Before we went through either door, Thon (And Connal) went down the hall to listen to each. He was sure that it was quiet at each door, and a short search let him know the doors were not locked and most likely not trapped. The water was still on the floor coming from under the north door. After some time though, Thon tentatively opened the south door and looked in.
It was a decent sized room and there indeed was a set of stairs going down on the west end of the chamber. It was cool here, and the steps had a low roiling fog of chilled air acting as a mist. The southeast corner had a lizard man tied up there. He had a rope around his head and tied back to his ankles, dragging his neck open. It had been slit and from the intermittent torch light, it seemed that he had another half dozen stab wounds in the side of his skull.
“Yah,” Thon grunted. “Let’s not go in here just yet.” He went to the north door and looked in there. Another sizable chamber but this one had a few buckets, the north and west walls were oozing some water, coming through as if under pressure, and there were 3 dead bugbears in here. Again, the room was cold – not frozen. He nodded and said to the monk, “Yah, pretty much as I expected. Nothing special. Let’s get the others.”
They went back and discussed what had been seen, the group deciding to head down the steps after going into the waterlogged chamber first. The thought was the Frostman (who was promised to be here but was now conspicuously absent) probably stayed here and was responsible for the water-troll (Scrag) not wandering about. With him being missing, the water has melted and the Scrag is now walking free.
As for the bugbears, no sign as to what killed them, but they had been submerged until recently. Brading checked out the water directly, standing in the streams of it but outside of it having a faint brackish or briny taste, no specific identifier where it originated from. We went back to the stairs down and checked out the lizardman…with OUT touching it. In fact, Asher eventually did a detect undead spell, getting a nascent budding but not active feeling from the lizardman. Ok – might be undead if we fuck with it – so let’s don’t!
We travelled down the steps, where they turned to the left, went some distance, and turned again. The air grew colder as we went lower and eventually, we were on the 2nd level! Um…again! Some writing on the wall here and the floor had a layer of ice on it. Passage “T”’ed here, most of the cold and ice was south. So we went north. Torch and lantern were getting low, so we relit and refilled them and travelled on.
A side passage went off to the west and there was a door down there, but we kept going north. Eventually we came to a closed door and once Thon gave us the ok, we opened it up to see another fountain room! Very nice! The center of the fountain was stylized version of Yggdrassil. We took out the Bandersnatch Horn and everyone took a shot at drinking. About half of us had no bad effect, the others got a few special boons. Some time had passed and we discussed other options on where to go, whether out the door to the north or back south – when the matter was taken from our hands.
The south door opened up and a horde of armed and armored kobolds were there! We estimated 30, but was most likely more (actually 41!) and we were not looking to get a fight. They wanted us to leave and were getting geared up to engage with us when the party retreated out the north door – to see an oversized Shrieker in the hallway! A monster of a specimen, the group was caught between a rock and a hard place when Brading cast a silence spell on the behemoth and the group stepped up to try and destroy it, closing the door to the fountain room behind.
The problem was the huge myconid was dropping lots of spores and even more were spewing out when we struck deep enough. So much so that Captain Asher and Rhygar had gotten covered in them. And it was eating their clothes as well as growing on their face. So the old axiom, Kill it With Fire, came into play and the burning torch was pressed against both men, setting the fungal bloom ablaze and hurting both of them in the process. Asher had to replace his boots and pants (luckily he had a spare of each) and after all healed up and ready, we headed north.
And through the large archway on the west side, was a curled up wingless dragon on a mass of boxes, bags, and loose coin. And he was getting bothered that we had been so noisy. Named Tyrannous he had been awakened by the party talking and was willing to let them past. Since Thon was there, he asked Thon for his pouch, had him tell him what was inside, told him to take out a gold piece – and then toss the remainder, pouch and all, into the room. And now he can go past.
Er…crap.
We wanted to head back and wanted the kobolds to finish with the fountain. So we promised to be quiet and waited for Tyrannous to fall asleep again – and then we waited. It was a bit before 10 when we heard nothing in the fountain room so we went that way again, no kobolds, and headed on south. We took a detour down the side hall where it ended a door. Locked, we picked the lock and made our way in. A large statue of a dragon snake was here but it looked like it could be rotated. So we turned it slowly and then it lifted a bit, and pivoted down – revealing a floor trap that lead down to another room.
The party took turns looking down there. Some sort of temple/shrine to a snake god. Asher counseled us on leaving it alone and going away. There was a 15’ long snakeskin in here, and the passage south went off to the darkness and gloom. A closed and locked chest, a key in an offering cup on the altar. But thon took the robes, holy symbol, and sandals. We then got out, lit another torch, closed it all up behind us and made our way with speed to the stairs.
Up again on the 1st level, we were racing against time to head back to the Entrance One. We navigated the slopes up, long hall, and then slope down. Wending our way to the west of the Bugbear area we kept going until we came to the stair up and with a handful of minutes left before we would have needed the chime, we emerged back to the surface again, and came to Bork Keep at 11:30 on Restmonth the 23rd.
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