It is with a certain sadness that I again pick up this journal, having not written in it for some time. Much has happened since I last had time to record in these pages the stories of our adventures; some of it good, some of it bad, and some of it beyond belief. Read on and judge for yourself. When last I wrote we had paused before a door, deep within the mines used as a base by the marauding orcs. We passed through the door into a room overgrown with moss and slime. There seemed to be little in the room other than plant life, save for an exit in the North wall. We peered down the passage, but it was densely overgrown with vile looking stuff, and we decided against exploring further just then. The last thing I wanted was to be caught between an orc and a horrid place. We backtracked to the previous intersection, where we had fought the living boulders, and followed that passage to another door. I did my usual door routine, listening, checking for traps, and trying to open the lock. The room on the far side was covered in a thick layer of dust. It was furnished with a table and a few chairs, but not much else. We had just begun to explore the room when we heard a moaning sound and saw the dust on the floor starting to swirl. That didn't look good to us, so we bid a hasty retreat out the door. I'm sure nothing in there was worth fighting an evil spirit for! I at least was more interested in clearing out the rest of the orcs first. We backtracked once again to the previous branching, which led deeper into the mines than any path we had taken so far. We passed several corridors off to the left, but continued to follow the right hand wall. We came at last to an empty room with a door in the North wall. Beyond this door the passage continued, and shortly gave us a nasty surprise.
Glug and I, who were in the middle of the party, suddenly found ourselves drenched in oil that gushed from the ceiling of the tunnel. I think Glug panicked at this point, fearing that a torch would drop next, and he went running forward! He reached a door and went through it while the rest of us were charging forward to catch up. The trap must have set off an alarm, or the orcs must have heard him coming, because they showed up right about then. The door opened onto an intersection, with a passage continuing straight, another to the left, and one to the right. We arrayed ourselves for battle as best we could, with Neu Gai and I covering the left passage, and the rest of the party covering the orcs coming from straight ahead. We didn't hear anything coming from the right, and hoped it would stay that way.
Neu Gai killed the first orc to reach us from the West, and I slept the next three in line. Chicot killed one from the North right off, but then we started flailing at air. For the next minute or so everyone missed badly. I whipped out my bow and started pegging arrows passed Neu Gai, and Bernina did the dart volley thing past Chicot. A few minutes later and it was all over. We took out the sleeping orcs and the one or two left on our side, and Chicot wailed away on his side. It turned out that there was a guard room both to the North and West. Not much of interest in either. Since we were barely scratched in this fight we decided to continue exploring. It looked like we were getting closer to the heart of the base.
When we passed through the door into the intersection, we were suddenly in a much different environment. Rather than the roughly carved tunnels of the mines, we instead trod through hallways of finished stonework, as if in the lower reaches of some castle. That should have warned us to be more careful, but alas we were not and it soon cost us dearly. At the end of the East hallway, just passed a branch to the North, was a door. Tired of constantly listening and searching, I just opened the door. Naturally, on the other side was a dragon.
Really. I'm not making this up. It was a small one, to be sure, but we're still small fry ourselves. Wham! It opens its mouth and breathes a huge gout of flame down the corridor. I manage to dodge most of it but Neu Gai takes it full in the face. We try to attack it as it charges the doorway, but it reaches us before we can spread out in the room. In the heat (literally) of battle we don't think to dodge around the corner to the North, but Neu Gai gets in a solid blow. The dragon doesn't seem in the least bothered by it though, which seemed surprising for its size. Unfortunately it gets a chance to breathe again before we have done much else, and Neu Gai drops from the withering flames. I rushed forward to get into the room, hoping to draw its attention from my fallen comrade. The dragon turned to face me, all right, and nearly took off an arm with its bite.
Meanwhile Chicot dragged Neu Gai around the corner to safety and Glug attempted to leap on the creature's back. Ouch! Unfortunately he missed completely and landed on his ass directly in front of the dragon. It breathes again and both Bernina and I drop beneath its flame. As I understand it from later accounts by Chicot, Glug fell soon after I did, leaving Chicot to finish the dragon off by himself. We'd done a good bit of damage by this time, but he still had quite a task before him. He apparently fought on beyond what any normal mortal could reasonably expect, believing by sheer force of will that he was less injured than he was. For all our sakes, I'm glad he did.
After killing the beast he ran to tend to the fallen, but alas, it was too late to save Bernina. Chicot bandaged the rest of us, and managed to trickle a healing potion down Glug's throat. That was enough to bring him around, and he tried to heal Neu Gai and I. We were too far gone for him to bring back to consciousness, however, so they were forced to drag us all the way out of the mines to safety. They managed to hide long enough for Glug to rest and regain spells, and he then succeeded in bringing both of us around. After a brief discussion we decided to head back in after Bernina's body.
We returned to the dragon's lair without incident, but the room had been cleaned out completely. The dragon's body was gone, Bernina's body was gone, and there was nothing of value in the room. Chicot searched the floor and found signs that the bodies had been dragged out to the North. We followed this passage out, passed a closed door, and took the next branch to the West. This led to another room with exits to the West and South. I guessed that the South passage connected with the North passage outside the dragon's lair, which may well have saved us shortly thereafter. We took the West passage which led to a large room with curtains on all the walls. I heard a burning sound coming from behind the North curtain, and snuck over to investigate. Peering under the curtain I saw a short passage to a good sized room. A glowing pit took up the middle of the room, and seemed to be the source of the burning sound. Bernina's body it seemed, had gone to the fire.
Around the pit were five of the red robed priests and over a dozen orcs. That looked like a lot more than we were ready to handle, so we bid a hasty retreat. Since they were chasing behind us, it was a very hasty retreat. Fortunately they gave up the chase when we exited the mines, and we headed back to town to report our discoveries.
We reported back to the mayor and to Jonas Smythe, the captain of the guard. They were pleased with our work, but Glug had previously negotiated a very puny reward. They also showed no interest in providing help to cleaned out the red robe temple once and for all. Glug was most disappointed in this, expecting them to take a more active role in stamping out evil. The most they would do was to send a larger detachment of guards with the next caravan, to provide more security. This prompted me to go visit the Merchants Guild in search of greater reward. After hearing our story and seeing the relics of the caravan we brought back, the Guild agreed to pay us the reward they had posted for news of the caravan. In our absence this reward had grown to 5000 gold pieces, which considering that we had lost one of our party (and nearly all), seemed far more appropriate than the forty gold pieces we got from the mayor!
They weren't interested in funding an expedition against the temple either, but they were interested in hiring us to help guard the caravan against attacks. Since we were thinking about leaving Groat anyway, we said we'd consider it. First, however, I took the opportunity to train my mage skills, since the local Guild agreed I was ready to learn more. The Thieves' Guild however, decided I needed a tad more experience. I was close, but not quite ready. It was just as well, I suppose, as it took two weeks of training to learn how to handle two spells a day, and the caravan was scheduled to leave soon thereafter. While I was training, the rest of the party met Brother Singer, a novice priest who happened to be the younger sibling of our recently deceased friend Bernina. On hearing of his sister's death, he asked to take her place in our party. Glug had a few problems with this, as they follow different religions, but eventually agreed. I'm just as happy to have a second healer in the party. Even if he is more ugly than his sister.
On to Journal Eight