Slice of Glaive

And Ghoral yells, “SQUID!!” as he starts to climb the stairs with Perrol close behind him.

Segment 12
I hold for the moment to see what the creature will do. As a note, I am still down 2 body. The creature lets out a horrific shriek and we all feel a reverberating wave strike us. Glaive’s ego cannot protect her enough and I take 13 stun. Perrol climbs the stairs and the we hear an unsettling scream. Kross takes off for the opposite stairwell so that he can get up on the other balcony and shoot at the creature. Ghoral makes his way up the rest of the stairs and then I hear another scream. I decide to use a half move to get up the stairs so that I can attack the creature.
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 15 in the vitals for 6 damage. It screeches and falls; however, it is still twitching/breathing.

Segment 3
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 15 in the arms/tentacles for maximum damage, cutting off a two tentacles
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 6 in the vitals for 5 damage
Ghoral also delivers a powerful blow. I’m fairly certain that it is now in serious trouble.

Segment 4
Perrol strikes at the creature and kills it. He basically severed the nervous capabilities of a giant, beaked brain with tentacles.

End Combat

Ghoral wanders away from the group toward a pile of rubble. I follow him to protect him should anything go wrong, not that Ghoral usually needs much protection. He finds a shiny dagger, apparently what he’d been attracted to from our previous location. After both Jarlyn and Perrol clear the dagger, Ghoral pockets it. Upon further examination with magesight, we find two unidentifiable potions. On the subject of potions, both Perrol and I debate taking a healing potion since we are each down 2 body; however, we each decide to get Jarlyn to heal us and save healing potions for when they are needed. We head on down the stairs and Perrol opens the N door down there. Inside that room, we see a large loom and three small spinning wheels. Also, an irregularity exists in the far wall. After opening the secret door, Ghoral peeks in and sees a rather strange hallway. On the walls of the hallway are imprints of gears with holes at the center. I was about to go in, when Ghoral resolves the debate about what to do by entering the hallway. Nothing appears to happen. Kross comments that the end of this hallway, not the side passage we can see, most likely lines up with the wall of another room on the map. I check it and find a secret door and latch. As I’m discovering this, Ghoral wanders down the side passage. As soon as he steps on a certain spot, spears shoot out of the holes in the side hallway. I turn to see the spears retract and see Ghoral dazed, but still standing. I check the area and find that the entire small side hallway is a pressure plate that triggers the spear trap. Using my ring of featherfall, I glide across the small hallway and find nothing. It appears that there used to be something(s) important but it is long gone. I glide back over to the others and report my findings.

We then decide to go through this secret door at the end of the hall. We end up in this room with anvils and quenching barrels, obviously a smithy. Perrol’s magesight finds what is likely a door key at the bottom of one of the barrels. Using my tinker skills, I’m able to craft together a tool to get it out of the water. The key turns out to be an I key. We promptly troop back through to the I door that was opposite the N door we had gone through. Inside we find a room with a lectern and desks that are the appropriate size for gnome children. After find no traps and learning that the pile of rubble is just that, Perrol goes into the room to find that there is a tunnel and a secret door. Through the secret door in another room with a tunnel at the end. On either side of that door, in the next room are stone built-ins, nothing else is visible due to the mist filling the room. Perrol’s curiosity gets the better of him and he steps into the room. He yells back that he sees a shape start to appear in front of him. He calls back for a rope to be thrown to him so that we could pull him back if something attacks. Suddenly Perrol squeals like a little girl and…

Segment 12
…jumps back into the room. There is a skittering sound coming from that room ahead. Everyone waits for just a bit to see what happens. Then cubit-long centipedes start to enter the room. Ghoral manages to close the door with only 4 entering the room and then promptly hacks one to pieces. The three remaining start to attack Ghoral and crawl up his leg. Perrol attempts to pull off the centipedes and fails. Then Jarlyn walks forward and also fails.
Half move to get close to Ghoral and then I manage to grab and partially pull of one of the centipedes. Kross moves up and strikes the stretched out centipede and slices into it. However, it is not dead.

Segment 3
Attack=Orunatiya with DCV 9 and slice the one I was holding in half
Attack=grab another centipede and miss
Ghoral also tries to slice one off of him, but fails to dislodge it.
The two remaining centipedes crawl up and under Ghoral’s mail shirt.

