A.F.A.L. on Tarsakh 20, in the Year of the Tankard

Tarsakh 20, 1370 (just past new moon): High = 50, Low = 30 No precipitation Wind gusting to 16 mph from the prevailing direction. Overcast. Arder Amkatac shows up for a tour of the Star Chaser, but doesn't stick around after tour. Henkles receives a reply from Morgath:

Elvis taught to recognize the smell of smoke powder. Brogan, Darius, Denyae, Deringa, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Mrap-M'rap, Staric, Steve and Tristan, along with Elvis head to the Yawning Portal and descend into Undemountain. Once inside, they head North for the stairs to level 2. At the Demongate, Maanamere solves the following riddle: I'm so fast you can't see me, Though everyone sees straight through me, I don't stop until the day you die. 500xp to Maanamere for riddling Maanamere took the front of the marching order for a change and borrowed Urgoth from Darius for the day. The party made their way to the 2^nd level and Dexter cast Find Traps. Darius cast Strength (at 4th level) on Maanamere for +6, bringing him to 18/00, and (at 5th) on Henkles for +1, bringing him to 18/74. Tristan cast Strength on Henkles for +8, bringing him to 18/00 and on himself, bringing him to 18. North of the stairs from the 1st level, the party entered a large chamber with a pile of remains in one corner and a lever on the North wall. "Pull this lever." was painted on the wall beneath the lever. Beside that, someone had carved "NO DON'T!". "Ignore him, it's fine." was painted beside that in a different hand. Above and to the right of that someone had scrawled "FRUITBAT" in ash. To the left and below that someone else had written "losers" in chalk. The remains were orc and animal bones and some bits of giant beetle carapace. Only Elvis found them interesting. Steve summoned a gargoyle (-2hp) and the party stood back while it pulled the lever. A 10' wide (E-W) by 30' long (N-S) section of floor slowly sunk down to become a stairway descending 30' to a corridor going North. Deringa cast Invisibility on the gargoyle and the party stationed it at the top of the stairs while they descended. At the base of the stairs was a long corridor going North. Someone threw a light button down the corridor and it became very faint in the distance as if obscured by fog. The party advanced and 3 giant spiders came down the corridor at them. The party won and collected the poison sacks from the spiders. 1950xp to Brogan, Darius, Denyae, Deringa, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve and Tristan for spiders Denyae went on DRG at this point. The party continued on to what turned out to be a web-filled room. The party tried to ignite the webs with a torch and five more giant spiders attacked. The party responded aggressively. Someone cast Lightning Bolt and managed to kill two more spiders who hadn't emerged yet. When the spiders were all dead, two more poison sacks were collected. 4550xp to Brogan, Darius, Deringa, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve and Tristan for more spiders Searching the webs in the room uncovered 3 dead orcs with, 3 Toals, 11ep, 1cp, 1 glass sphere (identified as the same as the one found on Eliasias 1), and 3 scimitars between them. The party decided to head back up to the level where they encountered the smoke powder. When they got to the stairs controlled by the lever, they were gone, but there was a second lever that lowered them again at their level. The party circled around to the Southwest, towards the bridge with the gate to Nesme. They came to a 40'x40' roomwith a broken wagon wheel and some barrel bits which Elvis suggested once held smoke powder. Brogan cast Locate Object to try to find more barrels and sensed some to the ESE. The party tried to circle around to the North, but when Brogan checked again, he detected some other barrels to the North. Heading North, the party found a 40'x30' room with an old barrel stacked on 3 other old barrels. The top one was empty. The lower ones were at least partially full of liquid. The party headed back toward the other barrels that Brogan had detected. Going down a promising corridor, the party dead-ended in a 30'x30' room which turned out to have several patches of green slime growing in it. Staric got to try out Aganazzar's Scorcher and the slime was disposed of. 260xp to Brogan, Darius, Deringa, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve and Tristan for dungeon sanitation Denyae came back off DRG at this point. Continuing their search for the barrels, the party went down a short flight of stairs to a 20'x80' room which held 6 patches of green slime on the walls, one above the entrance and 2 more on the ceiling. The party began burning them away when an 8' ghost woman came through the East wall and began menacing them. Dexter suspected an illusion and successfully disbelieved it. After that the party was also able to disbelieve the slime. They began to search the room when the ceiling began to lower down towards them. Henkles and Tristan disbelieved that too, but everyone else fled. Eventually Henkles and Tristan managed to convince the party that they weren't dead and the crushing ceiling wasn't real. The party returned to searching the room and found a secret door in the South wall. Deringa and Frutz had no luck opening it, so Steve cast Knock. The (double) doors swung out and the party was facing a blinding white light from beyond the doorway. The 2013-1-6 game ended here with the party standing in these positions: Game End State

