Of Warlords and Tentacles

Summary

Drakken, Kalnac, and Shashank exited the complex and joined their other companions to rest for a bit. Miandra was still nauseous, and Wylan was still dead. But while resting, a stranger appeared. A dwarf warlord, he said his name was Biren and he'd heard a group of heroes had come to Wyvern Mountain to destroy the evil that infested it. He'd set out with a party of fellow adventurers to aid them, though unfortunately the rest of his group was slain en route.

Biren was hesitantly accepted into group, though Kalnac still harbored suspicions about him. With that, the party went back into the fortress. After verifying that they'd dealt with any threats that may still remain, they proceeded to the last room they had not yet explored.

The walls and floor of the small chamber were riddled with shards of glittering metal. A dais with a staff-sized hole in it occupied the northern end of the room while moons in various phases were depicted on the southern wall, along with a riddle. Using deductive reasoning, Kalnac inserted the staff they'd found earlier into the hole in the dais. This caused a beam of light to shoot out of the gem at the top of the staff. Via trial-and-error, followed by thought, the beam was shone on the moons in a variety of ways and after triggering an old-fashioned "shards of metal shoot out from the floor if the sequence of moons isn't hit with a beam of light properly" trap, a staircase opened beneath the floor

The stairs wound down for hundreds of feet, opening into a cavern chamber about 500 feet down. The party proceeded to exit the chamber via a stone tunnel, but before they could do so two barghests attacked them from behind the shadow of the stairs. The battle was rough but the heroes prevailed.

Returning to the tunnel, the party followed it to a larger cavern. There they found an odd prison - a pool of water surrounded by ten cylindrical shafts with locked lids, most of which contained skeletons. They found some treasure on one, but nothing unusual otherwise.

The group proceeded down another tunnel and came upon a torture chamber inhabited by four gricks. The gricks attacked, ganging up on the paladin as if he were an adolescent girl in a sailor outfit. At times their tentacles would lash at him like the whip of a slavemaster; at other times they would caress him, like the touch of a cephalopodic lover (though those might have been lashes that simply didn't penetrate...his defenses).

The party was victorious once again, but their resources had been tapped; they decided to hole up in the torture chamber for the night. In the morning, they would continue on, and perhaps reach the exciting conclusion of...

...Wyvern Mountain!'

Memorable Events

• Arrival of Biren

Creatures Encountered

• Barghests
• Gricks

Treasures Discovered

• +1 magic chainmail
• +1 thundering flail
• cure disease scroll
• hand of fate scroll
• Golden spikes

Locations Visited

• Wyvern Mountain

NPCs Encountered

• n/a