October 16th, 2016

The Adventure continues as the party returns to the citadel of Zelligar & Roghan...

Line Up from left to right in the House of Chinchillas and nothing else.

Nick playing the eternal point man and wall, Merrick the human fighter

Hunter playing his new character, Strix the elven magic-user

Sarai playing her new (old?) character, Desorna the elven fighter

Chris playing his light tank, Valandil the elven spellsword

Nilo briefly playing his healbot, Arden the “too damn many elves!” racist halfling cleric before leaving and passing it to Nick

and, in a necessary turn of events, the DM playing the absent Catherine's character, Ydee the half-elven thief, aka the only thief who is willing to adventure with you rubes so long as you pay her well

The party began in town where the group recruited two new members who were willing and able to adventure with a group who had a horrible reputation in town since three of their current/former members had been in court for various crimes. Of course, the new members were elves, which explains a lot. Since Ahri was training a new elven magic-user seemed a wise choice, and having another pure fighter made Merrick happier too. And a happy Merrick ignores his list of party members to kill when they annoy him, which is pretty much everyone but Arden.

After acquiring some needed supplies and supplementary equipment in town, the adventurers headed back to the stronghold spending two days on the trip. Once they entered the stronghold, they walked all the way around to climb up the hole to the higher floor and began exploring further. Making their way towards the octagon room, they decided to detour along the way and explore some passages that they had passed before. They opened the door in the wall across from the storeroom where they had found (and busted) barrels of oil. The hallway extended for thirty feet before there was a door in the north wall. The hallway came to a dead end ten feet further. The party opened the door and looked through, seeing a forest beyond. This obviously confused them since there was no way they could find a forest with a clear view of the sky above while underground. Some explorations revealed the illusionary nature of the room, but did not dispel the illusion. Frustrated with the result, the party left.

Merrick decided to search for secret doors at the end of the hall and he found one in the east wall of the dead end. Unfortunately there was no way they could find to open it, and after spending some time with the battering ram Valandil had bought they decided that there was no point in trying as there were just chips of stone on the floor and no real progress. So back they went and they began to explore further.

After the gnomish 'oh my god!' room, they decided to explore the previously unexplored south hall just before the octagonal room. The south hall appeared to go for twenty feet before it ended in an east-west hallway, but on drawing closer the party realized that there was no hallway but instead a 20x20 room on each side of the hallway south. They explored the west room first, but its only feature was a large tapestry hanging on the west wall that depicted a view of a tower on a cliff face as seen from below the cliff. A closer inspection revealed what looked like tentacles along the edge of the cliff. Merrick thought that the picture strongly resembled the view they had of the now-ruined tower that he saw which helped them find the stronghold of Zelligar and Roghan.

The eastern room was a mirror image of the western with the tapestry being on the eastern wall. This tapestry depicted a swamp scene, but no matter how intently they examined it, there were no tentacles to be seen. With these areas explored, the party continued on to the octagon room.

Opening the door to the octagon room, Merrick was confronted with four lizard men and the battle was quickly joined. Several of the party were wounded before the lizard men were defeated. After looting the bodies and checking on the brazier room, the party went south.

After proceeding through the room with some chunks of rock scattered around from the slabs that the party attacked previously, the party went through the south door, down a 10' long hallway and into another 30x30 room whose main features of interest were doors in the center of the south and east walls, and scraps of metal on the floor that on closer examination were found to be blades of various types and sizes. As Desorna moved to check the south door there was a clang as a portcullis fell at the edge of the north passage, sealing the party in the room. Then the bits of metal began to rattle and rose up to form roughly human sized forms made up of sharp and spinning steel. Initiative was rolled and the battle began! The battle was fairly brutal. The spellsword's shocking grasp spell destroyed one of the lesser bladeswarms, but the others got in some good licks before they were damaged enough to go back to pieces. The final one shot out shrapnel as it 'died', doing minor damage to the closest members of the group. Once the bladeswarms were destroyed, the party explored the doors and finding a lockplate on each they summoned Ydee to deal with the locks. Ydee successfully picked the lock on the south door. Merrick went to open it and found it locked, so the DM told him that killing the bladeswarms unlocked the door, and Ydee's good roll locked the door again. Ydee grumbled at the idiots around her and unlocked the door again so the party could proceed south.

Through the south door the party found themselves in the northeast corner of a 20' wide by 30' long room. The center of the south wall was obscured by a 8' diameter semicircle of curtain that stretched from floor to ceiling. The curtain was yanked aside revealing a large golem-like creature made of iron. It began to move and the party began to panic, retreating into the previous room to try to escape the golem. It followed them and, as Merrick held up his shield to potentially deflect any blows if the thing was hostile, it yanked the shield out of his control, put it in it mouth, and began chewing on it. This ticked Merrick off and he leapt into battle, striking it solidly with his silver bastard sword which seemed to do no damage to the monstrosity. Worried by this seeming inability to hurt it with weapons, Valandil leapt forward and touched it with a shocking grasp which seemed to freeze it in place. Merrick reclaimed his chewed shield which had fallen from the creature's mouth while the others carefully examined the thing. Valandil noticed a panel in the creature's back and, upon being hoisted up to open it, he found that the interior of the torso was hollow and filled to just below the waist line with coins! He began tossing handfuls of coins out of the back of the iron piggy bank where the party began searching through them. They were mostly (75%) copper with some silver (25%), but that didn't stop Desorna from filling her large sack with eight bricks worth of silver coins. They party collected all the silver they wanted to carry then proceeded to test the east door and open it before having the thief lock it.

