DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
Skeef Hawkridge (Half Elf Druid 7 / Thief 7)
Goro (Half Orc Cleric 6 / Fighter 6)
Solcha (Elf Fighter 5 / Magic User 6)
Chanee (Human Paladin 5)
[Baqua Irontoes (Halfling Fighter 4 / Thief 5)]
Date/Time
Wealsun 8 (night) to Wealsun 9 (early morning)
Moving on, the party finishes their exploration of the basement with a tromp through the wine caller. There they encounter wine, webs and an ettercap which is soon destroyed. When additional detailed searching fails to find further areas to explore, the party moves up to the main level. There they find Asflags ballroom, a massive room with space for hundreds of guests. Surrounding this central area are a series of utility spaces such as storage, powder rooms, and a cloak room. In the cloak room, Goro fiddles about with the cloak pegs and finds one is actually a button. He presses it, and with a mechanical whir and grinding of stone, half the room floor starts to descend. Everyone hops on and it lowers them 50' to the end of a long tunnel. This is followed to the end, where a narrow circular staircase twists upwards. At the top is a trapdoor, which initial efforts cannot open; it feels like there is something on top of it. A second try and it flies open, leading the party into the centre of the rock garden which they noted on their earlier stroll amongst the flower beds. They are somewhat startled when the largest rock starts moving and tries to roll over Solcha. The elf dodges, and she and the rest of the party decide the return to the tunnel, hearing what they assume is the moving boulder roll over on trapdoor of it once closed.
There being no obvious way to get the elevator to rise again, they treck back up to stairs to the ballroom. Poking about the stage at one one of the ballroom, they find a violin on the conductors podium. Goro takes it up and starts to play; and finds he cannot stop. And begins to play faster and faster and faster. As the rest of the party desperately tries to break it or wrest it from the clerics hands, Chanee breaks into a dance along with the music. In the end, the paladin collapses from exhaustion, and Skeef uses warp wood to destroy the violin and break the spell.
Done with ballrooms. the party moves through the double doors at the north east end of the room. These lead into a long entry hall hung with tapestries depicting pastoral scenes. At one end of the room a brass-railed stairway curves up. As the party moves into the room, the hear a faint sound of metal on metal, and suddenly a rain of brass snakes drop from the ceiling. These prove hard to hit, so the party retreats up the stairs. The snakes do not follow, and they find themselves in front of another set of double doors. Chanee reaches out to open them, and as soon as his left hand touches the brass handle, the paladin is transformed into stone!
The party now faces a dilemma; how to get their now quarter-ton comrade past the snakes and out of the tower. But they can think of no way to do so and still avoid getting bitten to death buy the brass snakes. In the end, they decide to leave the paladin behind, and return when fully healed and re-spelled to recover him.
GAINS
none
KILLS/VICTORIES
1 Ettercap
1 Fire Snake
3 Brass Snakes
LOSSES
Channe the Stone Paladin
