Slice of Glaive

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