Session 9 - Sloop Group - Stone Cold in the Knuckle
General Summary
The party continued down the passage and climbed down the ladder to the lower part of the mine. This area was clearer old than the upper part, the walls were a more uneven, darker stone and it was considerably colder here. An ornate door stood at the bottom of the ladder, Okkar spotted the hidden dwarven lever beside it. They opened the ancient iron door and peered into the gloom. There was no light beyond the door and it was clear that no one had stood here for many years. The deathly silence was an ominous warning to those who entered. The party moved through the door as quietly as they could, already feeling like eyes were on them, ancient, evil, hungry eyes that had not seen the light for a long time. The party moved into a large, open room with four carved pillars.
Several thick pillars support the ceiling of this chamber,
hewn from the mountain stone. Both floor and ceiling are flat
and level, worn smooth by dwarven skill and prolonged use. Two
closed doors, one large and one smaller, stand in the east and west
walls. Scattered piles of aged bones, some quite large, are strewn
about the room in haphazard fashion and intermixed with rotted
leather scraps.
Every footstep they took kicked up an ancient dust which seemed to hang in the air. As they watched, the dust began to take shape and before the party stood several ghostly, emaciated dwarven figures with a cold and malevolent blue glow where once their eyes belonged. The party has disturbed the sleep of these evil denizens and none who did so would live to see another dawn!
"Stone Ghosts curse 'em! What's left of the dwarves that worked the mines hundreds of years ago. Their greed twisted and corrupted them, it sometimes happens to dwarves who mine....."He fell into silence at that point and the party moved on.... It became clear that the dwarves who built this mine built it with defence in mind as the adjoining rooms showed evidence of rock fall traps set up in the past and guarded areas that could be easily defended. The party came across more stone ghosts in one of these, still patrolling the mines in death as they did in life. Down a long corridor they found a large iron door, it was locked in several places and it was beyond the party to open it. Moving down the corridor in the cold darkness the party found what appeared to be a chapel:
A dais topped with a shattered idol occupies the far end of this room. The
idol appears to have once been a massive stone hammer, but the
head is now broken off and lies in pieces beside the still-upright
shaft. Standing before the dais is a small, three-tiered fountain.
Liquid gold streams from the fountain, flowing down each of its
three levels before filling the fountain’s shallow basin. Another door
stands in the western wall to the north of this chamber’s entrance.
This room proved to signal the doom to several of the party although it look innocuous enough at first glance. The liquid gold had a strange effect on several of the adventurers and although warned not to touch it, several of the party became permanent features in the chapel, forever immortalised in gold. Okkar was wise enough not to touch the molten gold but the glow of the golden fountain filled his eyes.
