• Llamryl Chaent - Elf THF1/MAG1, Sister of Adaeril
• Alexios - PAL
• Morganna - Human MAG1, AC 10/10, MV 12“ Doors 1-2, Listen 1-2, 12, 18, 12, 12, 15, 14, 5 hp, NG, Venha, 31 years old.
• Ragnar - Human RGR1, AC 7/7, no shield, 13, 14, 15, 10, 14, 10, MV 9”, Doors 1-2, Listen 1-2, 9 hp, NG, Rook, 21 years old.
• Hendricks - Elf FTR1/THF1, 166 years old.
• Galador
• Oswald - CLR

We are going back down the well and into Mon-Karag.

We make it to the secret area beyond the secret door with the face. We push through to the southern chamber and immediately encounter 5 Giant Ants that are consuming several Giant Rats.

• Llamryl is going to shoot her bow.
• Oswald prepares for a charge.
• Alexios and Galador form a line.

Llamryl hits with an arrow for 4 damage but this does not kill the Ant. She then falls back to try and hide in the shadows.

Alexios hits for 3 damage and Oswald hit one for 7 damage but all 4 are still alive. After the initial charge, Alexios takes 6 damage, Ragnar takes 5 damage but Oswald is missed!

Llamryl hides in the shadows and is out of melee. In the front lines, Ragnar does 3 damage and kills one Ant so now there are 3 left. Galador kills another and Oswald hits for 3 damage, but that one is not down.

The Giant Ants missed Morganna and Alexios as they pursue them. Both Ants are now attacking Alexios but they miss him. Llamryl misses with her backstab attempt and Alexios takes 1 damage. Llamryl is struck and is at -3 hitpoints. SHE DROPS!

Alexios drags her out of the melee while Ragnar hits the biggest one, though it does not fall. Alexios stabilizes Llamryl and she is no longer bleeding out.

The front line hit one for 8 damage, which kills another one! Galador hits the other for 4 damage. Ragnar is knocked out as well as he takes 4 damage from the last Giant Ant.

Oswald and Galador destroy the remaining one.

We are immediately headed back to Mombafra, to the surface.

On the way out, the party comes face to face with more Giant Ants.

Galador is bit for 7 damage and then 15 damage. He must save versus poison or die but he saves!

The Ants are quickly dispatched.

We introduce some new party members:

• Darvan - THF1, AC 6/8, Luz.
• BRON the First - FTR1.

We head back down into the dungeons of Mon-Karag with the new lineup.

Bron the First joins as does Darvan, the Thief.

We arrive at the entrance to the Giant Ant nest, which is located on the eastern end of the dungeon. We are thinking about sending Darvan down in Gaseous Form to scout it out. He agrees to do this and Darvan drinks the potion and becomes a transparent gas.

He begins floating along the passage and goes down into the pit at the end which extends down for about 50'. As he continues, he finds another pit and continues forward, floating past it. He has a movement rate of 30“ per turn. He can see with Infravision in his gaseous form.

Darvan continues forward and floats into a larger chamber that spreads out. He sees numerous heat signatures that are Giant Ant sized and immediately spots 12 of them. There are even more heat in the back. In a Gaseous Form, he can push against the walls and he finds that the ceiling in here is quite high as he rises up.

Keeping tabs on the time, he backtracks down the other passage which goes for another 50' until he sees 21 separate chambers. These have a much shorter ceiling, at about 10' tall.

It has so far been just over a turn. The tunnel in the middle feels solid all around and he finds that there are two tunnels coming off the bottom tunnel. There are more heat signatures down here along with a room. There are 5 Ants moving about but he sees even more further away.

The tunnel splits again and he comes across 11 more Giant Ant heat signatures located at the bottom of another pit. Darvan goes back down this way which opens up into another larger area. In this area, there are 18 more heat signatures at the bottom but there have been no eggs seen so far.

It has been 3 turns at this point and Darvan goes a short way into a chamber that is oddly shaped. There are 18 more Giant Ants around the entrance. At this point, he goes back to the top chamber to see if there are more than 12 Ants there.

