Paladin's Journal (Adventure Path) Intro

[Damon Griffin]

Over the next several messages titled 'Paladin's Journal, entry x' I'll be posting our campaign chronicles for the Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury adventures. Be aware that:

* There are SPOILERS aplenty for both these modules.
* The layout and monster population of both modules was altered by our DM for various reasons, so those of you familiar with these adventures may see some unfamiliar things.
* There is no way to achieve the desired objective in the Sunless Citadel; our DM thought that sucked, and overrode the designer's notes on that point. Consequently, two of the NPCs from the Citadel adventure are with us when we explore the Forge.

Dramatis Personae
Sir Alcee Thibodeaux, aka "Tib" - Human Paladin (a bit of a rube, and hard of hearing, so he is more trusting and easier to convince than perhaps is good for him; and he doesn't always hear things correctly, like the names of spells or NPCs); native of Oakhurst; attended paladin training with Sir Braford
Winter - Human Wizard with a WIS of 7; native of Oakhurst
Gerik - Human Rogue; nephew of Garon, the innkeeper in Oakhurst
Lance - Human Fighter; native of Oakhurst
Wulfgrim - Dwarf cleric of Moradin; native of Oakhurst
Tayla - Half-elven (and half-halfling) Bard; birthplace unknown [Forge of Fury adventure only]

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - Entry 1

The journal of Sir Alcee Thibodeaux​

If found, please return to Lord Aristide Thibodeaux at his keep near Oakhurst​

My name is Alcee Thibodeaux. My friends mostly call me Tib, on account of my older bother Alcide is usually called Al. I guess maybe they will have to quit using that nickname, though, at least around any strangers, because I am now invested as a paladin and nicknames seem maybe disrespectful of the uniform. But I don’t mind as long as it’s just us Oakhurst folks.

There’s an old sunken ruin near our village, and goblins live there. Once or twice a year they come out to auction off some kind of magic apple, and in between times they come out to raid and steal from folks, travelers and passersby mostly. Folks who bought the seeds tried planting them, and saplings did grow, but seems like someone always came before long and stole them away.

I’d been away from home for a couple years, with just a few short visits, working at becoming a paladin, which I guess was my calling. One of the other paladins at the monastery was called Sir Braford. He finished up his training just a couple weeks before me, and was set to guarding some of these saplings that the priests were growing in a greenhouse at the monastery. While he was on guard, someone stole the saplings, which made him pretty embarrassed, and hot to do something about it.

Ten days ago, Sir Braford and a wilderness scout friend of his went off to Oakhurst wanting to see about getting some of the special apples, but after a week they hadn’t come back, so I was sent back home to see what might have happened to them. When I got to Oakhurst I found out they’d taken on two of the Hucreles as guides – no doubt Talgen was bragging about how he knew the area so good – and left for the ruin a week before. Nobody’d heard from them since, and a few people were organizing a small search party, which I joined.

Gerik, the innkeeper’s nephew, and Lance Hawthorne I grew up with. Winter, the wizard, and Wulfgrim the dwarf priest, I recognized of course, but I never really knew them except to say good day to until now. We brought Jack, a cattleman from daddy’s keep, along with us and set out the next morning.

We got to the place around midday and lowered ourselves down into the dark using a rope that’d been recently left behind. Wulfgrim went down first, using some handholds the goblins put into the walls, and was attacked by wicked big rats – biggest I ever hope to see – as soon as he reached the first ledge. But we all got down okay and followed some stone stairs to a wide place with lots more wreckage. There some kind of trap rigged over a pit and another big rat at the bottom, but none of us got hurt. There were some chewed up bodies down in the pit and we couldn’t tell at first if they weren’t the people we were looking for, so Gerik killed the rat with his crossbow and went down to check. It was goblin bodies.

We moved around exploring, and found some more dead goblins, probably killed by the group we were looking for. We ran into a fancy door that apparently needed a special key to open, and some kind of water imp and then we came upon a lone kobold. He was a miserable creature, who’d apparently been responsible for guarding a baby dragon his people kept as a pet. The goblins had come and stole the dragon two days before, and he’d just sat down and cried about it since then. Winter seemed to think kobolds couldn’t ever be trusted, but Meepo (that was his name) just seemed pitiable to me, and besides Mama always said you should always think the best of folks until they give you a reason to do otherwise, because you can’t see into someone else’s heart. Actually, since I got the calling, I can see into people’s hearts, a little, but I still do like I was taught until a person gives me a reason to suspect him.

Anyways, we asked him about the Hucreles and the others, and he said he didn’t know about them but his boss woman Yusdrayl would know, so we went and spoke to her. She said she’d seen them but the goblins took them. We said if they’d point the way to the goblins so we could make good time with our search, we’d keep an eye out for their pet dragon at the same time. The boss woman said okay and Meepo came along to take us by the short route.

Well, the short way ain’t always the best way, as we soon found out. In pretty short order we’d had to kill a bunch of goblins and a few hobgoblins, and then hightail it back to the kobolds’ patch because we got ourselves outnumbered. Gerik was in a world of hurt by then and Winter got beat up some, too. We brought back a couple of goblins as prisoners and when they were questioned they said two of the people we were looking for was already dead. One of the men had been killed in a fight, and another mouthed off and got himself killed for his trouble. Lance thinks that was Talgen, and I’ll bet my boots he's right. Sharwyn Hucrele was still alive last the goblins saw, and the other man, but their goblin boss had given them to someone called Belak, who makes the special apples. Belak is apparently a human like us, but strange, and he’s lived down there among the goblins for the past dozen years or so. We stayed the night in one of the kobolds’ spare rooms and Wulfgrim got Gerik and Winter healed up the next morning. My hearing ain’t too good, and I might have misunderstood, but a couple of times I thought I heard Winter making suggestions about the goblins, or the kobolds, that I wouldn’t agree with. But maybe he was kidding, too. That wizard has a strange sense of humor, I think.

There was a key on the wall in the hall where we talked to the kobold boss woman, and she let us borrow it to try that door we hadn’t been able to open the day before, after we promised to give her half of whatever goods we found back there. The first thing we found was a big glowing ball that made terrible sounds that made Winter want to run away from it. It didn’t bother me at first, and I got it wrapped up to muffle the sound somewhat, but after a minute I took off running, too, and I wasn’t alone. I went back and broke the thing to stop the noise, and didn’t that make Winter awful sore? He thought we ought to have carried it along with us to scare goblins with, and it probably would have done that, but we couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t affect us again, even with candle wax in our ears.

Through the next door the floor had been rigged to shoot arrows from the walls when anyone walked on it, and through the door after that we came to a room with a white marble statue of a dragon, and it spoke a riddle, which Winter answered straightaway, and opened up a secret door in the wall.

Through that door was a large room with more statues. Life sized statues of men this time, and none of them spoke, but made from the same kind of marble rock as the dragon statue. The room had six little alcoves and five of them had these statues. At the far end of the room you could see an open archway and past the archway a green glowing light showed a big stone coffin in the next room, also made from that marble. Just this side of the archway was a big pit, about ten feet across and as wide as the room. It was maybe ten feet deep and we could see spikes at the bottom, and no clear way to get across it.

Wulfgrim spotted a hidden door at the back of one of the alcoves, and there was a little closet of a room past it, and a trap door in the floor of that room. Wulfgrim was mightily unimpressed with the stone crafting skills of whoever built that secret door and trap door. Elves, he reckoned. On the back wall of the closet was a message about a dragon priest who broke the law and got buried alive but still had his title and position. Below the trapdoor was a narrow tunnel, which Wulfgrim and Gerik explored. When they found out it went twenty yards or so and came up in the stone coffin room, the rest of us followed, except for Jack who stayed behind to watch our backpacks and such that wouldn't fit while we crawled through the tunnel.

Coming up into the coffin room, I checked and knew that evil was present, both in the coffin and somewhere up near the ceiling. I couldn't see anything up there, but I knew sort of where it was and could tell when it moved. When I said something about it, Wulfgrim tried slinging a rock at it, Winter tried to use a Sleep spell and Lance threw a bunch of dust in the air. The only effect of any of this was to make my eyes water a little. Winter hollered across to Jack to throw us a sack so we could try to catch the thing, but about that time Gerik moved over near the archway to take another look in the pit, and the evil presence I'd noted near the ceiling made a dive for him. I hadn't been paying close enough attention to things, and didn't keep myself between him and it, like I should have. When it attacked it became visible, and it was some kind of little winged devil or imp. It clawed at Gerik and tried to bite him, and knocked him off the edge into the pit. There was some more flailing around trying to hit the thing, but it didn't seem much bothered by us until Winter hit it with a frost bolt or some such spell, and it took off yelling something about how it was free now. Jack climbed down into the pit to help Gerik, but fell and injured himself doing it.

We got Jack and Gerik taken care of and out of the pit, and Garik came back around through the tunnel with some of our supplies in a sack, ready to open up the stone coffin. Now, I was not altogether comfortable with the notion of breaking this coffin open, since desecrating graves ain't something honest folk should do. But I knew there was something evil inside, and that meant the dragon priest - we figured that message on the wall was about whoever was in the coffin - wasn't dead, or not entirely so. I heard stories about the undead while taking my paladin training.

Anyways, we got a bunch of candles lit, and stuffed some rags into bottles of oil and broke the hinges off the coffin, and then pushed away the lid. Whatever was in there might've been a priest, but it wasn't no dragon, nor a human or goblin or dwarf or anything else I ever seen before. Thinking about it later, I think it looked like a troll, something my daddy fought once and told us kids about several times. We lit it up with the oil right away, but that didn't stop it climbing out of the coffin and trying to get at us. The fight was pretty short, but a couple of the guys swore afterward they saw the thing healing itself of damage while we fought, without casting a spell or anything. That'd fit with what daddy said about trolls, so after it went down, I cut off its head and even then we made sure all of it got burned up. There were some metal scroll cases and little stone jars in the coffin, plus some coins and jewelry the thing had been wearing. The stone jars had healing potions, which we used right away, and the scrolls had cleric spells that Wulfgrim might be able to use.

