Day 108 Goodmonth (Continued):
The party, which consisted of Kyro, Niki, Chalkboi, Lhoss, Feno, Gnorcia, Armatzi, and Zraith, continued to explore the Barrowmaze, looking for the Font of Law: an artifact whose purpose was outline by the ghost knight Sir Guy. Heading in a south/southwest direction, Kyro noticed a hidden latch on a wall, and called Lhoss to investigate. Normally, it is the elves Feno or Lhoss who make such a discovery. Lhoss confirms that it is indeed a hidden door, Feno undoes the latch, and being the impulsive elf that he is, enters the room. As the room starts unfolding before his eyes, he inadvertently triggers a trap by snagging a hidden tripwire. Sharp spikes suddenly jut forth from the floor. Due to quick reflexes, he dodges most of the spikes, though a couple of them hurt his leg. Seeing the chaos from another activated trap, Niki thought it wise to travel closer to Feno, and utilize the 10 ft pole the party had, and check ahead of Feno for any future traps.
They proceed cautiously into the new room and see many burial alcoves. With a thorough searching, the group finds a number of electrum pieces, a pearl, and a gold signet ring. While the group was actively searching, Feno stood guard by the doorway. He hears the flapping of wings, as well as squeaks of an enemy just outside the room. He informs the group to get ready. Upon seeing that they are sufficiently braced for combat, he opens the door ready for anything.
Four stirges (which look like giant mosquito creatures) rush into the room. They first set their sights on Feno, the death bringing elf. He sidesteps each stirge attack with relative ease. The penguin Zraith attempts to attack one stirge, but is unable to connect with his two hammers. Feno looks and sees the formation of the flying blood suckers and formulates an attack plan. He spins his body off the ball of his foot, and attacks the four stirges in the room, and kills all four in one fail swoop. Their bodies, or what remains of them, clang to the dungeon floor. Seeing an opening, the last remaining stirge flies into the room, ready to attack. Niki, sneaks behind it, and deals a killing blow to the last stirge. The group gathers their newfound treasure and continue to press on southward.
Upon entering a possible dead-end, Niki discovers a hidden door. They enter and find an unusual, shaped room. Suddenly a flagstone golem is alerted their presence and attacks. Lhoss, channels some of her magic, and sends magic missiles at it, causing some damage to its body. Armatzi is next, and steps forward to attack with his war hammer and hits it, causing further damage. Gnorcia, utilizing her nimble size, decides to jump on his back and attempts to literally stab him in the back. However, due to his stony exterior, Gnorcia is unable to cause much damage to the 7 ft tall creature. Kyro, steps forward and attacks, but the golem deflects the attack. He lumbers forward and attacks Feno. Feno, upon seeing the telegraphed movement of the lumbering giant, easily sidesteps and dodges both attacks. Niki, capitalizing on the golem's focus on Feno, attacks, which causes further damage to the creature. Zraith waddles up to the creature, and swinging both hammers again, attacks. This time, due to the creatures focus on Feno, he connects on his attacks, dealing the killing blow. The flagstone golem crumbles to the ground in defeat. The group notices more burial alcoves in this room. As the majority begins to search and loot the newly discovered alcoves, Feno again gets into a guarding position near the southern door. The group in their searching discover more electrum pieces, a piece of jade, and a small shield. Niki decides to cast a spell, to determine where or not it has magical properties. Her spell causes her to conclude that it indeed does have those properties. Feno hears what sounds like a small adventuring group nearby. He hears their murmuring and muffled talking as they walk near the room the group was in. While listening near the doorway, He also catches a tripwire in the corner of his eye, that is attached to a large stone slab hanging overhead. Presumably, the slap would come down, pushing them into the room with the golem. He informs the group of this, and they disarm the trap. After storing their fresh loot, they proceed forward through the door and further south. They discover a passageway that goes east and west, as well as another passage south. Feno faintly hears the previous group and sees the faint light from their torches from the southern passageway. Lhoss, utilizing her ability for stealth, hands her lantern to Gnorcia for temporary safe keeping. She proceeds to cautiously head down the sides of the passageway, getting closer the other group. After getting close enough to the group to hear their conversation, she learns that they are members of the of the Black Hand. Hearing this her blood boils, and she quietly leaves to inform her party a few paces off.
