In the larger room we see that there are 6 sarcophagi in the floor. There is also a fresco around the room depicting humans carrying baskets.

We open the sarcophagi in the southern room and find a Necklace of Keys +1 that helps with opening locks. Rylene takes it for future use. Inspecting the northern room, we find a Potion of Healing (Rylene) and 70 gp, a wagon wheel, a wicker basket with junk in it, and 10 gp, 15sp, and an abacus.

We move north and follow the corridor to the east. In the room we find Thurann tied up. We untie him and he says he was recently captured trying to pick pockets. He recognizes Jalissa and Zerriksa and doesn’t know of any other prisoners. He’s not very receptive of his fathers death. We let him know that we need to continue on and find the remaining captive as well as the artifacts. We search the alcoves in the room and find 100gp and 200sp.

As we head north the room opens to what appears to be a throne room with Living Dead (Boneshard Skeleton, Deathlock Wight) sitting there. The room is littered with bones of the dead as well. The Deathlock Wight was able to call undead (Decrepit Skeletons) from the bones on the floor. The room appears to have a field in it that continues to raise the dead even after the Deathlock Wight was destroyed. Once all the enemies are destroyed, the dead cease to rise.

After we defeat all the enemies, we begin to notice the details of the room. There is a mural in the room and the faces on the paintings are in greater detail and realism than the other features in the paintings. The paintings are of the lords of Rivenroar, and are defaced. They depict the lords as godlike figures.

The thrones in the rooms are not real gold. They appear to be gilded. We find some Deathcut Hide +1 and a Wand of Inevitability +1 behind the thrones. Goolag and I take them for use respectively.

We head west from here and come to a room with Evistro (Carnage Demon) guarding it. There is a hallway on the northern side and a door to the south. Due to the yelling of the demon, 2 wererats enter the room from the northern hallway and we hear a yell, “I Release You” from the rats. The Demon was able to resist 10 damage initially, and the wererats bite can cause Disease and Poison.

After the fight with the demon and were rats is over we have a chance to look around the room. “Honor the Heroic Guardians”  is inscribed on the walls. The pillars in the room were forming a barrier that was holding in the demon.

Due to the state of our rescued captives (old man and traumatized woman), Goolag and I want to return them back to town. We were going to discuss this when everyone awakes. I also feel that we should head back to the mushroom room to explore the other areas there that we haven’t opened yet.

I only just now noticed that we booked it out of there pretty quick we didn’t do a thorough check of the room. There is a short way and a long way there, so maybe our party could split up to check it out and see if we missed anything? I know the Gnomes had some War Picks that may be good for Goolag or Raiann, and they may have had gold on them. Or we may just want to count it as lost and continue on our quest for searching for captives and relics.

After the other wake up we discuss our next course of action. Raiann is very persuasive about continuing the exploration of the catacombs while keeping the rescued captives in tow. He makes the argument that the distance to town is long enough that we can’t guarantee the remaining captives safety while we waste time trudging back and forth. We head in and notice that the goblins have set a trap and cleared out the dead bodies. It’ll be harder for us to take them by surprise now that they know there are intruders. We fight one goblin, and take out their turret. It’s pretty uneventful, and a little surprising that they though 1 archer would slow us down or be able to give warning.

We head back to the room with the Rage Drakes and go east through the door we hadn’t opened yet. We find Zerriksa behind a force field and I take her out of it easily. She doesn’t give us much information we didn’t know already with the exception that the goblins threatened her with the lives of the other captives.

We head up to the unexplored portion of the dungeon and find some Spitting Drakes, hobgoblins, and a Goblin Hexer. The hobgoblins went down pretty easy. More one-hit-wonders. Goolag took on the northern Spitting Drake with myself as support while the rest of the team headed to the southern area of the room to take on the remaining spitting Drake and hobgoblin. Once the southern Spitting Drake was encountered, the Goblin Hexer showed from the room to the south. Rylene was able to get behind him, and we found another captive. Jalissa was chained to yet another alter. We can only imagine what the goblins were hoping for by sacrificing so many prisoners.

After vanquishing the foes, we freed Jalissa, and find a Hexer’s Rod on the Goblin Hexer. Speaking with Jalissa, we discover that Thurann has been bringing her food when he can. We now know that of the 2 captives left to be located, at least one is currently free from the goblins and roaming the dungeon, possibly alone. There isn’t much to see in the room that Jalissa was kept in, so we head back to the larger room that had the Drakes and hobgoblins.

We headed north from the Endercap room an met up with a Guard Drake and 2 more hobgoblins.  When 1 hobgoblin was dead and the drake and the other hobgoblin was bloodied, 6 more goblins came in. We took a lot of damage from the drake and hobgoblins (Rylene had to use 2 Surges during the encounter, and one out of encounter to heal up). Goolag and Rylene were both severely wounded and we almost thought they wouldn’t pull through. Luckily, the reinforcements were easily vanquished, and we were able to continue on.

Once we cleared the room of dangers, we headed down the spiral staircase into an area with some sarcophagi. There was a wall inscription that read, “Here lie the Rivenroars until the Day of the Black Sun. If you seek their monument, look at the lands around you.”

