The beginning of this session began with a series of questions and answers with one of the bandits we captured. This captive was taken back to Gren where he revealed the following:

• The bandits have a cave complex. It is hidden somewhere South East of Gren and is accessed from inside a large tree stump concealed by foliage. An path leads into the earth and opens up into a cave system.

• They have a large Force. These include the best men from their group, over 100 brigands in total including strong fighters, veterans, all led by someone called “Rob”. The captive says that they have horses and are well equipped with magic weaponry and numerous resources at their disposal.

• The reason they only sent small group to the Chapterhouse is that they were preoccupied with retrieving two treasures. They had only found some handfulls of gems and some jewelry, some coins. These bandits were trying to find the other treasure indicated on the map that they had.

• He confirmed that they did not have any spell casters among their group and they were hesitant to come to the area. What was their goal? Many of their members got booted out of the Benoba area (south of Macetor) after they cracked down on their presence with the recruitment of a new leader. The “anti-bandit task force” in Benoba forceably pushed them north.

• In regards to the maps, he did not know how they found the treasure maps. The Chapel near Gren is NOT one of the treasure locations from their map and their group did not prioritize the Chapel. He said that they had contacts with people willing to deal with brigands.

• It is determined that the area around Gren is thought to be (Neutral Good) leaning, so to speak, but there is some Lawful presence in the area. A contact in Gren might be willing to deal with the brigands. The nature of brigands is that they do not want to deal with people, just steal from them.

• The captive explained that he does not know any brigand “call signs” and does not know too much about their greater plans. The leader of the group at the Chapterhouse did not know what they were doing either.

Our cast of characters this session included:

- Maervahr, the Magic-User and psionicist.

- Oleander, the Half-Elf Ranger.

- Porto, the Halfling Thief.

- Haans Blackrock, the Dwarf Fighter.

- Talon, the Errant Paladin.

- Gil, the Cleric / Fighter of Nefer.

- Gummo, another Halfling Thief.

The Chapel is three miles to the North West of Gren, our adventure takes us there.

Today, it is Blade Moon the 6th, the holy festival day of the Goddess Riswa. The town of Gren celebrates as Riswa is their patron deity and largest temple.

Oleander bought a donkey and she named it either “Jote” or “Moscow”.

Without hesitation, we depart for the Chapel area and make it to the Chapterhouse without any trouble along the way. It is late in the morning, the place still appears as we had left it.

The Chapterhouse is a small building, about 100' x 50' with short spires, It stands approximately 100' distance from the Chapel, which rises into the air behind it. We can see huge stained glass windows from here. In-betwixt the Chapterhouse and the Chapel is another small stone building, about 30' x 30' in size.

We notice a brief shadow in the upper levels of the Chapel.

Inside of the Chapterhouse are three little rooms and a dry font. The font is twice as wide as a human, and about as tall - standing 6' off the ground. In the area between the chapel and the shed we find only some grains and there are no trees or rocks.

As we approach the Chapterhouse, we found that the door is still cracked open, just as we had left it some days ago. We enter back inside and find that the bodies are no longer here. Talon, our Paladin, had taken care of the bodies, leaving only remnants of blood. In the room to the North West is where porto killed one of the bandits.

Investigating the room, we find that there are anomolies in the blood spatter, as if sticks poked into the blood, perhaps like giant insects. This would have been a rather large, bestial insect. The tracks appear to be doubling back over each other. We also find evidence that a creature came in after the blood had dried. These markings point in both directions around the entrance.

Some of us search around the font and we discover a concealed box. The box has an invisible wire connected to the font. Following the wire, it appears to go all the way up to the bowl where it is attached to a piece of metal, branching between the bowl and stand. We find that if the bowl was shifted or moved this trap would be triggered.

The basin stands approximately 3.5' high. There is a thin crack around the inner part of the bowl and no way to lift the inner part up because there is nothing to hold onto. The font is made of stone.

Porto puts his weight on one end of the basin and Talon pulls the bowl back…it slowly becomes unseated…revealing a whole compartment beneath the bowl. They separate this from the trap area and inside, we find a white pouch, human sized. Porto did not find a trap associated with the pouch, which is surprisingly light weight. As we open it, sunlight from the windows, glimmers into the open pouch. Sitting in a bed of crystalline dust is a diamond! The dust is diamond dust!

Porto wants to reload the trapped box and puts it into a pouch to save.

In the corner of the Chapterhouse is a trap door leading down. If it was giant beetles that made those tracks in the blood, we discuss how beetles hate strong scents and how we might try to use that against them.

A light from a hooded lantern shines down through the trap door but does not reach the bottom. The hooded lantern burns for 24 turns in a 30' radius whereas a torch extends to 40'.

Oleander has brought with us Henchi, the War Dog. She calls him Hench for short. He can understand basic commands, has 2+2 HD, AC 6, and one attack that does 2d4 damage. Henchi has a 12 inch movement rate, which is also the normal unarmored rate for a human. Henchi uses War Dog stats.

We descend into a room, 30' wide made with a dark gray stone. There is a door on either side of the wall. We do not see any displacement of dust on the stairs but the lantern light reveals its not that dusty in this chamber. There are no footprints. The stonework appears to have been built by unskilled labor. From our location we cannot see if there is a wall to the north.

All is quiet, the air is stagnant and there is a faint smell of decay.

Gil walks to the middle of the room to use his infravision. The hallways branch off from the doors and there are no heat signatures. Maervahr uses a psionic ability of clairaudience and focuses it beyond one of the doors. Inside of his mind he hears the clicking of insects and a faint dripping noise.

Oil is spread in a 3' diameter in front of the door.

As Gil begins to open the door, it reveals that the hallway continues in the same direction. Haans Blackrock checks down the hall using infravision, and only notices a door at one end of hallway. There is silence now when listening from clairaudience.

