18th Session; 16 April 2020

Valldel Amakiir - 3rd Level Male Elven Rogue

Akadum Ironbeard - 3rd Level Male Dwarf Fighter

Dolin Stoneflare - 3rd Level Male Dwarf Light Cleric

Kethry - 3rd Level Female Human Wizard

5 June 981, Sunday, Continued

Partly cloudy and warm

They continue down the sloping corridor.  Valldel sees nothing out ahead and falls into the pit trap at the end.  Through the door and they see a room with a central pit with flame burning in the center.  There is a hiss, clearly the source of the flame is gas coming up from below.  The pit is littered with charred bones and via Dr. Hoot Kethry can see some glittering soot coated things.  Kethry casts a Mage Hand and gathers up these and finds two medium sized jewels.

After dithering, they decide to head into the bad smelling natural caves.  There is a room with low ceiling and filled with piles of what looks to be improvised weapons.  Dolin launches Burning Hands blindly into the room and they hear a scream and find one dead Fungal Goblin who was apparently wielding a pole arm.

They head out one of the two exits, down a narrow passage, and into another low room filled with rocks and indistinct piles of dirt.  Akadum probes ahead and realizes the piles are actually Fungal Goblins sleeping.  Valldel sneaks in and they dispatch two before realizing there are six more in the room.  Some of the Goblins move to attack but are burned up by Kethry's Burning Hands and the remainder flee out the far end of the room.  Around the other way they find what looks to be a Fungal Jungle with pools of water and a riot of many sorts of fungi and mushrooms.  Kethry sees a patch of magical, purple mushrooms she recognizes as being able to re-animate someone turned into stone.  Jon Fairbrain is sent into the jungle to gather the mushrooms, and while he is doing that a large number of Goblins come around the corner and attack.  They begin by throwing a mushroom which lands between Dolin and Kethry and the cloud of spores cause both of them to be confused.  Dolin begins loudly extolling the virtues of Apollo while the Goblins swarm them.  The others rush to rescue them while Jon Fairbrain retreats after gathering the Purple Mushrooms.

The goblins are dispatched when Kethry snaps out of it and the other smash the remainder.  They press ahead as Akadum sees a Goblin on a throne in the next room.  He shoots it and it falls to pieces.  It was an effigy made of sticks with a crown of bent cutlery.  Dolin exults in the destruction of a false god.

After some debate they press on and find a Fungal Goblin midden, containing stuff too putrid to even discuss.  Finally they get to what looks like a large mushroom growing area noting some of the mushrooms have hands and eyes.  They spread oil and burn this area thoroughly assuming it is the Fungal Goblin spawning ground.

Beyond is a twisty passage leading to a door in worked stone corridor.  Just beyond that is a rotating pillar that fills the corridor.  There is a niche in the pillar and one can get in it and rotate the pillar to pass beyond.  Rotating it one way leads to stabbing spear that they all manage to avoid.  The other reveals an alcove with a pair of gold bowls and a stone snake idol.

The short corridor beyond leads to the far side of the big room in which they fought the basilisk.  The corridor beyond leads to two doors one of which is an ornate snake mosaic.  They go through the unlocked plain door and are greeted by a hideous, skeletal snake man who says, "Greetings bipeds."

Seventeenth Session, 31 March 2020

Valldel Amakiir - 3rd Level Male Elven Rogue

Akadum Ironbeard - 3rd Level Male Dwarf Fighter

Dolin Stoneflare - 3rd Level Male Dwarf Light Cleric

Kethry - 3rd Level Female Human Wizard

5 June 981, Sunday, Continued

Partly cloudy and warm

They explore the next stone door.  Akadum pushes it open and they see another tomb with a lidless sarcophagus.  On the wall opposite the door is a silvery disk that Kethry can see is magical.  Tony explores and sees nothing within, and Dolin leads them into the room.  When they get half way down the connecting corridor a bolt of lightning from the disk shoots and badly hurts Dolin, Akadum, and Valdell.  Dolin drinks a healing potion (from Kohn's Explorers which they met at the Weston Coach Inn and fought the Charred Hag) and heals Valdell.  Kethry sees the disk is now ownly feintly magical, and Dr. Hoot is unable to remove the disk which seems to be embedded in the wall.