We were pretty beat up by this time, even after drinking the two potions, so we decided to crawl back through the tunnel and rest a while in the room across the pit. It ended up being a long rest, because Winter and Wulfgrim needed to get their spells back. Winter would need to sleep for eight hours and then get up and study, and Wulfgrim has to pray at a certain time every day for his. Gerik felt some of his muscles stiffening up a bit, he thought because of the imp's dirty claws, but he said it wasn't bad. I'd completely lost track of the time by now, but I knew Wulfgrim had done his praying just a couple hours before, after we'd had our rest back in the kobolds' area. So we've been in this room for near another full day, and we've talked about what we might do next, and made some wooden wedges in case we might need to block off a door quietly or quicker than we could with a spike. I prayed to Heironeous to help me do better today -- I hadn't kept Garik from getting hurt last night, and hadn't been as much use as I should have in the fights with the little devil or the troll.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - entry 2

We finally stirred ourselves, locked the fancy dragon door behind us and went back to the kobolds just past midnight, or so Wulfgrim said it was. This would be the start of our third day down here. We'd arrived about noon on the first day. The kobolds weren't eager to give us any help with the goblins at that point, so their boss lady just took her half of the treasure we brought back and they opened up the passage we'd used before. While we were there, Meepo mentioned something about eating goblins. That had come up before when we brought in the goblin prisoners, but I figured it was a joke, like when people at Gerik's uncle's inn say they're hungry enough to eat a horse, but don't. This time I asked Meepo about it and he was serious! I tried to explain to him how it was okay to eat animals but not other people, or anyways creatures that are somewhat like people, but I couldn't make him understand why I had a problem with it. He said he wouldn't eat them and would wait until they could be traded for kobold prisoners, but I don't expect his promise necessarily binds the other kobolds.

Headed back down the hall toward the goblins, we looked for another secret door, hoping to find a way around some of the goblins, but if there was one, we didn't see it. The goblins heard us banging around searching, and said so. Lance and Jack tried a couple of times to break down the door we'd busted in the first time, but it held pretty well and we had to pull back. I got a big wooden beam from the kobolds and Jack and Lance used it as a battering ram about an hour later, and this time they punched through.

What happened after that is hard to remember very clear, and some of it I had to ask Garik and Winter about later. Seemed like the fighting went on for an hour or more, but it couldn't really have been more than a couple of minutes. We killed some hobgoblins and a bunch of goblins, close to a dozen in all, but there was just too many of them. Lance fell, and Wulfgrim put himself at risk to do a healing. Wulfgrim and I also fell, none of us dead because the goblins were mostly trying to knock us out for prisoners, although Wulfgrim had been cut up bad because the goblin leader used a longsword against him and me, and the goblins dragged us away out of the room. Winter was near out of spells again, so him and Gerik had to fall back toward the kobold area and leave us to our fate. Winter told me later that before they did, Gerik had tried to challenge the goblin leader to single combat, but the leader wouldn't have none of it. Just as well, I say. Gerik is my good friend and I love him like a brother, but that boy has more guts than good sense.

One hobgoblin and a couple of goblins chased after Winter and Gerik, but they were ready for that and Gerik killed the hobgoblin as he came through the door. Stabbing someone in the back ain't something I'd approve of normally, but in the spot they were in I guess you'd have to excuse it. I think maybe Heironeous approved, because something like a miracle happened, and as near as I can piece together, it happened just about the time Gerik did that last hobgoblin in. Back at the monastery they liked to say "Heironeous favors the bold" and maybe what with Gerik's challenge to the goblin chief and also hanging back to kill another hobgoblin when he could have just run, and Wulfgrim healing Lance in the middle of the fight and such, maybe between us all we'd been bold enough to get the god's attention. And of course Wulfgrim's god Moradin could have been looking out for him, he being a priest and all. Anyways, what happened was Lance and me woke up in a store room. Wulfgrim was there too, but still knocked out. We should have been out for hours while we slept off the beating the goblins had given us, but it seemed it had only been a minute or two since we'd been dumped there, because we hadn't even been tied up or searched yet. I was a mite groggy but I think the kobolds that drug us in there heard a ruckus down the hall, and just dumped us to run check on it. Our wounds weren't healed but somehow they seemed to matter less than they had before, and we set to freeing four other prisoners we found in the room, a gnome and three kobolds. The gnome, called Creaky Timbers or some such name, was a priest as well, and the goblins kept him caged up here to fix them up when they got wounded fighting kobolds and such. He healed me and Lance and Wulfgrim up some, which finally woke Wulfgrim up. The goblins might have tried keeping Wulfgrim down here too, to heal them when they needed it. He would've said no (well, what he likely would have said I won't repeat here) but I'd guess Creaky probably said no at first, too, and he's been down here as a prisoner for a year anyway.

Meantime, Winter and Gerik had met up with the kobolds again. They were also feeling better somehow, and this time they managed to convince the kobold's boss woman Yusdrayl that it was a good time for the kobolds to come attack the goblins that were left. So she brought a bunch of her soldiers and they made short work of the goblin chief, and their shaman, and some more goblins that come in to join the fight. This was the noise heard by the goblins who dumped us here.

We started off in the direction of all the noise but didn't get far. Another half dozen goblins had also heard the noise, and were coming toward us, so we got ready to fight them. The last goblin from the fight with Winter, Gerik and the kobolds came running our way too, with Winter and Gerik close behind, so we were reunited in time to kill off these last six. I just felt great, like I was never going to be afraid of anything again, and I was ready to smite me some evil, but that was all taken care of for the moment. The goblin chief had Talgen Hucrele's masterwork crossbow, and was wearing one of the Hucrele signet rings, so I guess Lance was right, Talgen was the one that got mouthy and got killed for his trouble.

About this time Yusdrayl mentioned that we hadn't seen any goblin women (other than that shaman) or children, so they must be in hiding somewhere, and probably with some guards. I had been thinking about that already and was worried about how we might bargain for their safe passage out of here, and for those two goblin prisoners from before, if all their other men have been killed, since now I know the kobolds will kill and eat them otherwise. If it comes down to it, I can't see just turning on the kobolds and attacking them, because that'd be dishonest behavior and so far they have done as they said they'd do where we were concerned. Even if it might be excused, in order to save the women and kids, or if they betray us first, they outnumber us and control the exit, so we'd probably not enjoy the result if we tried it. But I can't just abandon living women and children of any sort to be used as food. I will pray about this some, and hope I get inspired with an idea. The priests and senior paladins at the monastery all said the gods hear our prayers and they speak to us, and I guess that's true. But you know, I used to speak to my dog back home, too, and mostly he didn't have any idea what I was trying to say to him. I think maybe we're like dogs to the gods - they might love us and take care of us, but most times we just can't understand them when they talk.

We decided to leave the kobolds to recovering their pet dragon -- seems it wasn't all that anxious to be rescued -- and go on exploring through the door next to where the dragon was found. Yusdrayl warned us about a big horned bugbear before we left. Just a little ways down a hall and around a corner we came to a large round room where we saw a purple light coming up from the middle of the floor, and on the north wall a throne, a chest and sapling tree in a big pot. I check for evil presences and found that there was one, but then thought maybe I'd done it wrong because it looked like the sapling was the source of the evil, and who ever heard of an evil tree? But we surrounded it and got ready to burn it, and it jumped right up out of its pot and came for us! Surprised me almost out of my boots, but it didn't make any difference to the fire -- evil, walking, intelligent or not it was still just wood and burned up right quick. I'm not the sharpest tack in the drawer, but even I knew now that those trees had never been stolen from the monastery or anywhere else, they'd just got up and walked away. And it was these trees been coming after daddy's cattle, you could tell from how their claws looked.

Gerik checked the chest over and found a poison needle trap; I said maybe I should open it because I'm better suited to dealing with things like diseases and poisons than Gerik. That's no credit to me, nor any shame to him, it's just we got different strengths. Anyways, I opened the chest and though I am not 'specially nimble, I avoided that poisoned needle thanks to Gerik warning me. We took what we found there but none of it seemed useful right away. Meanwhile Lance was having a look at the purple light, and saw a vine covered shaft leading down. We knew we needed to go down somehow, because that's where Yusdrayl had said Belak was to be found, but decided to backtrack to the last point where we'd killed goblins and see if there was a stairway or something down from there. But then we talked to Yusdrayl again, and she said that area was kind of a no man's land between the goblins and kobolds, so we reckoned there wasn't likely to be such a thing in that direction. She also talked about chopping up the dead goblins for meat, which bothered me and Lance a lot, but after thinking about it I told Lance that the goblins were already dead, we couldn't do nothing for 'em and we needed to go on and find our friends if we could. So we went back to the vine covered shaft and climbed down.

At the bottom of the shaft in a large square room we killed two more of them evil trees and a couple of walking skeletons. That was easy enough but we soon had reason to wish we'd waited and come down here better prepared with spells and such. Lance heard a crowd of voices from nearby and when we went to check, this big bugbear with a horned helmet come out with two of those really big rats and wanted to know our business. Well, I figured our business right then was to get through him, if he was working for Belak, so I let my sword answer for me. I hit him a good solid blow, but he done me right back with this wicked looking morningstar, and between him and his rats I dropped pretty quick. Lance did too, I found out later. Somehow or other it all got sorted out, and the bugbear and one of his rats got killed, and the other rat run off. Gerik and Jack looted the bugbear and took his morningstar and scale mail. Them among us that wasn't unconscious looked into the big cave he was guarding and found the goblin women and children, who right off panicked and started running into these narrow tunnels in the back wall. Lance and me was dragged into the cave and we all spent the night there, recovering.

Must have been about dawn outside when I woke, and found Creaky Timbers praying for his spell power for the day. He used all his spells for healing as soon as he had them, and also spent the whole day tending our wounds. About noon Winter woke up and studied his spell book, and come midnight Wulfgrim prayed for his spells too, and used most of them to heal us some more. Lance put on the bugbear's scale mail.


Metagaming info:
* The "winged devil or imp" Tib refers to was a quasit, but Tib is insufficiently experienced to make that distinction. Garik's stiff muscles were the result of the quasit's poison, which temporarily reduced his DEX by -1.

