A.F.A.L. on Mirtul 14, in the Year of the Tankard

Mirtul 14, 1370: High = 60, Low = 40 No precipitation Calm. Overcast. The party heads back to the Fallen Tower dungeon. Amren Winterbrand and Denga RivenShade, their employers, request that they search the first two levels more. They believe that the maps show "too much form, not enough function". i.e. the levels are all trap without anything to justify having the level or even make the traps work. So they suspect secret doors. Darius casts Strength on Maanamere, bringing his STR to 18/00 for 7 hours. Darius casts Strength on Henkles, bringing his STR to 18/93 for 12 hours. Tristan casts Strength on Brogan, bringing his STR to 18/10 for 5 hours. Tristan casts Strength on Dexter, bringing his STR to 18/01 for 5 hours. Brogan casts Blessed Watchfullness on Denyae for 10 hours. The party gave the first room a more thorough search. Steve summoned a gargoyle (2HP dmg). The party formed up in the following marching order: Maanamere Tristan Steve Gargoyle Darius Brogan Dexter Staric Elvis Henkles Denyae The party searched the room with some lit areas and some unlit. They found a secret door in the north wall, in a clear area that had to be reached with cautious diagonal steps. The kobold thief is summoned to unlock it. The door opens on 5' of passage leading into another room. Tristan casts Find Traps and swaps places with Maanamere in the marching order. Frutz gets to go first though.

It's 35x15 with two doors in the north wall. It's full of floor-to-ceiling-large machines of unknown usage. Tristan sees that all of the machines are traps (probably parts of traps). There are two levers and two steep staircases going up to a crawlspace above the dark/light room; the crawlspace also has machines that are parts of traps. It looks like the trap would involve both spikes and a collapsing ceiling. One of the machines gives off a little heat -- Brogan thinks it seems like a pump.

The northwest door is locked. Frutz can't pick it but Steve can. There's a 15' corridor ending in an untrapped door; Tristan telekineeses the door open. There's a big storage room and a workshop for a finesmith, access to which would be very valuable for a thief. Frutz pockets some little tools. Tristan finds no traps.

We open a crate of bladders, exciting Elvis immensely. We also find 10 large sacks of fine sand, 15 small sacks of lead shot, 12 barrels of machine oil, tools, and pieces-in-progress. We search the room for secret doors.

We go to the northeast door from the machine room, which is not locked. Tristan opens it with the power of his MIND. There's again a 15' corridor north, this one with a mechanical trap (on the doorknob on the far end). He turns the knob with telekinesis and blade pops out of the wall; he turns it the other way and opens the door.

Beyond is a room somewhat paralleling the machine shop. We see no exits and no traps but lots of exciting things for professional glassblowers. The kiln probably has a gas feed from a pipe that runs out of the ceiling. We search the glass room for secret doors but find nada. Brogan amuses Frutz by checking inside the kiln.

The party searched the rest of level one without finding any more secret doors. Descending to the second level they searched the first room and found nothing. They returned to the flooded room and found that it was no longer flooded. They made their way down to floor level and searched the room. They found the hidden drains along the edge of the floor, but no secret doors. The party searched their way along the path to the next level until they reached the room with spike holes in some 5'x5' squares of floor and not others, but where the whole room registers as a trap. There they found a secret door in the west wall.

Frutz futzes with it and decides that the chest is the opening mechanism. We get to what we think is safety and Steve casts Knock on the chest. It flies open, spears fly up and down throughout the whole room. They sproing back where they came from about a minute later. Frutz re-enters and pushes open the secret door. The chest (of the "Please don't take my fabulous treasure!") is empty but for a snarky brass sign at the bottom.

Tristan casts Find Traps again and looks into the secret room. The doorway is trapped; there's a 10' corridor that opens into a room. Frutz can't handle the trap and neither can Steve. Henkles heaves a bag of sand through the doorway while everyone else dives for cover. He gets hit by a sharpened telephone pole for 23 damage. Dexter bandages it for 1 and cures a light wound for 6. Henkles takes a large fragment for poking traps.

