D&D Campaign Journal

Session 72: The Temple of Whispers

Characters Present: Umal, Wendaline, Felorn, Dahni, Mario, Grimdur

Recap

Having survived the cloaker ambush on the bridge over the abyss, the party pressed deeper into the Underdark, searching for the Creeping Death to save Umal’s father’s life.

Narrative Summary

Statues in the Dark

The tunnel opened into a wider passage where the first statue appeared — a graceful female elf carved from granite, noble in bearing with flowing robes and a diadem, though her left arm had been broken off. The stone was wrong for this place, Grimdur noted. It had been brought here deliberately from somewhere else, placed as if marking a threshold.

More statues followed at regular intervals, each depicting the same enigmatic figure in different poses of veneration. Five in total lined the approach like silent sentinels. The party proceeded cautiously, Wendaline scouting ahead while the others kept watch.

The path led to a stone bridge spanning yet another chasm, this one crossed by multiple pathways connecting to a central platform. There, upon a massive pedestal of cavern stone, stood the ruins of a small settlement — walls, towers, an open gate with a drawbridge long since lowered. All constructed from the same imported granite as the statues.

The Desecrated Temple

The bridge showed its age. Cobblestones crumbled beneath careful steps, pieces falling into darkness so deep no sound of impact returned. Braziers dotted the approach, long cold. Broken weapons littered the ground — rusted swords, splintered spears, the detritus of ancient violence.

Inside the settlement, the truth became clear. This had been a temple to Moradin the Allhammer, built by dwarven hands in ages past. The forge stood cold and cobwebbed on the right side, sacred tools scattered and broken. Altars of the same granite as the statues dominated the central courtyard, surrounded by smaller statues in dynamic poses — frozen in mid-action, some intact, others shattered to fragments.

But the temple had been conquered. Spider webs draped every surface. Lolth iconography defaced the walls — blasphemous text scrawled in Undercommon alongside blood-written madness. “The webs whisper,” one phrase read. “Older than gods, older than fame. She’s hungry for silence.”

In the corners, piles of corpses and skeletal remains told stories of violence and dark feasting.

The Madman and His Pet

Mario ventured into the sleeping quarters and heard a voice — rambling, broken, switching between lucid speech and incomprehensible muttering punctuated by clicking sounds. In a chamber beyond, writing on every surface in what appeared to be his own blood, stood Velthes Duskthorn — a tall, emaciated drow in tattered robes, his white hair matted, his eyes switching between vacant madness and terrible clarity.

“They left me here,” he muttered to the walls. “Left me to die. But the webs whispered. They whispered dreams.”

When Mario offered food, Velthes panicked. When Mario tried to cast Calm Emotions, Velthes retaliated by casting a deadly spell — which Umal managed to counter just in time. Then emerged Screech: a hook horror, one of Velthes’s “companions,” carrying a fresh duergar corpse in its mandibles. The two had formed a strange kinship, the hook horror hunting while the mad drow maintained his vigil over the desecrated temple.

The party wisely backed off from further confrontation, though Screech did headbutt and pin Mario against the forge wall when he approached too aggressively.

Failed Transformation

Investigation revealed the grim truth. The petrified statues in the courtyard were not art — they were drow cultists, frozen mid-ritual. They had attempted to transform themselves into driders, the spider-bodied servants of Lolth, but the ritual had catastrophically failed. Instead of ascension, they found petrification and death.

When Grimdur used Greater Restoration on one, the stone became flesh — but the drow was already dead, his soul long departed. The body crumpled lifelessly as the spell faded.

Felorn’s sentient rapier Spite drew Velthes’s attention. “Devoted weapon,” the madman murmured with sudden clarity. “Housed by something within. Whispers. Creating something better.” Velthes confirmed that Spite was created through a ritual similar to what the petrified cult had attempted — forging a weapon that housed “whispers” to create “something better.”

The comparison was unmistakable: both processes involved trying to transcend, to become more, through Lolth’s dark gifts. Both were marked by hubris and horror.

Whispers and Influence

When Felorn investigated the statues, Spite compelled him to strike one with the sword’s pommel. Suddenly, with superhuman strength he couldn’t control, he smashed the petrified drow to pieces. The voice that spoke through him called the statues “fools” who “failed the experiment.”

Mario tried to restrain him but failed. The damage was done. Spite, the sentient sword created through dark rituals similar to the failed drider transformation, had exerted its will over its wielder — a chilling reminder of the weapon’s true nature and the “whispers” it housed within.

The Rune of the Master Smith

While examining the forge, Grimdur felt drawn to something on the floor. A smooth stone with dwarven runes, glowing blue as he picked it up — a sign that it recognized him as a dwarf. This was a Rune of the Master Smith, an ancient and powerful artifact of his people. It had survived the temple’s fall, waiting in the ruins for a worthy finder.

