as written by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia, himself.

Wealday, 27 Pharast

Qatana and I went down what we believed to now be the unguarded spiral staircase. Dasi and Zos came with us, while the rest planned to enter by one of the grates.

Radella apparently found their way blocked by traps (which she successfully disarmed) while our way seemed free of such. (Which was good, since we were searching for them largely the old-fashioned way – by looking intently and whispering “TRAP!” when one was triggered.) It seemed maybe the architect of this place was more worried about attack from below than above.

We hadn’t gotten far, though, when Qatana found another of the organ-visible skeletons. Unknown to us at the time, Radella et al had found another as well. Our parties came together just as we made these discoveries and between us, we handily dispatched the creatures. One had some sort of prehensile tongue that snaked out at me and Dasi warned “don’t let it touch you!” He seemed to know something of these creatures.

We returned to the prisoners, both now conscious thanks to Qatana’s healing. They’d been lost in the forest, and had been captured by the aranea and brought here – probably eventually as food. They told us of nobles ransacking villages in Minkai – that’s why they had fled to the forest. They were also able to tell us there were troglodytes and hobgoblins in the pit below us.

We used our wand of CLW on them to bring them back to full, at least physically. I think I caught that their names were Junzo and Udtsetseg. Anyway, we armed them with some of the simple weapons lying around and told them to wait for us, as there was more we needed to do down below. I don’t know if they’ll still be there when we return, but we’ve done the best we could for them. We renewed our dark vision and proceeded to the pit.

As we descended, we encountered more webs, but apparently the aranea or spiders that created them had already been killed. Radella, as always, was trap-alert and found and disarmed one on our way down. Eventually we reached the aforementioned pit.

It’s hard to say how much of this was constructed and how much was natural. Clearly the stairs carved into the rock were not natural, but how much renovation continued below us remained to be seen. But we did run into some more spider-creatures which, while not terribly difficult to kill, were persistent and tenacious, as well as annoying magic users.

Having cleared them out, we could see the pit more clearly now, and with parts of it being quite smooth, it seemed that there may have been quite a bit of engineering involved. I doubt this was part of the original design for the “oni prison house.” Air rising from the hole was warm and fragrant in a bad, sweaty, dirty sort of way.

We carefully and quietly descended and found ourselves looking at an underground fortress. Maybe this HAD been where the oni had been kept. It stretched from wall to wall in this underground chamber, and was fortified as well as any city wall. There were guards patrolling and, to our horror, there appeared to be two humans impaled upon the obvious front doors. We quickly devised a plan.

It was apparent that the only surprise we could offer would be an overwhelming assault. Nothing tricky or clever was going to get us past the archers and massive front doors. The clear area in front of the entrance was an obvious kill zone; anything entering there needed to be prepared for an onslaught of archers and maybe worse. So the plan became:

1) summon an earth elemental to assault the front door
2) Have Qatana stoneshape an opening in the parapets while that was happening
3) Haste all
4) Bring in our more mobile strike force via that means
5) Hope for the best.

This plan proved fluid in its execution, and involved all of us eventually flying up to the opening in the parapet, an illusion of Akinosa scaling the outer wall, and the earth elemental giving his all in destroying the front entrance. But we eventually found ourselves inside, the guards dead, and probably a small amount of time until the next shift discovered the previous shift was dead. We collected

[516-519] Cure Serious Wounds

from the bodies of the guards, and turned our attention to the impalees. They were alive but unconscious, but a little healing made them more comfortable and able to answer our questions. There were apparently more inside, held as slaves, and something or somebody else they greatly feared.

Well, in it was, then. We had a bonsai to rescue.

We collected

[520] MW armor (4)
[521] MW shield (wooden) (4)
[522] MW composite long bows +3 (4)
[523] MW morningstars (4)
[523] many arrows

and started our incursion. Two doors to the north led to two kill rooms. Their only purpose was to lure uninformed visitors (such as we) into rooms with no exits and lots of whirling blades. The impalees had said that the hobgoblins never used those rooms and now we knew why. We approached the eastern door apprehensively.

We (Qatana, Radella, and myself) entered this room to find a torture chamber. No living creatures were here, but there was evidence there had been. Radella found several pit-traps, however, making this room seem unnaturally dangerous even for a torture chamber.

And then from behind the walls, something said “Fire”. And arrows came flying through holes in the wall, striking all three of us.
The Ring of the Ram burst through the door at the end of the room and allowed me access to the archers. Qatana cast one of her magics that make people behave strangely – and thankfully, many of them did. Two giants started hurling rocks from a mezzanine above us, but Kali installed a wall of force that thwarted that and also kept them from joining the fray.

It was chaotic for a bit, but when the dust cleared we again had dead hobgoblins and now dead giants to add to our resume. And a few arrow holes in several of us, but nothing a little healing wouldn’t take care of.