Session 23: Looting the level

General Summary

Having finished off those orcs, we took a short break before continuing. Valstrax cooked us a dish using some orc meat. I didn’t think orc would taste good, but leave it up to him to make it taste amazing! Anyone at home would call me crazy for eating this kind of meat, but they just don’t know what they are missing. Besides, after almost being pushed to my death, I am done being nice to these orcs!   After a short breather, we continued to explore the level we were on. We decided to backtrack a little to a double door that we had seen earlier. Behind it, we found another room with ramshackle bunk beds. Skrik managed to find some more coins and also a pouch with a few gemstones. Other than that, this room was a dead end, so we went back to the large cavern and checked the other unexplored tunnels there.   At the end of one of the tunnels, we found the cooking area that Janey found earlier. This was a dead end again though. The only other interesting tunnel was one that was barricaded by a bunch of crates and other loot that the orcs had gathered. We cleared out the tunnel and behind it we found a gate where each hole was stuffed close with sacks and cloths. We removed a section to look through and behind it was a room and also a strange buzzing sound. Thinking back to my childhood, I figured it could only be one thing, Stirges. Bat-like creatures that use their needle-like snouts to find prey and suck their blood, disgusting. I jokingly mentioned to Skrik that we could combine some of our blood with that disease-ridden water of his to make the creatures and anyone they feed upon sick. Skrik thought that was an amazing idea and we ended up preparing a bowl with disease and blood. We placed it on the other side of the gate, closing the hole that we made.   While we waited to see whether they would take the bait, we decided to explore the stairs that lead up. They lead to a heavy door, which Valstrax pushed open in no time. Behind the door was a room with pelts and two chests. I was happy that it wasn’t another room with bunk beds. In the chests we found more coins, a potion of climbing and a magical rapier! Since this was such a nice room, we took a short break and ate some leftover orc before returning to the closed gate.   When we got to the gate, we checked whether the Stirges had taken the bait. Sadly, the bowl stood there untouched. We didn’t want to wait any longer, so Skrik unlocked the gate and we went through.   The room behind the gate had three exits; a stairway leading down in the middle of the room and two doors on each side. There were also several burned corpses laying in front of one of the doors. This door was made to look like the face of a dwarf. Skrik was quick to point out several spouts around the door, most likely another trap. Before dealing with this trap door, we decided to deal with the Stirges and the other door first. We made some noise to try and attract them while Voron prepared a moonbeam. Four Stirges appeared from the stairway, and were immediately evaporated by Voron’s moonbeam. When we got to the other door, we noticed it was locked. Skrik was able to pick the lock, and behind it we found three more of those damn orcs; one of them turned out to be their shaman. We made quick work of them, but not before one tried to run away through a hidden passageway; which lead back to the large cavern. That did explain how these orcs got in here with that barricade in place.   Turning our attention back to the trap door, we figured we should try and open it and see what would happen. We opened the door with mage hand, and it opened up all the way by itself. Fire started spewing out of the spouts creating a wall of fire, which disappeared once the doors closed automatically after a while. We had to figure out a way to redirect the fire spouts so that we could get through the door. Skrik came up with the idea of using skulls from the orc shaman’s room together with some metal plates grafted to their yaws. I attached the metal plates to the skulls, and the skulls to the spouts. Some were difficult to reach, but Voron gave me a lift. When we tried the door again, the sight was pretty ominous with the fire being redirected away from the door onto the ceiling and walls. One skull wasn’t properly attached and got launched off of one of the spouts. Dangerous, but also amazing! If only I could make a weapon that could launch flaming skulls at my enemies, that would damage both their bodies and their psyche. No one was hit by the skull luckily, but the spout did hit some of us with fire; it didn’t hurt that much without the other spouts however. There was bad news however; the other side of the door was also engulfed with flame. Valstrax moved one of the corpses to the doorway to prop it open. After a while, the doors started to close by themselves again but couldn’t fully close because of the corpse. Eventually the fires on both sides stopped, but the doorway was still slightly open. Skrik nudged through to the other side and disarmed the trap. Sadly, there wasn’t any treasure behind the door, just a small room and two foul smelling barrels.   Having cleared the entire level, we decided to get some rest in the cooking area and continue down tomorrow.

Rewards Granted

16251 xp total