* The miracle Tib refers to following his capture, waking up only a minute or two after being knocked unconscious, is his perception of the party's bump to 2nd level upon earning 1000xp, which occurred when Gerik felled that last hobgoblin.

* Tib's statement that he was "never going to be afraid of anything again" and being "ready to smite me some evil" note that a 2nd level paladin gains Aura of Courage and Smite Evil as class abilities. His wounds mattered less than they had before, because he'd suddenly gained 11 h.p., making his previous injuries smaller in proportion to his total h.p., even though none of the damage had been healed. Lance rolled badly for new h.p. (he only gained 3 h.p. even with his CON bonus) and gained just barely enough to rise above 0 h.p. when he was bumped to 2nd level; Wulfgrim had taken only "real" damage, no subdual damage, which is why he didn't wake up until the gnome cleric did a Cure Light Wounds.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - entry 3

Around three hours after midnight we finally roused ourselves and left the cave, feeling a good deal better. There was two doors out of the large room. We heard snoring behind one of them and decided to try the other. It lead into a crevice which run off in a couple of directions, one of them looking like it might be a back way in to where we figured Belak was. We followed it, moving pretty quick because Wulfgrim said these little tunnels in the side walls showed that a thockwa worm lived hereabouts, and we didn't want to run into it if we didn't have to. I guess these thockwas burn their way through rock the way regular worms dig through the soil.

We come out into a small room and just beyond that heard snoring again. We found maybe a dozen goblins asleep in side rooms, plus a distillery and an armory and a big rat being tortured. We wedged the goblins up inside their rooms, still sleeping, and went on through the armory. We soon got to a door where Gerik heard humming, and he peeked in and saw another bugbear, this one doing gardening chores. He had grass growing underground! I guess Gerik had picked up one of those saps from the goblins, and he decided he'd try sneaking up and knocking this bugbear out rather than kill it. The bugbear heard him coming, but I guess didn't notice the sap, and the two of them talked for a bit. The bugbear told Gerik where to find Belak, and then the rest of us just marched on through.

In the next room past the garderer we saw a bunch of them little thockwa tunnels in the walls, and a door across the room. I thought I would run across and open the other door, and if we all hurried maybe we could get through before the thockwa worm showed up. Well, fools rush in, as they say. I got maybe halfway across the room when that thing come up out of the floor, slammed me in the back and burned me something fierce. I got through the other door okay, but had to use up my holy healing power for the day to take the smart out of that burn. Winter and Creaky were right behind me and got across okay. Then Wulfgrim got some iron spikes from Lance, and told people to be ready to run when he said. He heaved one spike up against a side wall, and when the thockwa worm went for it, two more people ran over. Then he threw another spike at the other wall and the last couple made it across safe. Wulfgrim told me later that thockwa worms can hear vibrations in the rock and that's what they attack, so he was using the spikes as decoys. Pretty smart, and if I hadn't been in such a blamed hurry to get across, I'd have saved myself some damage.

Outside that room was a hallway and across the hall some goblins peeked out a door to see what the noise was. Winter told them we was here to see Belak and they said okay and let us in. Once we got inside we saw a big open space with a lot of them evil trees and heavy brush and grass. Burning it seemed like a good idea but we figured the goblins wouldn't like that, so half of us set ourselves to defend the rest if the goblins attacked. But Lance and Wulfgrim decided they didn't need to wait, and threw the first punch, so to speak. Winter put most of the goblins to sleep and we tied them up. Boo went running around in the rat holes and found an interesting room behind a locked door, so Gerik set himself to open the lock before we started anything on fire. It was maybe Belak's study, and we found some books and things.

After that we got a good grass fire started, and also made some fire arrows for Gerik and me. I think this turned out to be a pretty good tactic for us. We killed maybe five of the trees with the fire arrows, and the burning grass and brush kept the rest from charging at us. Plus, I was told later, it got rid of a bunch of plants that Belak could have used to tangle us up with a spell. Belak showed up pretty quick, though, and created some water to douse the worst of the grass fire, then he and a bunch more trees came for us. Sir Braford and Sharwyn Hucrele were with him, but they were changed. Their skin looked like tree bark and although they knew who we were -- me and Gerik, anyway -- they attacked us and talked like we were enemies. A minute or so later we also caught sight of a giant toad that was some kind of pet of Belak's.

Winter and Wulfgrim tried to restart the brush fire, but only Wulfgrim got his side going again. Winter got hit with some kind of spell and was dazed for a second or two, then he got up a magic shield and retreated behind it. He didn't do any damage to any of the trees, but he kept five of them at one time occupied trying to get past his shield while the rest of us mixed it up. Sir Braford made straight for me and kept saying how I should give up and couldn't win this fight, and he had his magic sword Shatterspike trying to break my weapon. I just kept my mouth shut and my mind on the job, and I admit I was pleased to see him look so confused when he dropped unconscious, and me still with a whole weapon. I know I should not be thinking such things about a fellow paladin who has got changed to evil, it's a terrible thing I should ought to take any kind of pleasure in. When I get back to the monastery I will ask if I should do a penance.

Belak threw some kind of spell at Lance that made his armor heat up and burn him a little at a time. He was hurt awful bad but he still used up his last bit of strength killing Belak. Wulfgrim saved his life by throwing water on him so the hot armor didn't hurt him as much, and then healing him with his last spell. The effort of doing that almost dropped Wulfgrim. When Belak died, the trees ran off past us, just wanting to get away, and Sharwyn surrendered to me and I tied her hands behind her so she couldn't cast no more spells. By now Lance, Wulfgrim and Creaky could just barely stand, and Winter, Gerik and me was injured as well. Belak had some healing potions. Wulfgrim drank one and we had to pour another down Lance's throat.

That second grass fire didn't really help us much. Lance had charged one tree and pushed it back into the fire, but pretty much all of them had got past the places where Winter and Wulfgrim were trying to set fires before the grass caught. We ended up having to stamp it all out after the fight. Gerik looted Belak's body, ran off the toad and recovered Shatterspike.

Sharwyn told us about a vampire tree that was down here. Years ago a vampire was staked to death at a crossroads and the stake grew into this tree. The fruit it bears is what the goblins would sell twice a year, and the seeds from that fruit is what makes the evil saplings, which she said were called twigblights. She and Sir Braford had been tied to the tree and it changed them like this. I don't know if they can be changed back, but we will ask the priests back at the monastery. Whatever caused it can't be a disease, because as a paladin Sir Braford would not have been affected by it. It might be a curse. We burned up the vampire tree and sat down to figure out what to do next. I spent a little time looking at a book we found in Belak's room. I can't read any of it, nor tell what language it's writ in, but it has lots of good drawings of plants and such. I didn't see anything that looked like a vampire tree, though, so I guess there is nothing in that book that will help Sharwyn or Sir Braford. Winter found Sharwyn's spell book with her other gear. She says he can't have it, but it seems like a bad idea to give it back just yet, so we'll just hold it for a while and see how things turn out.

Sharwyn knows where that ranger's body is, back upstairs, and we might be able to get Talgen's body back too. We still got to get back up the vine shaft with two people who should have been rescued but are now captured instead, and maybe a corpse, and then get them all plus the ranger's body up the cliff we came down at the start, plus get them back to Oakhurst. By my reckoning we killed just about ten or maybe twelve of the twigblights, and about that many more again ran off when Belak died, plus however many are already out and about roaming the countryside.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - entry 4

We'd sat there for an hour or two, making plans as best we could and deciding to take Belak's sickle along as a kind of trophy, before we roused ourselves and went to talk to the goblins that showed us in. We woke three of them easy enough, but the fourth one was still knocked out even though Lance had bound his wounds before. We told them about Belak and about how the rest of their folk had run off into the deep underground, and they told us about a safe way around the thockwa, and led us along that route with me carrying the last goblin. Well, the route they showed us was safe as long as we didn't open any extra doors. Behind one of them they said there was a ghost or some other kind of bodiless undead. The layout of this place is crazy! Everything seems all twisted around, you go downstairs just so you can go back up again, and neither the "long way" nor the "short way" seems very straightforward. We met another bugbear gardener, and told him that Belak was dead and showed him the sickle as proof. He asked if that meant that the grove was now unowned, and I allowed that was true, but thought it best we didn't say how we'd destroyed it. He took off, hurrying back the way we'd come, and we went on, soon enough coming to the garden we'd been in before, and told that bugbear about the grove and how to get past the thockwa safe, and he took off running hoping to get there before his buddy.

When we got back to the goblin barracks, some of 'em was awake and banging on the doors we'd wedged. I set down the goblin I'd been carrying and the other three goblins went about removing the wedges and explaining to the rest how things stood. We went straight on to the big room at the bottom of the vine covered shaft and dug around where Sharwyn pointed until we found Talgen's body. We bundled him up in what was left of his cloak and bedroll, and then Lance and Jack climbed up the shaft and began hauling Talgen, Braford and Sharwyn up, and the rest of us climbed up after. There at the top of the shaft, the kobolds was having themselves a fine old time, laughing and drinking and, well, enjoying each other's company in a big way. Yusdrayl was right in the middle of it all, but stopped just long enough to hear how we'd killed Belak and drove away the last of the goblins. We told her about the bugbears and the twigblights, and that the goblins had told us about other dangerous things down there we didn't see, and went on our way.

A bit past the prison where Wulfgrim and Lance and I had been, we got to where Sharwyn and the others had run into rats, and worked out how to deal with them and get the ranger's body back. Garik moved real quiet and spread some oil on the floor near the door where we thought the biggest rats were, and most of us readied bows and slings. I had no arrows, so I went down to just the near side of the oil and started making noise, hoping to lure the rats out into the oil. They seemed to notice but didn't come out, so next I tried singing, and that had no more effect. I tried throwing in some caltrops we'd found scattered in a nearby hallway, but that didn't interest them either. I guessed the next step was to walk on down there and look in the room for myself, but Lance said wait until he could tie a rope around me, that way if I fell he could pull me back. That made good sense, and we did it. Walking down to that doorway, I could see into another room, with two trapdoors in the floor spiked open and another door out. I walked over to that other door, out of sight of Lance, and started in since I couldn't hear anything, but soon as I got one foot in, I was set on by a rat twice the size of those we'd run into before. Big as me! She snapped and hissed and some other smaller ones -- the size I used to think was as big as a rat could get -- come out with her, but they couldn't get at me through the armor, and I backed up 'til I was back in the main hallway where Lance could see me. Mama rat jumped at me and knocked me back into the oil, where I slipped and fell. Lance was ready and pulled me on back, and Garik set the oil afire as soon as I was clear and the rats got to it. Mama and one other ran back after getting burned, and fell into one of the pit traps that had been spiked open. We killed one other, and the last one ran off and squeezed through a hole I would have swore was too small.

