Tairn

Play date: 7/28/09

1533.2.12 – dusk

Serk shoulders the door once, twice, thrice. Crash! Serk sees a woman 30 feet away through another open door across a small room. She chants and mist billows up between them. Serk rushes her, but half way there catches his foot on something on the floor and hears metallic clanks around him and the scratching movement of talons on stone. Varende moves into the room looking for his fallen companion. Serk rolls to his feet, dodges past the elf, and out of the room as what appear to be turkey-sized roosters converge on Varende from the mist. They peck at him ferociously and he rolls out of the room as Malperder steps in. Banic moves to the edge of the mist but not into it. The things rend Mal’s skin as his cousin shields him with Moradin’s power. Malperder moves out of the room and Banic kicks one to the curb with a mightly blow. He then moves back and waits for the flock to stream out of the room. The flock fails to comply, and Malperder, stalwart rock of the party’s fighting core, bravely moves into the room. He tries to go far enough that others can follow, but three of the cockatrices bite him and Lady Luck abandons the hero. His movements cease as he stands statue still in the entry square. Banic moves forward and shouts at his cousin to plow into the room. He can just make out Malperder’s unmoving back through the mist, and he eventually realizes the appearance of Malperder resembles stone now. Banic hammers at a cockatrice that flutters towards him and then engulfs the room in holy fire. The mist evaporates. Keddick tosses in some magic missiles and eventually a fireball to finish off the flock. Malperder seems undamaged, but hopelessly petrified.

Serk leaps across the room stepping over the tripping chain. Banic observes six openings, three in each side wall, that were covered with metal grates released by the chain. Serk puts his shoulder to the next door and bursts it open as well. He moves into the hallway beyond, and flames engulf him. The hall runs to both left and right. He sees stairs to the right going down and a hall to the left ending in an open door not far away. The priestess on the left incants and Serks vision fades to black. He rolls back out of the hallway. Banic moves back and invokes Moradin to heal Serk’s eyes, before stepping forward and sealing the passage to the right with magical stone as a Hell Hound appears in front of him and bathes him in fire. He hears retreating footsteps as he does so. The hound is quickly dispatched with hammer and magic missile. As the party stands discussing what should be done, two men in breastplates, tower shields, and longswords with locked gauntlets in their left hands emerge in the guardroom behind the party from the barracks with two priestesses. The men have horned helms and the symbol of Talinoman displayed prominently on shield and breastplate. Varende rolls through the fallen door into their midst. Serk follows. A priestess seals the doorway with a stoneshape. Varende takes some deep slashes from the longswords. Another hound appears and bathes him in fire, but Thasti Kes preserves him. The priestesses retreat as Banic opens the stoneshaped barrier with a spell of his own. One of the men is dispatched and the other retreats. Serk slams against the door to the barracks but the other man seems to be holding it. Serk hears him yell “Darmuth has fallen! Run. I’ll hold them.” Serk takes several rounds to finally beat the strength of the man holding the door. He runs across the room to the storeroom on the left with Serk on his heels. Banic follows and the two dispatch him.

With no enemies in sight, a systematic search eventually reveals three bedrooms with large double beds and wardrobes. Behind one of the beds, Varende finds a hidden passage that leads to the right-hand storeroom. He and Keddick emerge as Banic and Serk fruitlessly search the other storeroom. Keddick wanders the passages detecting magic and finds none. Eventually Varende discovers a hidden door behind the wardrobe in the bedroom where there was a door behind the bed. He opens it to discover a five by five low-ceilinged room with a passage half as wide leading away to the right. It ends after five feet in stone. Much of the stone in the area seems to have been shaped by magic.

The safer course is chosen and Banic opens the passageway he closed before. Keddick makes Varende invisible, and the elf goes exploring. He finds three more bedrooms with wardrobes. He searches them all thoroughly finding a piece of wall in one of them that opens to allow exit to a passage near one of the other bedrooms. The only unexplored area is a long hall reaching out of Varende’s vision. It is not lit as the rest of the passages have been. The group proceeds down the passage and finds after two hundred feet that there is a small alcove on the left and stairs leading down. A faint scent of purification tickles Banic’s nose. As he proceeds down the stairs with Serk just behind, Glyphs of Warding explode in fiery flashes, but Moradin and his quick reflexes mostly protect him. Down ten feet. Landing. Glyph. Turn to the right. Repeat four times. As he stands on the last landing looking down into a room that opens up, he sees a cat lurch by the opening. He descends the steps. He notices the room goes out of his vision in front of him, is thirty-five feet wide, and has lots of figures in it that take lower precedence compared to the zombie ogre right next to him…