Session 21: Escape From the Traps

Characters: "Dave", Tthardas, Tex, Arren. Orrin and "Galen" proxied by the DM.

Day 27, continued
They're down their clerics but not that many attack spells, so they decide to adventure on anyway. They try to sneak through the southern hallway to the broken door, but alert the occupants. Bursting in, they take a whack from the bugbear who was hiding by the door. Tex fails to tumble by and takes a hit. It's all downhill from there as they take out the bugbears without too much injury. Searching the room, they find a keyring on one of the bodies. This lets them out of the wolf den room and back into their favorite hallway.

Next they check out the northeast door in the mirror room. The mages and fighter wind up trapped inside the very cold room. It takes them a bit but they're able to solve the ring puzzle and escape back to the mirror room, through the water trap room, and on to the gold mine. Tex is able to Appraise the gold flecks to be worthless, but touching them has set off the trap. They run back but naturally the door has closed behind them. Holding their breath, they head into the billowing clouds and start searching. Tex runs out of breath and takes the initial poison hit, but is able to disable the trap. The "virtual-clerics" use their Healing skills to help keep the poison damage to a minimum.

Searching the room without imminent death, they find a wing pattern on the wall and a secret door. Virtual Orrin puts his hands on the wings and the door opens. Beyond they see a well and a rope leading down. They look into it but decide not to dink with it, and just head further into the Dungeon. A small room outside has four doors; they try the door opposite and find that it leads back to the ledge and pit room they'd found earlier while Tex and Arrin were stuck in the water trap. Trying the northeast door, the party discovers the remains of a battle and some very minor treasures. (Do you know anyone who needs a gold tooth? It's goblin-sized!)

Heading north, they follow the corridor all the way to another fancy door they can't open yet. They turn back and take the first path east to a curious room and one of the best discoveries to date: a map of this entire section of the dungeon! They gently take it down and fold it up to take it with them. The search also turns up a secret door to the east.

Seeing the results of the trap, the party is ready. Tex and Arren narrowly avoid being crushed. Tex finds that the trap is now broken and safe to pass by; they continue east to a door to the south.

This door leads to another very dark room, and inside they soon find four dire wolves. Arren does some serious damage to one before being knocked down, and the evoker is able to Color Spray the lot of them, buying time. It's a tough fight, one where the proxy-clerics had to enter combat to save the party. At one point Arren was down to -9 and his only hope was that Tex was able to make an untrained Heal check to stablize him...and he rolled a 19! Tthardas had bad luck trying to cast under combat conditions, which hurt. In the end, it came down to Tex and one Dire Wolf; Tex hit and did exactly enough damage to kill the ferocious beast.

This session gave them enough XP to make 4th Level! Congrats, guys!