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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rybaer" data-source="post: 402168" data-attributes="member: 118">Session #14.1 – The Shadow’s WelcomeHaving decided that time was of the essence, the group quickly scoured the ruins of Timberline Keep for the trapdoor to the sub-levels.   Within the crumbling main tower, they found a built-in stone box, the bottom of which was removable.  Underneath was a narrow hole with evenly spaced rusted iron rungs for a ladder descending into darkness.Amblin, the quickest and most nimble of the group, led the way.  About ten feet down, he felt a sharp prick in his finger.  He might have blown it off as a mere splinter was it not for the burning sensation that immediately followed.  All the muscles in his body started to slacken and it was all he could do to hold on to the rungs.“Poison!” Amblin said, only loud enough for Bommer above him to hear.  The halfling spread word up to the others and then slipped past Amblin by way of Spider Climb.  He gave each rung and quick inspection and marked two rungs with white chalk to identify those with poisoned needles.The chute emptied into a small square room with two doors.  Rurik called upon Moradin to purge the poison from Amblin’s body while Bommer checked both for traps on the doors.  Through one of the doors was the pantry – barrels of dried and salted foods as well as shelves full of jars.  The other door opened into a short hallway that split left and right.  Amblin and Bommer led the way, everyone else listening intently for hints of the Shadow’s presence.  In the next hallway were three more closed doors as well as a stairwell leading down.  Again, Bommer quickly checked the doors and found them not trapped.  Two had to have their locks picked, but it was simple work for the halfling.  Each of the three rooms appeared to be bedrooms, furnished with a mish-mash of presumably looted goods.  There were no occupants and no dark elf, so they pushed on down the stairs.In the hallway, at the very top of the stairwell, Amblin triggered a pit trap.  He had little difficulty in jumping back out of the way, but the resultant crash from the trap door falling open removed all doubt that the element of surprise had been lost.  Amblin and Bommer looked down into the exposed pit.  It was at least twenty feet deep and lined with ugly iron spikes.  A few moments after the trap door came to a rest, a large blade swung out of the lining of the pit, just clearing the spikes.  Amblin silently thanked his training as falling into that mess would have been rather painful.Moving quickly and with less regard for stealth now, the group descended to the second sub-level.  A hallway ran left and right and a single door was set in the wall opposite the stairs.  Down both directions, the hall only went a short distance before turning again.Bommer inspected the door for traps while Nigel and Amill peered around the corner to the right.  There they found a dead end with a foot and a half wide crack in the wall.  An empty bucket tied to rope sat on the floor.  “That would be the well,” Nigel whispered to Amill, who nodded in agreement.Bommer cleared the door and they swung it open, finding a small room stuffed with boxes, crates, and sacks of various loot.  Nothing appeared to have any exceptional value.Down the hall to the left, Bommer was the first to peer around the corner from his position hanging on the wall of the corridor.  He saw that the hallway extended another fifteen or twenty feet and turned left again.  Just as he was going to continue, a figure stepped around the far corner – a dark elf.Bommer, along with Amill, had never actually laid eyes upon the shadow before.  Amill had joined up with them after their last encounter with the group’s nemesis and Bommer had been dead during their brief encounter down in the ruins of Kladish.  From all the stories, however, Bommer instantly recognized the Shadow.  The Shadow stopped short with a look of surprise, uttered a single word, turned and fled.  All in the group heard the footsteps fading, followed almost immediately by a door slamming shut.  Zalman recognized that one word, a vile expletive in Undercommon, though the others had little difficulty in guessing its meaning.  Finally, their quarry was at hand.Before Bommer could turn and tell the others what he’d seen, most everyone was already reacting.  Zalman, who had cast Fly upon himself rather than climb down the chute, zipped past and over everyone else, hurling down the hall at a tremendous speed.  He reached the next corner and found a short passage with three closed doors.  Brandishing his wand of Lightning Bolts, he used his crown’s power to make certain the Shadow wasn’t hiding invisibly.Rurik, unusually quick to react, wedged himself past Bommer and Amblin and charged after Zalman with Sleet in hand.  Halfway down the hall, he stepped on an unseen pressure plate.  The entire fifteen-foot length of hall fell away beneath the dwarf and he plunged thirty feet.  The bottom of the pit was lined with three foot long rusty spikes, and was filled with about two and a half feet of fetid water.  Rurik cried out as several spikes drove through weak spots in his armor.When the floor had fallen away under Rurik, a thick steel plate fell from the ceiling and essentially created a new wall flush with the far side of the pit.  Zalman found himself completely isolated from the rest of the group, blind in the pitch darkness, and on the same side of the wall as the Shadow.  To balance those poor odds, he quickly summoned a dire ape.Amblin and Bommer, neither of whom were able to offer much help to Rurik, both Spider Climbed on the walls across the pit to see if there was a way through the steel wall.  Amill pulled a length of rope off his belt and tossed and end down to the floundering dwarf.Rurik extracted himself from the spikes, but immediately recognized another problem.  Half a dozen giant leeches, each a couple feet in length, had latched on to exposed spots of skin.  He could feel his blood being drained away at an alarming rate.  Through his panic, he heard Nigel and Amill yelling at him to grab the rope.  Rurik did so, and started climbing while they hoisted him up.Rurik was scarcely halfway up the pit when a certain realization hit him.  Nigel saw it in his old friend’s eyes while the skin under the dwarf’s beard turned white and then blue.  Rurik lost his grip and fell back into the pit, impaled upon spikes and lost under the foam of thrashing leeches.The cleric was dead, and Nigel knew that this time he wouldn’t return from Moradin’s Hall. Next session:  Pursuit and a new ally.</blockquote>

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