It has now been 4 turns. He continues on behind the 12 in the top which is an enormous chamber. He counts and cant detect a total of 45 Giant Ants in here and the entire chamber keeps going. Beyond that, he sees no more ants.

He has to turn around at this point.

Darvan returns and arrives back at the end of the chamber. Back with the party, he turns back to corporeal form. As a Thief, he has no problems getting back

The party decides it is not yet ready to take on the Giant Ants so we go to some staircase located in the south of the dungeon.

The staircase climbs up. As we go up the stairs, we find two bodies of Deep Goblins on the ground of a chamber at the top of the stairs. They are decayed and shriveled up and appear to be completely drained of blood.

Darvan searches the area for traps but finds no traps. The Goblins do have some coins on them. Meanwhile, Darvan also checks the southern door, and finds no traps.

• 14 sp

These Deep Goblins appear to have died by Stirges…

We continue on, past this area, and go through the northern door where we find more stairs going up.

We catch 8 Stirges by surprise at about 2” away.

• Bron charges in with his bastard sword and shield.

We get triple rate of fire with your ranged weapons out. The Stirges have AC 8 and Galador hits, doing 2 damage. This actually kills one! There are two shots from Alexsios who hits for 4 and 5 damage each. Morgana hits for 3, 3, 1, 2, 1, and 1 damage using darts. Hendricks hits and does 6 damage.

Overall, they kill 5 of the Stirges immediately. Bron does 2 damage with his sword and Galador strikes again, doing 8, 6, and 5 damage. There is still one left alive.

Darvan hits that one for 1 damage and Galador hits for 4 damage. It is Slain!

We are inside of a refined bedroom made of smooth stone and angular edges with perfect corners. There is a staircase going up to the east. It appears that the staircase goes up 20'.

Bron checks along the wall on the west side for secret doors and so does Alexios. He finds something in the west wall, a sliding panel. It is small, about the size of an outstretched hand. Darvan, the Thief, does not find any traps.

Not willing to take any more risks, Oswald casts Find Traps but there are still NO TRAPS.

Lifting up the panel reveals two holes. One of them is quite large and goes back into the wall about 1' deep. The other hole fits a key. It turns out that…WE HAVE A KEY!

Nothing is glowing with Detect Magic and inside the holes, no traps are detected. The lock has some weird mechanisms inside and it means that there is a -10 to check the lock for Darvan. Hendricks also tries, but in the end, nobody can open it.

The door opens up and 6 more Stirges come in. BRON immediately charges them with a rage. These ones also have an AC 8 and are 2“ away.

Darvan hits 1 for 4 damage which kills one. Hendricks also hits and kills a Stirge. Alexios kills one and Oswald did 6 damage. Galador hits and kills yet another one.

We quickly make short work of all the Stirges.

There are no traps on the other door so Darvan takes a moment and listens. He does not hear anything and Hendricks fails to pick the lock on it. Darvan also tries this but fails as well. No luck for our Thieves.

We cannot force open the stone door and it will be impossible while it is locked. At this point we check the southern door, which is not locked.

Inside another room we find five racks and some weapon racks that are empty. There is a stone panel with a vertical slider on the wall. An inscription in Dwarvish says the following:

Forbidden to all but the Forgeguards.

We check out the small stone panel on the back wall which is built into the wall, like the one in the other chamber. There is also a keyhole next to it, both of which are along the south wall.

We enter into a fire scorched room where several beds had once been scorched and burned by fire. At this point, the Find Traps is no longer going.

We examine them and see that all of the beds are scorched, particularly the northern parts of the beds. Some of them are unscorched in the north parts. Darvan searches for traps again but does not find any traps on the panel, more Thief luck…

BRON holds the door open for him as Darvan picks open the lock finally! A strange metallic hook mechanism comes out and he catches it with his lockpick tool. The mechanism snaps and he is able to disable this lock. The door automatically UNLOCKS!

This also reveals a handle at the bottom of the panel with a shallow shelf inside holding two keys.

• KEY 1 and KEY 2 (Alexios has them), they each have 1 coin weight.

We try each the keys in the lock we failed to pick and the small one fits. When he turns it, the wall shifts and grinds open, revealing a secret room behind the wall.

