I see that that door and that door are traps Zadira says, pointing to the door with a goat's face over it , and the one with a hand over it . You guys might want to hand-check the others in case I didn't notice something bad.
She figures she might as well make the dungeon safer for others, so she works on disabling the traps that she did find:
Once we're confident that we've found all the traps, let's still be cautious. I can cast a spell to open the doors when we are ready.
Zadira disables the trap in front of door A without trouble. It's a simple thing, really. Pit D is a little more elaborate and she quickly finds herself in a pickle. The latch she must jam is on the opposite side of the pit and she's now holding up a rather heavy door. She grunts, strains.. then falls in with a heavy *thud*.
Her shoulder sends shocks of pain into her arm and chest. It's then that she notices a passage in the west wall of the pit. How fortuitous!
Hey, um... there's a shortish little tunnel down here. Might be worth checking out.
First room and already decisions which may be life or death *sigh* well, I knew what I was getting myself into, nothing to do but get on with it I suppose.
Knowing she's not going to be very useful checking for traps, instead she follows Zadira's progress as she does her thing, therefore noticing Zadira losing her balance (but not how deep the pit is) and speaks a short phrase to cast featherfall in time to negate her fall damage.
She pokes her head over the edge of the pit and calls down, You okay there? Maybe next time you see a pit, we tie you off with some rope for safety, yes? and lowers some of her rope to allow Zadira to climb back up.
Zadira thankfully accepts the rope, and climbs back out of the pit.
At least falling in gives us another option about where to go... one that is less likely to be trapped even, if there aren't a lot of short, creepy things waiting to kill us of course.
The towering half-orc grins as she says Maybe Rappan Athuk does not know yet that you are here to save it.
Then looks uncomfortable as she continues How 'shortish' is this tunnel? It is always good to have alternatives, but, uh... well, would I fit?
I think it's about 4 feet high or so. Definitely not easy to walk through.
While the others play around with the pit, Melkar investigates the remaining doors.
The voice which emerges when he approaches the alcove containing the final door spooks him just a bit.
Grelthe grunts in acknowledgement of Zadira's response, and also jumps a little as the magic mouth spell goes off. Well I guess we know what direction Rappan Athuk is now (laughs uncomfortably).
So shall we forge ahead into the main part of the dungeon, or explore these offshoots first?
Zadira, not quite trusting the voice, randomly casts open on one of the doors , making sure no one is standing close.
She casts Open on the door with a pentacle over it .
The door opens without issue revealing a hall. To the right is a wooden door bound in iron just like the others. To the left the hall stretches some 70' before a 'T' with a doors in the far wall at about 10, 30, and 40 feet.
"I am curious about tis strange glyph on floor... some magic circle mebbe? It looks like te number one."
Catarya joins Melkar in examining the other exits.
"Tat voice is strange, no? Why put tat tere? To scare us?"
"But if tat is te Dungeon of Grafes, what is te rest of doors?"
She rubs her chin.
"We got tis door open for now. Let's go tere and ten see what is down tat way. But wait a moment..."
Catarya pulls a long bone out of her pack. She chants a few words over it, and the bone begins to levitate in the air, and hovers nearby her.
Catarya turns to Grelthe.
"Grelt, mebbe I can ask yu... can yu carry tis?"
She holds out her large bag.
"I need to moof fast and tis will weigh me down. You look strong enough to take it."
Grethle takes the second pack easily and puts one over each shoulder, drawing her flail in one hand (since it's small enough to fit through the straps), and a javelin in the other. Nothing breakable, I hope? If we get attacked I would like to drop the packs to fight.
Since my healing wands uses a spell I know, I can activate it easily outside of combat. But during fights, my hands will be full with weapons & shield, so it might be better used in someone else's hands for now?
Catarya finds nothing new in the room.
"It's probably smart to explore everywhere. We don't want any surprises lurking if we are trying to leave the dungeon in a hurry."
He has a look at the first door just inside the pentacle hallway.
"Nope, noting breakable. I usually tie it to my back wit tis twine."
"So, you want to go sout ten? Tere is many many doors down tere. We should go slow, check for traps everywhere."
As they descend into the darkness, Elion closes his eyes and focuses. When he opens them, they illuminate the area in front of him. He then seems to concentrate for a moment before continuing down.
As the warpriest recommends a destination, Elion is eager to see what else is down here and can't help but agree."Agreed, we never know what might be ahead of us. I'm pretty good at spotting traps. I'll take lead unless someone else would prefer to?"
Melkar: the door seems fine to open
With the light is diminished here below the surface, Kayla pulls out a small stone, and with a flick it starts to circle her head emitting light.
she kept an eye out for dangers as the group checked the doors. eventually deciding on a path to go, Kayla moves to assist the new front line.
Zadira casts Detect Magic.
She waits to make sure the doorway doesn't have some kind of scary aura, and then she walks into the opened hallway, leaving the other doors closed, since it seems some of her companions have already chosen to proceed. She pauses to wait for the rest of the group and to see if she notices any traps, or magic.
No traps, no auras in sight.
Hmm. Okay. Cast Open on the door on the west end of the hallway. The one Melkar is standing in front of.
