We backed out of the room, leaving Hillgauntlet and his bony wenches behind. Immediately, the door slammed shut.

Flint listened at the secret door to the south, across the hallway and heard nothing. Ulland heard even less. The thieves also found no traps on that door. Slowly the feeling of doom that surrounded Hillgauntlet abated.

Kyril cured some of Gonchar’s more serious wounds, returning 16 of his hit points. The rest of the party averted their eyes, allowing Cathal to lay hands on Gonchar, healing him for 12 more and bringing him up to 76 points.

We assumed a general marching order in front of the door\footnote{Kyril had clogged the dart/bolt trap at the end of the hallway at the end of last session. The pit trap at the end of the hall remained, though.}. Gonchar simply opened it and walked in. He found himself in complete blackness, with no help at all from infravision. He may have heard a rustling sound. He backed out into the hallway.

Lycovyne stuck the Sword of Sharpness into the room but it provided no illumination. Menka cast dispel magic just past the door with no apparent effect. Lycovyne tried the Sword again to see if the dispel did anything and this time the sword was knocked back out, definitely metal on metal.

Skeletons In The Closet#

Flint whipped out his Wand of Wonder, pointed it into the room and did whatever is required to activate the device. A lightning bolt was immediately launched into the room. We heard it clatter around a bit, but it did not return to us, so at least 30’ to the far wall or a non- rectangular room. We did hear several objects hit the floor, though.

• Flint, Wand of Wonder, lightning bolt, several skeletons in the room destroyed.

It was still pitch black in the room. Cathal and Gonchar stepped into the room, weapons at the ready. Menka followed and immediately attempted to turn any undead present. No idea if it had any effect ^{[It didn't. Not bog-standard skeletons, then.]} . Cathal tried to turn as well but was interrupted. While Menka attended to his priestly gesticulations the two fighters felt sword blows rain down upon their armor and shields.

• initiative loss
• Cathal got hit for 6 points
• Menka got his back up against the wall and started swinging
• Gonchar, blind fighting, hit something for 18 points of damage, and that something hit the deck at his feet
• initiative win
• Cathal rolled a 1 and hit Gonchar, somehow doing no damage
• Gonchar rolled a 2, then an 18, and whacked Cathal for 11 points of damage
• Menka rolled poorly but was not lucky enough to hit either Cathal or Gonchar as a result
• Menka got hit for 2 points
• initiative win
• Gonchar bellowed “run 20’ into the room!”
• Menka used his turn to run into the room
• Gonchar attacked again and hit something, hard
• Flint ran into the room and got hit for 5 points
• Gonchar’s second attack resulted in a natural 20 and something shattered
• Lycovyne rushed into the room, followed by Ulland
• initiative tie
• Lycovyne got hit for 1 point
• we burst through the darkness into the other end of the room, seeing the darkness as a wall behind us and a bunch of skeletons (note: whom Menka should have been turned automatically?)
• Cathal killed a skeleton in the dark
• Menka hit one for 6 points
• Lycovyne nailed one for 8 points, destroying it
• Ulland killed one
• Gonchar, another natural 20, shattered one
• Flint hit once and destroyed a skeleton - a sore round for our foes, praise Thoth!
• initiative loss
• Ulland got hit for 1 point
• Flint got hit again for 6 points bringing him down to 39
• Menka destroyed his bony foe
• Likewise, Lycovyne shattered his opponent
• Cathal shattered one, and Gonchar followed suit
• Ulland hit one for 6 points but did not destroy it
• Flint, on the other hand, destroyed his foe
• initiative loss
• the remaining skeletons all missed their targets
• Menka destroyed a skeleton, as did Ulland and Gonchar
• Lycovyne and Flint missed
• Cathal hit one but did not shatter it
• initiative win
• Flint hit
• Gonchar destroyed one
• Lycovyne shattered the last skeleton
• 28 skeletons, 7 hp each

Lycovyne somehow healed himself for 1 point of damage, back to full, while Cathal bound Flint’s many grievous wounds. Flint checked around the visible part of the room for secret doors but found none. Lycovyne found no secret doors as well. The only thing in the room (besides all the shattered bones) was the remains of a smoking chest, charred to ruin by the lightning bolt.

As we poked around in the room, we heard Kyril shouting to someone in the hallway, and a familiar voice shouting back. Sticking our heads back out we saw Arkadios at the end of the hallway, with a bearded, skull-capped figure and a fighter .

We all regrouped in the room behind us, now cleared of animated skeletons. The skull-capped man is an Hibernian and an acquaintance of Cathal’s. The cosmic satyr had paid Arkadios well to bring the Hibernian to us underground.

Arkadios did not like the look of the place. He delivered the Hibernian to us, handed Lycovyne a scroll (see below) and took his leave of us, saying he had a mission to attend to. The fighter left with Arkadios.

