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So there we are, standing around one headless minotaur body, one burning minotaur corpse, and one still smoldering elf body. Some of us are hurt, some are tired, and all of us are breathing heavy. It is very quiet. Quiet, that is, until another bellow of rage echoes through the cavern, closer this time. That spurs us into action. Gwaihir jumps for the burning minotaur, closely followed by Phae, to search for some kind of amulet. We dump out his pouches, and Landroval casts detect magic, but nothing appears to be a control item for this beast. There are some magic items, but we'll come back. We're a little more worried about the hydra (probably) that is coming to avenge its masters. It is quiet for a long moment. Miranda picks up some keys from the second dead minotaur (the one killed by the wall of fire). Beren heads around the the third door (to the right) and opens it. Inside, there is a 30'x30' (give or take) room, covered from back to front in skeletons. Really ancient, dwarven skeletons. One of the skeletons is still tacked up to a makeshift cross, built out of a bunk. There are no other doors in that room. In the silence, Phae looks at the second minotaur's scroll cases. One is empty, the other is burned but has some pages in it (also burned). Looks like some of the paper survived, but Phae can't read the writing. Landroval looks at them, sees that it's in Minotaur and that the ink is magical. Miranda can read that, but we'll read them later. We're still expecting the hydra to walk in at any moment. Aside: the axe Miranda found in the bunk room is magical, and the insides of the blade are cut out to lessen the weight. After a few more tense minutes, Landroval casts invisibility on Phae so she can scout out door number two (on the left). The door is locked, but Miranda flips through the keys she took from the minotaur and unlocks it without a problem. The door squeaks horribly in the silence. Phae goes in and finds a large circular room with an opening in the middle, going downward. This room is almost a natural cavern, but it looks like there have been some improvements made. There are a few couches, a rotting bed, and a low wall dividing the front of the room from the bed area. The stairs leading down are in the front part of the room, and none too wide. Phae doesn't find many objects of interest, as all the books are gone from the shelves. But someone has been using this bed recently. There is a bedroll on it, and four more on the floor. She comes back to report and we decide to go in and check it out. We find nada, and decide to head down the stairs. At the bottom is a smallish room (25' circular), looking something like a large bathroom. There is steam rising out of a square pool of water (10'x10') in the middle of the room, some stone benches with human-size robes folded on them. The stairs enter from the south wall, and the other three walls each have a bench. There are rocks lit with continual flame for light. Danarn falls into the pool. Climbing out, steps on a particular cobblestone that pops up. Tucked away in this secret compartment are two things: first, a rather nasty looking well-made silver dagger, and second, a lever. Well, you know that Landroval is going to pull that lever, so he does, and a section of the north wall pops out a fraction and slides to the side. The opening shows us a very short passage with a small, shadowed room attached. Looks like about 8' wide, and natural cavern, not worked stone. We can see from where we stand that there is a small altar (Dorn recognizes it as being for Clangadin Silverbeard, dwarven god of war, a "free-spirited" type) and some magical looking runes on the walls. Landroval heads into the room to check it out. As he passes through into the small room, he feels a bit funny for a second, and then he realizes that what it looked like a minute ago was an illusion. Now that he's in, he can see the real room... The walls are absolutely covered with runes. Yes, there is an altar, but it is not only rather large but also made out of solid gold. There is a dwarven corpse kneeling over the altar, with one hand pressed against a rune on the wall, and one hand on the breath-taking hilt of some kind of sword that appears to be stuck in the altar! It looks like he drove the sword into it himself with one hand against the rune. Landroval can tell by the hilt that this is a very fine weapon, probably elven make. The hilt is made out of gold twisted branches, and it is definitely not dwarven. The rest of the group sees Landroval disappear when he goes into the room and are a little surprised. However, being the adventurous sorts (sometimes, anyway) they follow in and can also see the real room. Beren can