant chanting from the double-doors. Deciding to head in the cultiest direction first, we push them open and continue onward.
There is a grand hall beyond the double doors, and it looks definitively culty with draconic skulls along the walls and adorning various areas. There are three doors again, one on each side and another set of large double-doors before us. The chanting is louder next to those doors.
We decide to listen to each of the doors to be sure, and to our surprise, Vistra’s opens! 4 reptilian creatures, which we recognize as kobolds, emerge to surround us. They ask us suspiciously who we are. Kiya lies and tells them we are lost. they seem only partially convinced, and insist on showing us the way. They herd us toward the large door, which we have no choice but to open and go through.
We find the priest from earlier standing in the middle of a large room beside an altar. The other churchgoers are standing around him, facing the table and chanting. They do not yet notice us, and eventually the chanting dies down. The priest asks if anyone brought snacks.
They finally notice us standing quietly at the entrance with our suspicious kobold guard. They do not trust us and draw their weapons! We roll initiative.
The priest calls two of his friends: “Alan, Neville! Get them!”
Vistra and Tyener wreck face, and the three of us slay all four kobolds and all five cultists in short order as the priest hurls curses and spells at us.
We attempt to cast Hold Person on him but he resists.
NEXT TIME ON D&D