They then turn their attention to the ornate stone door which is decorated with a snake motif.  The door opens easily and they see a stairway down.  Akadum leads the way down, and when he gets to the third step, there is a sharp click, and the stair transforms into a slide.  Akadum slides down and hits a set of spikes at the bottom.  There is a large room below with many old shields on the wall and a stone snakeman with a large, dented sword, and archaic armor which animates and attacks Akadum.  The others cautiously make their way down safely, except for Valdell who slips near the end and injures himself on the spikes.  Kethry notices the shields are feintly magical and when she has Dr. Hoot mess with one it flies off the wall and she is able to avoid it smashing into her.  The others fight it out with the stone snakeman who is quite tough.  He summons one of the shields to him during the fight and Dolin and Valdell are barely able to get out of its way.  They defeat the stone snakeman supported by magic from Kethry and Dolin, Valdell striking from behind, and Akadum resorting to his Steam Pistol.

In the aftermath of the fight, they notice that something above has closed the door at the top of the ramp and they can hear something that sounds like construction above.  As a precaution they dismantle the spikes at the bottom of the ramp.  At the back of the room is a open entrance leading to a ledge along the big chasm they saw before.  They note the ledge is wet and slippery and decide to proceed along it cautiously by hammering pitons into the wall and making a rope line they can hang on to as they move along the ledge.  The come to a door which is barred from the ledge side.   They are reminded of the trap on the upper level and indeed Valdell sees all the signs of a trap.  Their attempts to build something to remotely lift the lever fails as the rock here is too slippery and crumbly to support their mechanism.  They continue along the ledge and find an entrance they visited before.  Within they pass a pit trap, which has been reset, but is easy to avoid as long as they move slowly and cautiously.

They head back towards the chamber opposite the door they could not get through and within find rotted furniture, tattered wall hangings, and a dry fountain.  There is a trace of gold leaf around the fountain.  They head back towards the large chamber where they fought a Basilisk.  They pass the trap triggered by Kevin, the hated Fungal Goblin, that collapsed.  The area has been cleaned up with the rubble pushed to the sides and the functional bits of the trap, blades, springs and such, missing.  There is a door between two unusual looking snakeman statues.  It is locked, but Valdell is easily able to open it.

Within they find a room piled with refuse and a human woman who is shackled.  She pleads for release saying she has been captured by the Fungal Goblins when she was exploring the area for unusual mushrooms.  She thinks she has been here a few weeks, and on questioning tells them she thinks it is May.  She begs them to escort her out.  They are suspicious of her but she is strangely charming to Dolin and Akadum and they ask Valdell to release her shackles.  As he does this he also finds her quite mesmerizing, and cannot figure out how he did it, but finds her free.  She quickly leaves the room and again repeats that she just wants them to lead her out of this horrible place.  The Fungal Goblins fed her garbage, which eventually she had to eat or starve, and presented her to the horrible, skeletal snake man.  Kethry is confused by her friends buying this sketchy story, and the unusual vision she is getting with her Mage Sight.  The woman is magic but in way Kethry has never seen before, and casts Crown of Madness a spell to charm the woman who calls herself Shusuey.  Kethry cannot figure out what happened as her spell seems to work, it makes the target have a crown of thorns and mad eyes, but not exactly; Shuseuy has a firey crown, and the magical energy such a spell would normally be consumed by the spell has not left her.  Kethry calls Shuseuy out as a fake, and Shuseuy transforms into a strangely beautiful red-skinned humanoid with a tail and bat-like wings.

Dolin hits her with Holy Light rebuking her as Demon, Akadum whacks her with his war hammer, Valdell shoots her with an arrow, and she launches herself into flight fleeing away from them too fast follow.  Valdell launches one last shot at her with his Steam Pistol.  Except for the Holy Light, none of the attacks seem to cause her any discomfort.

Amid the mess in the room they gather two golden bowls, a kris (dagger with wavy blade) that Kethry sees as magical, and a wavy stone snake idol that also looks magical to Kethry.