I guess what with the pounding and throwing things, and singing and then falling in the oil, I must have looked a right fool by then, but I hadn't been hurt and we got the job done, so maybe that's all that counts. A minute later when the oil burned down, we went and pulled the spike that kept that trapdoor open, and left mama and the other rat trapped below, and went on to recover the ranger's body. His name was Karakas, I was now reminded, and we had to figure out which bones was his from a gold ring with his name on it, and a belt pouch marked with a 'K'. His body was in worse shape than Talgen's, but we got him bundled up and Sharwyn told us how to go to get back to the cliff without having to backtrack all around where we'd been before. I must admit I am not very good at drawing maps. Somehow the crazy layout of this place got me turned around and we went through some spaces that there shouldn't have been no room for, according to my map. Along the way we went past the room where those two goblin prisoners were still being kept, and we let them out. After we told them what the state of affairs was down below, they decided they didn't want to chance going through all them celebrating kobolds to join up with their people, and begged to come with us. I made them swear an oath to not interfere with us nor with the people of Oakhurst and they swore. We and climbed up about dawn, and the goblins run off while the rest of us rested for a couple hours and ate and drank before we started back for Oakhurst. Braford was quiet, even when we took off his gag for food and water. Hadn't said but one thing since we left the grove area, and that was he wanted his sword Shatterspike. I just said "Not right now" and we didn't hear no more from him.

We moved slow on the way back to town, what with having to watch Braford and Sharwyn and carry the two bodies, so it was sunset before we got back. Coming into sight of the town Sharwyn started to complain she didn't want to be seen like she was, and Braford started to pull and kick against his ropes. I told Braford "Don't make me come over there and smite you again" and he decided to put his nose up in the air and just march ahead. I offered Sharwyn a bag to put over her head but she didn't want it, so we went straight on to the Hucrele place. As if we didn't already know how bad we looked and smelled, it really showed once we got inside the Hucrele house. Jack stayed outside with the bundled up bodies. Sharwyn's older brother sent for the clerics, had baths run and heard our story. I told him we'd take Braford up to the monastery to see about having his curse removed, if that's what it was, and it was agreed that Sharwyn should go along, too. Hopefully this would all be done before their parents got back, due some two weeks hence. Soon as daddy heard I was back he had to hear everything that happened, so while everyone else rested a while, I went out to the keep and gave him the tale. He gave me more credit for it all than I deserved, and at first I tried to set him straight, but then gave it up as a lost cause. Aristide Thibodeaux always did hear what he wanted to hear, and if his own stories are anything to go by, I imagine my role in this story will grow in the telling as he relates it to other people over the next few months.

I came back to the Hucrele place where we all divided up the money and treasure we'd found and were given 250 pieces of gold each for bringing back the Hucrele kids. That seemed mighty generous considering Talgen was dead and with the shape Sharwyn was in, but the Hucreles never was a stingy bunch and I could sure use the money for better armor and such. I gave Jack five gold coins for his services, and he was pleased as punch since he'd only expected five silver. Truth be told, I wasn't entirely sure what day it was by then, but I thought five days was right. After we'd divided it all up, I'd got near 450 gold pieces, plus some vials of antitoxin, a dagger and six javelins, and the spear and longsword I'd been using while we were down below. That big bugbear's morningstar was magic, but none of us liked the look of it, so we decided we'd take it along to the monastery next morning to see if we could trade it, along with a book, a magic scroll and a magic wand couldn't none of us use. There had been two books, but when we opened up the one called "Secrets of the Fire Lords" it blew up and caught fire. Good thing the clerics was already there to do healing, so no real harm was done.

Just after sunup we loaded Sharwyn and Braford into a covered coach, got some extra horses and headed off. Erky Timbers -- I'd misheard his name before -- decided to stay in town a while since one of our clerics is also a gnome and they have that in common. After a couple days at the monastery, the clerics worked out that Sharwyn and Braford wasn't affected by a curse but by an enchantment, which is harder to break, but they did it. I bought myself a very fine breastplate and was given the blessings that will allow me to remove diseases and turn away undead. We didn't get to trade the morningstar, but we did swap the other stuff and got Winter a magic scroll and got a wand for Wulfgrim to use that does healing spells. Wulfgrim says the spells in the wand are more potent than the ones he can cast, for now.

Sharwyn hasn't strayed five feet from a mirror since her enchantment was broke, and keeps checking to see all traces of that tree bark are gone. Braford is his old self again, though no longer a paladin and feeling mighty down about it. As part of his penance he is required to give up everything he owns, and offered Shatterspike to me. I wanted to say no because that sword is his family's heirloom, but then got a better idea and said I'd take it. I went to the priests and told them my decision, that I'd hold onto Shatterspike like a trust, and when Braford had done his full penance and was a paladin again, they was to have him look me up and I'd give back the sword. He couldn't know about that ahead of time, because it was important for his penance he believe he was giving it up for good. I said I would let my daddy know about this as well, so if I chanced to die before Braford was ready, he'd still be able to get the sword back.

I feel like I've aged two years in the past couple weeks, but I'd have to say the experience has been good for me. I am no longer entirely green and know I am capable of some rough work and handling unfamiliar situations, though there is a lot of room for improvement.

This ends the Sunless Citadel adventure; up next: Forge of Fury.​

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Jpurnal - entry 5

Well, I had thought it might be a while before anything happened again that would warrant writing down, but I had barely finished that last entry when I got called into the abbot's office. Him and the provost marshal had been meeting with some folks from Blasingdell, a city about three days slow ride north from the monastery, about a problem they was having out there. That was six days ago and this has been my first chance to set it all down, so I might be misremembering some of it.

A dwarf woman the abbot called Lady Athlese Mountainhome had come on behalf of a group of dwarves that got run out of their home in the Dragon Mountains by a bunch of orcs. They got whipped pretty soundly, and can't think of retaking their home just yet, so meanwhile they got to have someplace to live, and went down to Blasingdell below the mountain pass where Mountainhome was. Blasingdell is five or six times the size of Oakhurst, but even so they ain't got the resources to see that many extra mouths through the winter, and Sir Miles Barrick came with Lady Athlese to ask for help from the monastery. Sir Miles has the title because his father and grandfather were knights, and that title passes on to the heir so long as they have land or property to go with it. Some folks think a man doesn't deserve a title for something his pa or grandpa did, but I never met anyone would say it to Sir Miles's face, and I doubt I'd want anyone talking about my son that way, either, should I have one, though I'd impress upon him the expectation to live up to the title.

Dwarfs is proud, and don't like being anyone's charity case, and they had a scheme for maybe relocating to another dwarf place until they could reclaim their own. Seems a hundred or so years ago, a small dwarfen cult set up shop in the foothills of the Dragon Mountains, about three days east of Blasingdell. They were an odd bunch who thought how you were remembered in death was more important than how you lived your life, but they picked out some nice limestone caves for their headquarters, and called them Khundrukar, which is dwarf for Glittery Home. Anyway, it got overrun by orcs within 50 years -- dwarfs just don't have no luck at all with orcs, it seems like -- and it wasn't even really finished. The orcs had tunneled in from the side, took the dwarfs by surprise, looted the place, killed or captured everybody, and moved on and left the place empty.

It ain't certain who or what might have moved in there since. The law in Blasingdell caught and questioned one orc bandit and found out Khundrukar is being used as the hideout for a small band of outlaws. Some folks think these orcs are spies for the bunch that just overrun Mountainhome, but other folks think the orcs ain't that smart. Seems to be about thirty of them, with one leader who might be an ogre, or a hill giant, or just a big orc depending on who you ask. Someone needs to go up there and clear those bandits out, and see what else might be lurking inside, so they Mountainhome dwarfs can move in. Blasingdell's own militia, plus whatever help they can get from nearby towns and the monastery, will have to hold the mountain pass until winter sets in, to keep the orcs from coming any farther down the mountain.

This is just the sort of thing that the monastery trains us paladins to do, and the abbot said he thought me and my friends would fit the bill just fine, seeing as how we just showed we could think on our feet and didn't think we just had to go kill everything in sight to get the job done. The provost marshal suggested we go in two sorties: one raid, traveling light, to clear out the entrance level -- killed or captured won't make much never mind, but if we do bring back some prisoners we might find out if their group is spying for the others up in Mountainhome -- and then another exploration trip to check out the rest of the place and see if it can be made safe for a couple hundred old people, children and adult civilians to live in. He said I could pick my own team from among whoever volunteered, and Sir Miles said Blasingdell would pay for supplies and so forth as long as we didn't get greedy about it.

I said I'd take on the job and went straight out and had an assembly called to see about volunteers. I think I gave a fair speech about the problem, but what with the need to hold the mountain pass and the clerics going to assist the city, and other things going on, there wasn't many available to go with me. Lance was spoiling for another fight and wanted to come, and I had Wulfgrim at the word 'orc', but Winter didn't seem too keen on it at first. Gerik barely paid any attention to the speech; as soon as he heard the first part he started watching the audience for spies. Sharwyn and Braford both wanted to come. I was worried about Sharwyn, but she convinced me she needed to do it. She said she wanted some victory to point to, and also told me that her brother Talgen had mouthed off and got himself killed only after Sharwyn was offered considerable insult, so she felt responsible for that and didn't think she could just go back home like nothing happened. Gerik rolled his eyes and shook his head when I told her she could come. He thinks she pulled the wool over my eyes and between possible spies and conniving females, he'd better come along to keep me out of trouble, because he don't believe I can look after myself.

