Session 25

Date Played: January 12, 2002

Moldain, 25^th of Thaumont, 1,000 A.C.

12:20 am

Once the party had rested a bit after the battle, the party decided to regroup and try the western door they found in the library. Beyond this door was a short, 10’-wide, 10’-long hall lined with shelves on the north and south walls. Markus and Chow-Lin entered first, setting off a trap door on the floor which dropped them into a pit. Then the doors snapped shut again, leaving them in a heap on the floor of a 10’-deep pit. Before the startled eyes of Eric and Hamlin, their friends, and the light source, simply disappeared. Eric and Hamlin eventually figured out that the floor had been trapped and set about trying to get it open again, hopefully finding their companions alive on the other side. However, Markus and Chow-Lin had problems of their own as the pit began to fill with oil from holes in the walls. It was a race against time! Once the oil stopped pouring in Markus heard a sound from an open chute and covered it with a sack as a torch came skittering into view. Just then, Hamlin and Eric managed to figure out how to open the trap doors again, then disabling them with a pull lever concealed just inside the doorway. It took some time for the oily Chow-Lin and Markus to extricate themselves from the pit, but with some help they managed to escape the trap.

Eric reset the pit trap and the party continued to explore, this time bypassing the trap by circling around to the main east-west corridor and trying the first door they could see. During the pit analysis, Hamlin had climbed onto the shelves and was able to open the door on the other side enough to see a room beyond. It was into that room that the party now filed. It seemed to be a deserted classroom. At the door came a familiar sniffing noise. From the outside corridor, the party ran into a black bear, thin and apparently very hungry. Eric decided to feed the bear and make conversation with his speak with animals spell. From his conversation he learned that the she-bear was named Urgra and was caught in the entrance when the red glow appeared. She has been wandering the halls ever since, looking for food and water. Eric fed her 3 weeks of iron rations before she was content, but very thirsty. He led her north to the fountain area and they trapped her in the collapsed stairway area by closing the doors. Returning to the party, Eric led them south out of the classroom, down a long corridor. At the end of this corridor was a half-finished stone room with a table bearing a statue of a silver dragon guarded by five zombies. The zombies would move to attack anyone entering the room, and would even attack those foolish enough to enter the doorway, but would eventually break off and head back to guard the statue when the party fled the doorway. Markus and Chow-Lin decided to try and pick the zombies off using spells (she cast magic missile twice) and missile fire (mostly Markus and his crossbow and Hamlin with his sling). Erik remained by the door to attack with his spear and to draw the zombies to the doorway. It took some time, but eventually the party destroyed all the zombies and took the statue. The statue is made of silver and in the form of a dragon about to take flight. On the base of the statue is inscribed “Ariksbane, Destroyer of Evil.”

Once the party recovered what they could of their expended missiles, they discovered that the room connected with the previously mapped southeastern corridor. They continued to explore the doors along this corridor, finding one that led into a sitting room filled with couches surrounding a crystal harp in the center of the floor. A decorative wheel was painted on the floor and the harp sat in the center of it. To the north was a door, beyond which was a butcher’s shop complete with butcher’s block and sand covering the floor. Exhausted after a long march and extended combats, the party decided to barricade the doors of the sitting room using the couches and rest in the relative safety of the room.

END TIME: 3:10 am

Burning time remaining for Hooded Lantern = 8 turns.