Wealday, Pharast 27, 4713 afternoon
The Spirit Forest, House of Withered Blossoms

The day is barely half over and already it feels as if weeks have passed since waking this morning.

Olmas and I crept down the circular stairs, and Dasi and Zos followed after. At the bottom was a small pillared room with a four gibbets hanging from the ceiling. Two of the cages were occupied by a pair of Tien looking humans (at this point in time almost everyone we meet is Tien, and I suppose there is no point in mentioning ethnicity unless someone is not).

They appeared to be unconscious and in rough shape and Huffy was cooing his concern so I channeled to heal them. The woman opened her eyes and said, “I hate it when they do that.” She was startled when she saw Olmas and I, but kept quiet when I motioned for her to hush.

We cautiously moved out into the maze of partitions.

At the same time Radella, Ivan and Kali lifted up one of the grates and dropped down before a metal door, which they opened and continued on into the partition maze.

I drifted up to look over the walls and saw the others as well as a pair of “Morg” skeleton/zombie things. After a brief encounter the creatures were dead and searching the area revealed no additional hazards.

We returned to the captives and set them free. They had been traveling along the forest road some weeks ago when their party had been attacked by the spider kin and dragged back here. They were traveling north to flee the nearly regular raids upon the rural villages in Minkai. This sounded odd, but they thought it normal.

We led them up to the ground level above us, and armed them with some simple weapons that were lying around.

We then descended down the next stairway to a web cluttered hallway that led around a large square room. Four pillars held up the ceiling, but the floor tilted down towards the center where a large dark hole dropped into darkness.

Kali and I drifted nearer to the pit as the others filed in, keeping well back from the center. A quartet of aranea spider beings scuttled out from the webbing and attacked, but they were seriously over matched and soon fell twitching to the floor.

Kali became invisible and flit down the hole to quickly scout around. She returned and reported that the pit dropped down some fourteen fathoms, but after the first three were stone steps circling around to the floor far below. The steps landed in the corner of a vast cavern, at the far end of which stood a mighty wall reaching to within a couple of feet of the ceiling. Hobgoblins could be seen patrolling the top of the wall along the parapet behind battlements.

She paused for a moment before saying a double gate was set in the wall, and a couple of humans had been impaled upon the large spikes protruding from the gate.

Other than a soft angry chittering from Star, all of my friends (even Beorn) were dead silent.

We discussed our options and decided to go for a two prong approach. We would all fly down the pit where Kali would summon a large earth elemental, which would rush through the wall and attempt to unbar the gates. Once the elemental appeared we would all fly toward the wall, and Ivan would use Stone Shape to lower one of the battlements by a couple of feet to provide us with easier egress to the courtyard beyond.

The plan mostly worked — certainly well enough to get us inside, where we made short work of the half a dozen hobgoblin guards within. In the courtyard two large doors were to the north and a smaller door was east.

Radella and I opened the gate and lowered the two men impaled on the spikes. I healed them, and they volunteered some useful information about the fortress.

“Nobody goes through the northern doors. At least we’ve never seen them. The guards on the wall change every twelve hours. They impale prisoners on the gate with less regularity, but more than often enough for us.”

“The single door leads to ”her” domain — I’ve never seen her and from what I’ve heard I don’t want to. She’s truly awful.”

Dasi pressed him for a name, and he finally sputtered out, “Manusikaru.”

The other fellow continued the audio tour. “First there’s a torture chamber, and beyond that is a walkway where stone giants patrol: it is called ”The Balcony of Pillars.” Why? Well because it is a balcony with pillars. Further in you’ll come to ”The Agonies” and the ”Great Ledge”. This is what the hobgoblins call a pit with no bottom. That’s where it is rumored that ”she” dwells. Most of the hobgoblins live around the pit, and they are led by a Budo, a great hobgoblin who rides a great big pig. He calls himself ”Budo the Swine Shogun.””

His friend chimed in, “Yeah, but we prisoners call him something else behind his back that doesn’t sound as nice. Rumor has it riding isn’t all he does with pigs.”

Bless his little heart, but this gave Beorn a bad case of the giggles, which we had to endure for the next hour or so.

We took them up to the ground level where they joined with the other couple to wait for our return, or if things looked desperate, to escape out the front door.

In the meantime our companions had taken various useful items from the corpses of the hobgoblins.

We discovered that each of the two northern doors opened onto a trap room with a dummy door at the far side. Radella disabled the traps, thus making the rooms useable to us.

The small eastern door led to a long narrow room with bodies in various states of decomposition hanging from the walls and a door at the far end. Radella entered and I followed, floating six inches above the floor. It was just as well that I did not walk in, because Radella found several pit traps in the floor.

My interest was taken up by the series of small holes in the wall. I almost thought a felt a breeze coming through one, and had called Radella over to look when we heard a loud shout of “Fire!”

Both of us were peppered with arrows fired through the holes. Radella ran for the door at the far end, which was locked. I drifted to the center of the room and began to emit an aura inspired by Groetus which I find calming but others usually less so.

Olmas used some magic device to blast the door from its hinges and the gang all rushed past me to attack the attackers. Steps led up from the room beyond to a pillared balcony where a pair of stone giants looked over at us and yelled.