Sir Miles's squire, who's also his nephew, volunteered but Sir Miles asked me privately not to take him, so I said I guessed Sir Miles couldn't do without him while all this business was going on in town. We did get a bard who was visiting the monastery. I'm not sure what to make of her. She's got something of an elf look about her, but then again something of the halfling folk too, for all that she's too tall to be one of them. Didn't seem polite to ask, but maybe she'll tell us more about herself as we go. We might have got more volunteers if we'd been able to offer more than the possibility of some unknown amount of treasure that the Glittery Home dwarfs might have left behind and the orcs maybe never found. That wouldn't matter none to the clerics and paladins, but of course we ain't the only ones at the monastery.

We drew some extra equipment including a chain shirt for Sharwyn and new gear for Braford. Sharwyn said she'd wear the shirt once we got to the mountain but I couldn't make her put it on while we were travelling. She said the road there wasn't the dangerous part and she'd wear the bulky thing when it got time. Lance decided he'd go ahead and use that magic morningstar after all, so it didn't go to waste, and in that same spirit I told Braford he should carry Shatterspike. He looked uncomfortable about that, like it might jeopardize his penance, but I said he could use it better than any of us, and I wasn't going to hobble the group just to make him feel better.

All this went pretty quick and we borrowed horses to set out for Blasingdell the next morning with Sir Miles and his squire, while Lady Athlese stayed behind to work out more arrangements with the abbot. The three days slow ride was pretty quiet. We ran across some charcoalers and asked for news, and found out the twigblights was in the area. No one knew what they were, of course, but we recognized them from the description, and told the charcoalers to pass the information on to the area farmers. I think they believed us more out of politeness than anything. We also got visited by some goblin bandits one night, trying to steal our horses, but Sharwyn was on watch and she threw a colorful spray spell that stunned three of 'em unconscious and run the other one off. Lance tied them up and took their weapons, and next morning we questioned them about the area, offering to let them go rather than take them into town to be hanged as thieves if they cooperated. They told us about that group of orc bandits, and what they said tallied pretty well with what I'd been told back at the monastery plus gave us more details, so we let 'em go as agreed, unarmed but otherwise okay. The second night out Lance spotted a cottonmouth by my foot after we'd stopped to camp, but I just stabbed it with a dagger and flicked it into the fire, and it didn't trouble nobody.

We got into Blasingdell around sundown the next day, travelling kind of slow because it had been raining. We spent that night and the next two days and nights in town, loading up on supplies and securing mules to carry them. We have Jack along with us again, to keep an eye on the mules. We asked Sir Miles about prisoners, and he said if we took any the best place to hold them would probably be at his manor outside town. I was there once before, with daddy, who knows Sir Miles and most of the other landowners around.

That bard, Tayla, asked around and found a dwarf among the Mountain Home folks that had lived in the Glittery Home years ago when she was little, and drew us a rough map of the layout. Winter collected up live crickets and spiders, I'm not sure what for. Wulfgrim got some holy water. We also met a druid named Felix who agreed to guide us out to the Stone Tooth mountain where Glittery Home is, but he won't go into the mountain because he doesn't like being in enclosed spaces. When we told him about twigblights he said he would need to put off guiding for one day while he ran off and told the ents about them. I ain't sure if ents are trees that talk, or creatures that look like trees, but I think in some way they are the druid's superiors so he had to report to them.

Over these last two days in town, Gerik has been keeping a watchful eye out for spies, and Sharwyn went along with him, mostly I think out of boredom and wanting something to do. They didn't find any, but did find a half-orc that lives here in town and was a watch captain until they started having trouble with orcs in the area and they fired him and have him under watch. So far as I can tell he ain't done nothing to deserve that, other than just to have some orc blood in him. It's late now and we're leaving before dawn, but I've a mind to speak to Sir Miles about that when we get back to town.

Tomorrow morning we will set out on foot for the Stone Tooth with Felix, leading our mule train.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - entry 6

Wulfgrim and Tayla left their ponies to be stabled and cared for in Blasingdell along with our borrowed horses, and we went on foot from there with our pack mules. It was a three day walk, and on the way while Felix was off hunting we ran afoul first of a stampede of small animals, which Lance and Wulfgrim and I turned away by jumping up in their path and banging weapons on our shields. We soon found out who had been behind that mischief: the imp creature we'd met in the tomb of the dragon priest. He was invisible again, but between him laughing and bouncing around on tree branches, and my being able to sense his evil aura, we had a fair idea of where he was, and this time, we killed him. Daddy always used to say if you let an enemy live, it'll come back and bite you in the ass, and that sometimes seemed kind of ruthless to me, but damn if he wasn't right this time, just ask Braford. Sharwyn cast her colorful spray spell again and had the imp blinded and stunned, so he wasn't much bother to deal with when someone could chance to hit him, and Braford finished him off with Shatterspike.

The next night Tayla heard a large group of folks marching, circling around our camp, so we woke up our group and went to check on it, and found that band of goblins we'd run out of the citadel before. After we'd chased them into the deeper underground, they'd been run out of there by some tougher group, and were on their way to the Stone Tooth to look into that for a new home. I let them know we had no more quarrel with them, but were also headed there, with a mind to set up the place for some dwarfs to move it. They grumbled a lot but said they didn't want no dwarfs for neighbors and weren't up to another fight just now, and changed course to go farther up into the mountains.

On the third day out we could see the Stone Tooth and spent some hours circling around it at a distance, getting a general idea of the layout. We saw rising smoke but couldn't see exactly where it was coming from. The next morning we divided into four groups and scouted out the mountain. Winter and Lance found the natural stone chimney that was the source of the smoke; Gerik, Braford and Wulfgrim found the orc tunnel used to get into the Glittery Home before, as well as bear tracks and other tracks that Felix said was the footprints of a troglodyte; Sharwyn, Tayla and me found two sets of shallow caves, either of which might make a suitable base camp for our stay here. Felix and Jack kept watch on the mules and set up our camp for that evening, out of casual sight of the main entrance and the orc tunnel. Winter wanted to try to set the orcs up to attack the troglodytes or the other way around, each bunch thinking the other one had attacked them first, but Wulfgrim and I said we can't have anything to do with that. I saw Winter talking to Garik and Lance a few minutes later, and I couldn't hear what was said, but I saw Lance and Garik shaking their heads no, so I got a suspicion what was going on there.

We talked about what we would do in the morning, whether we'd enter the mountain straight off and if so, would we go by the old orc tunnel or the chimney, and decided the chimney was worth a closer look. Also, if we could catch a small group of orcs outside the mountain, it'd be that many we didn't have to deal with inside and we could find out from them how the inside was laid out, who else was in there and so on. So in the morning, Winter, Gerik, Braford and Wulfgrim went to check out the chimney; Boo went in first and they figured about how long the chimney was from the time it took him to go down. There wasn't no good place to tie off a rope, and they didn't want to make noise driving spikes in at the top of the chimney, so they got a sturdy log and used it to anchor 150' of knotted rope to the opening, then Gerik went in for a better look. He said the chimney ought to work so long as we left shields and packs behind.

I took Sharywn, Tayla and Lance and we scouted for a likely ambush spot. We found one not too far from the base of the mountain where the main trail comes out. The door into the gate level was more than six hundred feet away, we reckoned, so we didn't worry too much about noise carrying that far. We worked out that Gerik and Winter would hide and watch at one end of the trail, and Sharwyn and Braford at the other, with the rest of us in between to spring out and catch the orcs when we got a signal they was coming from one side or the other.

Gerik and Felix worked out some signals we could leave by setting out rocks on the ground, and Felix would fly over in a hawk form and know what we were doing. He said he'd leave directly, and be back around dusk every couple of days to check the signal. He left us some berries he said were good, and said eating one of them would make a person feel like he'd had a whole days worth of food. I didn't try one, because I like berries just fine but I don't think I'd want three whole meals' worth in a day. Some of the others agreed they were filling enough, though.

No one got much rest or any sleep during the day; and we were up all that night (except Winter, who fell asleep) waiting for goblins. About three hours into our wait we heard a ruckus and Tayla slipped off to look, and come back and said it was just a moose. An hour later, Gerik got stepped on by a bear! He was hiding under a leaf pile and the bear smelled his rations, but he ended up just taking the bag and going off, leaving Gerik a bit shaky but not hurt. He didn't scream out when he was nose to nose with the bear, but then that sort of thing can dry a fellow's throat out pretty quick. Finally just before dawn, we got a light signal from Sharwyn, and a minute later Wulfgrim said he could see four orcs and what was maybe two halflings being led along on leashes. We let them pass by us and Wulfgrim threw a Sound Burst spell that came near to killing all four orcs on the spot. I had to lay hands on two of 'em just so we'd have enough prisoners to question, and even with that one of the four died. Lance hid his body off the trail a ways under some rocks and leaves, and we all went back to our camp with the orcs and halflings.

Braford tried to intimidate the orcs into talking, but they wasn't very impressed; Wulfgrim and I didn't do no better. Then I tried being diplomatic, and pointed out how we was lawfully empowered to execute the lot of them on the spot, but would be willing to let go whichever one of them gave us the best information. Then we separated them and each one being sure the others was going to spill everything, they all three told us everything they could think of. Orcs don't seem to be much for making maps, and they didn't all agree on some of the details, but we got enough out of them to suit us. In the end there wasn't much to choose between them for whose information was best, and I said they could all be on their way once we'd finished our business inside the mountain.

We rested and ate through the rest of the day and night, with watches, because even manacled and gagged (except when we fed 'em) you just need to be careful around orcs and such types. A couple of deer came by to investigate the oat and alfalfa mule feed while Tayla and I were on watch, and she bagged one which we left hanging to drip overnight. We found out later that a bear came by while we're gone the next day, attracted by the deer carcass or just looking for a winter place in the cave, and Jack scared him off by irritating the mules into braying loudly inside the cave.

About dawn Wulfgrim, Winter and Sharwyn memorized new spells, Gerik set our signal to "Trouble, we went thataway" and we all hiked up to the chimney where Gerik went down first, with a wet cloak to drop onto the banked fire. We came down one at a time after he gave us the all clear and regrouped in the kitchen, then Wulfgrim scouted ahead and found no one nearby.

