The World of Telvar

Albee was unable to snag any of them, as his target dodged the Wire Ball, and he was unable to find them.

At this point it was clear that we weren’t following dark dwarves, so we gave up and headed back to the Skull.

We decided to plug up the “ventilation holes” with rocks once again, but this time to wait a significant distance away and have Albee watching the entrance while hidden.

In the morning, the rocks were moved, and Albee had seen no one enter the mouth.

So we tried it again, but this time scattered dust all over so that we could track our invisible rock movers.

The rocks were moved, and there were no tracks. Hmm.

We tried a third time. This time there were two objects that looked like loaves of bread on the edges of the rocks, which had NOT been moved.

Balinor accidentally knocked one of the loaves down the ventilation shaft, but picked up the other one curiously. He wondered if it was poisoned. After about a minute, the party was deciding what to do, when suddenly Balinor took massive nerve damage from the bread! Contact poison, somehow surviving the evening to soak through Balinor’s plate gauntlets.

Sigh.

We returned to Barnacus. On the way we were shot at (by six bolts—I’m assuming the Spectacular Six were trying vengeance), and Albee managed to capture one of our opponents this time, using the Wire Ball. Balinor shot one at long range for little effect.

We healed Balinor up, and returned once again to Skull Mountain, and decided to plug the holes with mud to secure the rocks.

This time, we heard a weird noise. By the time we got down to the cave, there was nothing there, but there were a number of booted tracks. It seemed as though the destination of the tracks had been obscured by someone, intentionally, so we couldn’t figure out where we came from.

I don’t remember who suggested it, but at some point we checked the ceiling above the spot where the tracks ended. And spotted a peephole. Of course! They had come from a trapdoor in the ceiling!

Unfortunately this trapdoor appeared to be one-way.

We checked out the area near the other breathing holes we had discovered (on the top of the hill attached to the back of the skull) and found a small stone slab/panel. This also appeared to be a one-way exit.

At this point Bodkin pointed out that there really might not be a way inside. The dwarves might be holed up in there, only able to get back inside if the dwarves on the inside let them in. This would make it very difficult to invade. It should be noted that both entrances would require high level Knock spells if we chose that method to invade.

Balinor wondered if perhaps we could draw them out. Balinor sealed up all the holes once again, and this time, we camped near the UPPER holes (by the stone slab). At some point during the night, we heard a pop and a clatter, and noted some kind of pole pushing the rocks out from the inside of the shaft! Bodkin wanted to shoot down the hole, but Balinor wanted to get to the other shafts to see if the dwarves might come out. The party ran down the hill, but arrived too late—the rocks had been dislodged.

At that moment, a crossbow bolt whizzed over Anselm’s head. This seemed familiar.

The party was wondering what to do, when a canister bounced at our feet. Some kind of smoke billowed out of it, but the party didn’t wait around to find out what it would do. We scattered, and were separated for a moment.

Then Balinor was shot through the neck. This SHOULD by all rights have dropped him instantly (via an assassination), but his Ring of Heroism kept him standing. Anselm and Morhion frantically cast Cure Lights on the fighter, and informed him that he was “still in bad shape.” Balinor response was better left unquoted. He took out the last half of the Potion of Clairaudience, handed it to Albee, and told him to get the bastard. Albee nodded and vanished. A few minutes later we heard, “I got him.” The party marched out, and a single dark dwarf was entangled in the Wire Ball.

The party questioned the dwarf, with Balinor getting a little rough (hey, the guy HAD just nearly assassinated him!). He refused to speak anything but dwarvish and was quite hostile to Bodkin the “traitor.” We don’t really understand all the history here. Although when we mentioned that we were friends of King Felix, the dwarf Commanded Bodkin to defecate, which he did. And glared at Balinor afterward, since the fighter would have been immune. Oops.

The dwarf had a modified heavy crossbow that fired these canisters. We saw nothing else we could do at Skull Mountain and dragged the dwarf back to Barnacus for questioning. He was interrogated by Haermond’s men, but little was gained, other than that the dwarf was convinced that his group would take over Lendore with a few hundred years.

The canisters that remained turned out to be of mild interest. Two of them were Type I Sleep Gas, which is very weak. The rest was standard oil.

So the adventure was not a total loss, but it wasn’t much. Net loss: potion of Clairaudience, 1 month of adventuring. Net gain: some experience, and about 500 gp worth of stuff. And one hostile captured dwarf.

It’s unclear where to go from here—should Balinor sink resources into this mission? It seems to me it depends on how many dwarves there are. Suggestions I have received include:

Using Wrath to pump strength and attempt to Chisel through the Slab under the cover of Silence (10 minutes to do this). This might be interesting. Knock seems unfeasible unless a mage of significant power came along.

There are some possibilities here. We’ll have to see whether Balinor should remain or not. He has probably managed to repay about 500 gp of his debt at this point.

Joel/Balinor/Morhion