tell that the runes are part of a magic spell, Dwarven interspersed with Draconic (Landroval can't read Dwarven). Dorn checks out the corpse and finds an amulet, showing that the dwarf was a member of the Shield Dwarves royalty, or one of the associated families anyway. Danarn looks at the runes that Miranda copied down. Looks like some sort of contingency spell, and the illusion (powered by the altar) is part of it. The runes on the wall appear to be already-activated contingency spells. The magic that they triggered was transmute stone to mud, although the effect was somewhere away from here. Miranda says it was probably a dam that flooded after the trigger went off. There is a brief discussion of various society's "sword in the stone" legends, almost all of which say that only the "right person" can take the sword out of the stone. Landroval gives Danarn a grin. "Hey Danarn," he says, "I'll try to pull it out if you do." Danarn grins back, "You're on." Miranda says, "Oh, no you don't," but it's too late. The wizards are already playing rock-paper-scissors to see who has to go first. Danarn loses and steps up to the altar. As soon as his hand touches the hilt, there is a crackle of light and Danarn goes flying into the pool of water, badly damaged. There is some miscellaneous healing. "Whoa," says Landroval. "I bet that hurt. Hey Danarn, do you still want me to try?" "YES DAMMIT" comes the reply. "Okay," says Landroval, "here goes nothing." He reaches for the sword and gives it a good tug. It almost felt like it gave a little there! However that does not startle Landroval as much as the voice in his head does. "Draw me forth so that we may slay my enemies," a voice whispers in Landroval's mind. He pulls his hand back hurriedly. It really is a beautiful sword, he thinks. He pulls on it again. This time it actually slides out a fraction of an inch, just enough to show the blade. Looks like it's made of adamantine. The voice continues in Landroval's head, getting more excited as he continues trying to pull it out. (In the background, someone or another is yelling at him to stop, but he can't hear them at all). A blue light surrounds the sword and Landroval, but he is just as unaware of that. Finally, just as Miranda is about to shoot a crossbow bolt at Landroval to get him to stop, the sword pulls free of the altar. Landroval is surrounded by tendrils of lighting, and blue electricity seems to crackle off of the sword. It is indeed very beautiful, and very elven. As the sword is thanking him for freeing it, Landroval realizes that this sword is actually intelligent and sentient. So he asks it about how it came to be there in the first place. It was placed here many years ago when its former wielder perished at the hands of the drow. "And who are these enemies that you want to slay?" asks Landroval. "Servitors of evil," the sword replies in his mind. "The ones who sleep. Oh, and the Drow also." Landroval explains to it about Danarn, and the sword replies, "Well, don't swing me at him then and I won't kill him!" Okay, no problem. Apparently the sword's name is Aranashator, which means "Blood spilt in the pursuit of justice." The rest of the party asks Landroval why he is talking to the sword and pausing as if for a reply. He tells them what Aranashator has told him so far, and there are some members of the group that are nonplussed, but take it in stride okay. Dorn takes the amulet off of the corpse. We all go back into the room with the bath to sit down for a minute. Miranda takes this opportunity to read the scrolls silently. She shares some of it with us: apparently there were once forged certain "rune swords" and other rune weapons of light (including some axes). The group we killed was actually searching for this sword--for Aranashator! According to the scrolls, the weapons were made by the "dark" gods, such as "that harlot bitch Mistra." There is a reference to "those that sleep." Banished by the dwarves after the betrayal of those that sleep. Some swords are "faithful" while others are "betrayers." Some heal, some do ... well, tons of other things. The scroll goes on to threaten the party leader with sending him "back down" to be a slave, maybe among the Zhentarim. There is a threat to take away the ability to alter "the Weave." The Weave is what holds the universe together, allows magic to work, allows us to reason and have souls. Mistra is in charge of the Weave. Ashbrond is the dwarf that fell here with the sword. Corbin recognizes the name as being the name of the current Speaker for Shield Dwarves in Scarsdale. The scroll also talks about "Warriors of the Black Warder," and mention to the party leader that they will run into a wyrm in the ruins, and they might try to buy it off instead of