Stepping into the Mess Hall after bathing the worst of the dungeon funk off of us, we managed to squeeze in at a table and then got some of the stew and venison that was at the buffet style kitchen. Some of the locals got to chatting with us, and we got a full lesson on leatherworking and tanning of hides. There was a point where they tried to talk to us about getting some green slime samples but we quickly demurred and then learned that they were taking bets on which of us might come out with burns and scars from attempting to take a sample. At the end of it though it was genial and by 7 or later we had gone back to the visitor’s hall and made ourselves ready for the next foray.
“We’re going for the fountain, right?” Shim asked, fingering his missing ear and scarred head.
“Fuck yeah, we are.” Connal agreed.
“Hoping to get lucky?” Darius asked.
“It worked for Grygmiir,” the gnome shrugged. “It should work for me?”
“Who?”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Captain Asher chuckled. “I think he’s the new guy.”
We went back to the entrance hall and spoke with Kira again before the passage was opened and we descended again into the Terror Dungeon’s depths. This time the stairs travelled in a straight line down, heading east and it was a bit before we emerged at the entrance chamber again. Unlike the other chamber, the floor here was a ragged mess of old equipment busted and smashed. 4 doors were here, north, south, east, and west. There was a chlorine smell to the air and Thon commented that it most likely went towards the gas chamber – which would be the south door.
But we had a mission and that was to head east. We opened the door there and moved down the hall that turned left and then split. “That way is a trapped door,” Darius said pointing down the north passage, reviewing his map.
“ “Map” “ Asher muttered.
“You say something?” Darius asked. The Half elf shrugged and looked around absently.
The group went east and the fountain room showed a variety of figures around a stylized Yggdrassil tree that was the central focus of the font. The water shimmered slightly. We took out the horn and the group then went round robin, sipping the fountain water from the Bandersnatch horn. Shim did indeed get lucky and had a healing pulse run through him, regenerating his many scars and missing bits of flesh, making his skin baby smooth. Darius had the same and the fighter was horrified at his callus free fingers. “No!”
“You can always make more calluses,” Brading offered which did little to appease the fighter. Once everyone had taken a drink (Rhygar actually doubling all the coins in his pouch!) and Shim filling his skin with the slightly chocolate tasting water, we discussed our next steps. The thought was to proceed through the area, see if the mass of green slime was still there, and if not, move on and see if we could get to an area where this entrance would join up with the rest of the maps.
So we headed back to the main room, Thon listened to the north door, hearing deep male voices talking. “Quillians,” Darius whispered, “Let’s leave them alone.” He pointed west. “To the zombie area? We heading there?’
“Fuck yes, we are,” Connal agreed. Thon once more gave the door his blessing and Connal opened it up. The passage went south, jogged east a short spell, and went south again. It ended at a door that we pretty sure knew led to the zombie area. With care we opened it up and looked in. There was an almost 20’ area by the door of filth that had been piled up on the left and right wall, with a slimy path running through the middle. 4 sodden couches were spaced about the room, each with a 3 count of dead human, bugbear, lizardman, and ogre on it. A few large crates were in here as well, the monk giving them a scowl.
“Do they come right at us?” Darius asked.
“No,” Brading replied, “If you mess with them or anything in the room, they “awaken”.”
“Really? I don’t remember that.”
“Yeah, last time through we figured it out.”
“Ok then,” the fighter agreed. “We’re just going to go right through.”
“Fuck yes, we are,” Connal nodded, kissing his fists left and right.
“Anyone else getting a weird feeling from the monk?” Shim asked.
“Yeah,” Captain Asher said. “Thon, too. They’re both rather agreeable today.”
“Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth,” Darius said, frowning and looking around quickly. “Weird…a horse pun. Anyway, let’s go.”
The group indeed did cross the chamber and we watched the zombies carefully, but none of them got up or came at us. At the end of the chamber the passage turned east and we went by a slow burning torch, eventually coming to the chamber with the floating table. The table was here, 3 candles lit, 1 not, the entire thing leaning a bit over. The tapestry that had been burned off the wall had been replaced with another copy, a bit less refined than the last one. Still showed 3 women at the same table, eating grapes.
Thon checked the north door (Yep! Still smells of methane), noting that someone had installed a leather flap at the bottom of the door like a sweep to keep the gas that sieves through to a fraction of what it was before. “Bunch of Ogres blowing up might make the dungeon safety board react to things like this,” Shim shrugged, looking under the table. There was some spell work under it, and being small enough, he could feel the waves of repulsing energy coming off. As for the tapestry, Asher and Brading not sure who the women were. One might be Sif, but the other two were not Freya nor Frigga – the other 2 main goddesses in the pantheon. The thought was this might not be any gods.
We then moved east. At the corner was a chamber that could be locked within, some sort of trophy room. It was pretty trashed right now, but a viable safe room should we need it later. We then moved on north, lighting another torch (lantern was still doing ok) as we did so. The next room has many holes along the bottom and middle, gnawed and kicked. Some of the classroom maybe, but there was a 15” glowing crackling yellow sun like ball in the center of the chamber, spinning slowly.
“Moving on,” Darius said, pointing at the chamber. “Not for us.” We waited a second for dissenting opinions but none came and the party pressed on north.
The next chamber was the slime room. The fact that there was none in the hall so far meant that others had taken care of the menace. The door was missing and the room was scrubbed clean except for a 5’ semi circle of salt on the far east wall where a patch of green slime sat unmoving. We did note though that if we stayed at the doorway, the slime could sense us and made some attempt to either cross the circle or climb the wall. Backing away calmed it down and returned to its inert/dormant state. The group agreed to move on from here with care and not dawdle.