This is another storage area, 15x35, including some partially-assembled machines. There's a secret door in the north wall. There are more tools, some jars and bottles, many crates, chains, nails, more sand ... Henkles intends to return for the chains on the way out. There's a butterfly collection, some cosmetics, a slip of hippogriff fur, a pouch of snake scales, two bits of wood stuck together with sap and a hexagonal magic rod.

The secret door is untrapped. Frutz and Steve fail to unlock it and nobody can bash it open. We chip open the door with the cold chisel set. Tristan finds out that the door 10' away is not trapped, then the spell runs out. Henkles opens the stuck door. Tristan re-ups Find Traps and sees no problems in the wizard's lab beyond.

The lab is 25x35 with no obvious exits. There are two firepits, one with a cauldron, a summoning circle, paraphenalia and some old, moldy research notes. A second magic circle in the corner, with some techie bits, appears to have been imported from elsewhere -- it might or might not be a teleporter, though it does look old enough to be Netherese in origin. It's not an elder gate. We need to come back later, when Find Traps isn't running, to glimgauntlet treasure, look for secret doors and sketch the circle. Dexter finds a loop of silver wire, which he takes after Brogan kisses it.

~~~~~

We go down to level 3, tromp tromp tromp. We go north through the waiting room and look west, to 40' of corridor that ends in a door. No traps, but the door is magically locked. Darius casts Knock as if he were 12th level, poof. The room is 20x25 with a north door. Before we can spike the door open, two rust monsters approach. Tristan closes the door, the rust monsters remove the knob, the rust monsters pull the door open. Maanamere flees in a blind panic.

The gargoyle got to be a wall, spells were cast, monster moralle was failed, rust monsters were slowed, chased, and killed. 540xp to Brogan, Darius, Denyae, Dexter, Frutz, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve, and Tristan

We skip checking the room for a moment to keep looking down corridors while Find Traps is operational. We find one just before a door, a pit trap. We bypass the pit and Tristan telekineeses open the door. There's a 25x35 room, door in opposite wall, one trap that takes up most of the room (but not the outer border). The far door is locked. Frutz futzes with it and opens it. 20' of corridor north to an east-west T with a sign that says "No Traps Here =)". The sign is lying, as the five feet in front of the sign is trapped.

In the room with the untrapped border and in the rust monster room we find no secret doors. While Henkles searches in the tea room, we discover that the jars are magical -- presumably preservative, as the tea is still good. We drink some tea and take the rest.

We circle where the compass is pointing, checking all relevant walls for secrets. Nuthin'. Tristan casts his fourth Find Traps. We leave the west wall of the horseshoe room. Just after the corridor turns north is a trap, and likewise just after it turns west again. After passing the corridor comes to a T. It runs 25' north to a door and 20' south to a door, both with traps in front of them. The door opens easily to Tristan's telekinesis.

The room is 25x40 and it has a single suspicious stalagmite in the middle. Maanamere plinks at the stalagmite with a bow and hits, but gets pseudopodded by the roper on the ceiling right above the door. He is pulled off the floor and manages to break free of the tentacle before losing half his strength. The middle roper then ropes him again. Steve casts Ray of Enfeeblement on that one but it saves. Tristan deals 8 damage against the middle roper with magic missiles.

While Maanamere tried to break the Roper's grip, Tristan and the gargoyle stepped into the room to make room for others and both got trapped - Tristan by the Roper on the ground, the gargoyle by the one on the ceiling. Darius cast Magic Missile while Brogan started firing his wern into the room and those behind him started working their way up. As the fight progressed, most of the party eventually worked their way in while Tristan and the gargoyle both sustained nasty bites. Eventually the gargoyle was dismissed to avoid fatal injury and then the ropers were dispatched. Maanamere was the only person who suffered strength loss. 14000xp to Brogan, Darius, Denyae, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve, and Tristan The party searched the room and the ropers' internals, but found no secret doors and nothing of value.