We found some large double doors, which our directions said should lead to a rope bridge that joined the main gate to the rest of the fortress, and wedged them shut so no one could come at us that way. Then we went off in the other direction, through a couple of empty caverns and a store room, until Wulfgrim found a secret door. The information we had said the orcs' shaman, an evil cleric, would be back there with her helpers. We busted in on them and surprised them in bed for the day, and made pretty short work of the head cleric before taking her acolytes prisoner. Wulfgrim took one injury and the shaman had tried to cast some kind of spell on us but it seems it didn't take.

We questioned the acolytes and I decided they wasn't to be considered combatants (for all that they had been using maces to defend themselves just then), and wouldn't be killed. We tied them to their beds and said we'd be back for them and they wouldn't be hurt any further. They told us about stirges in the next room, which their shaman kept on hand to help block off one way down to the next level. We decided to leave that for now, and finish what we came to do. Searching the room we got some silver and three flasks that Tayla said were alchemists' fire, and found a number of dwarf skulls hanging on ropes from the ceiling. I am somewhat troubled by the way this all happened, killing an old woman in her bed and all. "They're only orcs" don't cut any ice, they're still people of a sort. They are evil, and the old woman not just evil but blasphemous. That sort you just got to get rid of, it's no good sending them off to work their blasphemy someplace else. And we did just surprise them, good tactics, nothing bad like using poison or murdering them while they still slept. Even so I will be doing a lot of praying tonight and I want to talk to the priests about it when we get back to the monastery.

Next we slipped down the hallways and came to the room of Great Ulfe, the ogre that led these bandits, and his wolves: Wulfgrim cast another Sound Burst, and Shawyn threw her Colorful Spray spell, and Tayla used magic to grease up this huge axe the ogre had laying there. The wolves were knocked out and Ulfe was stunned, and we lay into all three of them and killed all three before any of them had a chance to come at us. Sharwyn cracked one wolf's head open with her staff. That Sound Burst spell gets the job done, no doubt, but it also let all the other orcs know we were there, and four of them came running down the hall after us. We killed all four of them without any of us taking injury, and then Sharwyn spotted someone peeking out at us from what would be the quarters of Yarrick, Ulfe's second in command, and his men. We took a quick look at our map and decided to relocate in hopes of surprising them from another direction, but that didn't work out. We ended up being attacked from two directions near the doors we had wedged shut before, and although we did well here, it wasn't without taking some hard knocks ourselves. The orcs seemed to think Wulfgrim was our leader and picked on him some, but even so Braford and Winter got hit hardest. Sharwyn shot and killed one orc that was coming at Braford after Braford was hurt bad. Winter used a Light spell so we could see to shoot at the orcs, and Tayla greased up the floor so four of them fell when they tried to run at us.

We looked around to see we hadn't missed anybody, and saw no one, but Wulfgrim heard two orcs on guard outside the gate. He tried to trick them into coming inside, but one of them caught on and they ran off as soon as they realized their bunch wasn't in charge of the inside any more. We found out the rope bridge had been cut, so Lance and me went back around the long way to where we left the acolytes and got them, while everyone else started searching the place, and as soon as we got the new captives out to our cave and manacled, we changed the signal for Felix to say "All clear, bring up the dwarves" and went back in and helped with the rest of the search and with carrying things out.

Sharwyn walked along the hallways detecting magic, and found a bit hidden in Yarrack's room. Wulfgrim had me walk through the whole place trying to detect evil, but none turned up. He also removed all the unholy symbols in Burdug's room and collected the dwarf skulls to prepare them for proper burial. The orcs had left some secret doors open in their hurry to get at us, but we didn't find any more than that. The cavern with the well was full of crates and boxes with food, blankets, tools and assorted hardware the dwarfs will no doubt be glad of. The well has a bucket with a very long chain and pulls up good-quality water, if it does taste somewhat of limestone.

Sharwyn, Gerik and Winter also managed to organize a small tub and some hot water so we could all get cleaned up a bit, and rinse the worst of the dirt and soot out of our clothes. Gerik is still worried about what his aunt will say when she sees his ruined cloak -- made dirty and sooty and then dumped on a banked fire.

Altogether we found 2390 sp, 954 gp, 300gp worth of gems, one magic rapier, 4 longbows, 16 heavy flails, 6 javelins, 2 light maces, a masterwork hand ax, three throwing axes, Ulfe's extra large scale mail and his huge greataxe, Yarrick's scale mail, and a large steel shield. Some of the weapons were made by dwarves. There was three flasks of alchemist's fire and a potion bottle with some kind of mark burnt into the cork stopper, a dot with eight lines coming from it, like a sun, plus another unmarked magic potion and a vial of holy water, and the key to the prison cell that Yarrick had.

In the evening we had a fine meal, with the deer from the day before. We got about 40 pounds of meat plus the edible organs, and Gerik and the two halflings had a great time talking about which parts to roast, and which parts to stew or pan fry or dry for jerky. We fed the five orcs too, because it'd be cruel to send the orcs off without even a meal, and winter coming on. The acolytes wasn't in a talking mood, and seemed nervous about the looks they was getting from the male orcs, but the ones we'd caught in the ambush didn't mind answering more questions. Jack said he'd talked to them while we were gone and convinced them we'd be a lot nicer to them if they played fair and didn't threaten people around here again. Over dinner I remembered the orcs had mentioned a trap on a statue inside the mountain, and we'd seen one statue and heard about another, but I couldn't recall they'd said anything about what kind of trap it was, so I asked. They said the statue by Yarrack's room will open its mouth and pour poison gas on you if you step on the wrong tile (a square of granite right in front of it). They said the dwarves put that poison gas there, and the ghosts downstairs still have it. Some poison gases make you weak and some make you throw up, which also makes you weak. They said we ought to use halflings to test traps, and Lance made sure they knew what we thought of that idea. I told the orcs they should leave as soon as may be after dark, and could take with them warm clothes, food, knives and bows for hunting, but no weapons of war, and no loot or unholy symbols. I also let them know two of their fellows had run off from the main gate earlier. If any of them was seen in the area again they was fair game to be shot on sight.

After dinner Gerik and Wulfgrim went back inside the fortress to see about that gas trap on the statue, and tripped it. Wulfgrim wasn't affected, but Gerik got a faceful of gas. It started him hacking and coughing. He managed to keep his dinner down, but after a while he started coughing up some nasty looking green stuff, and whenever he tried to eat or drink something to get the taste out of his mouth, he said it tasted like a dirty copper pot. He was pretty weak for the rest of the night, but next morning Wulfgrim cast a little restoration spell on him and he was right as rain after that. Then Wulfgrim finished healing up me and the others that was still hurt from the day before.

I have to say I am pleased with the way everyone did on this mission. About half of us never got hurt at all, our spells worked better than we could have hoped and best of all we all worked together instead of everyone haring off and doing whatever they wanted. I was worried about Sharwyn but she did just fine. She has not even started fretting about how she looks yet, though we are all flithy with dirt and soot from hiding in ambush and later coming down the chimney. It may be harder next time to convince her to wear the chain shirt (which she calls "that heavy, noisy thing") because she only got poked at once the whole time we were inside the mountain, and she says it missed her by a mile. But if she gets stubborn I'll remind her how Braford was nearly killed in one blow from a nasty looking flail, and Winter too, and I guess she'll bear up under the extra weight. She and Braford both gained a lot from this experience. Now we are waiting for the dwarves to come, and talking about how we want to go about clearing the next level of the fortress, whether we go to the old orc tunnel where the trogs are, or past the stirges to use the main inside gate. This gate level won't be big enough for the two hundred dwarfs that need to live here, so we got to get on to the next level as quick as we can.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - entry 7

It didn't take us long to decide to use the main inside gate, and didn't take us long after to regret it, either. I guess maybe Heironeous or some other god maybe decided we'd had things a mite too easy with the orcs, and decided we needed to be taken down a peg or two. What happened was this --

After Wulfgrim did his little restoration for Gerik, we started off from the orc shaman's quarters, expecting those stirges we'd been told about. At first there was only four, but two of them latched onto Winter like he was the last meal they'd ever get, and went to work on him. As it happened, he was the last meal they got, we did kill them all, but it was harder than you'd think. It only took one good solid whack to kill one, but it was hard to get a solid hit. The room we were in was a large one, with stone stairs leading down into a fissure the stirges had come from, and a large stone door carved with the face of a dwarf. Gerik and Lance went to try opening that door, and they got a load of alchemist's fire dumped on them for their trouble. For the instant the door was open, Gerik could see there wasn't nothing behind it but the pumps and valves for the alchemist's fire. Between this and that poison gas trap on the statue, I'm beginning to wonder if there wasn't something seriously wrong with the previous tenants.

Gerik and Lance was both burned really bad, so Wulfgrim and I healed them best we could, and we all went back to rest again 'til the next day. Winter was really weak from all the blood he lost to the stirges as well. By the end of the day we was pretty well rested and found the halflings had busied themselves with cleaning up the place, and had done a right fine job, especially in the kitchen. Their farm is between here and Blasingdell. The orcs who captured them did a lot of smashing and burning, and killed most of their livestock, so they got no place to go back to just yet. I don't know if they are waiting for us to leave and take them back to their land, or plan to do cooking for the dwarves over the winter, but they ain't idle in the meantime.

Next day Wulfgrim did his little restoration for Winter, and we started off from the orc shaman's quarters like before, and this time took the stone stairs down. The stairs led down the sides of a natural rift and switched back and forth between stairs, ledge, and more stairs, until the rift narrowed. After that it was more like switching between stairs, tunnel, and more stairs. Several places along the way we could see or hear a stream. In one of the tunnels a stone bridge had been built over the stream, where it came out from a high point on one side and disappeared down a low point on the other side. At that bridge we ran into seven more stirges, most of which Winter put to sleep and they fell into the stream and got swept away.

