Players: Tre/Tienarth, Henry/Ferris, Nick/Azrak, Jeff/Ghevont, Audrey/Nebula
For two days, they camped in the tiny room behind the secret door, resting and healing. Then it was back down into the second level. The first room they found held four prisoners. These foolish people from the fort had come adventuring and were captured by bugbears. Nebula gave them an earful about taking such risks with their lives. The party chased three of them off but took a youth named Nodo into the party for protection.
They puzzled over a room with clicking flagstone tiles and found a secret way back to a dusty room they’d seen before.
They found a fungus-filled room dominated by a large pool, but moved on without much investigation. Then they returned to the vile temple where they’d nearly died fighting zombies. Behind the altar they found a secret door that led a bedroom. An ancient bugbear corpse still lay in the bed.
Turning north, they fought a gelatinous cube in a room and then burst into a room with a chest and snakes. Azrak shoved Ghevont aside to slam the door shut. Unfortunately, the snake slithered out through large holes at the bottom of the door. Immediately a snake clenched down on Azrak’s ankle and he fell to the floor with a thump. Nebula chopped at a snake but she too was bitten and keeled over.
Sensing doom, Tienarth cast a sleep spell that got all of the snakes plus Ferris. The battle was over, but much sorrow was in the hearts of the party as two of their number lay sprawled on the cold floor. Presently they noticed faint breathing from each of them. The snake poison was not deadly after all.
With some effort, they dragged the unconscious dwarves out of the dungeon and made their way back to Morgansfort.
They were lucky. After rolling a 3 for his poison save, and the DM’s pronunciation of, “Azcrak is dead,” Nick lost it and started to cry. It was a hard lesson for a 9 year old, which was mitigated by a DM deus ex machina. I believe all learned some valuable lessons through this though, and hopefully they know the DM may not save them next time!