Segment 4
Perrol uses the flat of his blade and tries to hit the centipedes under the chain mail. Jarlyn tries something similar but cannot accurately judge where the centipede was and so hits Ghoral.

Segment 6
Ghoral takes off his chain mail shirt.
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 12 for 9 damage, killing one of the centipedes
Attack=Oruskormaeli with DCV 7 (1hp) for 4 damage on the last centipede, wounding it
Kross attacks the last one with his sword, killing it.

End Combat

But we can hear at least three more centipedes on the other side.

We passed the night in one of the J rooms that we were able to lock ourselves into for the night. It is a new day and we decide to head down to the end of the hallway. The doors at the end are an E and an N, giving us the opportunity to try either door. And we haven’t been out that way yet. Ghoral inserts the E key in its respective door; it opens rather easily. Inside the room we see four beds, four chests, etc. He walks through the door and a sheet of flame engulfs him. When Ghoral reemerges from the wall of fire, he appears undamaged if smoking (smoking hot (wink, wink)). Jarlyn and I check for traps and see nozzles, like where fire would come out, ringing the door. Ghoral sees an irregularity at the back wall and Jarlyn decides to go in and check it out. When Jarlyn walks through the door, the sheet of fire reappears. There is a large padlocked chest in the secret room through the secret door that was determined by the irregularity. I want to try and pick that padlock, so I ask Jarlyn and Ghoral to come over and cover the nozzles with their shields so that I can walk through the door in moderate safety. Unfortunately the fire is especially virulent and I still take 2 body and 12 stun, reducing me to 9 body and 13 stun. Doing what I endured fire to do, I try to unlock the padlock and it starts to work but then the age of the padlock starts to tell and I cannot get it. Two more times I attempt to get this stupid thing open, taking more time between each attempt. Right before my third attempt Ghoral notices that there is another irregularity in the wall of this room. My 4th attempt succeeds easily. Ghoral is the one to open the chest, my burn injuries are making me a bit cautious. He finds several items in the chest. Perrol is just about to explode from curiosity, but is unwilling to brave the ring of FIRE. I walk back to the door to try and disable the flame trap but do not succeed. Giving up on that, Ghoral and I pass through the second secret door into a hallway. We comment that this hallway appears to lead all the way to the great hall that we started in at the beginning. Perrol and Kross go around and find a catch that lets them open up the door from their side. We all troop over to the chest and Perrol is finally able to examine the items both with his eyes and with magesight. After much discussion, Jarlyn keeps the crossbow bolts, Perrol and I each keep a smokestick (flares), and decide to leave behind the magical stone, wand and bag filled with magical stuff. As I examine it more, the bag appears to be a tanglefoot, which is an item of alchemical origin that is thrown at an enemy and has exploding goo to entangle the person. Kross decides to take that, now that we know what it is. At the end of the hallway, in the other direction, there was a place where the floor looked different from the rest. After testing it for traps, we decide/see that under the floor is a spike trap like we’d seen previously with a creature speared on it. However, we also know that on the far wall is an irregularity that usually heralds a secret door. Kross is able to jump across at it an open the door the rest of the way. In that room is four more letter doors like the previous doors and one very large, iron, double door set into a stone frame. Using the N key, we open the N door and see a room like a previous one with four beds, four chests, etc. When Jarlyn bravely walks through, nothing happens. He can find no secret doors or anything of worth in the chests. Perrol follows him into the room and discovers nothing else. Back out in the main room, we are debating having me try to pick the lock on the large iron doors, but we think we hear banging and/or metalsmithing sounds from the other sides of the doors. Then, we open the E door. Expecting flame, we send our hardier members through the door and they take a beating, both going through and coming back. There was nothing interesting in that room. Perrol, on listening to the large door some more, comes to the conclusion that the metalworking sounds are repetitive in a false kind of way. I unlock the door, forgetting completely to check for traps. Everyone except Ghoral, who stayed behind to open the door, retreats to the nearby N room in case there is some explosive trap that I didn’t disarm. He sees into the room and nothing appears to have happened. We enter into the great room. Perrol wants us to climb one of the spiral staircases to the upper level because he senses a large magical blob just about there. Ghoral and Perrol lead the way as we start to climb the stairs. Just as Ghoral is exposed to the second level, a green tentacled blob detaches from the ceiling and attacks Ghoral.

Segment 12