Interrogating Madness

Through careful questioning, the party extracted fragments of truth from Velthes’s ravings:

Umal attempted to provoke more information by sending the telepathic message “She’s coming. Tell them everything,” disguising it as if from Lolth herself. Velthes’s scattered response mentioned ritual, abominations, failure, and the surface repeatedly.

The party concluded they had learned all they could from the mad priest. He was neither fully cooperative nor truly dangerous — merely broken, subsisting on whatever Screech brought him, maintaining his vigil in the ruins of a failed dream.

Having learned what they could from Velthes, the party decided to move deeper into the Underdark. They left the mad drow to his delusions and his hook horror companion, following the tunnels toward their ultimate goal.

The Myconid Guide

As the party traveled deeper through the caverns, they encountered a deep gnome thrall — a being infected with cordyceps fungi, now part of a larger collective consciousness. The thrall communicated telepathically without moving its mouth, offering to lead them to information about the Creeping Death in exchange for an unspecified price.

The party inhaled spores, which caused mild hallucinations — floating creatures, whales swimming through the air, visions that tested their senses. But one hallucination proved real: a glowing blue trail of lights that led them deeper.

The Price of Memory

The trail descended into an enormous cavern filled with bioluminescent blue light. Below, a vast network of bridges and platforms snaked through the darkness, populated by thralls of various species — drow, hook horrors, humans — all bearing cordyceps growth. This was the domain of the myconids.

The central platform supported a massive mushroom forest — tree-sized fungi with canopies like broccoli, tendrils hanging down, creating an otherworldly grove in the heart of the Underdark.

At the entrance to what they would learn was called the Sporeheart Enclave, two large myconid guards stopped them. The collective voice spoke through both:

“Welcome to the Sporeheart Enclave. To enter, each of you must offer a memory. We value experience and knowledge above your trinkets.”

One by one, the party members surrendered pieces of themselves:

Mario offered his memories of Urukayxl — the island where he’d endured trials related to Uk’otoa. The memories of that leviathan’s influence and the society that worshiped it. (Took 12 psychic damage as the memory was torn away)

Dahni gave a treasured memory: being with his parents and his people, helping an indigenous community in the jungles destroy industrial machines that threatened their sacred lands. It was the last happy memory he had before losing his family.

Wendaline surrendered her memories of Ophelia Mardoon from Shadycreek Run in the Dwendalian Empire, and the quest to recover stolen family heirlooms — a task she’d promised to fulfill but never completed. (Took 12 psychic damage)

Felorn offered a string of memories spanning years: all his recollections of a rival from his days in the military academy. Every duel, every argument, every stolen moment — all the experiences that had shaped his competitive nature. It was, as the myconids noted, a memory that clearly had profound impact on who he’d become.

Umal gave up his memories of the journey after his banishment from Rosohna — the weeks spent crossing the Xhorhas Wastes, scavenging to survive, hiding his true nature as he moved through Dwendalian lands. Skills of survival that had been hard-won now wiped clean.

Grimdur surrendered years of his life — the time between being exiled from his clan and finally settling on the Menagerie Coast. Years spent seeking revenge that never came, a fruitless quest that ended only when he gave up. The myconids acknowledged it as a vast contribution.

With the price paid, mushroom stems opened like doorways, and the party entered the Sporeheart Enclave proper.

The Mushroom Market

Inside, they found a thriving civilization unlike any they’d seen. Myconids of all sizes moved with purpose through the settlement — small mushroom-like beings with humanoid limbs and carved faces. Every creature had a role in the collective. There was no idle chatter, no chaotic markets — just organized, purposeful work.

But there was commerce of a sort. Thralls acting as merchants sold various wares — books, adventuring gear, strange objects collected from travelers. The currency here wasn’t gold. It was spore value: stories, songs, unusual items. One man’s junk was another mushroom’s treasure.

Wendaline spotted a myconid merchant who’d incorporated weapons into his artistic displays — swords used as bookshelves, daggers arranged in wooden structures. One dagger caught her eye: silver, clearly magical.

With remarkable directness and clarity — a communication style the myconids appreciated — Wendaline negotiated: her small knife (one spore value), her crowbar (one spore value), and her hammer (one spore value) for the silver dagger (three spore value). The myconid agreed and handed over a silver dagger +1.

Grimdur managed to trade a used parachute and a great axe for a large purple egg from another vendor.

