Session 24: A busy morning in the Khundrukar Caves

General Summary

After we have a good night's sleep, we have some breakfast from what we can find in the kitchen. Can't skip the most important meal of the day! Once everybody's fed and ready to go, we start heading down those big stairs where the freaky bats came from. Should've known those first 3 weren't all of them. That would've been too easy.   No, there's a couple more that come at us from a hole in the rock, where a stream cuts across the staircase. Janey and Duldar collapse the tunnel of sorts to block their advance. Which gives us a rest from these annoying things. They're not tough to take out, just... Annoying.   We decide to be a bit sneakier on our way down the rest of the stairs, just in case. Voron turns into a big spider, after doing his sneaky magics. The bottom of the stairs are reached easily with this help, and we manage to surprise 4 more of the annoying bat-bug-things. We take those out easily as well. Again, not tough, just annoying as heck.   There's some footprints from bipedal lizard people with tails. Or something. I was thinking which way we should go next. And then Spider-Voron decided to go down one of the paths. And we all followed him. Not entirely sure why we did that, but it worked out, I suppose.   There's another big cavern, but this one has a bunch of Dwarven graves and stuff. Duldar says it was made during the Dwarves' fight with the Orcs. A long time ago, though. As we go down some more stairs, without annoying bat-bug-things this time, I wonder if we'll end up in the Deep Roads. On the far side of whatever blocked this place off from the rest of the Dwarves.   Before I can wonder about that too much, there's a big sorta farm with a bunch of edible mushrooms and stuff. Duldar says they taste quite bland. Pretty sure Skrik didn't care and was just munching on some near the stairs. As I'm collecting some to use in my cooking while we're here, there's some shifting rocks near a big iron door. That kinda takes priority for us.   There's some freaky snake-worm-octopus looking things hiding between the rocks. There's a big one, and a smallish one. They're kinda tough to hit while hiding between the rocks like that, so I call upon the same power that helped me break open the entrance into this place. After trying to root the big thing in place falls short. These things aren't friendly at all, because the big one knocks Janey unconscious!   Luckily, Duldar is there with some healing magic, after which Janey switches places with me, and I give the big meany a tight hug, so he can't get away anymore. He doesn't seem too bothered by my squeezing, but my fancy new rapier hurts him pretty bad. Or.. Normally, I suppose? I don't understand these creatures very well. I just know they're pretty tasty when you sauteé 'em with mushrooms.   Yeah, it's not a big surprise that we won the fight pretty handily. The small one was a coward, but we manage to kill that one, too. I stabbed the big one in the brain, I think. Hard to tell where the brain is when it doesn't have much of a face. The small one had even less of a face left after Voron uses some magical claws to melt off half the face and rip off the other half. I didn't know he could be so... Savage. I'm kinda impressed.   Anyway, Duldar says I managed to make the mushrooms taste delicious, while we have a quick bite to eat after we skin these things to get at the meaty bits. And collect the hides or scales or whatever the heck it's called to maybe get some better armor for Voron. Hope that works out.   After that quick snack, we inspect the big and rusty looking iron door at the far end. Skrik opens that door really easily. They said it was locked, but I don't believe it. A locked door wouldn't open that easily. Especially one that looks as old as this one. Duldar says Durgat-Din's mark of smithing is inlaid in the door. Guess that means we're definitely in the right place!   Beyond the door is a flight of stairs going up. Guess we're not going into the Deep Roads. Oh well. Kinda would've liked to see that. Maybe we still can. At the top of these stairs is an octagonal room, with 3 big bronze statues of Dwarves. And at least 1 of them looks like it could move the arm. Or so Janey says. There's also the faint sound of a hammer hitting an anvil. Hard to believe there's still someone alive down here. Let's hope they don't wanna kill us, too.   We move back a bit in case of traps, and Janey uses some magic that she inherited from her dad, she says, to try and open the 2 doors we found in there. Imagine our surprise when instead there was a HIDDEN door that opens in the wall! She seemed really excited about it. Bit of a shame that something started whining in Dwarvish about 'intruders' or something. We're not intruders, we're explorers! We've been taking care of the intruders. Dang Orcs. At least they were tasty.

Rewards Granted

16971 xp total