Oathday, Pharast 28, 4713 afternoon
Beneath the House of Withered Blossoms

Our plan for sneaking up and ambushing the the two guards at the bottom of “the drain” before they could make a noise went almost according to plan. We did sneak up and kill them, but in the process of doing so a blast from a flask of some oily explosive concoction gave us away.

From deeper within the cavern came the sound of heavy movement and a loud gruff voice called out, “Who goes there? None shall pass. Identify yourselves!”

By this time most of my companions had flown off to the far end of the pool, where there was some sort of commotion, and so to delay any attack from another enemy I answered, “It’s Icharou” while infusing my voice with as much oily obsequiousness as possible.

“Not today!” came the response.

“It is too Icharou! Yassu said to come see mother.” I was counting on the voice being familiar with just how craven and stupid Icharou was to aide in my deception.

“Oh, remember what happened to you the last time you saw Yassu? If I were you I’d keep away.”

Joy! You really can’t go wrong assuming everyone else thought Icharou was a worthless fop. “I’m more afraid of mother than Yassu!”

“If I were you I would be afraid of both, but do what you will.”

By now the rest of my companions had gathered near the entrance to the cavern. Most had a grim look about them, and Zos’ giant twins were absent (I later discovered that something had swallowed them whole!), but this was not the time for questions.

We carefully moved in to where we could just make out the owner of the voice. He was a large samurai mounted upon a gorgon. He seemed bored, as did the gorgon, and with little wonder: how many invaders could there have been that had made it this far over the centuries. Not many, I warrant, and so perhaps he was not quite as alert or suspicious as he otherwise would have been.Piles of gorgon dung (some still steaming) gave off a pungent stink of sulfur and rotting flesh.

Kali and I used our usual confuse and confine technique, which had the desired affect of the gorgon and samurai attacking each other. Meanwhile my companions used ranged attacks to wear them down even further. Eventually the samurai fell and the gorgon smashed through Kali’s wall of ice, but it was grievously injured and the combined efforts of Olmas, Zos and Ivan put it out of its misery and cleared the way.

There was a door to the west, which Zos opened and stepped in while I picked through what the samurai had been carrying.

587	large master work katana
588	silver master work wakisashi
589	large composite longbow [+9 STR]
590	large master work tatami-do armor

The room to the west had been the samurai’s bedroom. Zos said that the floor was a carpet of beatles and that the bed was full of over sized lice. I took a peek later, and really, I know I am not the neatest of people, but how could anyone sleep in a room like this?

“That’s just Gross,” Timber squeaked, and the others quickly agreed, except for Beorn who simply cooed, “Mmmm, bugs.”

There were some nice items in the room which are now ours.

591	headband of alluring charisma +2 (Dasi?)
592	offering bowl set with rubies
593	gilded elephant tusks
591	jade and silver rooster funerary figure
595	10 foot panel screen of the House of Withered Blossoms when it was still pristine

We faced a small dilemma. While the panel and treasure could have fit inside a bag of holding the gorgon could not. Yes, we needed the gorgon’s body, or more specifically Zos did. As I had mentioned his giants perished back in the pool and to replace them he wanted a gorgon that he could ride.

I actually had a solution to this problem, and pulled a bolt of fabric from my pack. It unfolded to a ten foot square of silk which we spread onto the floor on top of which we were able to place all of the loot and the body of the gorgon. I then cast Treasure Stitching and the entire pile collapsed into an embroidered image of the same. I rolled up the silk and put it back in my pack.

And moments later we heard voices approaching from the north.

“Oh I can’t believe we’re doing that again. We should let the others…”

A squad of hobgob warriors came into view and started shooting arrows at us. Some of us fired back and the rest closed in and quickly reduced them and their pet giant into piles of gore and bone.

The hallway from which they had come was odd: there was a ramp that led up from a rubble strewn floor — the ramp had clearly at one time been a bridge, but the archway in the far wall to which it would have led was bricked in. The walls were decorated with scenes of oni-centric decadence and depravity, including the scene of a female oni suckling a pair of nagas.

Pools that probably led to the lake outside were to the west, and further north was an eastern door beneath the balcony from which the ramp descended. The door was wooden and swollen shut from moisture, but Radella and Olmas forced it open. The small damp chamber beyond was uninteresting except for the small potted bonsai tree that was withering within.

This must be the tree one of the kami had asked us to rescue. It looked to be in poor shape because of its prolonged exposure to darkness. Just why someone had bothered to steal the tree and bring it down here was a mystery, but we took it in the hope that it would recover once it was back outside.

We picked our way across the remains of a collapsed bridge that led us back east and into the western end of a long pillared hall that stretched east into the darkness.

We had hardly all moved into the hall when we heard the sound of hobgoblins and a giant approaching. A moment later and I was eye to eye with a giant (I was floating some teen feet up) and the brute walloped me.

Kali cast Cloud Kill, which stretched across the full width of the hall engulfing a number of hobgobs before moving eastward. We killed everything on our side of the cloud and then followed it along, swiftly slaying the occasional warrior that stumbled out, gasping and wheezing. Ivan aided us greatly here by entering the cloud (safe with Delay Poison) and luring the attackers on the other side of the cloud in to their deaths.

Nearly ten minutes and six hundred feet later and we finally reached the end of the hall and the cloud began to waft out over a pond to the southeast. We heard a loud “Crap!” from Ivan, who was still before the cloud. He had suddenly come face to face with a large wide mouthed hump backed lizard (his words) sporting a lot of razor sharp teeth, but having no eyes.

Moments later we were blasted with the force of one of these things screeching. Dasi was stunned, but Ivan managed to find his way back through the cloud to join us. Another, lower key shriek pounded us, and we realized that these reptilian frog, lizard like beasts were probably the most dangerous things we’d faced all day.

I placed a zone of Silence in the middle of the cloud to buy us some time to regroup and Kali put up a wall of force. We decided to let the poison cloud do as much damage as possible before pressing our attack.

Presently the cloud drifted out past the lizard things and dissipated. We moved in, but this time Dasi was prepared and matched his singing to counter the sonic attacks.

Even still the creatures were tough and took a lot of punishment before falling. We were all a bit tired by the time the last one dropped, and those of us who use spells were feeling a little depleted.

On the further side of the pond we could see what looked like a pile of hobgoblin bones on the shingles. So the lizard things ate the hobgoblins? Then which way had the group of hobgobs (plus hill giant) come from?

We must have missed a secret door somewhere along the hundreds of feet of hallway we had traversed. Radella seemed upset by this, but even she needs to focus a little more than was possible when we passed through.

We’ve decided to set up camp either at the far end of the pillared hall or maybe the chamber before that. While this seems risky, we do need to rest to regain spells, and it is a far better option than to drop back to some place “more safe” — or I should say “less dangerous.”