Characters:
- Ishum (Beastheart)
- Rusty (Monk)
- Raoul (Rogue)
- Ilai (Druid)
We travel to the farm and then make a strong start into the grasslands, moving into the Gale Mountain foothills when Ishum gets us lost (as is tradition). Luckily we make it across the river and reach the cave.
Past a mosaic, we follow a staircase up to another room with a tiled floor. Tiles are made of clay, glazed white, brown, and blue. Ilai casts tremorsense on Rusty, who senses something moving about 100 feet to the south of us, though the door in front of us leads east.
Raoul and Ilai check out the door and find a button, which we ask Naharmatu to press since we are all paranoid. It opens into a circular room with a domed ceiling. The mosaic pattern seems to tell an abstracted story with some kind of pictograms. There are slight breaks in the mosaic near the top of the dome, with a hole (perhaps for ventilation)?
On the door is a stone circle with many small holes and a swooshy symbol (like wind). Ilai uses druidcraft to create a small puff of wind, opening the door. After we go through, the door seals shut behind us, though there are similar holes on the opposite side.
To the east is another door, this time wooden (a later addition, probably). Raoul looks through the door and sees nothing except the tiled floor, so he opens the door. It’s a large, empty room with high, vaulted ceilings, another tiled floor, and papers scattered around.
Before we go east, we check out the corridor curving around to the northwest and find a dead-end corridor with a lot of cobwebs covering the entire hallway—seems like giant spiders were once here. Unlike in a video game, the cobwebs don’t burn when we throw a torch at them, so Ilai turns into a spider to check out the webs.
In the webs there is one unhatched and three hatched egg sacs. They also find a humanoid body with a shortsword, shield, breastplate, and coin purse (30 gp).
Back in the large room, Raoul and Ilai start looking through the papers. It looks like someone was trying to decipher the pictograms on the walls. Raoul starts sneaking around the edge of the room when Rusty looks up and notices an air elemental lurking near the ceiling. He goes to say hi, to which the air elemental responds by attacking him.
We handily take out the elemental, though not before it gets a solid hit in on Raoul. After picking up all the papers, we proceed down a winding hallway to the south, filled with more pictograms. Seems like this might have been some kind of temple, with mosaics intentionally built as a form of worship / religious iconography.
Raoul picks a lock on another wooden door, through which is a room filled with alcoves. We find 25 gp, 100 gp worth of gems, and a secret door at the back of one of the alcoves. Ishum and Naharmatu pry open the panel and we head through the secret door.
There are more tiled mosaics in the next corridor, but, while similar, these seem to have been made at a different time. The corridor ends in a portcullis, through which we can see another room with high ceilings, alcoves, and a tiled mosaic floor. There are also a lot of cobwebs and at least one giant spider. About 20 feet up on the walls are openings like hallways to a second story.
We decide to just run in and attack. We’re doing great fighting the spiders when a phase spider appears and bites Rusty with a nat 20. Luckily, we take it out and heal Rusty.
On another spider victim, we find leather armor, five daggers, a shortbow, 20 arrows, and 5 magical arrows that feel cold to the touch. Also 170 scattered gp, a pouch with 73 gp, and a potion of healing.
Naharmatu tosses Ishum up into one of the hallways. It looks like they lead to other rooms on the next level, but there are no apparent threats, so we continue exploring on the current level. We avoid the hallway with a guillotine and slip past another portcullis using wild shape shenanigans. We find a small room with two locked doors, where we take a short rest.
After our rest, Raoul unlocks both doors. Behind one door is a locked iron chest, which (after thoroughly checking for traps), Raoul picks. Inside is 460 gp and 2 small carved stones (magical??). Through the other door is a corridor; Raoul sneaks around and finds a room with 11 heavily robed figures who are, according to the GM, “totally benign, I promise.” Also, they’re definitely not air elementals or spiders because they each have two feet firmly on the ground.
Ten of them are standing in a circle and the eleventh is chanting. They have lightning bolts on their robes, but we don’t wait for them to finish whatever spooky ritual is going on. We sneak up and get a surprise round, with the hasted Rusty stunning the leader. Much smash, and we manage to take them all out without taking damage! Loot: 300 gp, diamond worth 300 gp, chalice with gems worth 1,000 gp. The leader had a journal that his organization, which is trying to summon something (“The Bringer of Storms”?) was looking for a holy site. Seems like they probably hadn’t been in the area for very long.
We head back to the farm without trouble, carrying a lot of money and mysterious loot to be identified. More dungeon awaits next time! (sorry for the not-so-brief debrief. tl;dr we explored most of another dungeon level and got a bunch of loot)
