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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kerrick" data-source="post: 1023012" data-attributes="member: 4722">From the journal of Mirabeth the ranger:  The third gate turned out to be easy to pass, much more so than the second - it was blown inward, probably by a huge battering ram. It led to another valley, bigger than the first; a river drained from another lake in the northeast corner, wound across the valley, and disappeared into the rock near the south gate. Anohter island stood in this lake too, also with ruined buildings on it. Unlike the first valley, this one didn't have trenches; instead it held fortifications - old ones, too. It looked like the defenders had fought a holding action here, but had slowly been pushed back. A road led from the south gate through gaps cut through the fortifications (again, old work, probably done by the attacking army) to the other gate.   The first thing that struck me was that the valley was dead silent - I could hear nothing but the wind whispering through the grass. It almost felt like we had stepped into a tomb, except the place was open to the sky.   We slowly made our way along the road, while the vallendre flew over to the island to investigate the ruins. She rejoined us near the other gate, having found nothing of real interest.  The fourth gate was big – 80 feet wide, and 50 feet tall. Dwarven runes, badly weathered, had been carved across the doors. The only thing we could make out were the runes for "ocean," "volcano," and "forest." The cleric quickly determined that this probably meant we needed the blue key, and inserted it into the lock, then turned it.   There came a loud grindning noise from the gate, and we all took an involuntary step back, thinking of the mage whose book the bard carried in his pack. Luck was with us, however - the gates were slowly grinding open. Time and war had taken their toll, however; the right-hand door ground to a stop about halfway, then fell slightly aslant with a loud CHUNK. The left-hand door, by default, stopped too, but the gap was still 30 feet, wide enough for a platoon of soldiers to ride abreast.   The tunnel beyond was large, easily 100 feet wide and 150 feet high. Cliff dwellings lined the walls of this tunnel, too, and openings led off at varying heights into the rock of the mountain.  There was only one entrance at groud level, so of course we started there. A short tunnel led into the rock to a small room, and in the room, two human-size figures moved toward us with the clanking of metal. They advanced into the light, and we saw that they were suits of armor - old, rusted, and worn, with nothing in them but two points of red light.   I won't go into the details of the fighting; it was fierce, despite the obvious age of our opponents, and we very nearly didn't win. If it weren't for the vallendre hovering behind us with a wand of cure wounds, our bodies would likely still be there. As it was, though, we survived and won.   We soon discovered what the creatures had been guarding, for there could be no other reason they were still there after such a long time - crates, rotted and broken after all this time, lined the walls, and within them... ingots of pig iron, stamped with the rune of the dead Marktik Van dwarf clan. Here, in this room, was enough money to make us wealthy for a long time. We spent nearly an hour transferring ingots to the cart, then we turned our attention to the exit from the room, another passage that led further into the rock.   A few turns later, we ended up in another room inhabited by a pair of long-dead dwarves with metal plates bolted to their bodies, who rose to greet us. The cleric, with his hammer, came in handy at this point, as my arrows were doing very little damage to them. He blasted the things down with but a few swings.   This room held a number of locked, but empty, chests, as well as a rack of shortswords (also locked, unfortunately). It appeared the Stygian Wave had taken these caves and used them for storage, placing their guards here.    I won't go into detail abput the rest of the area, in order to save space; suffice it to say that all the caves here were being used for storage, and all of them were guarded by suits of armor, zombies, and - in one case - a large creature made from chains. That was a fierce fight, which we very nearly lost, but it was worth it - the creature was guarding an iron coffin with the body of an important dwarf inside it. We also turned up several disassembled siege engines - portable towers, a movable fortress (a big turtle-shell with a neck that soldiers could hide under) and portable rams. We took one each of the towers and fortresses, thinking they might come in handy sooner or later.  Near the far gate, we encountered a group of wraiths, former soldiers of the Stygian Wave. We killed the lesser ones, and the leader decided to parlay - information in exchange for his unlife. The information he had was worth it - it turned out that what we had thought were the gates mentioned in the legend weren't the gates at all - the tunnels themselves were the gates. Which meant we had another six tunnels to go through. On the plus side, he told us that in order to get through the far end of the third gate, we had to go back to the first valley and retrieve a block of stone from the citadel, then take it back to the third gate, place the keys in it, and open the doors.   So we returned to the first valley and retrieved the stone from the tower. We were about halfway back across the causeway when we were attacked by a gigantic squid. Things were looking rather bleak (it had grabbed half the party in its tentacles), but the paladin threw his greataxe at the creature's eye, which was just under the surface of the water, scoring a hit. The creature immediately let us go and fled into the depths.   It's getting near dark now, so we're going to stay the night here and haul the slab out to the third gate in the morning. We have no idea what to exepct in the valley beyond, but having the siege engines makes us confident that we can face most threats.</blockquote>

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