The party heads out in this order: Maanamere Tristan Darius (Dexter, on DRG but joins soon) Staric Henkles Denyae They head south, finding another pit trap, marking and jumping it. Beyond that they come to a room that is empty except for a brass sign reading "No traps here." with the ubiquitous clown face. They chalk "this is not a lie" below the sign. South from that room is a long corridor that has 15' of pit traps at the south end, just before it turns west. These are a nastier type of pit trap where the walls come together in a wedge at the bottom instead of having a floor, and the walls are lined with downward-facing spikes. 15' after the corridor turns west it dead-ends. The party found no secret doors. After some discussion, the party decided that they needed to circle back up to the north, past the lying "no traps" sign, as that was starting to look like their best chance at getting to the point indicated by the compass. They did so and marked and jumped another pit before coming to room with two other exits. One door, going west, looked normal, the one to the south had no obvious latch and was surrounded by gaunt faces with wide open mouths (revealing sharp teeth, tongues, uvulas, etc.). They headed west. Henkles checked the west door and it was locked. He stopped to listen at the door and heard something on the other side. He was debating what to do when the door suddenly ceased to have a lock and the rust monster came in. Henkles jumped back out of range and Darius cast Wall of Fire. When the wall cleared, it was gone. Henkles lead the way west and found the usual jog in the corridor with a pit trap in the middle. He hopped over and discovered the rust monster waiting around the corner. He managed to hop back in time and the rust monster chased him back into the previous room, where the whole party could shoot at him at once. Searching the body yielded no treasure. 270xp to Darius, Denyae, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric and Tristan for the rust monster Making another attempt at heading west, Henkles came to a room with a door in the NW corner. The door had no latch but apparently pushed outwards. There was a sign beside it which Henkles couldn't read but when the rest of the party arrived they told him it read "Only the Truly Strong May Enter Here". The party decided to return to the previous room. Dexter came off DRG at this point and cast Find Traps. Heading back east, then north, the party came to a room with many chains hanging from holes in the ceiling. In between the chains were suspicious looking stalagtites. Henkles threw a dart at the stalagmite directly above the door, which caused it to fall at his feet and explode. Dexter reported that the chains were trapped, which wasn't really a shock to anyone. Tristan tried to get the circlet with telekinesis, which causes a bunch of flaming oil to fall on it and the floor below. Denyae levitated up for a careful look and determined that the three items were actually built into the chains, so the party left. The party decided to go back to the door surrounded by faces and have Darius cast There/Not There on the door. After that was done everybody did the necessary looking away and then looking at the door until it wasn't there for them, then passed through into the corridor beyond. The corridor led south with the usual turn to the side and back again, but this time the trap door was in the second turn, not between them. South of that was a room with a spiral staircase going down. The party descended, with Dexter casting his second Find Traps halfway down. The spiral staircase opened into the center of a cross-shaped room with pairs of pillars leading off in each direction. Dexter determined that several pairs of pillars were traps of a "quasi-magichanical" variety. Henkles threw a rock at one and got shot with a dart for his trouble. After that everyone carefully avoided walking between or touching the pillars and was fine. The corridor to the east could be seen to turn north, so the party took the corridor to the south, which branched east. This led them to a corridor with a series of short corridors leading to 15'x15' rooms on either side. Each of the rooms was apparently a barred cell at some point in the past, but all of the bars were rusted away. The first cell to the north held a roper. everyone tried to shoot around corners at it, but it managed to grab Henkles and get a taste of him before the party killed it. (No prize inside.) 7000xp to Darius, Denyae, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric and Tristan for the roper Continuing down the corridor, the party looked into several more cells before coming to the one that the compas pointed to. In it were five identical chests matching the description their employers had given them of the two they were supposed to find. Before going in, Henkles decided to see what else was around and continued further down the corridor, finding a blue jelly moving across the floor of one cell. He attacked it without provocation and a short fight ensued. 