Goolag opened up the sarcophagi and we found some equipment, gold, silver, and Residuum. Our total haul from the battle and the room was 2 longswords, the Residuum (worth about 100gp), 108sp, 31gp, and Magical Bloodthread Cloth Armor. Lihi took the armor since he was the only one that currently had Cloth armor.

There was also a pit in the room that we determined was a garbage pit, as well as 2 Alters. The alters were to Bane (the evil god of war and conquest). Lihi and I noticed that they weren’t always so – they’re originally altars to Vecna (evil god of undead and necromancy) that the hobgoblins have “rededicated.” It is well known that hobgoblins, goblins, evil barbaric humans, and other of their sort worship Bane.

From the sarcophagi room, we took the door to the south. The hallway curved around a little and we went saw another room with some Dire Rats in it and some statues of Displacer Beasts providing light. We went in fighting assuming that the statues in the room may be a trap, but they ended up just being fancy lanterns. After the first round of fighting, some gnomes popped out of the woodwork (literally, they were invisible) and joined the fight with the rats. We made short work of all 5 enemies though even with the gnomes going invisible. In this room, we found another captive tied to an alter of the Raven Queen. Mirtala was in bad shape and we had to talk her into moving. Goolag only had 1 healing surge left and Ryleen had none, so we headed for the exit for an extended rest. We made it out safely, and are now fully recovered.

We headed back into catacombs and decided to continue from where we left off. We also discovered that the Brazier “trap” was easily disabled by closing the northern most door at the first landing.

We decided to test how the Mural worked, so Rylene shot a bolt at it from a safe distance. The bolt merely bounced off the wall. Goolag was requested to fetch the arrow in case another monster appeared, and on his way back after fetching the arrow that’s exactly what happened. We had to fight yet another Ochre Jelly. We were able to make faster work of this one now that we knew what to expect. Once we defeated it, we quickly headed west and into a room with an eastern hall and a northern door.

There were alcoves in the room that we started to search, but we were interrupted by some Magma Claws. They were a tricky foe that we managed to beat, even after being surprised by some Gnomes. Once the battle was over, we were able to finish our search and discovered some magical Bracers of Mighty Striking that we agreed would be put to best use with Raiann. An inscription on the wall read, “Hail Von Urstadts! Ascend with Glory!”

From the room with the alcoves we headed north. and followed the passage down some stairs to the west where we met with our first true success on this journey. We found a captive alive and relatively well. Sertanian gave us some basic information:

The captives have been moved around seeming randomly. He was originally with some others, but got separated. He’s unsure of how long he’s been in the catacombs, or where he is. He last saw Mirtala and Kartenix, but is unsure of their current condition. Kartenix was saying how he planned to try and escape.

We headed back to the room with the Alcoves, then headed east down the hall. We came upon a room that was covered in what appeared to be giant webs. The room was guarded by 3 Endercaps. This encounter was a trial, the terrain put us at a huge disadvantage, and we were also disheartened by finding Kartenix dead in the corner. We can only hope that his young son fares better than he has.

The Eladrin Rouge calls herself Rylene and requests to join our party. She says she’s been following us since we left Brindol, and after watching our fights and seeing our resolve wishes to help us on our journey. I vaguely recognize her from the village I grew up in, but I still have my reservations, as do the others in my group. She offers to scout the path in order to gain our trusts, so we agree to her company conditionally.

We make our way into the catacombs by heading down the stairs to the north. We enter a room filled with mushrooms that have varying degrees of danger. Luckily we were able to identify them before posing any immediate risk to ourselves. As we explore the cavernous room we stumble upon a Rage Drake. He doesn’t immediately cause our party too much danger in and of itself, but it was troublesome maneuvering around the mushrooms and attacking. The noise from our battle though alerted another unseen Rage Drake that proceeded to attack us. Since we had the first one pretty well contained, the second one was a little easier to handle. Once the Drakes were conquered We looked around the room a bit. Rylene picked some of the sleeper mushrooms and gave me one to hold onto. Then, we proceeded to climb the ropes we saw in the south-west and north-west areas in the room. Once Rylene and myself made it up the ropes, we were attacked by two goblins with crossbows. We made quick work of them after Lihi and Raiann flanked them.

From the landing we headed through the western door and into a room with what looked to be a magical mural. It had a sheen to it that made it look too well kept for such a run down place. While we were inspecting the mural an Ochre Jelly seemed to appear from it. It took us a while to get into this battle, it was a trial that we didn’t expect. We were extremely surprised by the fact that it split into two pieces while we were attacking it. Before we could finish it off we were flanked by 2 Specters which aggravated our dire situation.

While we were pretty beat-up after vanquishing our foes, we decided to continue with the expedition a little longer before getting some rest. Rylene continued south from the mural and followed the hallway to what appears to be the resting quarters for the goblins. We were able to catch them by surprise and took them out relatively easily given their numbers, but not without sustaining some wounds.

While successfully defeating the enemies, we needed to find somewhere safe so we could recover from the last couple battles. After a bit of discussion, we decided it would be best to leave the catacombs and look for a place to rest above ground. After inspecting the entrance to the castle and determining that it was not inhabited by anything that touches the ground (hopefully there aren’t any ghosts or other hovering beasts about), we decided to hole ourselves up inside. Rylene and myself kept watch while in our trance state. The rest of the party awoke at approximately 9pm.