Marpenoth 26

Marpenoth 26, 1369:

    The party, except for Maanamere, who wanted to polish his armor,
    return to Undermountain, paying 8gp from party treasure to get in
    via the Yawning Portal.

    The plan for the day was to find alternate routes to avoid some of
    the less convenient rooms the party had encountered along the
    White Flagstone Trail.  In so doing, they first came to The Hall
    of Mirrors, a well known feature of Undermountain which several
    party members had heard of.  Knowing that treasure was sometimes
    placed behind the mirrors, Stewart and Narthan methodically
    checked behind each one.  In the process they found two potions in
    stoppered glass vials inside metal "cages", apparently to cushion
    them from breakage, a small brass cauldron with a handle, and
    40gp.  They also triggered a Mirror of Opposition, which caused a
    duplicate of Narthan to appear and attack him.  The party defeated
    the anti-Narthan nd then Stewart tried to smash the mirror without
    looking in it, which caused two duplicates of Stewart to appear.
    The anti-Stewarts attacked him and the party finished them off.
    Stewart was badly wounded but received healing.
        1720xp to party for Narthan's evil twin and Stewart's
               evil triplets.

    Later they came apon a room which Darius' uncle and father had
    once explored years earlier with a statue in the middle.  They
    found a hidden compartment in the statue which The Five had missed
    containing 6 50gp moonstones.  They balanced several bones on a
    copper piece in the hidey-hole under the statue.

    From there they found a length of corridor with mist-shrouded
    stairs going up on one end and stairs going down on the other end.
    When they investigated the stairs going up, they found that one of
    the steps was trapped to bounce people back down the stairs.
    After that they led up to a small landing that allowed the
    corridor to pass unseen above another corridor they had previously
    mapped.  On the landing was a strange figure - a 7' tall elf in
    gleaming black fluted plate mail of an ancient and unfamiliar
    style.  He showed no sign of being aware of the party and simply
    stood there or paced back and forth looking warily down the steps
    on either side.  The party experimented and learned that they
    could pass right through him without ill effect.  They were unable
    to attract his attention.  They tried the stairs going down at the
    other end of the corridor as well, but they burst into flames when
    Stewart got about 10 feet down, so everyone retreated with minor
    burns to the front ranks.

    Near that corridor they found a corridor filled with candles
    floating in mid air.  The party discovered no cause or purpose for
    the candles.

    Shortly after that they came to the chamber the drow were using as
    a temple from a different direction and discovered that it had not
    been disturbed or repopulated since they were there on the
    23rd.

    After that the party tried to find a way around the trap door that
    Maanamere objected to going through.  They came across a round
    room with a statue of a male barbarian wearing an oak-leaf crown.
    They found that the statue could be rotated counter-clockwise, so
    they did.

    Next they found a tall room with an upper balcony surrounding it.
    The floor was covered with a metal grid, which was covered with
    (possibly poisoned) spikes.  The upper portion of the room was
    filled with a criss-cross of metal cables, from which hung down
    six cables with colored, polka-dotted sacks hanging from them.
    There was a huge metal spider statue suspended among the cables.
    Stewart climbed out to examine the bags, but 11 metal spiders,
    much like the motionless one, came down from holes in the ceiling
    and acted menacing.  He eventually learned that they would let him
    grab the contents of one bag, so he opened the yellow one with
    blue spots and found 17pp, 26gp, 1 Harbor Moon, a magic copper
    ring, a magic potion, an empty magic bottle, and a map of some
    section of dungeon.  He replaced them with some rocks and a note
    that read "Sucker - A.F.A.L., P.S. Selune Rules".  He made several
    different attempts to get another sack, but the spiders rushed to
    prevent him each time, even cutting a rope he was using at one
    point.

    A while later they ran into 4 bugbears waiting just inside a door
    for them.  The bugbears didn't last long and the party found 59cp,
    31sp, 23ep, and 13gp on them.  In the center of the room was a
    round cage that had been lowered from the ceiling on heavy chains.
    Steve worked out that this was directly below the barbarian statue
    that the party had rotated earlier.
        480xp to party for bugbears

    Finally, they found a room with a one-way secret door into a known
    room that would allow Maanamere (and others) to curcumvent the
    trap door climb, but not the flooded room.  After that the party
    decided to go home & recover spells, spending 8gp from party
    treasure to get out.