This room is empty. Upon further inspection you find a message scrawled in chalk on back wall of room: “Dam it is alive. Have to sleep, or die.”
Kayla and Zadira: you notice a secret door to the north of the other two.
Dam ... you think a literal dam, or a spelling error? And, err... does anyone have the sleep spell?
Grelthe stares at the words and scratches her head. I too am not sure of the meaning. I do not have the sleep spell though.
"Someting tat kills you unless you sleep? Some creature tat the one tat wrote tis tried to kill?"
Catarya shakes her head.
"I don know. But I cannot cast te sleep spell."
Hmm. Zadira thinks they might be missing something, but she casts Open on the secret/north door (from where she is).
Zadira opens the door and a rough voice says, Hey! Who did that!
Grelthe readies up at the side of the door, and at the sound of a voice, she pokes her head inside. Seeing furry hunched humanoids...
...she recognizes them as gnolls, and shouts out a warning to her companions before running in, positioning herself between the gnolls and the door, and starts singing.
She stands her ground, waiting until one of them comes within range to attack.
Gnolls are capable hunters, but are far happier to scavenge or steal a kill than to go out and track down prey. This laziness impels them to acquire slaves of whatever type is available, whom they force to dig warrens, gather supplies and water, and even hunt for their gnoll masters.
Zadira hears Grelthe's warning, so she moves in and shoots at the bad things.
"De desert dogs. I haf seen tem before."
Catarya rushes forwards, pulling a normal dagger out and hurling it at the nearest gnoll.
The dagger strikes the gnoll in the neck, and blood spurts.
Kayla springs to action flipping through the air toward a gnoll. drawing her blades in mid-air
Two gnolls fall before they have a chance to react, one to Catarya and the other to Kayla. The remaining three charge! Catarya and Grethle avoid the crude but deadly spears. Kayla gets a cool new scar!
Zadira shoots at the purple one.
Grelthe sings about how the mighty hero Merisiel slew her foes by striking particularly vital areas... .
And then she shoves her way between two of the gnolls , bearing the brunt of the assault to set up flanking, then attacks the one that charged her .
"Good shot, Grelt!"
Catarya holds her ground, and slashes one way and the other with her daggers.
Kayla circles around her opponent (purple) striking with both of her blades.
The party quickly and efficiently dismembers the remaining targets. A few seconds later a few more Gnolls peek in from the hall, but flee when they see what you did to their kin.
On the gnolls you find a total of and a small box of 5 sapphires worth about 100g each.
You find the other den a little ways back from where you came and loot that room too (included above) One adjoining room in empty, but the door to the other room is trapped, which is promising!
Bloody gnolls... disgusting evil creatures. Grelthe shows her digust by spitting into a corner while she waits for the trapmasters to do their thing.
Zadira, somewhat reluctantly because of her recent being-crushed-to-death experience, decides to disable the trap.
Catarya takes out her tools and tries to assist.
This room is comfortably furnished with a bed, chairs, a small table,
and a locked wooden chest.
Inside is an odd looking man. He wears a helmet fashioned to look like an array of curling tentacles, and the irises of his eyes are a strange yellow color. You only get time to notice that before he attacks!
"You take tat side!" Catarya calls to Kayla.
Catarya rushes to one side of the creature, and waits for Kayla to be in position. Then she strikes with a dagger.
Detect Evil on him?
He doesn't ping. He's clearly evil though by how he's screaming for your blood just now.
Kayla flips very acrobatically to catch this guy unawares (i.e flanking)
One, Two, Dead is the crazy man. In addition to his +1 light mace, his locked wooden chest contains 3 potions of cure light wounds and 200 gp, the gold stored in a nicely embroidered bag (10 gp).
On the other side of the room you find a door. The walls of this next room are covered in bizarre pictures and symbols, hastily splashed on with messy, slashing brush-strokes. The words are in the Common tongue, but they make no sense whatsoever.
After that parade of crazy and your first accrual sign of activity from the cult of Orcus you come to a corridor that has three iron doors along its southern wall, each with a small barred window in the center of the door.
Under one of the flagstones of the floor of this small cell, there is a cache of items: 200 gp, a holy symbol, a vial of holy water, and an ornate mirror in a gold frame (100 gp).
While Grelthe was busy considering whether this crazy man lunging at them was evil or not, Catarya & Kayla quickly dispatched him. She comments "What a strange hat. Should someone check if it is magic or anything? Perhaps it's what drove him insane."
After checking the items on his body and in the chest, she will hand a potion each to Kayla & Zadira. "Who wants the last potion? Catarya and I can heal ourselves, and I already have a wand of cure light wounds. I could just stick it in the pack for later? But if no one else is interested in this mace, it would be an upgrade for me."
Kayla accepts the potion with a nod of gratitude.
tucking it away she moves to ensure 'Z' stays out of trouble.
upon discovery of the three doors, Kayla moves to check each for traps.
That door has a trap, but I took care of it she says indicating door "C".
After clearing that little hurdle the party continues around the loop to the west and comes to two doors in the right wall.
Keep the mace, Grelthe. Upgrades are good.
Zadira casts Open on the next door.
Grelthe bunches up next to the door with her new mace ready to attack.
The door opens on... nothing. As does the next one. The third room in contains a mass of webs and two easily slain giant spiders. After pushing through that, you come to yet another empty room!
As the party moves onward, Kayla takes notice of the secret panels.
that's strange, there's some hidden panels over there. Kayla moves to examine them.
No traps detected.
Zadira casts Open on each of the panels.
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As Zadira casts her magic, Kayla gets ready to leap and catch her if she ends up falling into a pit again.
Each of them open. No shenanigans.
Do we see anything inside?