The characters so far:
Mhugalhuga, CN male minotaur (Savage Species progression) 1st Level
Joselynn, LG female astral deva (Savage Species progression) 1st Level
Ishmael, LG human male paladin, 1st level
The following optional rules are utilized in this campaign currently:
Reserve Points (from Unearthed Arcana)
Action Points (from Unearthed Arcana)
The minotaur works as a strongman/bouncer/pit fighter at the Emporium.
The deva (whom no one beleives is an actual angel) appears not only as an oddity at the Emporium, but is expected to say blessings on those who have just commited . . . untoward acts in the upper rooms, for a donation to the Emporium.
The paladin is the son of an older paladin that was stationed at the barracks until he was hurt and had to take a less active role. Ishmael is adamant about doing something that will make Diamond Lake a better place.
Day One, the Whispering Cairn:
Ishmael, Joselynn and Mhugalhuga each recieve notes that tell them that it would be of great interest for each of them to show up at the abandoned office outside of the Whispering Cairn the next morning.
Ishmael and Joselynn run into one another at Lazare's House, and Ishmael ends up defeating a wandering wizard, Khellek, in dragon chess. Khellek is overwrought, unable to comprehend his loss to a mere soldier, and leaves, muttering about the artifacts that he and his fellow adventurers will find in the Stirgenest Cairn.
Ishmael ends up at the Feral Dog tavern. Mhugalhuga and Joselynn wander in there as well, Joselynn following Mhugalhuga to keep her big friend out of trouble. Mhugalhuga walk up to the bar and sits next to Kullen, and Joselynn strikes up a conversation with Tirra, the wandering adventurer from the Free City. Joselynn speaks to Tirra about the elven homelands, a place that Joselynn is sure she has seen before, but cannot fully remember.
Ishmael is interested in Kirra's story, and tries to get her to relate information about Khellek and her adventuring party's current planes, but Kullen and Mhugalhuga begin to insult one another. Before they can come to blows, Joselynn calms Mhugalhuga down.
Mhugalhuga offers to show Ishmael around the Emporium, and the three return to the Emporium. Joselynn warns Ishmael that the Emporium is a place of wickedness, and before they can discuss this further, Mhugalhuga, forgetting the halfling sorcerer's act, douses the flaming halfling with a barrel of Ale, putting out his flames.
Mhugalhuga and Joselynn are fired on the spot. Mhugalhuga for breaking, damaging, and otherwise costing the business too much money, and Joselynn is fired becuase she has a tendancy to lecture those who pay for a blessing on their wicked ways, especially if they ask her opinion.
Joselynn and Mhugalhuga end up in Jalek's Flophouse for the night, and Joselynn and the cleric of Cuthbert get into a philosophical arguement over the nature of forgiveness and divine inspiration.
Ishmael bids them farewell, since he has something to do tomorrow, not having found out that these two also received letters.
Day Two: The Whispering Cairn
The group is surprised to find one another outside of the abandoned office. They find another note inside telling them that they may find something of interest in the Whispering Cairn. Joselynn and Ishmael want to investigate the office more intently, but Mhugalhuga is afraid of what might be lurking in the office, and that it might be a trap.
The group goes back into town, to the general store, to buy up some rope, torches, and flasks of acid. Then they return to the Whispering Cairn.
Once inside, Joselynn and Mhugalhuga notice the wolf prints in the dust, and they press on cautiously. Eventually the party finds a broken stone structure surrounded by glass. They take some time to investigate, but find nothing useful.
The group notices the air holes in the walls, and tries to put the stone structure back together, but they cannot see any function for it. Before they can leave, they are attacked by a pack of wolves.
The fight is relatively short. Mhugalhuga gores the lead wolf with his horns, making short work of it, and the other wolves go down with little effort.
Pressing further into the cairn, they manage to find a broken off finger from some kind of statuary, a moldy old bedroll, and a lantern with indigo colored glass, as well as an alcove that has seven multihued lamps in it.
Mhugalhuga burned a hole in a massive collection of cobwebs and peered through, seeing steps and a sarcophogas far down into the center of the room. The minotaur burned away the rest of the cobwebs, and the party went down into the room.
Mhugalhuga innitially tries to put the finger back onto the figure carved into the lid of the sarcophogas, but to no avail. He and Ishmael also lift the lid and activate the trap that shoots flames at each of them.
Joselynn places the Indigo lantern back in its proper place, and all three figure out how and which direction the sarcophogas moves. After discovering that one of the alcoves lifts up and crushes items, they keep experimenting, until they turn it toward an alcove that appears to have some kind of elevator.
Joselynn steps onto the elevator while the paladin moves the sarcophogas, and barely steps back before it falls. As the three discuss what to do next, a swarm of acid dripping beetles swarms up out of the hole in the floor, as well as a large, spider like creature with six legs and one eye.
The paladin fires at the spider like creature with his crossbow, missing it, as the minotaur engages it himself. The creature manages to slash both the minotaur and Joselynn with its legs, and Joselynn is enveloped by the swarm of beetles, after she has thrown down several torches to keep them back.
The minotaur throws a flask of acid at the swarm to disperse it, and does some damage. The paladin continues to fire at the one eyed creatures, and Joselynn flails vainly trying to get rid of the swarm.
Eventually the minotaur kills the spider thing, and the paladin runs up to help Joselynn. Ishmael sets Joselynn on fire to kill of the rest of the beetles, then tries to stabilize her.
The paladin stays with Joselynn to keep her safe, and the Minotaur decides to find food. He experiments with roasted wolf, and the rather large legs of the spider thing that they have just killed, and while none of it is particularly appetizing, they do find it to be edible.
