Arnd and Hilja suddenly appeared, and Arnd’s growling stomach brought the topic of lunch to our attention. We stopped and spent a few minutes chewing on some dry rations, which have been tasting worse every day since we’re getting used to eating the good food in Orlane. Lhoss suggested we open a door farther east down the hall but as Feno approached the door he discovered a glum-looking goblin limply holding a sign that read, “Go away. Come back later.”
Instead, we headed west, carefully avoiding a pit in the hall, and peeked into an empty room with some rubble all over it. Feno poked at the rubble a little but decided it wasn’t interesting enough to explore further. We approached the doorway at the west end of the hall and Lhoss attempted to open it, but couldn’t quite manage. Feno stepped in and quickly had it open, revealing a large room with some sort of rubble in the corner. We all agreed we had been here before but we weren’t quite sure when or what happened. We decided to continue down the hall and around to the area near the scrying pool.
As we moved through a few rooms in that direction, we heard a skittering sound and noticed a reddish light moving in our direction. Suddenly four fast-moving beetles appeared and ran toward us down the hall! They appeared ravenously hungry and immediately attacked Arnd, Armaziti, and Feno. One of them managed to get its pincers into Feno, who was instantly very angry and completely smashed the creature into the ground. Despite some hits that glanced off the creatures' hard carapaces and a nasty bite right through Armaziti's armor, we eventually destroyed them all. I (Gnorcia) pinned the last beetle to the floor where it twitched a few times and finally lay still. Hilja, Lhoss, Arnd, Feno, and I all picked through the antennae and gathered up the few that weren’t totally smashed by Feno. They make great lightsources in this dark place.
We continued down the hall to the east, toward the hidden door there. As Feno and Armaziti went through the door, they sensed that there was something nearby. They then noticed a pile of rags on the floor and Feno reached out at it with his sword. Suddenly the rags rose up in the shape of a creature that appeared to be several different types of creatures stitched together. The strange-looking thing cried out, “Don’t hurt me! Don’t turn me over to the necromancers!” Lhoss stepped up and attempted to comfort him, and in the process somehow named him Grumblecakes. She offered him a ration, which he eventually agreed to take. He then retreated, crying, to a corner, as she questioned him about the necromancers, collapsed in a heap, and soon began snoring. He was amazingly difficult to see while asleep like that. We left him there and moved through the next two rooms into the hallway where we had previously done battle with a group of skeletons.
As Feno and Armziti entered the hallway, they were surprised by four zombies lurking there. One attacked me and managed to hit me. I tried to hit it back and completely missed in my anger. Feno swung his sword and unsurprisingly obliterated the zombie in front of him. That guy can smash stuff! After a bunch more swings and misses and a vial of oil that went awry, we managed to destroy them all in a rather disgusting manner with heads bouncing and smooshing and one zombie exploding. The area suddenly smelled even worse than it had before.
We then noticed a glint of something shiny and discovered four goblets encrusted with diamonds, which the zombies seemed to have been carrying around. We collected them in the bag of holding.
Turning to the door next to us, Lhoss inspected it for traps and attempted to open it. Feno then stepped up, rolling his eyes a bit at her apparent ineptitude, and discovered he couldn’t open it either. Armaziti then tried and got it open, revealing burial alcoves covered in dust and cobwebs. Feno barged in and immediately began rummaging through. We searched through burial alcoves and memorized spells, eventually counting up 150 silver pieces and a tooled buckle that Arnd had found.
Lhoss announced she wanted to open the door across the hall and Armaziti pre-emptively cast a blessing, expecting the worst. Lhoss’ attempt to open the door failed again and literally everyone else—including Feno—failed as well. Finally, Tatania used her knock spell and the door swung open, revealing a hallway. As Armaziti and Feno led the group down the hall, Armaziti stepped into a trap! He fell through and the floor closed again behind him! The rest of us could barely hear him shouting.
Feno then spotted something strange on the wall to the west, and went to investigate. It was a lever, but he decided not to pull it. Instead he went back and investigated the floor where he saw Armaziti fall. The rest of us had been too far back and didn’t see what happened, and couldn’t see anything unusual about the floor where Feno said Armaziti disappeared. Eventually Lhoss and Feno managed to find a fine line marking a trap door opening. I suggested the lever might have something to do with the floor so Feno pulled it, but instead of the floor opening, a hidden door opened in the wall, revealing a large room. Ignoring that discovery, we went back to helping Armaziti.
Lhoss and Feno used a pole from the bag of holding and probed the area, soon revealing Armaziti standing sheepishly about 10 feet down in a pit. Hilja used a rope and pulled him out of the pit, and it closed again. Feno then decided to try to get to the door on the other side of the pit, but failed at crossing along the edge and fell in. He did manage to jump up and hang from the mechanism to open the trapdoor, popping the doors open and we were able to pull him out with the rope.
The party then discussed how we might create some sort of rope bridge across the pit. Armaziti tied one end of the rope to the door pull handle, I tied another rope to make it longer, and then tied it to the pull handle of the door we had just come through. Lhoss then tried the rope crossing and was able to do it easily, so the rest of us crossed as well. Feno opened the door and a large gust of wind burst out at us. Fortunately, we were using the beetle antennae instead of torches.
We discovered a room with a low, 6-foot ceiling with gems embedded in it. Turning the corner in the room, we also noticed a broken-down door with a room behind it. There were two sarcophagi, four shriveled corpses on the ground, and a large statue of Merikka. I stood on Arnd’s shoulders and along with Lhoss ad Tatania began to investigate the gems for possible traps, finding none and noticing that our comrades had moved into the next room, we began to investigate the bodies there. They were well-equipped but obviously dead adventurers, and we inventoried their belongings and distributed most of them between us all. They were:
An elven thief, female, wearing leather armor, dagger and scabbard, and a backpack. She was carrying 8 candles, a crowbar, a grappling hook, a mallet, 1 iron spike, some well-wrapped dry rations, a large sack, a small lens, a tinderbox, a waterskin, and a whetstone, plus a belt pouch with some coins.
A human female magic user with a dagger and scabbard, and a backpack with a bottle of writing ink and quill, 5 parchment, 2 scroll cases, a spellbook, a hand mirror, 1 week of rations, 6 torches, a tinderbox, an empty glass vial with a cork stopper, and a belt pouch containing more coins.
A human male wearing chain mail with a shield and a bastard sword in a scabbard, and carrying a backpack with chalk, a grappling hook, hemp rope (2x50ft), a hooded lantern, 3 flasks oil, a small 1-man tent, and a belt pouch with coins.
A male dwarf wearing scale mail and carrying a battle axe and backpack with the same items as the human male, along with yet another belt pouch with coins.
Tatania looked at the spellbook and found it contained the speels ventriloquism, light, jump, message, and read magic. Arnd claimed the scale mail, Hilja claimed a dagger and scabbard, and Tatania took a scabbard for her dagger. Feno took the last dagger.
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