There were 2 doors left, one on the left and another at the end of the hall. Once upon a time there had been an Ogre guard here but that was 2 and a half ye…at least 3 months ago. “Didn’t we tie those 2 doors together once upon a time?” Shim asked.
“Yeah,” Darius agreed. “What did you say?”
Thon went forward to listen to the left door, holding his hand up and eventually letting the group know, “There’s something in there. Skittering sounding? Maybe? Hard to tell.” He also ran his fingers across his chest. “Also, feels a bit like, I don’t know. Electricity? A charge maybe?”
We talked about options and eventually ended up with Connal going in to look around. We opened the door, not seeing anything right now, some dry goods, boxes, fat sacks. The Monk was ready to enter when Darius held his hand up and said, “Hang on. I think we’re doing this all wrong.” He looked at Shim, “Can’t you summon something instead of sending in Connal?”
The gnome smiled and began casting. “Yes I can.”
“Fuck yes, we are,” the monk agreed.
At this point a large badger appeared, skittering and snarling. Shim pointed into the room and then we shut the door. Which followed a host of snarls, screams, whipping sounds, crashed, some sparking, strange hooting calls and eventually the badger dropping dead. When it eventually quieted down Asher nodded slowly and said, “That was horrible!” He then proceeded to take a stick of chalk and write the word “Horrible” on the door in large capital letters. “No reason to ever go in there.”
The group agreed and we then turned our attention north. Thon eventually gave the thumbs up and Connal cracked it open. There was a large table with the smashed remnants of alembics, alchemy tubings, and the like on the far end of the room. There was a door on the right hand side of the room and a lever in the down position. But on the left hand side were three sarcophagi, each stained with verdigris from possible submergence in water. Each was a bit open, and each had a mummy within. Two humanoid, one lizardman. Each mummy had the odd arrow sticking out of it as well as some cuts. Currently they were all just lying there, on their back, looking straight up.
The discussion to fuck with them or the lever was short and even though the group joked briefly with Connal about looking at them, the unanimous decision was to TOUCH NOTHING and get the hell out of here.
“Fuck yes, we are!” Connal agreed, heading east to the other door out of here.
“He is sounding very repetitive,” Asher noted.
“Mayhap, but let’s move on,” Darius was anxious. “We are FINALLY getting to an area we’ve never charted before!” The passage east ran at least 12 paces, ending at a “T” intersection lit with a slow burn torch. The smell of refuse and squeal of rats was nearby. From here, we could head north to an eventual turn to the east, a short step north to an eastern passage (where the reek of garbage and many rodent sounds were coming from) or head south a short distance and then head east. We did not want to face any rats for now so since the south passage was closer, we went that way.
We followed along, walking slowly and with care. The passage was a good 30 paces and eventually opened up to a strange room roughly 30 x 20, with a few 45 degree angle walls. Two statues of orcish warriors in armor, 10’ tall and running from floor to ceiling like a column, were set up opposite one another, fingers pointing at each other and snarling angrily. The group did not feel good walking between them and it was eventually discovered that there were some prints in the grit BEHIND the statues. It would be a tight fit for any dwarf or orc, but we each took turns walking around, making some scraping noises as we did so. But after a short while we were on the other side without passing between the statues for now.
Another torch was lit and we pressed on. From here the passage went on to a very large chamber, at least 50’ x 30’. The ceiling was 20’ tall and was covered with 30 to 40 lizard like humanoid figures holding on to the roof and hanging down, looking around at the floor below. Dim light revealed a passage running south in the south east corner of the room, and north of here was another passage sunning west in the north west section. On the north wall was an alcove and door with a large heavy wooden sign on chains above that read, “Do not proceed beyond here on pain”.
We discussed options. The door was not attractive to us and Darius wanted us to try the south east passage as it might lead to another missing part of the map. With no other reason not to, we went single file, hugging the south wall. At the corner Thon looked around to see a short passage that opened to another chamber. There were old burn scars and the scent of ozone was baked into the stones here.
Not wanting to mess with any potential lightning traps, we figured we would back up and head to the northwest passage instead.
And that’s when 4 gargoyles dropped from the ceiling above and hit the group in a concentrated surprise attack. With multiple claw swipes, a goring rip with their horns, and a stony bite, they shredded the group quickly, striking the party and their spread out positioning. Asher and Shim took the brunt of the blows, the gnome activating his ring of shields fast following up with a summon spell getting 3 giant rats to stand in front of him. Darius found himself in melee as the gargoyles continued their assault, the party trying to concentrate their attacks on just a few of the gargoyles. Their stony skin made hitting them difficult but their blows against us buckling armor and scraping up shields.
A Troglodyte joined the fight with a 2 handed morning star thanks to Shim and the party was rocking from the impacts. Healing was doled out during the fight and Darius had a chance to finally get his sling in play. Bullets and stones flew and the gargoyles continued their attack, but we managed to finally fell one of the rocky monsters. A morale check followed and the 3 remaining one decided they did not want to fight, flying to the northwest passage to escape. We managed to strike one of them running away, doing enough damage to it to drop it from the sky and forcing it to run instead. And it had a heavy pounding gait and stride that Darius identified as the same noise we had heard from the other side of the secret room we had hid in earlier that day that we thought might be golems.
We healed up and waited a bit longer before heading to the northwest passage and moving on – ready to see any of the gargoyles that might be here. The passage moved west, then north, then split – west heading to the smell of garbage and sound of rats (most likely the other side of the same passage we had noted 20 minutes earlier), or a short jog east and then north. We went north.
And it was here while looking around that Shim found a secret door on the west wall! We shoved and pushed at it till it opened and it was the OTHER side of the secret room we had been in earlier! Success! We filed within and Darius spent some time matching his maps up and showing how Entrance two and Entrance three do eventually get together. With more of the map now in place and the time was a bit after 10 PM, we discussed where to go next from here.
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