as written by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia, himself.

Toilday, 14 Arodus

Since we had a number of short duration (~3hr) “rope tricks” at our disposal, we spent the night in another plane (well, four of them for a total of 12 hrs) in the cloakroom, setting guards to peer into the room and give us advance notice of any possible detection. Thus we knew that we were still being searched for, as two of the ninjas did enter during the night and looked around.  The lack of a hanging rope with these rope tricks was blessed indeed.

Other than that breath-holding moment, the night was uneventful.

Wealday, 15 Arodus

Exiting the cloakroom, we attempted to go stealthily toward the alchemy lab at the other end of the building.  The ninjas are so good at hiding in shadows that even moving, slowly, stealthily, and carefully, we walked past two of them before they sprang upon us. They may not have seen us in the cloakroom, but they clearly never believed we left.

The ninjas are quick, well-armed, and virtuosos with poison.  But what they are not, is well-armored.  Although there were eight of them, there were also eight of us.  Nine, if you include the celestial leopard that Kali conjured up to help us.

Being close to several of them when they emerged, I found myself the target of several accurate but not particularly deadly attacks. Although each individual attack was nowhere near lethal, I could see them adding up quickly if I wasn’t careful.  Qatana’s channel of positive energy was particularly timely.  As each ninja found themselves engaged in melee, they also found themselves falling down in a puddle of blood.  As I said, neither well-armored nor particularly robust.

There were still six standing, although few uninjured, when one gave a whistle, undoubtedly a signal for additional help.  As the ninjas began to drop like flies under the swords of our fighters, 6 thugs emerged from a doorway below us. I stepped up to the nearest, but missed.

Kali greased one thug’s weapon, but they were still proving remarkably tough to take down. Swords were doing the job faster than arrows, but we were reminded that they could dish out blows as well.  Still, I was embarrassed to find that I could not lay a blow to them. Fortunately our other fighters were much more successful, and the thugs lay on the ground bleeding out.

We were now free to search the many rooms on this lower floor.  There was nothing spectacular here, just several small rooms that appeared to have been used by the ninjas and the thugs.  In general, we found some higher quality stuff in the ninja’s room, which was also much neater. There we found

[288] 8 fugitive granades
[289] 8 potions

There was an altar here to Yaezhing, upon which we found ~500gp of gems.

In the room used by the thugs, we found an obvious trap door. Opening it yielded a coarse yell in some language: “Enough coal! No more! Close door!”.  Sparna was able to translate it for us.

Radella searched some foot lockers, and we added to our salvage operation:

[290] jade bracelet
[291] ebony antique fan
[292] IOU for Rimerunners, worth 80gp

Another room was cold, with carcasses in it – clearly a room for preserving food.  Two rooms appeared to be recently quarried; it wasn’t clear what that was about.  Each thug and each ninja had little jade raven statuettes … the ninja ones being of higher quality. And of course the ninjas had decent bows.

[293] 6 jade ravens (lower quality)
[294] 8 jade ravens (higher quality)
[295] 8 MW short bows

We realized we had never checked the werebear’s room, so we went back to check it out. We did find some stuff worth keeping there:

[296] under a small oak stauette of a warrior, a ring of keys

There was also a bag of about 40 Chellish gold coins.

From there we proceeded back to the alchemy lab, making sure that Etayne would retain her composure in the face of sucn an interesting room.  There was, of course, the intriguing “corpse under glass”. Looking it over carefully, we saw that its skin seemed to be writhing, as though something was underneath it.  As it beat feebly on the glass, it spoke – “Let me out” – this time in Infernal, said somebody.  We also found

[298] ointment: can be used either as stoneflesh, or as stone to flesh
[299] magic ring of counterspells (empty)

Etayne made a point of inspecting papers and research notes. Most were in common, but a few were in Giant.

Next was a room that was barred (on our side) from entry. Going inside, we found a 5’x10′ cell with a very pungent smell and a dead body with rats. But there was a (barely) live body here as well.  Lute, he said he was named, and he’d been here for maybe 3 weeks.  He gratefully came along with us.

While we were cleaning out the cell 🙂 Etayne found some mention in the notes about Infernal wasps that apparently could take over a body. Whoever was in the glass container was probably no longer really there, and breaking it would prove disastrous for us and maybe others in the building.   She also noticed that many if not all of the plants growing here were of the nightshade family and thus poisonous.  She hypothesized that this may be the source of the poisons we’d been encountering.

As we left, Etayne grabbed what research she could.

Leaving this level, we went downstairs.