Moments after the secret door was opened, four spears came shooting out of the light. One struck Brogan and one struck the invisible gargoyle, both struck hard. Brogan and Maanamere charged into the light, followed by Henkles. When they had advanced 10', they passed two light sources mounted in mirrors that were directing all of the light at the secret door entrance.

From Andrew:

After we opened the door into the bright light, a bunch of spears were fired/thrown at us. Brogan charged, and discovered that once you're past the light sources, you can (after your eyes adjust) see the ogres and orcs (orcs with ballistas) blocking the end of the corridor. Maanamere charged too, and the orcs manning the ballistas never got off a second shot. Henkles charged and hit one of the ogres with an orcish war dart. His plans to jump into the fray were dashed when two ogres walked through the corridor wall and two crested trolls appeared. Someone realized the trolls were probably illusions, and Henkles attempted to lean on the wall while dodging the trolls. He nearly failed his dex check when he went right through the "wall" into the leaders' quarters. While the rest of the party was busy dealing with the masses of ogres and orcs (Steve did ~120 points of damage, (only some of it to Brogan and Maanamere) with a well-placed Snowball Swarm), Henkles got backstabbed by the thief and attacked by a hastened ogre.

Meanwhile, back in the main room, Tristan, Staric and the gargoyle had an attack of the clumsies, with Tristan and Staric dropping their weapons and the gargoyle then crashing into Tristan and landing sprawled on top of him. Darius cast Dispel Magic on the lights and got rid of the glare problem and, incidentally, the effects of the Fumble spell that was affecting Tristan, Staric and the gargoyle.

Deringa used the wand of hurting to injure and stun the orc leader and everyone nearby (including Maanamere and Brogan). Brogan eventually decided he'd had too much being pounded on, and used a Wraithform spell. He came into the leader's quarters and heard someone casting a spell as Henkles finished off the thief, but he couldn't warn Henkles, and whoever it was got away.

Maanamere chased the fleeing ogre leader (were there others? I don't know) around a corner and discovered some (real) crested trolls, a pair of orcs, and the barrells of smoke powder. One of the orcs threw a lit barrell of boom at Maanamere, but missed, so it bounced into the room beyond. Maanamere, Tristan and the enemy front line (they failed to figure out the blast radius) were all toasted.

It did start a useful fire, which we used to burn the bodies of the trolls after the fight.