We had planned to rest in the vicinity. That plan was dropped. We decided to head back to Linnaeus' bolt hole and rest for a bit. It was quite a walk but seemed a good bet. We used the carpet to get back over the pit trap, with Cathal and Gonchar coming across last. Cathal had heard laughter issuing forth from Hillgauntlet’s chamber as he climbed up on the carpet.

The Enchanter We Met In Prison#

We assumed marching order and headed east, backtracking. As we re-entered the big chamber, we noted that all the juju zombies Menka had turned previously had been destroyed by Arkadios, Tim and the fighter on their way through. We continued east, back to the prison. As we entered the large chamber with all the exits south, we saw Arkadios and the fighter trying to get back up the chains to the floor above. Cathal wandered over and, wearing the Boots of Levitation helped them get back up. Arkadios told Cathal that he would remember how helpful we weren’t. Hmm.

Cathal returned and we took a break and acquainted ourselves with our new party member. He introduced himself as Tim the Enchanter. He had battled hill giants with Cathal (where?) and sought him out to tag along while Cathal searched for word of his uncle below the Temple.

We re-formed some sort of marching order and continued east. As we left the large, vaulted chamber we found one of the Innsport pilgrims spiked to the northern wall in the hallway. He/it had 2 puncture wounds in its neck. Tim asked Cathal to cut its head off. Cathal complied. Very little blood came out. Was it a random encounter or was it a sign for us to bugger off? If it was, we didn' t get the memo. Kyril cured serious wounds for Cathal, returning 15 of his hit points and bringing him up to 43.

We took a left and headed north up the hallway. There was a new portcullis barring our way. Lycovyne was able to lift it and we spiked it in place. Tim failed to open the portcullis (just north of B). That made all of us. The long dead minotaur still lay up against the gate, reaching through, trying to reach the winch. Lycovyne tried to knock the portcullis. Something happened, and a lot of rust broke free and hit the floor, but still we could not move it. Fed up with being surrounded by a bunch of skirt-wearing nancy-maries, Menka pushed Lycovyne out of the way and opened the gate, praise Thoth!

While we opened the gate, Tim and Flint became enchanted by a pilgrim of Innsport. She was waiting in the corridor behind the portcullis and now had Tim in her clutches.

• initiative win
• Ulland nailed her at point blank for 23 points of damage bit with a non-magical arrow, so no damage
• Flint nailed her with a natural 20 with his +2 sword but only did 6 points of damage
• Gonchar hit her with his +2 battle axe for 16 points, including 10 points of damage to Tim since they were, er, entangled
• He hit her again for 12 points and split her head open
• Innsport pilgrim vampire, ?? hp

Examining her closely we noted that the wounds in her neck looked fresh. Not only a freshly turned vampire but a new type as well. Cathal bound Tim’s wounds. Gonchar spiked the portcullis, locking it open.

We continued our walk north, to find that someone or something had pulled the portcullis halfway down. We turned east and saw the light pouring out of Linnaeus’ bolt hole and smelled the garlic as well. We rested in Linnaeus’s cell, regaining health and spells. Menka jacked up with Dust Devil and Negative Plane Protection, just in case.

Somewhat refreshed, we formed a marching order and decided to continue east through the newly opened portcullis at (B). We found ourselves in a hallway with holding cells on both sides. The door to each cell was open, with a barred gate within.

• In the first cell on the left, we saw the skeleton of a manticore. Perhaps something the drow left behind.
• The next cell had a very high ceiling and contained, chained to the wall, a human (or human-like creature) much larger than anyone in the party.
• The last cell on the left had 7 shackle sets attached to the back wall, four of which held a dwarven skeleton.
• One of the two cells on the right was empty, perhaps this was the cell the minotaur broke out of.
• The last door on the right opened into a corridor. No traps were found, nor were any noises heard. The corridor was covered in webs. Kyril took point and immediately a large spider fell upon him. It was dead, but he made friends with it anyway. We averted our eyes.

The last door on the right, past the dead spider, opened into a 20’x30’ room, evidently a rather nasty Drow torture chamber. No other doors seemed to exist in this room. Lycovyne and Kyril searched for secret doors, finding none. They did however find a “rather plain ring with a spidery emblem emblazoned upon it”. Haven’t we seen that before?

Finding nothing else of consequence (and the hallway having ended) we backtracked. Ulland and Menka grabbed some manticore bones on the way out, to serve as spell and scroll ink components. We formed a marching order and headed back to the big, vaulted chamber dead-center. Time to get this over with and all that. We made it back to the chamber without incident and chose the 3rd corridor from the left.

We marched onward. Kyril swore he could see a bluish light ahead, as if it was reflected in a mirror.

