Halls of the Mountain King Session 21 – The Thing in the Airlock

Halls of the Mountain King was the second 4th Edition Open Design project from Kobold Press. I ran the adventure in 2010 as part of the same Parsantium campaign as Wrath of the River King.

Here’s the write up from the 21st session featuring a nasty encounter with a mohrg (one of my favourite 3e/4e monsters) in an airlock.

Begin here with Session 1 – Alarm in the Dead of Night.

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24th Quintilis (contd.)

Leaving the derro chamber, the adventurers scout the corridor ahead, passing a side room, its floor covered in moss, only to find the way ahead blocked by a collapse. They return to the side chamber.

Krivinn enters and is immediately grabbed by strength-sapping moss tendrils. As the others move to help, two darkmantles drop from the ceiling; one engulfs the paladin, the second misses Saethus. Annoyingly, these creatures vanish when struck by an attack, and it’s hard to escape their grab as Krivinn discovers, making several attempts to “toss it off”. Bolval charges in after initially attacking from range and both the mosses and the darkmantles are killed. The characters gather up the treasure in the room, leaving the orichalcum ore behind.

Bolval and Krivinn clear the blocked passage which leads to the control room for the airlock Bartholomeus told them about. Saethus figures out the instructions with the help of a comprehend languages ritual, then dons the protective suit and enters the airlock, while the dwarf and the dragonborn man the bellows to pump fresh air to him. The wizard enters the large, gas-filled room beyond, attaches an air hose, and slowly makes his way round the edge of the room to the master control panel. He deciphers the controls to unlock the great doors upstairs, pulls the rusty lever, then starts to return to the airlock. 

Krivinn opens the airlock in response to a tap-tap sound on the door but it’s not Saethus! Instead it’s an undead mohrg wearing a worn protective suit. Meanwhile Saethus is being attacked by a belker in the main room and is blinded. Fortunately he manages to shake off the condition and fey steps into the airlock so he can help his companions defeat the mohrg.

With the doors unlocked, the characters are ready to return to the Great Hall but Bolval can’t resist checking out the room where they saw a flaming sword sticking out of the rocks. The greedy dwarf soon regrets his decision as he is quickly surrounded by green slimes and needs Saethus to take the drastic action of fireballing the whole room to deal with them.

Even after the slimes are killed there is more trouble as the sword turns out to be the trigger for a trap – explosive poison gas is released into the room when Bolval pulls it out. The characters don their Forsaken masks and beat a hasty retreat…..

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