We explore the room after defeating the enemies. We find the rest of the artifacts, as well as 100 gold and 2 more portions of healing. We discover that the obelisc is dedicated to the god Vecna.

We head back to the main entrance and locate the Von Jallac Family tomb through the easterly door. There are runes in the center of the room and they flash about every 2 seconds. I can read that they say Van Jallac in an ancient magical room, and the magic they are emitting seems dangerous. I encourage the rest of the party to keep clear of them.

As we enter the room, we are attacked by some Needlefang Drake.

We defeat the enemies and search the alcoves. It doesn’t appear that the Von Jallac’s ever used the alcoves. The bones we see don’t appear to be human and appear to have been eaten vs burried.

We head through the eastern door and find the last captive, Adronsius. Goolag rushing in and unwisely rips the chains out of the wall in his excitement. Lihi, Rylene, and Raiann show more decorum in treating our new friend. Lihi helpfully gets him sone water, while Raiann heals him. Rylene skillfully unlocked the manacles. We bring all the freed captives together, Raiann and Goolag fetching the body of Kartenix, and we begin our journey back to town.

We start off the new day encouraging the rescued captives how we feel the ordeal is drawing to a close. We Explain how so far only 2 of the missing persons have not been rescued, and we’ve only to locate the artifacts as well.

We follow the corridor to the west as it banks around. We find a room with pillars radiating coldness. Lihi tested moving through one and took some damage. As we advance through the room, Sinruth (Hobgoblin Cheftain) and his 5 hobgoblin lackeys come rushing through the door to the north. The lackeys went down easy enough but were enough of a distraction that Sinruth’s strength caught us by surprise. Raiann ended up getting hit pretty hard and lost consciousness. I was able to pull him to safety, but we quickly realized that Sinruth was not a simple enemy and had to be treated carefully. His combination fighting style of a whip and his spiked plate mail was extremely disadvantageous to us. When we finally defeated him we found a note in his gauntlet. Reading it we see that he appears to be a mere pawn in a larger scheme. We notice that his gauntlets look different than the rest of his armor, but a cursory inspection doesn’t reveal any details. We keep them for now.

We head north through the hall, and find the Dragon Helm artifact on top of a sarcophagi  In the sarcophagi we find a “Bold Victory Chainmail +1” which Raiann equips.

We head back to the main room where we fought the spitting drakes and head to the north. Down the stairs we see a pool with a stick/spire and a magical light on top of it. When I touch the water we see many rooms that we have been to and some we haven’t. It appears to be some sort of skrying pool.

We head back around to the “throne room” and go north from where we fought the demon. We find the room with the pews that we viewed from the pool. There is a Gnome Arcanist in the room with a staff or rod, but looks as though he’s hiding behind a veil of darkness. 2 “humans” in hooded clocks sneak up on us and attack me as I enter the room. The humans end up being Wererats in human form as 2 of them transform during the battle. Due to the low light levels as well as the “darkness” shroud around the enemies, the battle was drawn out. Rylene ended up getting bitten by one and contracting that horrid Disease that they carry.

We head south through the door and enter a hallway. The floor collapses on us and we have to climb out. In the room round the corner we encounter 2 Zombies and 2 Ghouls. The room has an mosaic of a black sun in the middle of it. The room is also extremely dark even though our sun-rod is still shining brightly.

The Zombies went down pretty easily. At least compared to the ghouls. The ghouls had much better defenses, both AC and reflex.  A miasma rose up from the floor and gave the enemies a little more energy.

After defeating the enemies, I notice some obvious magical properties of the mosaic.

1. It seemed to absorb any light, never allowing the room to be more than dim light
2. It seemed to be a source of energy from which the undead could regenerate.

We circle around and locate the (previously) rescued captives and head back down to the room we found Jalissa being held to take an extended rest. Choosing the shorter path, we helped the captives through the sunken hallway back to the room. On the way Sertanian seemed to sprain his ankle, but felt better after the rest.

Jalissa didn’t like returning back to the room where she was held but felt safer by sleeping as close to Rylene as she could. The horrors of the journey are starting to weigh on Mirtala again; she might start to loose her mind if she has to stay here much longer. Zerriksa is doing fine and stays to herself, mostly because the others still look at her dubiously; they may actually believe that part about her being a witch. She seems to enjoy that a little. Thurann is starting to get mouthy. When we returned to the southern room he asks, “Are ya lost? We’re heading in circles. My father will find us and lead us out.”

After the extended rest here, Goolag appears to have shaken off his disease. Lihi however didn’t seem to improve. We have a strong feeling that we are getting close to finishing our objectives here. We’ll soon be able to head back to town as Heroes.

Note: We should encourage Mirtila that we believe we’re almost done here.