The angled northwestern wall of this room is a mosaic depicting numerous different kinds of plants and animals, most of which are immediately recognizable to the characters. The central figure in the mosaic is a dark, human-like figure that was once carrying something, but the glass tiles of the carried object have all been broken away, revealing the plaster behind them. Wet plaster has given way in several other places, most of which are near the ceiling. There is nothing otherwise unusual about the mosaic itself.
From the wall in some of the places where the plaster has become wet and degraded squirms two giant centipedes! They arc up and attack!
The party reacts first, however, getting the jump on the giant pests!
Zadira considers vermin affinity, but figures it will take too long.
So, she takes a move action to get within 30 feet, and then shoots her longbow at the Green Giant Centipede.
The centipede is pierced by the arrow and immediately drops off the wall. It's not quite dead, but it is clearly on the edge of death.
Grelthe will drop the back packs (), move just to the inside of the door while shouting out flanking instructions (), and throw her javelin at...whichever centipede she can see from there, preferably the one Zadira already shot at.
()
Catarya runs in, daggers out. She sees the centipedes, and darts towards the wall to keep from being surrounded.
Her dagger flashes out at the centipede.
"Get to oter side and let tem come to te middle."
Catarya hits! But the bug just looks angry. Less can be said for Grelthe who's javelin clatters against the stone an embarrassing distance away.
Melkar hustles forward, drawing his scythe and swiping at the centipede facing off with Catarya.
The group rushes the centipedes and quickly cuts them down. Several more crawl out of the wall after the initial two, but they are immediately chopped to bits. In all the group slays 5 centipedes and the room is theirs.
Grethle suggests Everybody stay sharp, keep a weather eye open for surprises () and ventures further into the room.
Zadira casts open on the south door, then casts detect magic again.
Nothing magical appears.
This room is decorated with tapestries, although anyone looking at them immediately realizes that the rough cloth and crude sewing makes them worthless. The tapestries depict the outside of the dungeon—the demon-mouth which conceals the stairway down into this level. Around the demon-mouth, a battle appears to be raging between a small army of human archers and a larger force made up of ogres, who are led by three black-robed figures wearing helmets decorated with curling ram’s horns. These leaders are apparently human, and each one carries a mace topped with a metal skull.
The room seems completely normal to Zadira.
Zadira waits for Grelthe to go first.
While she's waiting to go to the next room, she is going to check behind the worthless tapestries in this room to see if there are hidden doors.
As the centipedes come out of the wall, Elion draws back his bow and takes aim. However, before he can loose an arrow his comrades have made quick work of the creatures.
"Very impressive and nicely done."
Catarya examines the tapestry closely.
"Hmmm... I tink I recognize some of tis..."
No, but the iconography is strongly Orcus-ian. As you follow the tapestry along the wall into the northeast corner you feel a click...
another pit trap opens under you! You fall hard . Your bone absorbs the brunt of the impact, but you land on... No in something! After a moment of slight panic, you realize it's just a skeleton wearing leather armor, which is pierced in several places by arrows. The leather armor is worthless, and only 3 unbroken arrows can be recovered. The skeleton also has a good backpack (containing 5 iron spikes, a lantern, a pint of oil, and 50 ft. of rope), a belt pouch (200 gp), and a pair of extremely fashionable leather boots (10 gp).
Catarya vanishes from sight into a hole in the floor. There is a "thump" sound as she lands at the bottom.
"I'm all right," she calls up from the hole. "Tere's someting down here. Tis trap got someone real good. He had som useful stuff."
She looks over the dead man (or woman). She murmurs a prayer over the body and then plucks a finger bone from the corpse. She adds it to her little bag of bones.
"Lower a rope don and I'll tie tis stuff to it. Ten I can com out."
Grelthe will follow Catarya into the tapestry room, making a general survey of the tapestries from the center of the room ()
Her perusal of the tapestry is interrupted when she hears the click, and she turns just in time to see Catarya disappear, and curses under her breath in Skald. She hurries over to Catarya to lower a rope.
Tomorrow, I should really pray to my god for more Feather fall spells, it seems like it might be more helpful than I first thought.
After Catarya climbs up, Grelthe asks what she found on the man, but shows no interest in any of the items besides the iron spikes. Hmm, these seem useful, though I haven't used them before. Didn't Garamond tell us about these?
Zadira moves into the tapestry room since someone has already moved in.
Melkar keeps his head on a swivel for danger as the others examine the tapestries. "I just hope we don't have to face those three horned figures down here somewhere."
While examining the tapestries youall accidentally discover a secret door leading to a hallway! It extends a few feet left and right before turning corners.
I hope not too, Melkar. It would be hard to make them uglier than the tapestries, but they just don't look like they have good intentions, do they? She grins.
Zadira moves up, waits a few minutes to make sure she doesn't notice anything wrong, and then steps into the secret hallway (still with detect magic up).
Nothing pings.
With many still checking the tapestries, Kayla moves with Zadira through the secret door.
Once through Kayla points to her left, signalling for Zadira to check that direction. While Kayla slides the other direction to see what is that way.
hugging the wall Kayla cautiously moves toward the bend, stopping to peer around the corner.
Zadira goes along with Kayla's suggestion, at least up to the bend in the hallway. Then she realizes the two hallways are not going to meet up, and she is probably too squishy to go farther alone. She goes back and gathers up the party to come with her, following Kayla.