270xp to Darius, Denyae, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric and Tristan for destroying an innocent pile of goo. The rest of the cells were empty, so Henkles returned to the room with the chests. Dexter reported that he couldn't see any traps from the doorway, but the chests were piled up, so there might be some unseen as yet. Henkles decided to carry one out of the room so that it could be examined (and tested with the compass) separately, so he lifted it up. At that point it revealed itself to be a mimic and attacked him. Both of his hands were firmly stuck to the mimic, so all he could do was back up against a wall and hope the rest of the party could handle it. The party rushed in as quickly as they could and began attacking it. One of the other chest/mimics attacked Tristan, trapping him. The fight was long and close, as Henkles couldn't fight and most spells had already been used up, but eventually both of the attacking mimics were killed. This left the party with almost no spells, two party members badly wounded and stuck to dead mimics, and everyone crowded into a small space with another live mimic who hadn't attacked yet. At this point Dexter realised that now that he was in the cell with one chest out of the way, he could detect traps on the locks of two of the remaining three chests.

Present are Henkles, Steve, Tristan, Staric, Maanamere, Denyae, Dexter, Darius Dexter decides to get the presumed third mimic out of the center of the room, and off the other two chests by shoving it with a 6' stick (staff?). This kinda works but Maanamere is near the corner Dexter was shoving to, so the mimic finally stopped faking and attacked Maanamere, sticking to him. Combat happened, the mimic never had a chance. 9000xp to Darius, Denyae, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve, and Tristan for the three mimics The party chopped away at the mimics until only small chunks were stuck to each affected party member. The room got messy. Staric went on DRG. The two remaining chests were lashed together and loaded onto the Tenser's Throw Rug. Some cautious experimentation (with the rug and a pit but not the actual chests) showed that the rug would slide over a closed pit trap without setting it off. The party headed back to the stairs. The chests had to be carried up the spiral stairs. While this was being done, Tristan noticed that each had a Zhentarim marking on the bottom. The rest of the trip out of the dungeon was unremarkable. Amren and Denga were quite pleased to get the chests back and the party was given the remaining 2500gp and a letter of credit for 1000gp more. They question the party extensively about the dungeon and get copies of all the maps. They are obviously particularly interested in the wizard's lab on level 2 and the presumed magical gate that was there. They discuss hiring the party to lead a recovery expedition - bringing in a work crew to manage the challenges of getting the gate out of the dungeon. The party doesn't say no but defers, saying they need to focus on the trolls first. Amren and Denga then offer the party 200gp to take them in to see the stone circle themselves that day. The party talks them up to 400gp and an Extra-Healing Potion. Everybody goes their separate ways to clean up and secure their new acquisitions (cash/chests), agreeing to return in an hour. An hour later the party rejoins Amren and Denga and takes them into the dungeon. when the party negotiates the first wide pit trap with the Sproing Ring, Amren and Denga immediately become very suspicious of Henkles and ask him where he got the ring. They accepthis explanation grudgingly and are obviously distrustful of him from then on. They seem very ammused to use the ring themselves to get over the pits. On level 1 the party encountered a rust monster but managed to kill it without losing more than a few arrowheads. 270xp to Darius, Denyae, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Steve, and Tristan for the rust monster (Amren and Denga should have taken some of those xp, but the GM goofed and didn't notice until after XP were handed out.) The party reached the wizard's lab without further incident and their employers examined the stone circle closely, making sketches and taking notes. They asked the party to look for anything that was the right shape to fit in the six hexagonal holes around the circle. The party looked carefully but did not find anything. Nobody mentioned the hexagonal rod that they had already removed from the dungeon. On the way back, Amren and Denga insisted on keeping Henkles in the front of the party so that they were behind him. However the return trip was without incident. The party were paid their 400gp on exiting the dungeon. AFAL returned to the Start Chaser to rest and heal (and collect XP).