Lia throws like a girl and misses!
Ares channels some positive energy, destroying the inkured shadow, while the other seems to resist.
The remaining creature reaches out and touches Maffei, draining her!
Lia is nothing if not persistent and throws her fire at the remaining specter.
Hammerfist will use his arcane bond to cast another set of Magic Missiles.
Ares will fire a pair of arrows into the combat at the creature.
"Duck! "
Lia burns the shadow!
Hammer blasts it with more force!
Rey stands facinated, but Ares manages to put an arrow into the creature, finishing it!
Searching the dormitory, you find nothing of interest. In the southeast corner is another sets of stairs leading up.
"Ah good job. Rey, are you ok? Snap out of it man! . "
Ares heads towards the stairs.
"Best check this out before we continue. "
Clenching her fist, Lia extinguishes the fire in her hand before thwacking Lao on the nose. "Great amount of good you were," she says playfully.
Reynaldo shakes the cobwebs out and looks at Ares. I...I think so, he says slowly. Their voices kept babbling on about the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow, and it needing to beat its wings 43 times per second to maintain flight, and whether two could have a coconut strung between them...and I just couldn't stop listening to it, it was fascinating.
Ares will take a quick peek up the stairs to see if it is a small/single room or mire complex.
"One second and we shall see. It might not be much of anything. "
Ares peers up and sees a narrow spiral stair. It appears they climb two stories to the bell tower.
Hammerfist grumbles
"My un'le 'as 'illed by a' fallin 'ell"
"How did a bell, kill your uncle, Hammer? Did he install bells in towers for a living?"
Ares continues upward.
Shaking his head at the often-unintelligible dwarf, Reynaldo looks up the stairs with trepidation. No real interest in meeting the bats in that belfry. Let's see what else there is down here instead, hmm?
Hammerfist grumbles,
"'ll My un'le 'ong'rip lived ou'side o San'point, but dere'as a 'kin'aw man an' all sorts o' terrible thin's. I'll tell ya da whole story some ot'a time."
grumble grumble.
"Very well, Hammer. We shall have your story some other time. Let's continue... "
Heading back west, the party heads up the northern corridor, entering a large chamber. A blue mosaic dominates the floor of this chamber. The ceiling rise to several domes twenty-five feet above. A large marble statue of a robed man with hair braided in a loop and worn like a necklace looks down on the chamber serenely from the east.
This place lookslike it hasn't been used in a while, eh? Reynaldo remarks, wandering about the room. Wonder where these double doors go to.
Ares nods and looks at the doors also...
"I agree, it Seems unlikely one of our missing lieutenants is here, Rey. "
Hammerfist grumbles some more.
Heading through the double doors, you enter a grand hall. This grand hall is nearly one hundred and fifty feet long, with a vaulted ceiling twenty-five feet overhead. Niches in the walls frame marble statues of monks in poses of meditation, and thick pillars run down the center of this impressive chamber.
Inside the hall are four grioths that the party quickly dispatches.
Nothing left but the stairs, Reynaldo says.
"Stairs it is, then!" Ares says with a grin as he falls into file with the others.
"Well down may lead to the types of dank place a servant of a foul dragon would like. "
Ares follows the group down...
The party decides to head down into the depths of the monastery. A flight of stairs descends to a cellar room with alcove-lined walls. Each alcove hosts a statue of an athletic man or woman with a long braid, and each figure is in different pose of martial performance.
"Interesting statues. Is this a door over here?"
Lia moves alongside one of the statues, mimicking its pose. She sees if there is some sort of motion one could do to easily do each pose in any certain order.
Hammerfist grumbles and checks out the statues for hidden compartments/traps.
Moving to the concealed door spied by Ares, the party opens it to reveal a room with a fifteen-foot-high domed ceiling and no floor except a two-inch-wide ledge that skirts the edges of the room around a deep pit that drops away into darkness. Beyond, you see a corridor continuing west.
Rey springs up to the ledge and shows off a bit. This is fun!
Assuming he makes it to the other side, he'll pull out his knotted rope and look for a way to secure it on the other side before tossing the end to the party.
Ares looks up with a grin at Reynaldo.
"Great. Now are you as good at tying knots? What do you see up there?"
Reynaldo easily clambers across the tiny ledge and finds a place to tie off the rope. Looking around, he sees a tunnel turing to the south with another teeing in from the west.
Lia looks from the ledge to Lao. "Iiiiii think we should take our chances on the bottom of the pit." She takes a cautious look over the side of the crevice, trying to pierce the darkness with the light from a torch.
Lia notes that the pit appears to be about forty feet deep.
Ares, remembering his new ruby slippers, decides to just walk across the wall to join Reynaldo.
"Almost forgot I had these. Very handy indeed."
Ares nearly dance across the ledge in his new ruby slippers.
Between the two of them, Ares and Reynaldo are able to help Hammer, Lia, Lao, and Maffei across the pit.
Once everyone is across, Ares moves around and into the hallway to the south and west.
Ares leads the way down the tunnel and turns to the west to enter a a large room. Sixteen five-foot-wide alcoves, each containing the crumpled remains of a sparring dummy, fill this room. After a fair amount of time searching, someone notes a sceret door in the northeast corner of the room.
Going through the secret door leads to another corridor, that heads north, then east, terminating in a door in the north wall.
"They sure love those secret doors. Either someone is hiding something of great value or hiding themselves."
"This door is not so secret. Master hammer, what do you think?. "
as Ares looks at the door.
As Hammer looks over the door, Rey seems to be studying the passageway.
Seems far too small to fit a dragon, doesn't it? he muses aloud. So these lieutenants, whomever they may be, must go to the dragon and not the other way around. It would be logical, then, that the dragon has some way to keep tabs on the underlings, no?