I blasted them with a Confusion spell while Kali put up a wall of force at the top of the stairs.

Things weren’t going well for the hidden archers. Sure, a few continued to fire, but some stood and stared, others shot their comrades, while still others poked themselves with their arrows. This plus the onslaught of my companions made quick work of these hobgoblins.

The giants had not fared much better. While one wandered about bashing the invisible wall, the other first injured himself and then took exception to the other giant’s presence (can you blame him — have you ever smelled a giant?) and began to beat on him.

Soon one giant fell, and Kali dropped the wall so the rest of us could finish off the survivor.

And so here we are surrounded by more dead hobgoblins and a pair of dead giants.

Wealday, Pharast 27, 4713 morning
The Spirit Forest, House of Withered Blossoms

We were treated to a spectacular show of vegetarian delights in the wee hours this morning. The vines of ivy that cover the house sprouted shoots that rapidly spread and put forth buds which just as rapidly bloomed. The flowers opened and blasted out great poofs of pollen that engulfed the house, obscuring our view. Presently the flowers wilted and dropped, presenting us with the same scene that met us when we first arrived.

As soon as it was light we took to flight and hovered above the roof of the structure. A large hole had been blasted in, and peering down into the dim morning light we could see a wall to wall tangle of webs.

None of us much liked the idea of dropping down into that matted sticky mess, and so Zos tossed down a vial of alchemist fire.

Beorn chortled out a diabolic song of, “Burn, baby burn!” while my other friends tittered nervously before joining in the chorus.

A pair of voices wafted up, speaking in common.

“Get that.”

“Get what?”

“The fire.”

“Oh, hold on.”

Neither speaker seemed overly concerned that their lair was being set alight like a roman candle. Zos seemed to think the pollen from the flowers was some sort of opioid. It was a good thing Ivan and I had protected the party with Air Bubble.

We became a bit impatient and continued to set more webs on fire, and yet the only reaction we got was a somewhat disinterested exclamation of, “Intruders.”

Finally we saw a half spider and half humanoid creatures scuttle into view and Ivan, Radella and Zos promptly shot it dead.

Taking advantage of our active fly magics Olmas, Radella and I dropped down. This was a mistake. In addition to the spider things there were shadows, which floated over and began to sap our strength.

Ivan provided cover with a circular tube of flame and we fled back to the roof top, where Radella and I used wands of Lesser Restoration to undo what the shadows had done.

We then set about torching the space below with some serious fire. Soon most of the webbing had been burned out and I entered and verified that the shadows and spider creatures had either perished or fled.

Dasi said he had detected the thoughts of others below us… and moving down and out of the range of his ability to detect them. We then heard a scream suddenly cut off.

We searched the space we had cleared and found a stash of loot, mostly burned to char. Sometimes you have to choose between prudence and profit, and in this case most of us agreed the loss had been worth it. We did manage to salvage a handful of things, and found a few additional items on the one spider corpse.

There was a wide hole in the floor and more webbing beyond. While the others gathered the loot Ivan and I lit the area on fire using Spark.

Someone below called up that we should give up and leave. I called down that the oni had sent us to help out, but this sent the voice into a fuming rage — well, not really a rage exactly, but more like a “you’re really bumming me out, man, but lets not make too big a fuss about it, and could you go away and leave some munchies while your at it” kind of general unhappiness.

Apparently the spiders controlled the part of the house above ground, and the oni were supposed to stay below ground in the part they controlled, and we were putting a serious harsh on his mellow.

Large spiders clambered out and attacked, but we made quick work of them. We could see more half spider half humanoid creatures below, and so Olmas and I sent down spiritual allies to beat on them.

Things appeared to be going our way when a bolt of lightening arced up from below and struck me, and then exploded into a other arcs that zapped my companions.

Suddenly the humanoid in filthy silk robes that Kali seen with her Arcane eye teleported up to us, and was immediately met by a serious combination of psychology and extreme violence, but without the psychology.

In short, he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

“Dude, ” squeaked Badger, “are you sure that air bubble spell thingy is really working? You sound a little spaced out yourself.”

“Badger,” I calmly replied, “I’m writing it that way so folks know how these guys sounded.”

We pawed over his corpse and removed everything of value.

We could see nothing living down below and so we drifted down and explored, mindful of the spikes sticking up from the floor.

I found a series of iron grills set in the floor around the perimeter of the room, through which shown a dim light. I saw some sort of skeleton that still had its vital organs pumping and pulsating in its rib cage. It moved stealthily as if it were hunting something.

Meanwhile the others had been busy searching all of the debris that littered this level of the house.

Nobody was too happy upon hearing about the skeleton thing below, and with all of us looking through the grates we found that there were two of them, and that they were patrolling along a set route.

We made a quick, but efficient plan. Most of the party would concentrate on one of the skeletons while Olmas guarded the circular staircase that led down, and I kept track of the other bony fellow.

The archers quickly blasted the one into flinders, and I charred the other with a Flame Strike before the others finished it off.

Where to go next? Well, down, obviously.

The others are fiddling with one of the grates, which lifts up just before a door in the metal wall.

Olmas and I are standing before the stairs, and he’s looking at me and I’m looking at him, and it is as clear as day that we’re heading down.