We finally got to the bottom of the stairs and went into a big sparkly cavern, real pretty in the torch light. Four more stirges was hanging from the ceiling, and Sharwyn dropped them to the ground with her colorful spray spell. We didn't spend much time in here. There was two other exits, one going off southeast (or so Wulfgrim and Tayla said) and one to the northeast, and we took that one. That took us to another good sized cave where we fought two trogs and a bear I guess they kept as a pet or guard animal. I remembered what Wulfgrim said about trogs smelling so bad, and hollered out for Wulfgrim, Braford, Lance and me to take care of them -- fighters and dwarves can handle such things better than other folk, just like clerics and wizards seem to be able to resist a lot of spells better than your fighting types can -- while the others handled the bear, preferably from a distance. Remember what I said before about Gerik having more guts than good sense? After that bear took a swipe and me and got a good hold of Lance, Gerik run up and jumped on the bear's back, and killed it with a short sword between the shoulders. Then right off he started talking about a bear skin cape to replace the one his aunt give him, and about taking trophies of the claws and teeth. I'm pretty sure he just wants to impress the girls with that stuff, but I can't say he didn't earn it.

There was several exits from this cavern, and Tayla and Sharwyn worked out a scheme to block some of them with flasks of alchemist's fire while we checked the others. That way trogs and such couldn't sneak up on us as easy. One exit led to the little cave where they kept their pet bear, behind a grate. One went to a dead end, one to the old orc tunnel we'd seen from outside, and two more led off south. We picked one of these and followed it a few yards before we come to a branch. A short ways down that branch was a room with giant mushrooms, that started screaming when we got too close. Once they quieted down, we went real still to listen for anyone coming, and Sharwyn set one of the fire flasks at the end of the branch tunnel. We didn't see anything, but when it got to where the noise said something was right in front of us, Sharwyn set off the fire with a magic hand spell and some kind of invisible creature started burning. Once it was dead we could see it and it just looked like some kind of big fungus, but it walked.

Wulfgrim noticed a shiny sword and helmet in the room with the screamers, so we went in and fetched them out, which started up the screaming all over again. We knew anyone down here couldn't help but hear all that racket, so we left the branch tunnel and continued south for just a short ways, and found that both of the tunnels heading south from that last cavern met up here, and continued on south as one tunnel. We set ourselves to meet whatever come out of that tunnel, and had another couple of fire flasks set, but we soon found out the trogs was two steps ahead of us. We had remembered to watch our backs down those two tunnels, but what use is that when what's coming at you is invisible? As we realized a minute later, a trog sorcerer and his pet giant lizard had circled around us somehow and come up the two tunnels at our backs, and they gave Winter, Gerik and Talya a time. Gerik had to back off from the lizard and drink a healing potion just to stay alive. Sharwyn had been back there too, but changed her position as soon as Winter started gagging and coughing from the trog smell.

Things was pretty confused for the next minute or so. Javelins came at us from up the south tunnel, Tayla set off both fire flasks with magic hand spells, the sorcerer put me and Lance and Braford all to sleep. After he woke up Braford got to fight the trogs hand to hand, and him and Shatterspike wne through two of or three of them like hot butter. I woke up from a sharp pain in my backside, and found out later Sharwyn had shot me with an arrow! I walked stiff the rest of the day, and I just might remember this if she is ever put to sleep with a spell, see how she likes it. Well, never mind, it did the trick. I could see right off that I wasn't going to get many solid hits through this big trog's tough hide and breastplate, so I dropped that bastard sword we'd found down the hall, and tried wrestling with him. He was a slippery one, and it took a while, but once Winter recovered enough to help out, I did eventually get a good enough hold on him that he couldn't cast any more spells or defend himself proper, and he was knocked unconscious and taken prisoner. We had killed seven trogs and the lizard in this room, and was pretty beat up ourselves -- if not for the fire flasks turning the tide, we might all have been dead -- so once we had the prisoner secure and Gerik had a look to see what the other trogs was carrying, we took the old orc tunnel out and went back up to the gate level.

Gerik made a bunch of good suggestions about keeping the trog sorcerer secure, and then him and Tayla and the halflings went back to skin and butcher the bear. Wulfgrim and me went along to keep watch, him with darkvision and me with detecting evil, and Jack led the mules down to carry the bear meat.

I don't know if we're done with trogs yet. If we've seen any females yet, I can't tell them from the males. There might be non-combatant females, and maybe young as well. Those we can't kill, and I am reluctant to drive them off just as winter is setting in. Maybe we'll try to get something out of that sorcerer, and anyways I will talk to Lady Athlese when the dwarves get here and see what dwarf law and custom says about this. Maybe the dwarfs will be willing to keep the trogs captive until spring and then turn them out.

The sorcerer is a problem, too. He is evil and I bet he's the kind to hold a grudge, so just turning him loose don't seem smart. But unlike the orc bandits, he ain't a criminal that I know to tell, so I got no basis to have him executed. There's no law in place here, so I got nothing to refer to. The abbot always said "a paladin carries the law within him", so I guess I have the ability to make law where there ain't any yet, but is that right? One of the other senior priests, a dwarf that liked to use metal and stone as examples of everything, liked to tell us that justice is like bronze, an effective combination of law and mercy, like bronze is of tin and copper. He'd say the combination is better than either alone, but too much of either one ruins the mix, and you need experience to know how to proportion it. I hope questions like this get easier to solve with experience.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Paladin's Journal - entry 8

I called a temporary halt to the explorations and we spent the next couple of days doing different things: Sharwyn learned herself a new spell from Winter’s spellbook, Winter practiced some combat moves that me or Braford or Lance showed him, and got the hang of using different kinds of weapons. He also tried out armor but decided against wearing it because of how it’d affect his spells. Lance and Wulfgrim gathered enough stones to build cairns for all the orcs we’d killed on the gate level, and moved the bodies from the cave where we’d stowed them a few days ago. And they made cairns for the trogs we’d killed, too. Gerik and me hunted and killed a moose, and Tayla got another deer, plus we brought in lots of firewood and nuts.

Around dusk the second day, we saw a line of torches coming up the mountain side, and Wulfgrim and Gerik went down to meet Lady Athlese and get her caught up on what the situation was. She had arrived with a couple dozen dwarf women, there to clean the place up and get it ready for the rest of their group. That woman who used to live here before, that made Tayla the map, was in this group, and also a dwarf priestess. Despite being tired, the women came in clucking about all the work to be done and how they’d start here or there and do this or that – and I think they was a little disappointed to find the halflings had already done so much, especially in the kitchen. But there was still plenty to do and they didn’t complain. I asked Lady Athlese about the disposition of any trog non-combatants we might find later on, and she allowed they might winter in the caverns as long as they could be kept separate from her people and would be made to leave come spring. She said she wanted to wait until morning to question the trog prisoner.

So the next morning Lady Athlese and Wulfgrim and me went into the cell to talk to the sorcerer. Gerik stood outside the cell with his crossbow, waiting to plug the sorcerer if he tried anything funny. The trog wasn’t inclined much to cooperate, and didn’t tell us nothing about any more of his people we might find. He did mention another group of dwarfs, already in the caverns below, and after a bit Lady Athlese and her cleric worked out he must be talking about some dueregar, a folk like dwarfs but evil and rumored to have strange powers. He also mentioned how dwarfs is good eating, and I could see by the look on Lady Athlese’s face this one trog wasn’t likely to see next spring.

Soon as we’d done talking to the trog we went back down the caves, started from the orc shaman’s room and going back the way we did before. That route was still clear as far as the place we fought that group of trogs, and we went on south from there down the tunnel. At the end of that tunnel we come came to a very large and sparkly cavern. Wulfgrim was so taken with it he didn’t notice much else going on around him for a while. From the look of the place, and how Wulfgrim acted, and the map Tayla had got in Blasingdell, we worked out this must be the Glittery Home itself. There was cliffs to the south and the northeast, but we can’t see the whole place so we start making a circuit. A bunch of us see some movement among the boulders on the northeast cliff, and we move that way with caution. Winter sent Boo on ahead for a peek and Boo comes came back telling Winter’s there’s bunches of snakes back there. Turns out they wasn’t weren’t snakes but something I never seen or heard of before, with bodies like big snakes but wavy tentacles around the mouth. They wasn’t weren’t much trouble to kill, but I don’t like to think what they might have done to a couple of us if we hadn’t spotted them ahead of time. There was a suit of armor and a bunch of coins in their lair, but no magic, so we left it all there for the moment. From the top of the cliff we could see a path winding through some big patches of fungus on the cavern floor. Wulfgrim said it probably winds like that to avoid damage to the stonework. We got down and finished making our circuit of the Glittery Home, along the way passing a stairway going down and another one going up and an iron door. Then we went back to the west wall and followed the stairs going up, and come came to a mausoleum. There was a couple dozen stone coffins, all of ‘em carved with the name of a different dwarf, but only three of them had a date and manner of death, and the rest we guessed to be empty, though we didn’t check. A tunnel north from this room turned out to be a southeast tunnel we hadn’t explored before on our first trip down, so we went back out to the big cavern and took a look at the iron door at the east end.

The door was rusty but we could see the lock had been recently oiled and picked. Even so it took Gerik and Tayla about five minutes working together to get it open again. Behind the door was a room with eight walls, and in the room we can see two doors and three big statues of dwarfs. We could hear a pounding off in the distance like maybe an anvil, and when I checked I found evil beyond this room to the north and the east. By now we are somewhat suspicious of statues and doors with dwarf faces carved on them, and sure enough there was a trap here. Both the doors was false, and the statues tried to drop axes on anyone fooling with them. When the second axe dropped the pounding we had heard stopped. Gerik poked around behind one of the statues for a while and found a secret door that opened onto a short stairway. We headed up and as soon as we hit the top step, a magical mouth on the wall started screaming about intruders.

