The World of Telvar

About 4 hours into the process, the last guards gave a thumbs up and abandoned their posts, retreating out another exit. We healed up a bit and explored the compound, discovering that it had clearly been built by dwarves, but had been disassembled by the current occupants.

We explored the rest of it, and it became natural cavern, eventually leading to a stable area where several horses had been kept. There was a rising "stair" that led to the outside, approximately where the prospector had disappeared when Alduin had followed him before the raid. In addition, there was a very smart hobgoblin warbird in a cage that we freed after talking to it and getting it to promise not to kill us. In addition, it scouted out the area and found the retreating group of people heading down the hill with a cart and horses. Eventually it became clear that this was the one that attacked Narahn earlier. There was another empty cage for the other bird, which was lost in the wild somewhere.

We continued healing and investigating, doing Speak with Dead on the single poisoned grubby man we had found in one of the rooms. The room with the warbirds had a decent sized throne which may have been used by the dwarves. The gems in it had clearly been pried out, probably by our buddies with the swords. Behind it was this room surrounded by iron, and accessible only by a once cleverly hidden secret door, though not now. In the room was grubby dead man, with a black hand. We think he was a dissatisfied miner who went to see if the long sword man had the treasure and wasn't paying it. He was surprised to be dead when we talked with him, and was rather cooperative.

One thing we were definitely able to confirm both from the miners and the body of bastard sword woodswoman is that the leader had not actually found any treasure, and was merely excavating fairly randomly. It should be noted that a Locate Object turned up nothing in the main area of the compound (locating chests, gold coins, and gems).

We followed the fleeing people and caught up to them. Rather than slaughtering them, we decided to talk. Balinor, Felix, and Kodo strode up to the camp and bellowed out a greeting. Realizing that even though there were 14 of them they were dead meat in fight, so they agreed. For 100 gp, the leader told us quite a bit.

A group of four people, Traywick, Linda, Mavelle, and one other name I can't remember, hired them to excavate the mines for "dwarven treasure." They had a map quite similar to ours and said they would pay the miners upon finding the treasure. After a while there was still no treasure, and the miners were getting anxious about being paid, but they became frightened of their employers. Apparently they were not particularly lovely folk. Traywick was the leader, referred to as "the Terrible One" by the warbird. He was the long sword guy. Linda was the bastard sword wielding woodswoman-she had her own notations of the map, before Traywick burned it. Mavelle, we think, was the prospector, though the description did not match at all. But assassins can definitely disguise themselves. The last was the cleric of Kord (Dark Helmet), who of course refused to heal the miners' injuries when there was a minor cave-in. He scared them.

About 5 or 6 of them were miners, the rest were soldiers. There was another "leader" who argued a lot with the leader of the miners. He was quite bitter that we had killed 15 of his men (embarrassed blush here from Felix) and just wanted us to go away. We did, and returned uneventfully to the cave.

We decided to explore this grate near where we had initially come in, and Morgan, Narahn, and Alduin went to check it out. Lifting the grate Narahn climbed in and had to stoop to walk down the corridor (he's a halfling). Suddenly a Light glyph went off, but he managed to avoid being blinded. Then the lanterns and continual light pouches began to fade, and darkness overtook everything, destroying infravision as well. In the darkness something was moving, and something tried to shear Morgan's finger off, though it failed. Something jumped on Alduin and then jumped off. They ran out of the darkness to find themselves intact but missing stuff. Morgan's magic ring finger had been sliced neatly right below the ring. His Chain of the Warlord was hanging loose. Alduin's backpack had been severed, and the bracers we had found had been removed.

Donald had absolutely no idea what creatures those could be.

A Detect Evil revealed no evil about Thunderstruck, and since it lasted a while we prepared better for the grate. This time we tried some experiments. Note that during this Detect Evil revealed nothing, and Detect Life revealed life.

Balinor tossed a rock in the grate, but nothing happened. Narahn went inside and the darkness descended again. We yanked him out quickly, but he had taken some damage on his arm. Fortunately he had swung with his dagger at the thing, and hit, drawing some weird magical blood residue. We then tossed a torch in, and it flickered and went out. Then Cassian threw a Dispel Magic at the darkness, and it vanished. There was a creature with weird black rags on it, but we didn't get much of a look before it suddenly exploded with a blinding light. Cassian and Balinor fell back, unable to see, and the darkness descended again. Donald threw a Sleep spell, and two of the creatures were lying there. We got a decent look at them when Narahn crept up to them. The corridor went to an intersection, and there was water to one side, and more tunnel straight ahead.

Then Narahn noted that the torchlight was burning the little creatures, and in mercy he put it out and backed away.

The darkness suddenly returned and began floating toward the grate. We backed away, and the darkness seemed to come slightly out of the grate for a moment... and the bracers popped out. Then the darkness receded.

We decided that since no actual harm was done to us, we would accept the peace offering and leave them alone. They probably have a number of magic items, but they aren't evil and just hate light and crave magic items. The creatures themselves seem to be made of magic. Leaving them alone seems prudent.

With more Speak with Dead from Cassian, we determined quite a bit about the purpose of the people here. Acting on an inspiration, we sent Felix running up and down the rushing water with a Waterwalk spell from Cassian. Upstream was the lake that the water drained from, but about 15 feet downstream was a ledge that he could climb up on. Felix reached the top and wandered around for a minute before finding a latch. The latch opened a secret door back into the chasm we were standing in. Walking through it and exploring this new corridor, we discovered a weird door. The door and the surrounding walls were magical, and the door had five symbols on it in a wheel pattern. The wheel could in fact be turned, and we tried out a combination we thought we had deciphered from the hash marks on our map. However, our combination was 8 symbols long, and after the seventh a foghorn blew and Felix was blasted for substantial lightning damage (24 points). By this time were fully healed, having spent about a week here, so this was little concern, but we used Protection from Lightning to try a few other possibilities with Balinor, but unfortunately we were unable to open it. Currently we are sitting frustrated near the door, having little idea what the combination could be, or even how to enter it (clockwise, counterclockwise, do you return to the first symbol in between each entry, things like that).

Before we tried combinations, Cassian threw a Dispel Magic, and the door and walls vanished entirely for one minute, leaving a blank, non-magical wall. Quentin's Stoneshape had little effect.

Well, we're still thinking of ideas. It has been suggested that we pull out and ask for sage's help on the map at least. Maybe we can have the magic items IDed at the same time. There is a question of whether Traywick will leave us alone if we ditch his sword, or he's the vengeful type. In any case, if it is evil, I recommend destroying it. If not, then I think Morgan needs to decide whether the risk is acceptable to him.

Joel/Balinor