This room looks like some kind of armory. There are 16 daggers, some stacks of crossbow quarrels including 200 light and 340 heavy bolts. There are also 3 light crossbows and 2 heavy crossbows. We find an unusual dwarven axe, one like we have never seen before and it does not look rusted. There are also 4 Dwarven tubes.

On closer examination of the axe, it appears to be a button where the thumb grip is. Bron lifts the axe off the rack and finds that it cuts through the air masterfully. The axe has a +2 magical bonus to hit.

Suddenly, the 4 Dwarven tubes spring to life as steam comes out and they appear to come down sharply with their own accord. Of these items, Darvan only collects the daggers.

We return to the other door and open it on the second try with the other key.

We find a large chamber dominated by a great forge that is trimmed in obsidian. This was clearly constructed by Dwarven forge masters though the forge is cold now. We also find a small metal barrel in the corner and 3 metal tubes on the floor. These are more Dwarven tubes and there is some flint and steel and charcoal that, though old, have not worn away.

Searching through the forge room, we find a secret panel on the floor. There is a small slit that will allow us to lift it up but first we check for traps. Darvan does not find any traps.

Hendricks tries to open it with one of the daggers and a hidden panel in the floor opens! It contains a set of masterwork forge tools. When Alexios picks up the tools, a chill fills the room and a sound booms through the chamber.

“You have taken up tools that are beyond your ken. Let us take the tools to the Dwarves. I will not trust a random Human to take and do what they will with them.”

The voice continues…

“If one of us can prove ourselves to be keen of hand, with the ability to craft something of value, only then will I permit you to use them.”

Unfortunately, there are no Dwarves among us. However, Alexios volunteers to be taken over. He tells the voices of the forge chamber, “We were brought here to seek out Ain the Traveler.”

The voice responds,

“I am TUKUEL the first forge master.”

We ask Tukuel about the axe we found with the button.

“That was not crafted by my hands but I will tell you how to use it if the Paladin survives. The rest of you must leave.”

The party leaves the room. As we depart, there is a burst of heat and a light from the forge chamber. Alexios finds that the entire room is filled with incredible heat. Outside, we can hear the ghostly sounds of clanging and feel a slight breeze from the heat.

There are some gasps as to cause pain. From the process, Alexios magically ages 10 years and must pass a SYSTEM SHOCK roll! He passes and survives the possession!

In pseudo consciousness that Alexios vaguely understands, he senses TAKUEL overtake his soul but there is the understanding that Takuel does not have the power to invoke the gods. He defines in his eyes a set of Plate Armor and he can feel an incredible power of the chamber.

From outside the stone door we hear metal being forged. Morganna casts Hold Portal.

Eventually, the noise finally stops after an hour. The forge has become cold and dark and the chamber now looks like it did before.

For Alexios, the presence of Takuel is nowhere to be felt but he has willed the creation of a suit of Plate Armor. It is Plate Mail +5, crafted specifically for ALEXIOS! It is made of adamantine and with a shield, Alexios now has a -3 AC. His movement speed is 9 inches.

• PLATE MAIL +5 (id 105)

Alexios is now 29 years old though before this, he was 19.

Alexios grabs the tools, they weigh 300 coins and the party departs for the surface city of Mombafra.

We sell the +2 Battle Axe for 9,000 gp as well as the normal battle axes.

There are 3 Dwarven tubes worth 1,500 gp, which we sell.

Total gold reward is 12,100 gp.

We each get 2 sp and 1,728 gp.

Fothas will deliver Adaeril's Spellbooks to Llamryl Chaent, as per his will.

We killed 5 Giants in part 1 of the previous adventure, but there was no treasure. This equates to 28 xp for all of us.

Galador gets 91 xp.

For Part 3, we get 1,816 xp and Alexios walks away with 6,316 xp.

With the mediocre xp rewards, Bron still hits level 2 and he barely at 2,001 xp!

Llamryl is is 15/14 xp since she fell in battle immediately.

Darvan is at 2,097 xp.

Alexios is at 11,109 and he is at level 3.

Bron pays for the training.