Maanamere made heavy use of Urgoth for the rest of the fight, which kept the trolls from doing too much damage to him before he and other party members who ran up to help finished the fight. 18090xp to Ag, Brogan, Darius, Denyae, Deringa, Dexter, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve and Tristan for assorted humanoids The party searched the whole complex of rooms that had been the site of the fight. (There was also an additional room in the complex that had a 15' stone circle with magical runes carved in it set in the floor.) Many cure spells were cast. Of particular interest was the room that the theif was hiding in behind the illusionary wall. It held five beds - three for the ogres who had come out of the room, one for the thief and one for someone who left a smaller than man-sized impression in the mattress. There was also a table and chairs with an hourglass and some paper where someone had been tracking some event that seemed to happen every 13 hours, give or take 4-6. The event itself seemed to last 1 to 2 1/2 hours. The last event ended 12 hours earlier. There were also three maps tacked to the wall. One was of the immediate area and had a few 'X'es on it that the party didn't know the meaning of. The other two were dungeon areas that the party did not recognize. The party gathered the following loot (gems appraised later in the day): From the thief: magic Bracers magic ring another magic ring missed that before, sorry magic potion Broadsword, +2 Arquebus Sickle, +1 4 daggers (balanced for throwing) 5 50gp Phenalopes (semi-precious stones) 34gp 27ep 5sp The corpse of the thief (for questioning by watch) From the humanoids and various lockers around the complex: 8 10gp Eye Agates 10 10gp Algaes 11 10gp Chrysocollas 14 10gp Agni Manis 3 10gp Bluestones 17 10gp Sharpstones 13 12gp Violanes 12 10gp Tiger Eye Agates 12 10gp Silkstones 10 50gp Mykaros 403gp 655ep 113sp 7 longbows 73 arrows, poisoned 3 tubs of sleep poison (each could dose ~40 more arrows or ~10 blades, probably potent for 5-7 days) 11 footman's flails 11 long spears 8 balista bolts, two somewhat bloody Furniture/Detritus: Two reflecting silver mirror arrays, 250gp ea. Two double-shot (fire round 1 & 2, reload rounds 3-6) light balistas a blank/used scroll the 3 maps mentioned above two barrels of smoke powder

We investigated the magic circle, decided it's a teleportal of some sort, and left a gargoyle to watch it. (Nothing happened to it)

We decided NOT to bring the powder into Waterdeep, so we discussed where to stash it. Brogan thought he could create a hidy hole using Enlarge, Alter Self, and Stone Shape. We decided the best place to do it would be in the Ziggarat room. But first, a bit of mapping the areas we hadn't seen on the local map. Two rooms had mysterious Xs in them...

As we were checking off empty rooms, Maanamere noticed a secret door at the end of a 10' "dead end" corridor. But first, an 'X'. The room was bare and empty, and we never figured out what the X meant. (The players are pretty sure it's the destination of a teleportal, but the characters don't know that.)

We couldn't figure out how to open the secret door, so Brogan cast Frisky Chest on it, but it couldn't get free of the lock mechanism. So Henkles kicked it open. Behind it was a corridor leading to a stairway leading up. We decided not to investigate further, and propped the door shut.

When we got to the second X, Elvis broke free of Dexter's grasp and ran into the area, where he promptly vanished. Dexter followed him, disappearing just as he reappeared. It's a two-way teleportal to a 20x20 room with a corridor leading off it. We declined to investigate further.

In the Ziggarat room we arrayed a few light buttons so we'd be able to see if anything came to investigate the noise. Two trolls rounded the corner of the Ziggarat, saw the party, and decided to use a bit of discretion in their valor. An ettin showed up a while later, and wasn't so smart. Henkles threw his dart of Ettin Hurting at it (and missed) while it threw boulders at someone (probably Henkles). Then it got pincushioned with arrows, and Henkles and Maanamere charged it. We quickly looted the body (it had a couple of gems in its sack) and left it for the carrion crawlers.

Denyae & Dexter went on DRG before the ettin arrived. It had 3 160gp Tourmalines in its bag. 3000gp to Ag, Brogan, Darius, Deringa, Henkles, Maanamere, Staric, Steve and Tristan for an unfortunate ettin

The party reported their finding to the watch and handed over the dead thief and the originals of the three maps (having made copies). The watch took their statements and asked the party not to leave town for a few days as they would certainly be in touch. Before going home, the party got the gems appraised and sold off the mundane bows, flails and spears for 350gp. When they got home, there were a few interview candidates who hadn't got the word yet: Interviews for 1370-04-23: Minmaje Trollfriend Cook hf, N, CHA Okay Valdrin Gulros Boatswain's Mate hm, LE, CHA Remarkable Many cure spells were cast that night.