Adventure 20

Party Members:
Hammar – 5th Level Cleric
Cloverdung – 5th Level Ranger
Othello – 5th Level Thief
Gubikla – 5th Level Magic User
Kavis – 4th Level Fighter

As the party is about to bed down for the evening, Kavis climbs his way up to the nest. Everyone is overjoyed to see Kavis and quickly fall to sleep, while he stays awake for guard duty.

As Kavis is taking a leak on the sleeping Hammar, he notices a rotating beacon light, green in color, off in the North. In the direction of the castle we have been searching for the past several days. He watches for a while and then decides to find something else to watch. As he is walking around the nest, he finds an unusual stone in the flooring. After a quick dwarven inspection, he determines this to be a trap door of some kind. Kavis locates the edges of the door but fails to find a way to make it open. Therefore, he wakes up Othello from his slumber to have him find the way to open it. Othello studies it for a while and then finally discovers the pressure plate that lowers the stone covering to reveal a staircase leading down.

Without waking the others, Othello and Kavis delve into the darken staircase. On the way down, Othello discovers a false step that is a trap and easily disarms it. They proceed down. At on the stair landings, Othello discovers a secret compartment that houses a knob. He discovers that this knob will open and close the trap door from which they entered. Before proceeding down any further, Kavis hollers for the others to wake up and join them. Cloverdung hears something from his sleep, but simply rolls over for more shut eye. Gubikla and Hammar do not bugde from their spooning position.

Othello and Kavis continue down the stairs, knowing that whatever treasure they find will be easier to split up since there are only two of them, and Kavis can count that high. The two finally spill into a room with multiple hallways leading from it. They see that there are scorch marks on the walls, floor & ceiling. They check all the hallways to find rooms at the ends. Nothing in these rooms except piles of ashes and other burnt objects. There are some silver frames on the walls of these outer rooms, but rock inside the frames. Some astrological and other scientific objects are collected by Othello and Kavis, from all the rubble. They determine that some of the ashes are former beings that were completely destroyed.

Up top in the nest, the others finally awake. Hammar has a wet blanket. Cloverdung searches the horizon for their party members who left guard duty to go do whatever they were doing instead of guarding. He sees nothing. Well, for a second he thought he saw a green light off to the North. But, decides it was nothing. Cloverdung finally finds the open trap door with footprints from Othello and Kavis entering. Hammar, Gubikla, and Colverdung make their way down the stairs looking for the others.

Once Kavis and Othello have finished collecting all the items to find, Gubikla, Hammar and Cloverdung catch up to them. Othello tells Gubikla about the silver frames in the outer rooms. Upon inspection and some read magic, Gubikla says the magic words and poof! The rock that was inside the frame is now letting the outside sun shine in and the characters can see out as if the rock were now a simple window. it is not an open window mind you, only transparent.

The party decides to head down more stairs that leads into a smaller, much more greatly scorched room. That has a partial pentagram inscribed in the floor with some knocked over braziers around the edges. There are some orbs of some kind scattered around the room that Othello and Kavis collect. Hammar eventually finds one as well. Gubikla sees a glimmer of something in the pentagram that is humanoid shape, lying in the middle. He finally works up the courage to enter the pentagram. However, before reaching the center he is frightened and decides to exit the pentagram.

More stairs leading down are found so the group goes even lower. Kavis has determined that the rock outcropping with the nest at top is really some kind of fortress. And, the party is only a couple of floors away from being at ground level. The stairs enter a small room with a couple of alcoves. Othello searches one of the alcoves and finds a secret door. That seems to be trapped. Possibly with two traps. Hammar finds a knob in the other alcove. In the excitement of pollishing the knob, Hammar turns it to reveal a secret spiral staircase going down.

Cloverdung agrees to help Othello try to open the trapped secret door. Cloverdung uses his floating glove and a 10′ pole to press one of the levers. Othello, thinking he has disarmed one trap, presses the other lever. CRACKLE CRACKLE CRACKLE!!! A lightning bolt flies out from the secret door. It destroys Colverdung’s 10′ pole and yields 46 hit points of damage to Othello. Luckily, Hammar provided Othello with some extra hits prior the trap springing, so he does not die. Close.

After Othello picks himself up off the floor, the secret door is revealed to lead to a small bedroom. There is a desk, chest and cot in the small room. Hammar finds some items in the chest. Othello finds some writing materials in the desk. And Cloverdung finds a wand under the pillow. Meanwhile, Kavis has ventured down the spiral stairs to see where that leads.

After the quick looting of the bedroom, the others head down the spiral stairs. Hammar pops the knob off the wall for future poillishing. At the base of the stairs, the party finds Kavis shoving some items into his backpack. Clearly he has found something amongst the umbrella and coat stand. There is also a door. Kavis opens the door and walks outside to the notice he is at the base of the rock outcropping. From the outside, the door cannot be seen. He comes back in and the group heads back up to the pentagram room. Gubikla has gained his courage and wants to investigate the glimmering body in the pentagram.

Once the party return to the pentagram room, Gubikla slowly enters and feels around the floor in the middle. The others see him appear to be digging through something. He finally exits the pentagram and exclaims that he has found our next quest.

COD Piece Award
(Character Of the Day)

Hammar

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