Back in Gren, our party has participated in the celebrations surrounding the Festival of Riswa, the patron Goddess of the town. The Temple of Riswa sells lanterns made with colored glass which function, for the most part, as a normal lantern and sell for 10 gp . Lanterns are considered one of the holy symbols of Riswa. There are also staves decorated with carved magical beasts, lodestones and reed hats.

Today's session featured the following characters:

- Ithimyr Sarfanis, Half-Elf Cleric / Ranger.

- Haans Blackrock, Dwarf Fighter.

- Talon, Human Paladin of Riswa.

- Oleander, Half-Elf Ranger.

- Fandillas, Elf Fighter / Magic-User.

- Zenobia, Elf Thief / Magic-User

- Gil Buisarme, Half-Elf Cleric / Fighter of Nefer.

- Giles the Morningstar, Half-Orc Fighter / Assassin.

During the festival, Talon decided to purchase a bunch of wooden holy symbols of Riswa as well as food that he could give out to the children of Gren. While doing this, he is able to hear stories and rumors of interesting places from the kids' perspectives.

Ithimyr heard a rumor during the downtime: when some travelers came to Gren from the East, along the West Lake, there was something visible from the Gren side of the lake. They said the following:

• “Along the shoreline are some mysterious stone buildings, now mostly collapsed ruins. They appear to be like an eerie ghost town. Nobody goes there now due to rumors of Spectres and Ghosts.”
• “Some people have seen glowing lights over there. Sometimes the children will go out close to the area with their friends to see if there are any glowing lights.”
• “I hear that the ruins are specifically haunted by a curse that keeps the ghosts there. It used to be a town, long, long ago… Something horrible befell it.”

The last rumor was a detailed story heard directly from Syrah, the head priestess of the Temple of Riswa.

Another rumor heard around town was that the money changer is a failed adventurer. He now sells curios under his shop that are magical in nature and he hoards them. This is Skiff Blackleaf, money changer and curio collector.

Talon also heard some rumors around town:

• The local teahouse doubles as a surface level Thieves Guild.
• The hills to the north east are alive and actually one massive creature. They are part of one massive beast, a slumbering dragon or a dinosaur.
• Clover Tamford, the daughter of the mayor of Gren, is actually a dark Sleal cultist. Talon overheard this from some locals talking. Sleal is an evil god.
• Every year a great bat winged bird flies over Gren. It circles over the town and then departs. Its always around the same time in late summer.

It turns out that Zenobia knows about the thieves guild.

Fandilas obtained a map from a magic user in town and Ithimyr relays to the group all the details of our previous adventure.

The next day we head back to the Chapterhouse. We discuss events of the Chapel, all of the webs we saw and precarious nature of the upper level.

We make it back the the Chapel grounds without incident and as we approach, we see the enormous spider corpse outside. The weather today is cloudy and we spot no differences with anything from the last time we were here. We search for new tracks and find none. We see the four smaller spider bodies lying all around by the Chapterhouse. These spiders were still bigger than average dogs.

Oleander wants to harvest the silk from the webbing but we burned off all the small spider webbing inside the Chapterhouse. The webbing in the Chapel was like rope.

We go down to the dungeon beneath the Chapterhouse. As we enter the first front hall we find that there are more tracks in the oil. These are insectoid type of scrapes but there is also now a big streak in the middle, leading into the middle room. The large streak is around 1 to 1.5 foot in length and looks like something that would slide. We determine that it could have been made by another Necrophidius.

Hengi, Oleander's dog, is with us as we investigate these new tracks. Ithimyr goes to listen at the door on the left but does not hear much except for the squeaking of rats…from down the hall and they are approaching in our direction.

A large group of giant rats rushes at us! Ithimyr throws a burning flask of oil at the swarm but misses. His flask breaks on the ground nearby and still caused some fire damage and the oil splashes onto some of the giant rats. The burning oil creates a wall of flame and the giant rats screech down the hallways.

A thrown burning oil flask does 2d6 damage on a hit and does 1d3 splash damage to others in range. The oil flask must not roll a save on a d20 to break. The burning oil will cause 1d6 damage to creatures passing through fire wall.

The fire has run off the rats and they are all defeated! The swarm of giant rats ran down the eastern hall but they emerged from the north and east. We struggle with the door in the hall and while attempting to open it, we suddenly hear a shout. A beetle has attacked it takes a chunk out of Zenobia!

A fight with the creature ensues and Haans Blackrock kills the beetle. Zenobia dropped and was nearly killed but Ithimyr healed her with a cure light wounds. Zenobia is back from bed rest on Blade Moon the 19th.

We head back to Gren with Zenobia for recovery. Giles the Morningstar joins the group to replace her. He is a Half-Orc Fighter/Assassin, 5'3“ and obese. Gil is also coming with us, a Human Cleric.

The next morning, we head out once again for the Chapterhouse.

When we arrive, Ithimyr lights a hooded lantern with a plan to drop it should we get into a fight. We go left 30' and find a T-intersection. The streaks only go straight and there is a door to the south. The west hallway turns at an angle. The dead fire beetle still has its glowing glands. After cutting the glands out, Giles smears one on Ithimyr's spear. Even though there was no liquid inside, just mush and matter, the materials leaves a faint glow about 1' to 2' of light. We put another gland on the very end of Ithimyr's spear as a brighter light source. As we continue on down the hall, after about 40', it ends in a door.

We forgot about the keen eared rule on page 60 of the DMG so we will begin rolling for that going forward.

Ithimyr hears the sound of chattering insects, like the same type of fire beetle. There are 2 to 4 of them. Gil opens the door revealing a 30' deep, 40' long room.