The Sovereign’s Offer

Following the glowing trail to the heart of the enclave, the party encountered the myconid sovereign — or rather, they encountered the voice of the entire collective consciousness. The sovereign made their situation clear:

A creature had taken up residence nearby and was attacking members of the colony. It killed thralls and stole their eyes. The attacks were becoming more frequent. The myconids, for all their collective intelligence, had no warriors capable of dealing with such a threat.

The creature was a Beholder — an aberration of immense power.

In exchange for killing it, the myconids offered two things:

  1. Information about the Creeping Death — what they knew about the creature Umal sought
  2. Help understanding the Book of Whispered Words — the dangerous tome the party had recently acquired

The party debated briefly. Umal was concerned about the time pressure on his father’s poisoning. But they agreed — they needed the information, and the myconids clearly couldn’t solve this problem themselves.

After a short rest (Mario restored spell slots, Dahni boosted party members), they followed a new spore trail toward the Beholder’s lair.

Distorted Tunnels

The new trail led out of the glowing cavern into tunnels that felt immediately wrong. These passages weren’t naturally formed — they were distorted, malformed, almost sculpted. Smooth in unsettling ways, with sections that seemed melted or warped by alien geometries.

Bodies littered the path. Thralls with cordyceps growth, their eyes removed. Drow corpses similarly eyeless. Each bore signs of diverse magic — some parts disintegrated entirely, others turned to stone mid-death, a few flesh still fresh despite being long dead.

The party remained vigilant as they traveled deeper. An arcane heaviness filled the air, mixing with dampness and the distant sound of dripping water.

Lore of the Beholder

Umal shared what he knew of Beholders — knowledge from his studies and research:

They are aberrations from the Astral Plane, beings of alien minds and logic. They are intensely paranoid and almost always solitary, as they consider themselves the pinnacle of creation and view even other Beholders as inferior threats. Most are obsessed with knowledge and busy executing their own elaborate plans.

The most famous Beholder in known lore is Xanatar, whose legend has spread across realms. But each Beholder is unique, narcissistic, and extremely magically powerful.

The party noted the hookhorrors among the dead — similar to Screech, Velthes’s companion. This suggested the Beholder’s hunting range was extensive.

The Riddle Door

The tunnel terminated at a massive circular stone door. Carved into its surface were twelve hollow eye sockets, each the size of a fist. Above the door, an inscription glowed faintly in Deep Speech (which Mario could read as it was related to Abyssal):

“To enter, prove you are worthy of the eyes gaze.
One truth to open, one lie to bind,
One eye to see, and one to blind.”

Four of the twelve sockets were labeled with words: Truth, Lie, Sight, and Blindness.

Scattered on the floor before the door lay twelve eye-shaped stones in different colors:

Wendaline, examining the area carefully, spotted a body near the wall — another eyeless victim. Clutched in its hand was a scrap of parchment with more Deep Speech: “The eye sees only what it believes.”

The Puzzle

The party debated furiously. Color symbolism, metaphors, linguistic associations — every angle was explored:

Umal made a key insight: They’d just come from the Sporeheart Enclave where memory was currency. In places where information is valued, knowledge has monetary worth. Gold represents truth because gold represents value.

After extensive discussion, they settled on their first attempt:

Dahni placed them carefully.

A pulse of psychic energy exploded from the door. Everyone near took damage (9 psychic damage to those who failed an Intelligence save of DC 13). The stones fell out, clattering to the floor.

Wrong answer.

The party quickly reconsidered. Not white — silver for lies. “Silver-tongued liar.” They tried again:

This time, the door responded differently. A deep grinding sound echoed through the tunnel as the massive stone door slowly began to open, revealing darkness beyond.

Who Enters My Domain?

As the door swung open, a voice echoed from within — deep, reverberating, touched with dark amusement:

“Very amusing. Who enters my domain? The domain of Seltar.”

The Beholder was aware of them. And it sounded entertained.

The session ended with the party standing before the now-open door, the riddle solved, staring into the darkness of Seltar’s lair. Something ancient, powerful, and utterly alien waited within. Something that collected eyes. Something that valued puzzles and games.

And they had just announced their arrival.

Key Discoveries & Decisions

At Velthes’s Temple:

At the Sporeheart Enclave:

At Seltar’s Lair:

Open Threads

Notable Quotes

“They left me here. Left me to die. But the webs whispered.” — Velthes Duskthorn

“Devoted weapon. Housed by something within. Whispers. Creating something better.” — Velthes, describing Spite

“Information has a price.” — The Myconid Collective

“We value experience and knowledge above your trinkets.” — The Myconid Guards

“The eye sees only what it believes.” — From the parchment near Seltar’s door

“Very amusing. Who enters my domain? The domain of Seltar.” — Seltar the Beholder

← Session 71: Into the Creeping Dark