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.

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.

Finally we made it to Rivenroar Castle, the location of the goblin hideout. Upon entering the grounds we see the catacombs and notice that the goblins made a well wrought path to them. We do a cursory inspection of the remainder of the grounds but can find no other activity. Heading into the catacombs, we heard some goblins bustling about down the stairs. We decide to sneak attack them by flanking the stairs and making noise to get them to come to us.

Our plan works! We end up killing off some troublesome characters relatively easily (compared to those damn scorpions and the ogre) and head below after taking a moment healing up.

In the very first room we are waylaid again by some more Hobgoblins and goblins. We make quick work of them, but a trap was set off during the battle. Two brassieres in the room start moving north and south along a track spouting fire back and forth at a regular interval. It seems easy enough to avoid, so it seems like a pretty lame trap… maybe someone was just trying to be impressive.

The room we are currently in has 3 doors (stairs to the south), then doors on the west, north, and east walls. We’ve gone through the north door to avoid the brassieres and are currently waylaid by an Eladrin rouge.

Today we were called to the town councilman’s (Eoffram Troyas) office so he could ask us for help. We were a little wary though and gave him some trouble. I made myself glow while Raiann was trying to be very intimidating. After a little bit though we got down to business and the councilman requested us to save the 7 townspeople thought to be taken. He’s given us a list of names. He also requested that we try to return the towns missing artifacts as well. We have approximately 1 week to bring them back before the other council members cause a ruckus.

On our way out of town, we find out that they have a goblin prisoner, and we go to question him. After a bit of intimidation from Raiann and some history lessons from Lihi and myself, we get the answers we need. The goblins are trying to pass themselves off as the “Red Hands” but their hand on the uniforms is upside down. We also learn the basic location of their hideout, which is about 8 hours away by foot.

Finally leaving town, we head off and have some beginners adventurers foibles. We fall down a ledge, get waylaid and have to patch up some minor wounds and catch our breath. Unfortunately, just before reaching our destination, we stumbled upon a nest of Kruthik!

It took quite a bit of work clearing the Kruthik, we managed due to some awesome magic missiles from myself, some decent tactics by Goolag (throwing the adults into a pit), some awesome healing surges and back support from Lihi and Raiann. We take an extended rest here and fully recover.