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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kayne" data-source="post: 1009670" data-attributes="member: 13153">Miles' Journal - Part FourteenHammer 27th - We made our way through an illusionary door that we had found in the pyrohydra's cave, its huge corpse now starting to smell bad... actually make that smell worse, it smelt bad when it was alive. Heading through the door, we found a small chamber with a couple doors and three statues of old Rudenheim kings. Both doors turned out to be false and trapped too, and while Halbrinn was able to disarm the first door, the second trap was triggered when he tried to switch it off, and the statues animated and attacked. We quickly reduced them to rubble though, with the aid of one of Adamo's twisted summoned creatures (he didn't say what it was meant to be and I've given up asking). them subdued, we searched the room finding a hidden door. After determining that it was trap free, our gnome opened it and revealed a short staircase leading up to a stone door. Opening that door revealed... well nothing really , except for darkness, that was seeimgly magical in nature, dimming any light taken into it, even Slayer's glow, which normally provides me with a good 20' of brightness about me, was extinguished in the gloom.What happened next was total confusion, We entered the room, and found ourselves under attack from foes unknown, though from the feel of the blows I was dealt, they fought without weapons. We all fought as best we could against foes we could not see, and that further seemed to have no such difficulty in seeing us. Thankfully Yvgeny was able to see somehow (possibly he is not as human as he appears, this bears investigation). As we felled the attackers, who Stedd recognised from their voices as being monks of his order, the light in the room increased, their presence suppressing it somehow. We came to the inevitable conclusion that they are shades, though the how and why of their transformation is unknown to us as yet. This is truly a disturbing revelation, with possibly dire consequences for Daggerdale. We also rescued a paladin of Torm by the name of Vorinn, who the monks had kept chained up on one wall as a living decoration, torturing himn for their sick amusement. I am not averse to torture if it serves a purpose, but sadism is not in my nature and it appalled me to see how low these monks have sunk.Once we had secured the hall we headed into a large side chamber, evidently a forge, with many hearths and there followed a brief (they ran away), fight against a trio of duergar, one of them felled by Stedd, the other two leaping to their presumed deaths into another chasm that leads still further into the depths of the mountain. In this chamber we rescued another dozen or so Rudenheim dwarves, being used as slave labour to manufacture monkish weapons. Indeed, we found piles of shuriken and like weapons around the room, enough to equip an army. By my count, there are about 45 Rudenheim dwarves left now, and as we escorted these new ones up to join the rest of the clan, the mist spell that had been cast to baffle the monks (because while they could see in the dark, they couldn't see in the mist, thus it levelled the playing field) vanished, revealing two basilisks!! The gaze from these dread beasts had no effect on the dwarves at all, but poor Halbrinn was immediately turned to stone... a true garden ornament! We ran past the basilisks, and got away taking Halbrinn with us (thankfully he was shifted into pixie form, so very small when they petrified him), we'll deal with them in a couple days time, after we have our gnome back to normal.Hammer 28th to 30th - Adamo took a ring, a teleported back to Dagger Falls with the petrified Halbrinn and had him restored to flesh and blood and then the pair of them teleported back. Whilst there they sold a large amount of the surplus loot we had acquired of late and so came back with a goodly amount of gold and gems to divvy up amongst us. Everyones thoughts are now firmly on what they plan to buy once we return to Dagger Falls. With any luck, I should be able to afford another enchanted shortsword to partner Slayer. While they were gone, the rest of us took the time to relax and unwind in the upper levels of the hold, and patch up our many bruises from the past couple weeks.Midwinter - Keeping with our tradition of fighting major battles on holidays, today was no different. While the dwarves upstairs indulged in some hastily brewed liqour of a truly horrid smelling nature, we returned to the lower level where we had fought the monks, and quickly polished off the Basilisks, Yvgeny's spells, blinding them and they were then easy prey for our weapons. That done, we set off exploring the various chambers off the main hall, finding a large temple to Moraddin that had been desecrated and was being used as a mess hall and kitchen. the entire level seems to have been abandoned, and the monks we fought the other day must have been a rearguard I believe. We opened many doors, finding nothing but empty rooms (though one housed the spirit of a dwarf, but he was too depressing for me to bother listening to and I carried on searching the level as my comrades talked to him, learning nothing useful for their time spent).It was while searching a room containing crates though that we found something more interesting, a Clay Golem, that burst out of its packing crate and attacked us. Thankfully it didn't lay a finger on me, but Halbrinn and Stedd were beaten badly by it, until Adamo summoned another of his altered snakes and it crushed the golem to powder in its coils.With that out of the way, we set to exploring the chasm at the end of the smithy that the Duergar had jumped into, and discovered a ladder bolted to one wall of it, leading down into the pitch darkness below. Adamo & Halbrinn flew down to investigate, followed by the rest of us as we painstakingly descended the ladder. We discovered a series of caverns at the base of the chasm that the monks have been using as a training ground, with obstacles and an assault course. Very similar to what they had back at the monestary near Clearwater.While exploring this level of the clanhold, we came upon a vast underground lake, apparently where all the streams we have encountered on the upper levels, flow down to. It was while we were checking along a shore of the lake that we suddenly came under attack from none other than a Black Dragon, a big one too! We initially fled into a tunnel, and when it followed us into the confines of the rock, we turned on it, trapping it there where its wings were useless, and engaging the beast in melee. I am ashamed to say that it took me down just after I had ripped a couple rents in its scaly hide, as I forgot to dodge one of its myriad limbs, and was dealt a glancing blow by its tail. Adamo claimed the killing blow (I didn't have to ask, he was practically glowing when I woke up), nearly severing its head clean off with his enchanted sword. I took a tooth from its body as a trophy, and we made use of an elemental that Adamo summoned to fetch its hoard. We gained quite a haul of gold and treasures, including some magical items. After determining that this was the last guardian of the clanhold to deal with (apart from the Roper which we are adamant we are not tangling with again), we headed back to the dwarves, who were stunned to learn of this extra layer to the hold, it not having been there when they built the place. They were happy to learn of a dragon corpse though, I heard much muttering about the various uses of dragonhide amongst them.</blockquote>

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