fight it. Mention of the "rune blade," and the "bastard children of interlopers." Yeesh. Just in case you missed it, the scrolls were written by a bad guy, so anyone he refers to as a betrayer, or bad, is probably good in our opinions. Beren takes the nice dagger, and Miranda breaks the lever. We go back up to the room with minotaur bodies in it. Dorn searches the headless one: finds a rather large sword, made to be a minotaur sized short sword, and half plate. Dorn, Miranda, and Phae check out the barracks room. They find a drowish crossbow with crossbow bolts -- looks like that's how the one guy got pinned up, but whether that happened before or after his hands and feet were cut off it's hard to say. Yuck. We head down the hall to the west, the one remaining place to look. Phae and Miranda in the lead, Danarn and Gwaihir next, the Beren, Landroval, Corbin, Dorn. After a few curves it opens to a fairly large natural cave. There are some skeletons littered about, mostly dwarven. One orc. There are exits, in the shape of 25' wide passageways, leading off to the east and west. There are traces here of something very large, very tall. Which way to go? Tracks don't help. We'll go east. We come to a very large cavern, lit with flickering torches. There is a pungent smell of, and I quote, "shit and death." We can see lots of corpses. Phae notices some footprints. Tracks of some kind of lizard, probably the hydra we've been following. We enter the cavern. There are blood and guts strewn about: looks like some deer, an owlbear, and there is a cart with a bed in the far corner. There are signs of movement all over the place. Landroval and Beren are still near the entrance when they see a streak of light above them, and something slams into the wall: a big iron portcullis has completely closed off the entrance! Dorn stayed outside in the hallway to finish his midafternoon snack, and between him and Beren, they get to work on opening the portcullis. Landroval thinks that flash was magical, not an animal. Aranashator begins to glow. "My enemies are near," it tells Landroval. Dorn slides underneath the barrier and comes in, propping the door on the way. Miranda hears something that sounds quite large. We group up by the entrance, staying spread out. Suddenly three of us are engulfed in a fireball, and several others are nudged and nibbled by something that feels like... can it be? A huge invisible head? After it attacks, it becomes visible, and we see that it is indeed a very large hydra with seven heads, most of which are attacking. Beren sees an elven figure duck behind a stalagmite, and Corbin is one-on-one with a minotaur who got him from behind! Ack! Needless to say, combat ensues at this point. The minotaur drops Corbin quickly. Danarn is hit by a lightning bolt and thrown against the wall. Phae tries to help Corbin with one of her healing potions. Gwaihir gets the first blood on the minotaur and takes the first head off! Miranda gets her new handaxe out and hits with that. Beren is attacking Corbin's minotaur and does good damage, stunning it. The hydra drops Gwaihir. Landroval casts a fireball in the direction of the mage. At this point there are four of us attacking the minotaur. Dorn takes a head off! Beren beats up the minotaur again. Corbin blows a head off (thank you, Tymora). Landroval attacks a head with Aranashator, misses badly, and gets eaten for 16 points (ouch for the wizard!). Dorn gets another head, no, two in one turn! Miranda takes off one head and damages another. Danarn takes off after the elven mage. Beren finishes another head off. Landroval rolled a 1 in there somewhere, and the sword is not pleased about his fighting prowess! "Didn't I tell you I'm a wizard?" pants Landroval. Some of us run after Danarn, to where flashes of light are coming from. We are just in time to see Danarn finish off the wizard while he himself is badly hurt (it's a very dramatic fight scene). We run over, tie up the chick (she's still alive), heal Danarn. Dorn, out of options with the chick about to bleed out, pours a healing potion down her throat. Aranashator is berating Landroval for his sword-fighting. Note here: evil minotaurs have hooves, "good" ones have feet. Dorn eyes the red dragon scale armor of the minotaur that we killed. Tries it on, fits great! It has the encumbrance of studded leather. Magical: Miranda's axe, Dorn's new armor, short sword, ring the elf is wearing, bracelet radiates in some weird spectrum of magic never seen before. Coinage: 220 gp on them. Minotaur had a crossbow near where elf was hiding from. Repeating, man-sized, magic crossbow. Pistol grip instead of crank. We go back up to the bedroom to rest. To be continued... again...
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