Past the magical mouth we went into a big room, must have been fifty or sixty feet wide and twice as long, with huge columns carved to look like giants and dragons holding up the roof. A voice hollered at us to leave, but we went on in anyway. Gerik snuck in keeping to the shadows, and Sharwyn made herself invisible. Winter cast a spell and started climbing up the wall and along the ceiling. The rest of us just walked straight in until Wulfgrim got shot in the back by a woman with a crossbow. I’m pretty sure she’d been invisible until that point, but soon as Gerik saw her he shot her as well. Sharwyn could see her, too, but I’d told everybody in the last room I could sense three different evil auras, so she decided to wait until more of ‘em were visible before she attacked. Then two more shot at us with crossbows and she made a big web that caught one of those. Just a few seconds later, a couple doors in the room open and four more people come came out – like dwarfs somewhat, but as tall as me, so we guess them to be dueregar – and another one from the far end of the room near this big throne. Sharwyn shot one of those four with an arrow and it vanished, so it must have been an illusion all along, but the one that hit me was solid enough. She carried a staff with a sword blade on each end. Braford charged one of the ones that come came out of the doors, and found out not only was the dueregar an illusion, but so was the open door behind him. Sharwyn shot another illusion and it went away, and melee combat was going on with several solid opponents. Though we didn’t see him at first, there was a wizard in the next room casting spells at us and sending his rat familiar in to deliver spells by touch. Winter spent the whole time hanging upside down from the ceiling shooting his bow. I don’t think he hit anything even once, but I guess it would be hard to do that, since it would seem to him the arrows fall up as they move forward. Wulfgrim conjured a spiritual hammer and whaled away at the dueregar with it.

One dueregar tried to attack Sharwyn, and Lance moved to protect her, and wounded that one in the leg so bad he just sat down against a wall, though we never went unconscious. After that Lance killed the rat familiar. Sharwyn went after the wizard and put an arrow or two into him before he went invisible. Then she tried to throw a colorful spray at him, but Gerik had gone in ahead of her in and also attacked the wizard, and her spell hit Gerik instead. Braford had moved up to join me on the woman with the sword staff, and she quickly thought better of fighting both of us, and tried to run off. Braford, Wulfgrim and Tayla chased her and caught up to her pretty quick when Braford smashed down the door she’d shut and barred behind her, and they killed her. Sharwyn and Gerik and me finished off the wizard while he was still invisible, when he tried to push past us to go into the big room. Wulfgrim got hurt bad enough that he needed to heal himself at one point during the combat. I took a fair bit of damage from the sword staff, and Lance got an electric shock from the rat, but otherwise we was in pretty good shape.

All told we run into two female and six male dueregar by this point. We got two male prisoners secured, after we saw them shrink from man height back to regular dwarf size, and started looking around the place. The room the wizard had started in was a big forge and foundry and we saw they had been making weapons there. We found a couple of rooms full of tools, and Tayla found out the anvil itself was magical. The wizard’s book of spells was here, too, and signs that some magical experiments was going on. Winter, Sharwyn, Tayla and Wulfgrim started chattering away about what might be going on there and how all the different magic effects we’d just seen were managed, by what combination of spells, magic items, supernatural racial abilities and so forth. Heironeous knows I can't follow half of what they say.

We searched the bodies and stripped the prisoners of their goods, and tried to interrogate the prisoners, but these dueregar don’t seem easily intimidated. They did mention that there was some kind of undead behind that one barred door that Braford had hit running, big skeletons and something else, and said that their boss, an evil cleric we hadn’t met yet, was still in the area and had no fear of undead. The prisoners were more scared of her than they was of us, thinking she could condemn them to some worse fate after death than they was already looking forward to. Tayla and I checked and found magic or evil or both behind all four of the doors we hadn’t opened yet, three in this room and one down the hall behind the throne.

Braford and Lance hauled the two prisoners up to the pokey and come came back down about an hour and a half later with five pounds of powdered silver and some holy water they had got from the dwarf priestess. While they was gone I filed down a couple of silver pieces to get what I’d need for a circle of protection against evil, the stuff we’d taken was all piled together and checked for magic, Winter studied the dueregar wizard’s book of spells and we had a bite to eat.

Right around the time Lance and Braford got back, Gerik had started going around to quietly wedge shut the three doors as wasn’t not already barred, and one on of them he heard some kind of chanting or something going on beyond the door. He said he thought someone tried to cast a spell on him, but I guess it didn’t work because nothing happened to him just then. A minute later, though, as he was wedging the last door a secret door opened up next to him and he ducked into a side room but got spotted by another dueregar woman coming through the secret door. He moved pretty quick but she ended up tagging him with a spell anyways and he got held in place right after we heard him shout. Lance, Braford and me run up behind her, realizing her to be the boss cleric the prisoners had told us about and took her down quick. This is the second time I’ve killed a woman this way – attacked without mercy, and them with no armor or weapons of the usual sort. It bothers me some, though I know both of them were evil priestesses, and so true blasphemers instead of just misguided folks. I know such types can’t be permitted to live and are not deserving of mercy, but it still goes hard. Lance cut her head off as a final blow, so there wouldn’t be no chance of her coming back as an undead herself.

Past the secret door that cleric had come through, we found a short hallway we know must have more secret doors along it, but we agreed to camp where we was for the night and go at the undead fresh in the morning. Next morning we made Sharwyn and Tayla invisible, left Winter and me in plain sight and made everyone else invisible just to undead, and unbarred the door. We went into a big shrine or temple area with an altar on one end and doors on the other, and Wulfgrim cast a consecration spell that covered the half of the room away from the altar. There was a dwarf body on the altar and an orc kneeling beside it. Two big skeletons rose up from the floor when we went in, and the orc – which it turned out had been turned into a wight – turned around and smiled at us.

Winter and Sharwyn cast spells that would disrupt undead, and I stood my ground at the edge of the consecrated area, fighting defensively to draw attacks from the skeletons while Wulfgrim tried to turn them. Being about nine feet tall, they could reach across and try to hit me with the big bronze maces they had, from where I couldn’t hit back without leaving the consecrated area. Neither skeleton hit me, but when Wulfgrim’s turning destroyed them, one did drop its mace on my shoulder. The wight ran off behind the altar, but Braford and me ran after it and killed it with a couple of blows.

Gerik had gone to check out the doors at the far end of the room and we found him hypnotized, from which Wulfgrim and Braford and me realized there was an allip in the next room. Allips are a special kind of undead that hypnotize people by babbling, and they are also the unsolid kind that can come through walls like it was nothing, so we didn’t tarry long in that room, just made a quick check around the altar and then left.

Back across the throne room in the southeast corner, we went down a short set of stairs and through a door into a kitchen, where we was attacked – at least I think it was trying to attack – by a wooden table. Made me wonder if it wasn’t made from twigblight wood. Tayla made the floor greasy and the table slipped and tipped over on its side, and it quit moving when Wulfgrim told it to. Beyond the kitchen we found two pantry areas and a dumbwaiter big enough for three people to get inside. Some of the pantry food was stuff a person could eat, but might not want to, as we found no salt nor any spices or anything to make it taste good. Winter sent Boo down the dumbwaiter chain to see what was below, and Boo come came back and said it was dark and wet and a long way down. We decided to leave this area for later, as there was already a couple areas we’d been in and not finished exploring, so we went straight back up. We wasn’t weren’t ready for the allip just yet, so we went back to the Glittery Home and followed that last staircase down. We went down a ways, following stairs and tunnels, and roped ourselves together for part of the trip on account of the floor being slippery and us walking alongside that underground stream. In time we got to another big sparkly cavern, where the path continued on through and there was two doors side by side on one wall. Behind those doors were more pantries, and this was also where the dumbwaiter come came out. Same kind of food and drink as upstairs, but some of it smashed up by the orcs and spoiled.

In one of the pantries Wulfgrim got attacked by a puddle that jumped up from the floor. It didn’t get a good enough grip on him to do its worst, but we soon found out it was made of acid and dissolved wood and metal. It did seem to take damage from crossbow bolts, but dissolved them right after. Shatterspike was spared that fate but the blade is now etched. Tayla said we could neutralize the acid by dumping crushed limestone on it. It looks pretty neutralized to me by that point, but maybe this is like cutting off the evil cleric’s head so she couldn’t come back in another form. We did that and Gerik made a sign to warn the dwarves about it.

Past the pantry area, through a door, was another open cavern where the underground stream run through, with all kinds of fish in it, and another door at one end of the cavern. Gerik went to check the door and got grabbed up by a long pair of arms from near the ceiling, and when Sharwyn went to help him another creature dropped down from among the stalactites to attack her. These creatures ain’t no bigger than halflings, but got arms half again as long as those ogre skeletons. But they died without too much fuss and Gerik was happy to find treasure in their lair, up on a rock ledge near the ceiling.

Once Gerik did get to the door, we found there was a prison area behind it, with one dwarf in a cell. No sign that any food or water, or bedding or chamber pot, had ever been in the cell, whoever it was might have been locked up and forgot. There was a key on the body that we think might fit the iron door to the foundry. Wulfgrim plans to collect up all the dwarf remains we find and take them to the mausoleum. He and the dwarf priestess will discuss how to properly consecrate the area and when that would best be done. He thinks that body on the altar was probably the cult leader, and says the body should be bathed with holy water, then burned in a ritual fire and sealed in his coffin. The dwarf with the foundry key would get the same treatment if he or she can be identified, and the other remains bathed and burned and prayers made that their spirits be freed from their endless toil and shown the true path to the enjoyment of honest work and well-deserved relaxation and their ashes sealed in urns and put in niches in the mausoleum. The dueregar and their cleric likewise except they would have to be shriven first. I would have tossed the cleric into a fire with the wight – Wulfgrim and I agree the proper disposition for the wight is to cleanse it with holy water and then burn the body – since clerics that have dealings with undead are abominations and deserve no better. But Wulfgrim says they are all “the unfortunate and misguided creations of a troubled and deluded god”, even the cleric. But they won’t be put in the mausoleum. Well, this mountain is a dwarf place, and so long as the dispositions are all proper, I won’t fret about the details of how it’s done.

After that we decided to gather up that loot, plus that from the tentacled snakes and what all we’d left in the throne room, and haul it all upstairs and tell the dwarf women about the tool sheds, the foundry, the magic anvil and such, and also ask the dwarf priestess what she may know of allips.

Gerik has been keeping our accounts since he has experience with inventories and ledgers working for his uncle, and he gave us a tally of what we collected so far, mostly weapons and armor of different sorts which maybe we can sell.