The east door opened to a hallway that went for 20 feet before it dead-ended into a north-south hallway. At the intersection the party found that the north-south hallway only went 10 feet in each direction before ending in a door. Right hand rule took precedence and the party went south and through the southern door.

Once through the south door a 10' wide wall was directly in front of them before passages continued going to the southeast and the southwest. There was what looked like a mud-covered inscription in the south wall. Merrick used his blunt dagger to knock the mud loose to reveal the inscription. There was an arrow pointing to the right over an arrow pointing to the left, then an inscription that said "Choose your Doom". It was at this point that the party realized that the door they had entered through was gone, leaving a blank wall behind them.

After some minor but spirited argument, the party went right, following the passage for roughly 10 feet before it dead-ended with a door in the south wall. They south door was opened to reveal another 30x30 room with a curtain in a semi-circle in the center of the south wall. Again, the party swept the curtain aside to reveal a giant skeleton holding a giant-sized bastard sword which it used to hack into Merrick, doing minimum damage of 2 points. Battle was, once again, joined, with the skeleton doing severe damage to Merrick before being destroyed after taking ~60 points of damage. Various bones were scavenged, but something curious occurred during the battle; the large sack of silver coins that Desorna had set down when the fight began had vanished! Exploration of the area revealed no bag but it did reveal a secret panel with a lever. Pulling the lever made the vanished north door at the message reappear, and while most of the party wanted to leave doomland behind, the spellsword encouraged them to check out the other area of doom. After some minor grumbling, the party agreed.

The southeast corridor was a mirror image of the southwest one; 10 feet to a southern door, then opening the door revealed a 30x30 room, though instead of a curtain there was a 8' on a side wooden crate against the center of the south wall. After a few minutes of listening, the crate was opened and four odd-looking creatures emerged. Three moved toward the two fighters and ignored the magic-user while the fourth bypassed Strix to charge at the cleric and spellsword. Their natures were revealed (though their descriptions didn't raise any concern) when two attacked Desorna and hit, requiring her to make two d20 rolls against the first one's two tentacles and one against the one tentacle of the second one that only hit her once. Her rolls were all less than the 13 target that she needed which meant the first one's two hits turned her armor to rust and the second one's single hit did the same to the blade of her battle axe. Desorna began screaming at the horror. Strix managed to sleep one and the others killed the remaining three, though Merrick lost part of his armor to another attack and failed roll. The spellsword suggested taking the sleeper into the room with the iron piggy bank, and so Strix carried it there with Ydee opening doors along the way while the remainder of the party quickly searched the room, finding only another secret panel and lever which likely did the same as the one in the giant's room.
The rust monster quickly devoured the iron piggy bank and slurped up the rust and the party let it be while they went to explore the doorway at the north end of the short hall.

Desorna threw open the door without waiting and as hit by the arrow trap taking 7 points of damage. This room looked like a thief's workshop, so the party explored it, searching to see what they could find of interest. Several minor objects were found, including a set of nice lockpics and some gems, but Ydee made the major find of a secret compartment with several pieces of paper lying face down on a mirror. The party took the papers and the mirror with them. The papers, two pages from Zelligar's journal and a letter to someone named Quervin, were of some interest, though not necessarily immediate interest. But the notation on a page of Zelligar's journal of eight lines that revealed the location of a 'Castle in the Sky' that were in his chambers caused some interest to be raised. The party decided to return to the middle floor and open the locks to the trophy room so they could get to Zelligar's chambers.

A lot of wandering from trigger room to trigger room with a random encounter with another infected ogre (where two heroes failed their saves...) along the way, and then the party was finally ready to pull the green lever and open the lock, but first to face the Doom (abselt-mindedly changed from Wrath in this iteration, but all the same) of Zelligar room! A dust devil attacked Merrick and tried to push him into the pit, but he avoided the fall and killed the dust devil. Valandil activated the magical bridge and Merrick raced across to throw the green lever to unlock the lock and then the blue lever to remove the bridge that Valandil was running across at the time. . . . . oops? Valandil managed to catch the edge of the high pillar and Merrick threw the red lever to disable the attack before helping Valandil up and recreating the bridge. Back across the bridge and off to the lock room now!

Through the lock room and into the trophy room the party went. From there they made a quick trip to the storeroom to the north so the party could replace equipment lost to the rust monsters. Desorna took the chain mail that was there while Merrick had to settle for ring mail. Desorna found a replacement battle axe, and the party was ready to go again. The party went south to Zelligar's rooms where Valandil made a search for the lines that told of the location of the Castle in the Sky, but all he found was empty hooks as the party had taken all the artwork from Zelligar's chambers and sold it after their first journey into the stronghold. The DM did not celebrate this overly long, instead just raising his hands with the double V for victory for a minute or two.

Some more searching was done, and little came of it before the party tried to decide what to do next. They decided to take advantage of the effects of the angel room and came to themselves refreshed and restored in the entry room again. They decided to head back to town to re-equip and resupply and see if they could get some better options for equipment other than what they got out of storage. The master of the Curio Shop was happy to buy some curious items, and he sold them a few too. The party also stayed in town for a week and change so that Merrick and Ydee could level up, Merrick to 3rd level and Ydee to 2nd. Then they would decide what to do next.