October 4, 2008 - The party explores the rest of the dungeon and finds more mysteries.
Silverfang (Shaun) & Tank, his wolf pet, and Fraxx (Mark) travel to Cauldron for various reasons. There, they meet with Captain Skellerang to introduce themselves as strangers to town, and find out about the goblin vandalism problem and the bounty on goblin ears. They go to the broken-in warehouse, and Tank tracks the scent back to the bathhouse, and they follow the party's path down and find all the goblin corpses, taking their ears in the process.
The rest of the party is in Drakthar's room and hear people approaching. Snake Eyes hides in the wreckage of the throne, the others ready weapons...except for Bonesaw, who drops his pants and moons the door. Silverfang peeks in with Tank, and Silverfang thankfully looks in with his blind eye and doesn't see Bonesaw's naked ass.
Brief discussion, where it is revealed that Fraxx is a drow and - surprise! - so is Snake Eyes. They agree to split the ears. They search Drakthar's room and find some treasure and a locked box which they smash open to find some jewellery and an ivory flute with jade inlays.
Fraxx and Silverfang brought copies of the Cauldron Chronicle with them, and the party is rather upset that the Stormblades collapsed the tunnels leading to Gnomeregan, because the skulks were not evil. They are also not pleased with the insulting words from Annah Taskerhill. They also wonder if they will encounter Zenith Splintershield.
They decide to press on and investigate the orcish voices they heard. In the adjoining room to the chamber outside Drakthar's throne room is a large cavern with many chutes leading up into the night sky. On the ceiling is hundreds of bats blanketing every inch. Bonesaw goes into the room and dragonbreaths upwards, incinerating over 200 bats which fall burning to the ground. This stirs up the bats which start swarming around the room, obscuring all vision and hearing.
The party quickly discovers that there is something else in the cloud of bats besides regular bats, as Bonesaw and Huron get struck violently by something hiding in the swarm. After some misses, they manage to swat a large bat with a long, leathery tail out of the swarm. Moments later the other one botches an attack and crashes into Huron, and they both fall to the ground.
Huron: (from underneath the bat) I FOUND IT!! (from underneath the bat)
They quickly kill the giant bats and scatter the regular ones. After the fight half the party starts eating bat. Huron grabs one off the floor and eats it, and also stuffs 200 in his bag, while Snake Eyes and Bonesaw set up the cauldron and pour beer in and start cooking some.
Snake Eyes: I fill the pot with bats! Bonesaw: We make bat stew!
Silverfang/Tank are the only ones who are on the guard as 7 orcs with clubs rush into the room wielding clubs and attack. However, the party makes short work of them. As the last orc dies, Fraxx and Huron notice a dwarf in black armor with a heavy mace rush into the room, take a look around, gulp and rush back out. Huron pursues, hefting the helpless guide goblin over his head as he goes. The rest of the party sees him run off and runs after him. Fraxx notices that the dwarf was wearing a blue tabard.
Huron runs up the corridor just in time to see a door slam shut that the dwarf just ran through. The party close behind in the narrow hallway, Huron decides to kick the door open and run in, hoping to throw the goblin at the dwarf. Bonesaw yells that they should leave the dwarf alive since they don't know if he's evil.
Bonesaw: (while running into battle) I don't think we should kill the dwarf, because we just killed a bunch of goblins, and dwarves don't like goblins, remember the destroyed dwarf shrine, he might have treasure, PS the last dwarf we fought almost killed jamie in one hit!
Inside the room is another 7 orcs with clubs, an orc archer, a ferocious looking orc with a greataxe, and the dwarf, hiding behind some of the orcs. As Huron takes this all in, the archer shoots him in the gut. Huron reacts by hurling the goblin at the archer (over a group of orcs), knocking it down and killing the gobilin. He then steps back out of the room and slams the door shut and holds it shut, yelling a quick report to the rest of the party.
Before anyone else can react, two orcs start yanking on the door. Huron holds the door shut against one, but the other yanks it off its hinges and they step back, allowing two more orcs to step forward and attack. The club-wielding orcs don't last long thanks to Tyson's dragon breath and a shuriken barrage by Snake Eyes, which also blinds the dwarf. The orc archer double-shots at Huron, hitting once, and then later tries to power shot through a line of Tyson, Tank, Bonesaw, Huron and Fraxx...but rolls a 1 and misses completely.
The greataxe orc attacks Tyson when it enters the fight and does a huge hit to him, but Tyson returns it right back. They two exchange mighty blows throughout the fight.
Bonesaw: Oh, the dwarf's a traitor, kill him.
The dwarf doesn't manage to do a whole lot in the fight, as he is blinded by Snake Eyes, then dazed by a curse from Fraxx, then blinded AGAIN by Huron. Silverfang notices that the dwarf is wearing a blue tabard with a design of a white horned helm on the front. Right before the dwarf is killed, he yells that "the party is interfering with things bigger than they know!" to which the party mocks him a bit before killing him.
Huron: Not so big now are you?
The orc archer decides to flee as things deteriorate, and Snake Eyes chases him down the exiting corridor for about 200 yards, before finally catching and stabbing him in the head. He smells fresh air and discovers that the tunnel leads to an exit in the side of the mountain.
The party loots the corpses, and on the dwarf they find a letter in a pouch. The letter, which had a broken wax seal of a stylized Z, reads "I am sending new recruits your way. You're in charge of them. Await further instruction. -Z" The party hmms about this but don't know enough to make a guess at the meaning. The letter is also stamped with a black birdcage symbol, the same as they saw on supply crates in Kazmojen's lair.
They then decide to collapse the tunnel entrance despite having no tools to do so. After some bizarre plans, they decide to just have Fraxx blast the entrance over and over again until it collapses. This takes A WEEK. Finally it collapses and they head back to town. It is nighttime when they emerge into the bathhouse, and they can hear Orak snoring from his bedroom. They wake him up and explain everything that has happened. He listens and believes them, and also asks them if his decanter of endless water was recovered from the goblins (it wasn't.) He thanks them and says they can come back anytime for free baths.
On his way out of the ruins, Bonesaw sketches the decapitated statue of Moradin so he can show it to a mason in town to estimate what kind of work would need to be done on it to repair it.
The party rests until morning (Silverfang goes and gets a room at the Rolling Barrel Inn, because they have a stable). In the morning they go to meet with Skellerang, who pays them for the goblin ears and, after some convincing, also almost as much for the orc ears they also brought back. They ask him if they recognize the dwarf (whose head they brought back), but Skellerang doesn't know it. They also ask if he knows the Z wax seal, or if he can compare it to how Zenith Splintershield used to sign things. Skellerang says he will check into it and to return in a few hours.
While they are waiting, a representative from the trial comes and asks Mike and Jamie for their opinions on Keygan Ghelve's involvement in the kidnappings. Both say that he is not guilty-guilty because he was being extorted, but should still be found guilty of involvement nonetheless...but not anything as serious as execution. They both also explain how exactly he was being forced to work with the skulks, and Mike gives the person Stargloom back to verify the story.
They return to Skellerang and he tells them that no, Zenith never signed his reports with a Z - he signed his name. They compare some old reports to the letter and the handwriting does not match. The party still suspects that Zenith is involved.
LEVEL UP - PARTY IS NOW LEVEL 4
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