In Fair Cuccagna: Cuccagnat Catch Up

I've missed a couple of sessions in addition to having a report for this week, so before our main event we have two truncated reports in the style of the chronicles of old.

8: A party of 9 entered the Lapis Vaults. They were betrayed by one of the hirelings, Villanus by name, who turned out to be a bunch of super intelligent rats in an uncanny suit. Gax-exiled-from-his-own-council and three hirelings perished in a battle with backwards blemmyes. No notable treasure.

9: A party of 7 entered the Lapis Vaults intent on destroying the shriekers and connecting their two separate maps. This process took longer than expected and first attracted a group of "pseudo"pods, who wandered off after it appeared the goings on were not going to affect the Kingdom of the Monopods, and then a group of glass statues which forced the party to flee, leaving their two new hirelings to die. No notable treasure.

The Great Wen

A Loan Applicant - A Last Scream - An Old Trap - A new Trap - A Treasure Ported - A Mask - The Application of Tools - The Startling Statue - A Trail of Blood - The Gallery - A Deception - A Debate - Disappointment - The Studio - Sneezing Powder - A Return Full Handed

Characters Present

Jules Mozarin, Averois Seer

Maglor, Changeling Medium/Veteran

Boudin, Frogling Veteran

Oro Desiderio, Dwarfish Veteran

Lord Saurr - Crown Cat of Karse, Grimalkin Veteran

Hirelings

Baldassare, Medium and apprentice to the Seer Jules

The Mute Woman, a porter of strangely philosophical mien for someone who cannot speak

Events

• After two rather disastrous expeditions, the pickings for hirelings were rather light in the Great Wen. The only person seemingly willing to work with the party was the mysterious Mute Woman, one time hireling of Cristobert and Folavril. Maglor decided it was best to have as many bodies as possible and agreed to pay her fee.
• They boarded the worm ship and made their way tot he isle of Prospero the Blue and once again entered his Lapis Vaults by way of a secret door.
• They made their way back to the room containing the awful shrieking mushrooms, and indeed they heard their tell-tale "almost human screaming but the words are all slightly wrong" from down the hallway.
• Luckily they made quick work of the remaining mushroom before any statuary or other horrors could pounce on them again.
• They back tracked slightly to a room they had previously explored, as evidenced by the triggered and not reset trap just inside the entryway. Beyond was a workroom that seemed to have already been picked over and a slightly ajar door.
• Jules, being wise in the ways of trapped dungeons, pocked at the door with his 10' pole. His instinct proved correct when a steel bucket of acid fell upon the organic matter of his pole and he lost the first 2 and 1/2 feet of it.
• Wood was heaped upon this acid to quicken its chemical reaction and render it inert long enough to walk across. On the other side was a store of glass blowing supplies (rods and a small portable furnace). 
• It was decided that these were valuable but fragile enough that they needed to be taken to the ship forthwith. This was done slowly but without major incident.
• Upon returning they explored beyond a door in the rotten hall which had formerly served as the feeding ground for a number of shriekers. They found themselves with three potential ways to progress - down a short hall to a chamber seemingly dominated by a mask upon a pedestal, into a room covered with blood stains where bodies had apparently been dragged away, or through a door.
• After some debate, they decided to see what was up with the mask. Detect magic proved it was magical and that three other doors in the same chamber each led to rooms that so radiated with magic they appeared only as solid squares to the weaver of the spell.
• Lord Saurr, Crown Cat of Karse, decided to inspect it in cat form (so to be able to flee should "lasers fire from its eyes"). 
• Upon seeing it was safe, Jules followed him in the room but soon found that a magic moth the cat had noticed on the ceiling issued forth a strange warning: "Leave here, old man. There is nothing here for you!" The voice matched that of the magic mouth near the entrance ("I can't come to the door right now...") but was much more forceful in aspect.
• Lord Saurr explained that he was going to use his sledge to break the mask off so they may take it home, but asked that the rest of the party back up if they were worried this might cause some eldritch destruction. The entire party did so.
• The sledge did work to bend the pole the mask was attached to (and that was somehow worked into the marble pedestal such that it  could not be easily removed), but did little to actually sever the bronze. Jules and Lord Saurr debated some possible tools and ultimately it was decided that sawing with a cutting implement (Lord Saurr's sword) was the best plan.
• Mask in tow they made their way back to the aforementioned door. Maglor heaved it open to reveal a copper statue of a mermaid, made green by age. 
• Strangely the party's entire back section melted away as Jules, the Mute Woman, and Baldassare were filled with an indefinable terror upon seeing the statue and ran at full speed away from the statue. The statue, for its part, was of rather mediocre construction and did not appear particularly sinister or even notable to those left behind.
• The non-fleeing parts of the party felt if they were going to explore beyond this chamber - Maglor suspected a secret door - it would be best to do so now, despite the party's separation, because whatever had caused the back ranks to flee may take effect upon any who steps into the room. 
• There was, indeed, a secret door, though it merely led to passages that, when the party later regrouped, had previously been explored. While this was somewhat anticlimactic it did mean they had linked their maps.
• Jules and company refused to re-enter the room and so instead it was decided that they should meet in the blood-stained room.
• Jules instantly recognized this chamber for what it was: the site of their battle with the backwards blemmyes. Now that there was no adversary in sight or hirelings to drag back out, the details of the room could be ascertained.
• It was a gallery - holding pictures of four figures - an old man holding a sheep in a red toga, an imperious man dressed in green noble finery sat upon a silver throne, a magician in yellow and black robes commanding a thing Jules labeled a "foggoth"* to rise from the sea, and finally a man in autre orange robes in a wooded arcade next to a diabolic statue seemingly playing strange pipes. 
• Detect magic revealed that the painting of the yellow magician concealed within it some magical item, and removing the back of the painting they found a spell scroll.
• Now a debate occurred - should they return to the "magic rooms" they had seen near the mask's pedestal or instead head down a dog-legged passage that had been spotted in a previous expedition. Fearing some major entanglement, the party soon decided on the dog-legged passage.
• The passage did not continue much further than what had been mapped, ending in a door. Jules expressed some disappointment that there had not been more this way, but soon the party was opening the door.
• Beyond was a kind of art studio -  paints and art supplies were set on tables or held in crates and a glass arm - like those of the animate statues - lay in a prominent position for staining. 
• Oro's dwarfish eyes detected the use of gold, silver, and lapis in some of the paints while Lord Saurr's sensitive nose detected some strange smell that caused him to make the Flehmen response.
• While attempting to take some of the paints out of the crates, a dust was disturbed which caused both Lord Saurr and Maglor to sneeze for a great length of time. Maglor's ailment became so bad that he became unable to see.
• With this new treasure, and the paintings behind them so they could retrieve them on the way out, the party decided now was time to leave and hoped that Maglor's sight would return.
• Luckily for Maglor he began to see blurry shapes again when they were almost at the exit and by the time the worm ship had made it the Great Wen his vision was almost fully restored.

Monsters Defeated

1 Shrieker

Treasure Gained

Glass rods (500gp), Portable glass furnace (500gp), 4 paintings of wizards (500gp each), expensive paints (100gp), a scroll containing The Exquisite Repose, The Marvelous Magic Mouth, and, Chun's Halo of Unsleeping Eyes

XP Per Player

541