Hanging around just wasn’t my style. Last time I stick my neck out for a mage, although he does have his uses. Thankfully a group of barely competent adventures happened upon us prior to our untimely demise, which I am grateful to my god, The Great Wolf, for hearing and answering my prayer. I find myself wrapped up in some plot with my new found companions which includes Drow, which I despise, as well as a keep and some other backstabbing mage. Of course, in my opinion exactly all mage’s qualify for this distinction.
But I digress. A brief description of the party with whom I now find myself involved, in a purely convenient manner, is in order. There is of course a dwarven cleric, as if the lands needed yet another of these self-righteous gold crazed dirt munchers. I believe his name is Krond, or some other monosyllabic device similar in sound. The only good thing about Krond is he’s so short I can fire arrows right over his bald head, and he’s good to have around after a fight. For healing the fighter of course.
Speaking of fighters, there is Alistar the fighter who seems to be very good at nearly dying. Fortunately the lad is resilient and the dwarf has taken pity upon his unfortunate soul by offering a healing hand about every ten minutes.
Bainor the elf barbarian? Enough said.
A perfectly useless rogue named Cretoe seems to enjoy triggering traps and causing significant damage to certain fighters of the party. Note to self, keep back from Cretoe especially when he is attempting to pick things like locks and such. I must confess however, even with his penchant for blowing things up, he is a likable fellow.
Naugrim the Mage, whom I sometimes hang out with, seems to have some redeemable qualities. For one, he doesn’t listen to the dwarf much and he is also decent at blowing things up. On purpose of course unlike Cretoe who has mastered accidentally blowing things up, including Alistar.
I find myself lost in a dwarven tomb with my new ‘friends’. Apparently the dwarf figured out how to open an ancient dwarven door to a tomb which lay sealed for centuries filled with all kinds of things which will no doubt try to kill us. Of course remaining trapped in the cavern due to a cave in was not an option. So we entered, but not without some longwinded list of rules from the dwarf which included something about not touching things inside the tombs. I never was too good with authority.
The entry foyer was a long narrow chamber filled with two shallow pools with a deep pool and bell at the end of the chamber opposite the door. Krond ‘the boss’ ordered everyone not to touch anything in the room for fear of bad things happening. It occurs to me we’re trapped in an ancient dwarven tomb, how much worse could it get. So we touched stuff anyway.
By some small miracle Cretoe managed to pick a lock on a door in the next room after the foyer just as Naugy and I discovered the key for the lock at the bottom of the deep pool. The key was given to Cretoe to help him with any future lock picking endeavors. Oh yeah, Naugy rang the bell without actually touching it. Nice trick, I’ll need to learn that one.
So onward we journeyed. The next room was roughly square with a large statue of a dwarf, I know what you’re thinking; someone had a complex. There were also four alcoves in the corners of the room and four doors at the compass points. Three of the statues were in the shape of dwarves but with animal heads and the fourth corner had a black pillar. We searched the black pillar and found a keyhole. It turned out the key we found in the first room fit this lock as well. Cretoe fitted the key into the lock and a secret panel slid open in the black column revealing some dwarven treasure. However; when he opened the compartment the three animal headed dwarven statues sprung to life and attacked Alistar.
We easily vanquished the animated statues and then healed Alistar. I was hoping to see a raging elf barbarian but I’m not sure the elf knows how to get angry. Do elves get angry? I wonder. You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen an angry elf. I bet Krond could get him going.
The four doors in the room were investigated, while we touched nothing, we still amazingly found some treasure stuffed up the left nostril of a dwarven face carved right into the wall of a small closet. [ And the carvings left eye- the DM ]
The treasure was surprisingly meager for all the trouble Alistar went through fighting the dwarven statues. There was one thing we left untouched, no really we did leave one item untouched. We found a sarcophagus in one antechamber which we left unmolested. I could tell Krond really wanted to find out what lay hidden within the sarcophagus but we managed to talk him out of it.
Next we found a metal clad human figure filled with sprocketed gears and wheels and a small key hole in the base of the neck. Alistar tried the key we had from the foyer but to no avail. The key would not fit the keyhole. As luck would have it Cretoe managed to fail on his attempt to force the lock resulting in a massive explosion of fire and metal. Fortunately for Cretoe, Alistar was standing right there and managed to block all damage to Cretoe. The rest of the party was not as lucky.
The metal man was standing guard next to an iron door. The door led to a small chamber with a chest placed on the floor. You’ll never guess what we found inside the chest. The key for the metal man! Oh well. We all thought it ironic except for Alistar of course who dabbed puss from his multiple burn wounds.
We continued on, since we had little choice, and found a room with a pool of water. The dwarves seem to have this thing with pools of water. I didn’t think they bathed too much but I could be wrong. I’ll have to inquire as to Krond’s bathing habits. There were some strange fish swimming in the pool along with silver coins scattered about the bottom. We ignored the pool and moved to the exit from this room which led to yet another chamber.
The chamber beyond the room with the reflecting pool had a mosaic floor and a door opposite the entry. There was a strange feeling about the room and we found ourselves unsure of how to proceed. I think Cretoe decided to sneak into the room but was immediately sliced to pieces. Tiny bits of Cretoe lay scattered about the beautiful mosaic floor. Alistar, not wanting to be outdone in his field of expertise decided to jump on into the room and be sliced to bits as well. But before he did, Naugy attempted some spell which didn’t seem to work out so well.
Krond finally proved his usefulness and cast some sort of incantation which revealed the slicing blades as an illusion. With the illusion dispelled we discovered there was a viscous hag in the room. The hag tried to rip Cretoe’s head off, however the little thief proved tougher than he looks and put up a good fight until the rest of us could come to his aid and kill the hag. She did die well though.