Inside of the room is a dressing screen, concealing the back of the room from the front. Beyond the curtain are the tops of two beds. missing sheets but they have a stone reinforcement. Further down are two more beds, a total four. They appear to be roughly 50 years old, and there are numerous marks from wear and tear, there is a decay of the building materials. We check under the bed frames and find nothing besides specks of random materials.

Gil punches through the panels in the divider, the screen is a tattered mess now. Meanwhile, we find scratches of something like nails on the sides of the beds. It appears as if something was grinding into the bed hundreds of times.

We did not find any secret doors in here.

Gil pushes open the far door quickly, revealing a room, 50' x 40' in size, A door in the north wall is found inside an alcove. There are metal hooks hung about 6' off the ground. Most of the hooks are holding black robes with bright green threads. A tailor used them on the cuffs. This was most likely a cultist coat room. There are wooden benches in the middle of the room and there are two boxes in the South West corner. The robes are all human sized.

It is not uncommon for worshippers of Nefer to wear robes like this for Nefer has the domain of revenge. It turns out that Gil is a worshipper of Nefer.

Gummo searches the pockets and finds nothing but notices that one has an extra bit of cloth sewn into the right wrist cuff. This cloth is sewn with a different thread. Meanwhile, we search the room and can see the outline of a secret door to the south.

There are a couple of crates that are not nailed shut, the lids sitting loosely at an angle. We check the benches and someone lifts up a bench, finding less dust on the ground but nothing else. There are at least of a decent quality. The crates contain thick rolls of black cloth. Although they look heavy, they are probably worth something to a tailor, A total of six rolls of cloth, each about 1,800 coin in weight.

Using clairvoyance, Maervahr does not hear anything to the south. Haans confirms that the door to the south is solid and Gil puts on a robe. None of the hooks on the wall budge when we try to move them. Gil knocks on the secret door with a “shave and a haircut” but as expected, nothing happens. Maervahr puts on a black robe and Gil wears the robe containing the unusual extra cloth on the sleeve.

As we are unable to open the secret door we decide to explore further elsewhere. Gil pushes open the northern door.

We did not surprise the large, 10' long nightmare, a snake skeleton creature waiting for us on the other side. It has a human skull and is reared up on its back. We charge in and engage in combat. Blow are exchanged but nobody in the party falls.

Maervahr cast burning hands on the skeletal snake creature doing only 1 damage but this was just enough and it drops it!

Beyond the door is a bed chamber, or so it appears. The contents of the room are a bed frame and a dresser. On the wall is one set of empty hooks but these are not like the cloak hooks, they are smaller and 4“ distant from each other. Lying upon the dresser is a small brown, leather booklet, a quill and a vial of ink but the ink is bone dry. The booklet contains pages and pages, showing lists of supplies, herbs, building materials, often these are crossed off. This writing continues in random places throughout, along with some brief math calculations. Last page has one sentence:

“Old friend is in the ground, 400 feet deep at least. Cursed bastard will rot down there, machinations, R.M. L 16 435 after midnight.”

…or a better read yet…

“Old friend is in the ground. 400 feet deep, at least. Cursed bastard will rot down there, laden with his silver and swords. Machination of my machinations.Now that it's done I don't know what to do with the rest of my life. Servants freed. Perhaps I will depart for the desert lands, to wear black cloaks and gaze on white palaces somewhere far away.” - R.M.L 16, 435, after midnight

Porto, the thief, opens up some of the drawers. Only one drawer is empty and there is a bowl containing some coins as well as a spool of green thread. The coins total is 11 gp and 10 sp.

Meanwhile, Talon and Gil push open the door to the West, which opens up to another hallway.

Maervahr hears nothing but silence up ahead using clairaudience.

Haans determines that we are about 50' under the earth and there is no sloping. After about 15' the hallway goes to the left and then continues forward. There is an aroma of rotten flesh, or dead meat that has sat for a long long time.

The door on the left side of the hallway is different this time. It is constructed of metal and is barred, draped in 2' of chains held together with a big padlock. Beyond the door we don't pick up any sounds, it is dead quiet.

Porto suddenly notices movement ahead! Three zombies emerge out of the darkness. Gil attempts to turn the undead and just as quickly as they appear, the zombies are turned. As they flee, we quickly catchu up to them and kill all 3.

With that, exploration is done for the day and we head out.

The party makes it out of the dungeon, along with the rolls of cloth. As we are heading out, we stop to check out the smaller out building.

Inside, we find that there is a bunch of dirt on the ground. Oleander notices that, in the North East corner, is a very faint scratch on the stone wall. A curved scratch with an unusual shape… It appears that there were multiple strokes in the exact same location, resembling a drawing compass. There is no secret door in the walls here but we dig out a few inches of dirt, until we hit something hard. It is metallic.

Only silence is heard once again after Maervahr uses clairaudience.

We clear off the dirt to reveal the trapdoor but only one person can fit down at a time. Opening the trapdoor reveals a thin staircase descending into blackness at a sharp angle into the dark. Gil looks down with his infravision but it goes deeper than 60'. We throw a torch down and eventually it goes out of view. The torch eventually rolls down a bit more until it stops. We estimate that it goes more than 400'. This will have to wait another day so we cover up the trapdoor like nothing happened. We remove all trace of our presence here.

It is late afternoon now and we make it back to Gren.

There is a total of 1,212 xp to divide amongst the group.

A tailor in town will buy rolls of cloth for 140 gp and we can get 800 gp for the diamond. Along with the other treasure, there is an additional 11 gp and 12 sp, a total of 951 gp, 12 sp.

Divided up we received 136 gp and 277 xp. Maervahr takes 71.43 gp worth of diamond dust.