The Danger Gang Flush Out The Upper Level of The Dungeon At Aege
After a peaceful night sleeping in the mushroom grove of the doodya, the Danger Gang feels ready to continue exploring the rest of the dungeon. Unfortunately, Can ate some bad mushrooms and will not be joining them. Karp asks Martialis if he could help him cultivate some of the bioluminescent mushrooms, as they relate to his mysterious religion. Martialis scrapes some spores on some moldy bread. Old business accomplished, it's now time for new business. They begin to explore the area where they encountered the Clay Man.
The first room of interest they find has a large mosaic of a sunburst on the floor and two charred skeletons. Martialis' Detect Traps isn't going off, however, so they feel safe investigating further. Upon closer inspection, they find that there are a few holes in the ceiling, and the rays of the sunburst are pressure plates. These dead guys almost definitely used up this trap. Unfortunately, the closer inspection didn't turn up anything else of note in the room.
They cross through a mud filled room, most likely the home of the Clay Man. Arben gives a quick listen check, and there's some rustling coming from the south. They head through the south door. As they file down the thin hallway, a wall swings out, and Karp gets left behind. Two skeletons appear from a tiny room wearing rotting clothing and tattered armor. A mighty battle ensues. Two more are coming from around the corner. One of the skeletons grabs Ramble by the throat and starts choking the life from him. Arben casts Knock on the wall to try to get the cleric back to turn back these unholy undead. He pulls aside the wall and Karp bears his holy symbol. The skeletons flee in fear of the power of Karp's faith. Ramble and Arben slide the wall back in place in front of the two skeleton's that fled into the alcove, then take a climbing spike and wedge it shut. Karp is anxious to give chase and send these skeletons to their eternal rest, and so they follow the other two to the end of the hallway. They smite the bony monstrosities, but there's nothing else to be found in the room.
The exploring continues. In another room, the find a the Greek alphabet. Beneath the letters alpha, mu, and omega are three levers (one for each letter, see?). Above the alphabet is a small hinged panel with two handles. The panel gets flipped. It reveals the following sentence:
"(I don't remember what the sentence is -Chris)".
No one is quite sure what that means. Martialis remarks that his trap sense reveals that a trap is setting itself. Everyone looks at eachother. Ramble volunteers to pull a lever. Everyone else leaves the room. Ramble pulls alpha and the floor splits open, revealing a spiked pit. Ramble takes a few spikes, but then everyone pulls him out and mulls this over. Arben casts Levitate on himself and volunteers for further lever pulling. He tries omega; the floor opens. He tries mu; same shit. Then he tries pulling alpha and mu at the same time; success! This time, the floor doesn't collapse underneath him. "That's it?"
Everyone goes to look around the dungeon to see if this has had any effect on anything else. Arben keeps flicking the switches, hoping something new and exciting might happen. Ramble and Martialis head back to the room with the Three-headed dog in it. They hear some kind of clicking coming from the hole in the wall from which the dog's leash emanates. They tug at it, but can't quite figure it out. C'est la vie. Meanwhile, Karp went down a flight of stairs and poked his head around. He comes back up and urges the others to come check it out.
Down the stairs they go. The floor is slightly sloped, and there is another set of stairs leading to another part of the dungeon they had already accessed. They also find a door to a tiny, empty room. At the opposite end of the same hallway, they find another door, presumably leading to another tiny room. Indeed, the room on the other side of the door is exactly the same as the first; exactly the same except for the Giant Amoeba. It plops right down on to Ramble's back, burning him with its digestive fluids. A battle ensues, and with everyone's magic used up from the battle with the skeletons, it's going to be a knock-down, drag-out melee (not this party's specialty). However, they soon defeat the over-sized bugger; Karp finishing it off with a blow from his mighty morningstar. The amoeba appears to have been guarding nothing however, not even having a horde to speak of. They shrug and return to the home of the doodya to relax for a little while. The doodyas' patience is beginning to wear thin with the visiting "jelyu", but their good nature keeps them from showing it too much.
After their short rest, they head back to the room with the ferryman in it. There is a brief discussion as to whether their destination should be the cave or the grave. Martialis argues that they came here looking for a grave, and so, to the grave they should go. Arben counters that the path to the grave is traditional seen as a bad thing, and perhaps it could wait until they investigated the relatively harmless sounding cave. It's agreed, to the cave. They hammer in a few climbing spikes and start down the hole. Ramble takes the lead, finding a large room rull of columns. Soon he notices several shadows dancing of their own accord. He calls for help, but they soon find they are overwhelmed by the more than a baker's dozen shadows. Their nether powers start draining the strength of our stalwart adventurers. Arben is especially hard hit (his strength dropping to a mind-blowingly weak 3). They drop all but the essential equipment and scuttle back up the rope. "I need my stuff," says Arben. "Someone go get my stuff."
Ramble volunteers. Karp casts Invisibilty to Undead on the thief, who climbs down the rope, and grabs Arben's stuff. When he gets back up, Martialis and Karp are all like, "What about our shields? What about our shields?" Ramble sighs and climbs back down. Unfortunately, his luck doesn't hold out. A shadow swats at the light stone on Ramble's neck. He falls unconscious. "Don't worry," says Martialis. "It's Martialis time!"
He swigs the potion of rainbow hues, turning himself jet black. He hops down the hole and ties the end of the rope around Ramble. He scuttles back up and then runs to the other hole. Acting as a counter-weight, he pulls Ramble to safety.
It is then that Martialis sees the doors with four frescos above them, one to each cardinal direction: Phillip to the south, Antigonus to the east, Kassander to the west, and the Hall of Ancestors to the North. This is it. The famed tombs of Aege...
South: http://www.grendel.org/hunter/gaming/share/aegae_s.png
East: http://www.grendel.org/hunter/gaming/share/aegae_e.png
West: http://www.grendel.org/hunter/gaming/share/aegae_w.png
North: http://www.grendel.org/hunter/gaming/share/aegae_n.png