Day Three, The Whispering Cairn:
Experimenting with the position of the sarcophogas in the middle of the chamber that they are in, the minotaur, deva, and paladin manage to find a cylendar that opens at the end of the alcove with the yellow lantern, and they enter it one by one, until they are all in an area below the room they were once in.
The three find a large stone slab in front of them, and all three work together to move the huge piece of stone and topple it back into the room that they have just entered. The room then quickly fills with a noxious vapor that seems to sap strength from anyone breathing deeply. All three flee into the newly opened hallway, though none suffer any ill effects from the gas.
The minotaur leads the way into a hallway filled with alcoves filled with statues of humanoids similar to the ones in the cairn above. While the deva behind him notices a horrid creature, apparently just a chitinous ball with two eyestalks ending with eyes, the minotaur does not.
The creature tries to wrap itself around the minotaur's neck, but fails, and then it manages to fire an eye ray into the minotaurs face, causing him to withdraw in fear. The paladin and the deva attack the creature, but only the paladin's sword strikes the quick moving aberration.
The creature manages to strike fear into the deva with its eye rays, and she flees as well, and the paladin can do little but swing at the swift floating creature.
Eventually, the deva regains her composure, and runs at the floating eye thing, hacking in neatly in half with her greatsword.
The three make their way into a room dominated by a huge stone pillar, and two entrances leading to rooms on either side. On one side, the minotaur notices a patch of brown mold growing, so they explore the other side. The deva notices a switch to withdraw a large slab of stone from the other side of the monolith, and they recover a crushed body, that has, miraculously, undamaged armor and a kit with tools in it.
The minotaur led the way into one of the side passages, the one lacking the brown mold, and they found a ransacked bedroom with furniture all made of stone. The minotaur was overcome with a desire to sleep in the bed they found, but his companions drug him out of the place.
The group finds a dispenser that puts out orange gravy like slime, and the minotaur tries some, and decides that he likes it. They then approach the brown mold. The deva throws a torch at the patch, then they all rapidly jump back as the patch grows.
Exploring the back of the room, the minotaur finds a toilet, and proceeds to tear out any fixture that he can from the room to use as a walkway to get into the next room. While he manages to make a partial walkway, both the minotaur and the paladin fall into the mold, and, having the warmth drawn out of their bodies, fall fast alseep.
Day Four, The Whispering Cairn:
Joselynn thankfully has an uneventful night watching over her two drained companions, and, suitably warmed and rested, Mhugalhuga and Ishmael are awakened more or less whole.
The three manage to skip over the makeshift walkway into the room, taking little damage. Inside the room they find a well lit room, lit by a magical glow plate in the ceiling, and they also find various half finished sculptures, old tools, and a statue holding a wooden staff. On the far wall is a black stone egg marked with a golden glyph.
The three poke around the room and find nothing of value, and Joselynn and Ishmael jump back across the makeshift pathway, but Mhugalhuga decides that the stone might be valuable, and picks it up, intending to toss it between stones in the walkway and then drag it to safety.
A small creature made of stone erupts from the form of the black stone egg, and swings at the minotaur, missing it. Joselynn jumps back across, but Ishamael stumbles and takes some damage from the cold on the way back into the room.
The minotaur manages to slam it with his flail, and Joselynn hits it with her greatsword. The wounded paladin stays back, drops his sword, picks up his sling, and pelts the creature. Eventually, the creature is reduced to a pile of rubble.
The three cross the mold again, and they all try the orange sludge in order to stay fed. Mhugalhuga decides to try and empty out his flask and fill it with the brown mold, using the staff from the other room.
Mhugalhuga gets the mold on the end of the staff, tries to put it in the flask from long range by scraping it on the edge, and ends up denting the metal flask. He then jumps back across, accidentally hitting the paladin with the mold and getting it on his armor and knocking the paladin out with the heat sapping properties of the mold.
The minotaur tries to get the armor off of her, but ends up with it on his harness, and passes out as well. Joselynn manages to take off the paladin's tainted armor and the minotaur's harness without getting harmed.
Once again, Joselynn does her best to keep watch until she can awaken one of her heat deprived party members to take over.
Day Five, The Whispering Cairn:
After sampling some more of the orange paste from the dispenser, the party travels back up the elevator at the begining of the hallway, past all of the obstacles they have left behind so far.
Upon reentering the false carin, they start exploring various alcoves again. They take the measure of the tunnel leading up in the blue alcove, but decide to go down the broken elevator shaft in the green alcove instead.
Upon climbing down into a new area filled with even more statues of the hairless humanoids that adorn the cairn, the group moves to a four way intersection, and walk into one of the rooms. The deva quickly notices many of the beetles that swarmed over her several days before, and she alerts the others. They throw torches into the room and torch a hive in the corner before the beetles can form a swarm.
The beetle queen attacks them as the room is engulfed in flames, and sprays all of them with acid. The three all manage to strike her, and the minotaur charges her with his horns. Joselynn finishes her off with her greatsword.
On the bodies therein they find several potions as well as a ring, which the Minotaur puts on.
Across the way, they find a room that looks like sleeping quarters with more stone beds like the ones in the other underground chamber they found. They also find another large beetle.
Before it can spray them, the minotaur charges it and does a horrendous amount of damage to it, splitting its carapace and killing it quickly.
The group finds a corpse on a stone bed, and begins to examine its leather armor and ring, when the statue at the end of the hall animates and attacks them. The minotaur charges it, but its stone body does absorb much of the impact of his horns. Its fist punches the minotaur, greatly harming him.
Joselynn and Ishmael attack, one with a greatsword, the other with a flail, and cause more damage to the statue. Eventually they prevail against the animated object, collect the leather armor and the ring, and decide to set up camp for the night, this time with everyone still able to make the decision on when to retire for the evening.