On the way back she discovers a hidden trap in the middle of the passageway, that she hadn't seen before. It has a pressure plate, wherein if someone were to step on it, it would cause them to fall into a pit. Upon her return, Lhoss informs the party of all that she learned, and they begin to talk strategy. After talking through a few scenarios, the group decides to lure them and ambush them.
Lhoss moves down the passageway again, this time putting a bag's worth of marbles along each side of the trap, making it far more treacherous to cross. Gnorcia for her part, decides to use some illusionary magic, and creates a goblin illusion to trick and lead the assassin group towards the trapped trap. The rest of the party gets in position, with each member on opposite sides of the passageway, ready for the ambush. Gnorcia moves the goblin illusion towards the black hand members, and using her goblin language skills, gets the assassin's attention. Seeing the goblin, and potential easy mark for treasure, the group of assassin's sound the verbal alarm and follow the goblin down the passageway. As they proceed down, Lhoss's marble trap works, and 4 members of the black hand immediately fall in. They hear screaming, and the sounds of battling some creature at the bottom of the pit. Lhoss, seeing the destruction her marbles decides to slink back towards the group. The assassin nearest to the pit, sees her outline briefly and yells to his brethren that they are not alone. They attempt to cross the marble pit area in pursuit. Lhoss, with a wicked grin after seeing a glimmer of fire in the pit, tosses some vials of oil she got from her pack and tosses them in. The vials of oil connect with the open flame and cause a huge explosion that knocks two more assassins into the pit.
The rest of the assassins are able to make it across the sides of the pit and kick the marbles out of the way.
Suddenly, the doors behind the group burst open, and a large group of undead rush towards party that is laying in ambush for the Black Hand. The ambushers, it would seem, have now become the ambushed. They undead charge, before the party can counter-attack, and attack Lhoss, who had moved next to Feno, thinking it was a good vantage point. As Lhoss was preparing to fire one of her magic missiles, an undead zombie hits her, disrupting her spell casting and causing minor damage. The remaining members of the Black Hand rush forward and attempt to destroy the goblin but are unable to dispel the illusion. Seeing the danger, the party has now been placed in, Feno rushes back to attack and kills one of the Black Hand members, in order to help clear a path for other member's attacks. After both the assassins and undead reposition themselves to get a better angle to attack, Armatzi attempts to use his clerical magic to turn the undead away. Unfortunately, but the spell has no effect, and the undead resume attacking Lhoss, who falls unconscious from the attacks. Gnorcia, trying to at least affect the members of the Black Hand, casts her spell color spray which causes bright colored lights to shoot forth from her hands. The Black Hand becomes blinded, because they looked directly into the light. Meanwhile, Feno continues to rain death and destruction with every swing of his enchanted sword. As Gnorcia, and Niki methodically attack and kill each member of the Black Hand, Kyro, Feno and Zraith attack the zombie-like creatures. Zraith falls unconscious when a zombie hits the penguin with a hard claw attack. Niki rushes forward and heals Lhoss before she bleeds out from her wounds. The leader of the Black Hand, sensing their demise, quickly runs away, abandoning his men to their deaths. And death does indeed happen, with each and every one of them falling to the weapons of Gnorcia and Niki. Feno cleans up the remaining zombies with relative ease, side stepping their attacks and inflecting righteous fury upon the walking corpses. Once the leader of the undead falls, the conscious members of the Saviors of Orlane tend to the wounded and unconscious prior to heading back to Orlane to divide the treasures unearthed as well as get proper medical attention. A good meal and good rest is long overdue.
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