Haven: Teleported and Alone

On March 5th, Year 15, having found that the dwarven ruins connected to the Aithreachas mines continue much deeper, a party returns with significant numbers to continue exploring:

• Sicun (MiM): Level 5 Minotaur Fighter
• Finnigan Farl (CoB): Level 4/2 Halfling Bard/Chemist
• Steve (AdS): Level 3 Orc Fighter
• Aurum (TrS): Level 3 Elf Magic-user (Elementalist)
  • 2 water elementals, Squish and Squash (1 and 2 cubic feet)
  • fire elemental, Sizzle (1 cubic foot)
  • lightning elemental, Spark (1 cubic foot)
• Dell Carnegie (CoS): Level 3/1 Gnome Fighter/Tinker
• Will (CaB): Level 3 Human Monk

Glancing in rooms they had previously cleared to make sure there is no threat behind them, they find that some of the subterranean vultures are picking away at the spiders-scorpions they previously killed in a room which had originally held two-toed humanoids. Apparently a popular destination. The other rooms are still empty, including the large mess hall. They pass through the kitchen to look for new territory.

They head to the left, knowing the right to connect to their ingress passage, but through an intersection where they had previously been attacked by flying bricks from the floor itself. They soon find a door on which Aurum senses a magical aura that suggest teleportation to him. He warns the others away, but Will is not willing to be deterred so easily and opens the door to find an empty hallway.

They all proceed inside and find on the left a broken door into a collapsed room and on the right another door, which they open to find three hunched humanoids in what appears to be a blacksmith workshop. The humanoids are passive and while they discuss among themselves what to do, the humanoids also discuss. It is at this time they hear a distant scream and look around to see that Will is missing.

Will, meanwhile has found himself enveloped in darkness and stumbling over what feel like dry bones. He lets out a scream and huddles in a corner, continuing to scream.

The rest of the party return the way they came, following the screams back through the kitchen (where they search the food stores) and into the mess hall where they find Will, who calms as their lights approach. Taking stock again, however, they realize that Finnigan is now missing…

Finnigan, finding himself in the dark, decides to set off one of his fire bombs to shed some light on his situation. He is able to get out of the blast radius, but it sets fire to food stores piled throughout the room and puts flames between him and the now-visible door. He soon passes out as the room empties of oxygen and fills with smoke.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party has no idea where to go in search of him. They decide that the best thing is to move quickly deeper into the dungeon looking into doors, but not searching the rooms they find.

In the first door off the wide corridor, they find what appears to be some kind of theater and continue through a door on the stage into some kind of ready area where they destroy a dwarven skeleton. The ready area has two halls of doors coming off it and they start to search these, finding some empty and skeletons in others, which they destroy easily enough.

By a stroke of luck, Finnigan awakens to the feeling of something stabbing into his neck. He grabs for it and clutches onto something furry, which he stabs until it stops struggling. The flames in the store room have gone out, but he feels his way to the door, through which he can hear some scuttling with the help of his Helm of Hearing Quiet Sounds. When he opens the door, the scuttling stops, but he can still hear rapid breathing and small, swift heart-beats in the room beyond.

He throws a bomb at the sound and in the flash of the explosion sees giant rats, most of which he assumes he has killed. Daggers out, he fights in the dark until no more foes present themselves. He feels his way around the room until he finds another door. Through that door, he hears (with the help of the helm) the sound of bones being broken in the distance. He assumes this sound to be his friends at work and hurries toward the sound in the dark.

As Finnigan goes, he hears some grating sounds and when he is struck by a flying brick, he guesses where he must be. He throws his largest bomb toward the grating sounds and keeps running as the explosion shakes the halls.

The rest of the party, hearing the explosion, stops searching rooms near the theater and return to the wide hall where Finnigan sees their light and rejoins them. Finnigan is in bad shape and has used some of his healing potions, but Aurum heals him and they return to finish searching the theater rooms.

In one, they fight a kobold zombie that turns out to be more agile than expected, but ultimately is little threat to the party. As Sicun approaches the last door at the end of one of the halls, he sees that the knob has a mouth on it and licks its lips while he is staring at it. Spark’s fire is seemingly unable to damage the knob and they decide to have Steve break the door down. He does so and it falls back, vanishing to reveal a brick wall.

They are not so easily deceived and rush through the brick wall to find a zombified gnome which they quickly slay, putting an end to the illusions. They search all of the rooms, turning up some minor magical items and some few coins, before withdrawing from the dungeon the way they came in

They saw the trap coming and it still struck twice! I love my teleport traps, although I suspect they are going to take care of this one before it gets them again. Oh well.