Session 5 – Mopping Up the Moat House

We head down the stairs to an area we haven’t explored yet. It is a man-made cavern (room 30) that opens into a natural cavern that is quite large but enclosed. There is a large pool here. We start searching around, but something moves in the water. It appears to be a large crayfish. Dardenne fires at it with arrow but doesn’t do much damage. Hadrian goes to attack it but almost slips into the pool. He swings again and slices it in half. We drag it to the surface so we can eat it.

Looking around, we find some treasure. There is a platinum pin that Filarion puts on. A scroll is also found with spells on it. This is an 8th level scroll with the 2nd level spells Push, Stinking Cloud, and Fly. Dardenne takes this.

We come back up the stairs and go left through another hallway. It twists a couple of times and opens to a room with lots of alcoves (Intact Crypt – special #). We start checking it out but don’t find anything. At the end of the room is a sarcophagus. We move to check it out but we are ambushed by zombies from behind. Hadrian cuts one of them in half, Dardenne slices another and Elauthin takes out the third.

We look around further and find that one of the crypts has a hole in the back. We start check it out but Darius is looking at the sarcophagus. It emits a huge burst of energy and Darius drops. Hadrian grabs him up and hauls him away just as it emits another burst. We heal Darius and he tells us that before the pulse occurred, he saw two bodies behind it. Filarion tries to use his grappling hook to grab them, but he hooks his leg instead. Painfully, he pulls it out and has Darius toss it instead. He manages to hook both of them and pulls them out.

The two people are searched, and it looks that they have unicorn sygaldry. On them we find several items including cleric spells, druid spells and a staff. Mord takes the staff and briefly passes out. He wakes up with a smile on his face and says that it provided a direct connection to his god. It is a very powerful magic item. Filarion takes the breastplate with the unicorn on it.

We decide to try to get into the sarcophagus. Dardenne casts Detect Magic and sees that the lid is covered by runes which must be causing the magic. Filarion sees on top of the coffin the design of the body underneath and it looks like it is an evil wizard. Brother Gregory uses the scroll to remove the magic for a while, and Elauthin, Dardenne and Hadrian push the cover right off and it smashes into the corner. However, the runes are still active.

Looking in the coffin, we see four spell books and a wand along with the robe-covered corpse. There are two rings. We take everything and sequester ourselves in the pool room for the evening.

Dardenne checks the wand and sees that it is indeed magical. He uses it to check the other items and sees that the shield and one of the rings is magical.

Later, Dardenne goes out into the hallway and tries to check out one of the spell books — the blue one. He opens the clasp and suddenly there is a burst of cold air that almost freezes him. He wraps the clasp with cloth so he can’t accidentally touch it again and looks in the spell book. There are several first, second and third level spells in the book.

The next morning after some rest, we go down the tunnel where the ghouls came from and find their nest. We find a spell scroll for the cleric, and see around here a bunch of narrow caverns that go into a maze. We decide not to risk it and go to the outside and the other end of the caverns.

Entering the other area, we wind our way through several caverns and end up at a closed gate. We try to lift it but cannot. Eventually we find a secret closet with a lever that lifts the gate. We go up and see that we’re at the entrance of the moat house. We realize that we have missed something and go back down. Almost immediately we see a secret door that we missed. Inside is the nest of the ogre, where we find a very find elven cloak and a chest. There is treasure in here.

There are two doors in this room. Darius picks one of the locks and we see something moving. We think they are undead but they are actually starving prisoners, two humans and a gnome. They are thankful that we’ve saved them and move out.

We continue on and find a room of junk. Further through, we see what appears to be another burial area. We are attacked by zombies. After the first wave, several more run at us. Brother Gregory turns several of them and we take the opportunity to attack them as they flee.

After the battle we search the adjacent rooms and find a bunch of equipment here. There is so much that it takes us a long time to load it up.

We start heading upstairs and two oozes attack Hadrian and Darius.