The 5’ wide corridor was long, very long, and covered in some earthy, oily film. Reaching the end, it opened into a large, widening cavern. Near the entrance we found a heap of ripped clothing. It looked very much like something had suddenly grown too large for its clothing and burst out of it.

Evil Woman#

At the far end of the cavern we saw what surely must have been Ulland’s gate. A large, glowing orb was set on a pedestal. It looked different then Ulland recalled - when last he had been here some sort of gate had been open beyond the orb, a portal into another world, with horrifying, impossibly large creatures that were both insect and crustacean, with Innsport riders on their backs.

It looked different to him, now - the wall beyond was blank, stone and no such portal existed. We saw no exits of any kind though, according to Ulland, when he was last here the chamber was bright and went on forever past the orb, impossibly large.

Finding nothing immediately useful we headed back to the vaulted chamber and picked the first corridor from the left. It was foul, disgusting. It smelled of death and evil. Oily tentacles of odor enveloped us as we followed its bend to the east. The stench got worse as we moved onward.

To the south the passage widened out into a large corridor. This corridor lead to a huge chamber with a high ceiling, lost in mist. The path lead through this chamber, across a bridge glistening with slime, over a river of slow-moving mud. The smell was face-pummeling by now. The bridge continued east and passed through an arch.

Cathal offered to cross the bridge in levitation mode. He scanned the area ahead and found a ladder leading up to a tunnel 70’ overhead, on the other side of the chamber.

Gonchar wanted to march across the bridge but we talked him out of it. Instead Gonchar, Lycovyne and Ulland climbed on to the carpet and crossed the bridge without touching it, pulling Cathal and his boots behind them. Lycovyne returned to pick up Menka and Flint.

Left behind, Kyril and Tim heard a noise behind them. The Huntress had arrived, elaborate steel claws and all.

“You’ve been annoying me.”

• She attacked Kyril, but his Cloak of Displacement caused her to miss.
• Kyril cast Power Word Stun but it had no effect - a new type of vampire?
• initiative loss
• she hit Kyril for 9 points of damage with her metal claws
• Kyril grappled her and, using the Ring of Spell Storing , teleported without error to the bottom of the river behind the monastery

Gone. In an instant.

The party mustered into a marching order and continued on. The corridor opened into a huge room. The walls were covered with pictures of gods, hunters, things we didn’t recognize. The room was huge, indeed. Far beyond the limit of our light sources a blue-green sphere of light bubbled in the distance. It was impossible to tell how far away it was.

About halfway into this room we saw a set of large double doors in the distance. The blue bubbling light seemed to recede into the distance as we approached them. Stone pillars lined the hall. There was a clattering noise and each of the pillars shattered, releasing a juju zombie.

• Tim took 1 point of damage
• initiative win
• Menka managed to turn 4 of whatever they were
• Tim fired off a 7d6 fireball for 23 points of damage
• Lycovyne followed it up with a 5d6 fireball, knocking down 8 of our assailants, many of whom had been torched by Tim
• Flint hit a zombie creature twice for 11 points
• Cathal missed, badly, and chipped a nail
• Ulland nailed one for 24 points, but did no damage with his non-magical arrow
• Gonchar nailed one for 16 points
• Flint got hit for 8 points
• Cathal got hit for 3 points, while another assailant missed him
• Gonchar got nailed for 10 points
• Ulland hit twice, this time killing one
• initiative win
• Lycovyne, Wand of Frost, Ice Storm for 15 points of cold damage, had no effect
• Menka missed
• Cathal nailed a zombie creature for 15 points, but did not kill it
• Tim fired off some magic missiles, but they seemed to have no effect
• Gonchar hit one for 11 points, killing it
• Flint hit one for 5 points
• they missed Menka, praise Thoth!
• Cathal missed with his second shot
• initiative tie
• they hit Gonchar for 6 points but missed Cathal
• they hit Menka for 4 points
• Gonchar nailed one for 28 points but did not kill it
• Ulland nailed one for 12 points with his +2 sword
• Cathal hit one for 15 points, killing it
• Menka nailed one for 7 points
• Flint missed, then missed again
• initiative loss
• the missed Gonchar, Catha and Ulland
• Menka got hit for 5 more
• Flint got hit for 9
• Menka and Cathal both missed
• Ulland hit one for 21 points, destroying it
• Gonchar nailed one for 33 points, obliterating it
• Flint missed twice, again
• Cathal hit one for 10 points, destroying it
• initiative loss
• they missed Menka but hit Flint for 8 points
• Flint hit one twice, destroying it
• Gonchar hit one for 16 points
• Cathal hit for 15, killing the last one
• 20 juju zombies, 29 HP each

Menka cured Flint’s more serious wounds, returning 16 points of health. Cathal bound Flint’s wounds, returning 2 more. Cathal also bound wounds for Menka, Tim and Gonchar.