Wiki of The Dungeoneering Crew

After parting ways with the Svirfneblin — Dorrick, Sela, and Liri had moved on to seek their captured friends — the party once again found themselves alone in the dark. Following the directions they had been given, they turned east in search of a stream, a shallow ford, and the old fortress that was said to guard the way to the surface. Kipp and Brandy scouted ahead through the rocky tunnels, listening for water and watching for tracks.

They stayed to the path, keeping an eye out for a place to rest and begin the job of healing. The came upon an underground stream. While Kipp searched the area around the stream for a safe way to cross it, Brandy checked out a side tunnel, hoping for a safe out of the way place to rest. While moving into the side tunnel, she caught the foul stench of a familiar enemy and crept ahead until he confirmed his suspicion: a Troll den.

The party slipped inside and searched the filthy chamber. Among the bedding and refuse they recovered an iron-bound wooden shield, a dirty ring, a small hand axe, about 300 silver pieces, and a small pouch holding twenty gold coins struck in the coinage of a far-off realm — it was coin from their own homeland. They also found a partially digested book; turning through its ruined pages, Elenor salvaged two usable spells, Invisibility to Undead and Slow Poison, which she tore free to keep as scrolls.

Returning to the stream, the party set about a crossing. Audra used her Boots of Levitation to ferry Brandy to the far side, while Kipp waded across after them. Oglesby waded through behind Kipp. Oglesby came out of the water with a handful of small black leeches clinging to his legs, which were pulled off with much complaining. Audra carried the rest across. A nearby chamber proved large enough to camp in, and Elenor cast Leomund's Tiny Hut, shaping its shell to match the gray of the surrounding stone so as not to draw the eye of any Duergar that might be hunting them.

Inside the hut the party tended their wounds and took stock. Healing potions and spells were passed around to bring Kipp, Pyreece, Audra, and Oglesby back to fighting form. Eleanor then cast Detect Magic over everything they had collected in their recent battles. Thuldrek's warhammer and scale mail both glowed, as did the hand axe taken from the troll lair. The party identified them as a Warhammer +2, Scale Mail +1, and a Hand Axe +1. Pyreece took the Warhammer +2, Audra took the Potion of Hill Giant Strength.

While they rested, Kipp felt a soft, unwelcome presence brush his mind. He heard a voice in his mind ask, “Are you running? Where are you?”. As they woke only a short time later, he told the others of his experience. Elenor thought is was od that the hut had not blocked it. If it was magical, it shouldn’t have come through. The group reasoned the contact might have been psionic in nature. Perhaps the Illithid reached out. Their touch still lingered on Kipp since his resurrection. There was nothing they could do about it but mark the warning and move on.

The party traveled for three full days through the deep. Time loses meaning in the Underdark — no sun to measure passing, no sky to mark distance — only the slow rhythm of footsteps in an endless procession of stone. Forests of pale fungi shed sickly light, cold rivers whispered past in the dark, and once, a distant roar rolled through the rock like thunder. They rested multiple times over those days and fully recovered their health and spells.

Eventually, the natural curves of the tunnels began to give way to something more deliberate — smoother stone underfoot, sharper angles in the walls, the faint scars of long-still tools. Ahead of them opened a vast, mist-shrouded chamber. Beneath them, a field of blackened, fire-cast stone glowed faintly red from cracks of lava deep below. A wide stone bridge — almost certainly dwarven work — crossed a jagged chasm toward the iron-bound doors of an ancient fortress, guarded on either side by two faceless Stone Guardians.

The party advanced cautiously across the bridge. As they neared the doors, Brandy realized she could no longer hear her own voice — they had walked into a zone of magical Silence laid across the approach. As they past the guardians, they exited the zone and sound returned. Kipp examined the door and tried to nudge it open. That was enough. The Stone Guardians ground to life and attacked.

The fight was punishing. Brandy drew Long Tooth, her short sword that strikes for maximum damage against stone creatures and tore into one of the guardians. Pyreece brought out her Rod of Smiting, the one weapon in the party reliably ruinous to golems. Kipp flashed past with his long sword +2 and brought a natural twenty down on the first guardian, shattering it. Elenor unleashed Magic Missiles while Oglesby worked his sling from the back. Neither the Magic Missile nor the sling stones had any impact on the guardians. The remaining guardian struck Pyreece hard for sixteen damage before Audra finished it with a strike from her sword, and it crumbled apart at her feet.

With the guardians broken, Oglesby went to work on the heavy crossbar barring the doors from the inside. His own strength was not quite enough to lift the beam through the gap, but Kipp used his sword and exceptional strength to reach through the gap in the door and lift the cross bar while Brandy used her sword to push the bar away so it fell from the door with a loud crash. The doors creaked open.

Beyond them lay a great empty chamber with no immediate threats, multiple doorways radiating out from it, and a faint sense of being watched. Pyreece felt that someone was possibly scrying them, from somewhere far away. The party explored carefully. The western door opened on a long-abandoned chapel — broken altar, rotted pews, a cracked stone dome above — dedicated to a deity Pyreece could not identify in from any of the books they’d found.

Another door revealed an empty rectangular chamber of strangely uneven angles; a third proved to be little more than an ancient privy. Finally, down two small sets of stairs, they found another iron-bound door they opened it and …

That's where the session ended!

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Exp: 2667 + 267 = 2934