We are not surprised. Both Oleander and Ithimyr throw oil at the group of fire beetles Ithimyr makes a direct hit! All of them take damage and burn and this dropped 3 of the fire beetles. One of the beetles survives and must make a morale check. It automatically fails and it flees. We each get a parting attack and it is destroyed.

This room we have entered is a small bed chamber. There are three old bed frames that appear to be singed with embers. Lying upon one of the bed frames has a robed skeleton on its back. It is wearing a black robe with green threads like the robes we found previously. This room is otherwise filled with beetle refuse and there are 3 glands on each beetle. All of the beetles were destroyed, completely roasted.

On the robed skeleton we find 1 gp, 10 sp, and a little folded piece of parchment in the wrist pocket. It is smaller than a coin and inside, a hastily scrawled note with charcoal: “spoke nef's'tar”.

Going north, we find that there is another hallway and a door. We open the door and find another room with more bed frames. The bed frames are free of mattresses. As we scan across the room, we find a stone chest of drawers against the west wall. Two masks hand upon some hangers. The masks appear to have a face with the mouths wide open. For the eyes, there are two red gems.

The dresser is covered in dust and tracks are found on the ground, more beetle tracks but these are less numerous. Most of the tracks seem to be focused around the south door. Ithimyr checks the door and listens while the others are searching the room, some are examining the masks.

The mask hooks are smaller hooks, specifically made for these masks. There is an inch of space between the chest and the wall. The hanging masks are not flush with the wall and drawers do not look very heavy. They are gray in color, made of stone. Haans can tell that the drawers are not very finely crafted. He does not see anything odd about its construction.

The group decides to open the drawers and they grind roughly as they are crude blocks of stone. There is nothing inside them. Shining the hooded lantern light into the chest of drawers, we can see that they seem completely empty…except about 5' away from the drawer opening is a small black box, The box is about one foot in length.

Someone uses a halberd to retrieve the box. Oleander finds that tucked under a bed frame is a very tiny key. It looks as though someone stuck the key here and it fits the black box. Inside we find a small collection of 30 pp and 5 red gems. The box is made of maple wood which is not super common.

Suddenly, the door opens and entering the room comes a humanoid figure. A zombie!

Holy water does 1d6+1 against undead when thrown against it but the clerics in our group are able turn the zombie. It is quickly destroyed by the group.

An external force can re-animate an undead so we make sure to disable any bodies due to the frequency of undead we are finding here. We head back to the room with the snake skeleton (the Necrophidian) and Ithimyr beheads it. Then, head back to the dressing room where we found the robes and the secret door.

After saying the magic word on the paper we found, an outline crack instantly glows with a blue-white light and then fades into translucence. A secret door is opened! It opens into a small, black slate room. We can see inside that are three vertical hooks on the far wall. A silver rod in the form of a serpent rests on the hooks.

Ithimyr casts Detect Magic while looking at the rod. The rod glows with a decently strong magical aura but not the masks or gems that we found earlier. Gil puts on his robe and then steps into the room. He takes a look at the hooks, which are fastened tightly but are holding the rod straight upward. The bottom of the hooks are small, coin sized, and are attached firmly to the wall. Gil mutters, “Nefer, I do this for you” and he takes the rod. The rod feels pretty heavy but nothing otherwise happens.

The 5' long rod is very heavy and made of fine silver. It has a twisting pattern carved precisely and jade headed serpent. The whole rod is carved like a viper or poisonous snake. It looks like same kind of snake that are typical of giant snakes for this part of the world. It does not have a desert style or motif to it, nor is there any writing on it.

Checking the floor of the room, we find that it has no tracks at all. We leave the room and at that moment we leave, the wall re-materializes where previously there was a secret door. Gil notes that the symbol of Nefer is a snake.

We head toward the southern rooms of the dungeon and find an area where the ceiling of the room had been caved in. There are chunks of rock strewn all about. In the middle of dirt pile, with its rear in the air, is the shell of a fire beetle. We also find a barrel in the corner. The glands of the fire beetle are missing.

Although the floor appears stable, there is gravel and rock everywhere and only the fire beetle shell sticking out of a pile of dirt, which is piled up on top of the rubble from the cave in. There are tracks of a beetle that go in and do not come out of the dirt pile. The barrel looks empty but we can see a faint drop fall from the ceiling.

Someone decides to check the fire beetle shell and it drops several grubs to the ground. They start writhing around from the shell. Fanning out in all directions. We are luckily able to avoid contact with the Rot Grubs.

Before we leave, we decide to go back to the room with the lab equipment. This was a very crude lab but most of the stuff has been stripped out. There are a bunch of wall shelves and on top of one the shelves is a drawer.

As we open the door to the north, there is instantaneously a piercing high shriek emanating from several purple mushrooms in the next room. They look to be as big as a man. For now, we ignore them but make our way quickly for the exit and we head back to town…

For the first Talon and Zenobia group, we get 15 xp.

The second, current party earns 40 xp.

The jeweler in Gren is a Gnome and he will offer us 60 gp for the small red gems and 100 gp each for the garnets. Each of the masks is worth 240 gp including their gems. A total of 480 gp for just the masks.

If we are able to obtain good quality spider silk, the Gnome may offer us some gold for it, around 60 gp.

Total haul is coinage and 5 gems (60 gp):

1 small garnet (60 gp). 109 gp each 2 sp each 6 pp 199 xp each 99.5 xp, 1 110 xp

30 pp 546 gp 10 sp 5x small garnet (60 gp ea value) snake staff - 400 xp value if kept

Ithimyr spent 9 gp to buy a small iron box that he will deposit 300 gp and 100 sp into. He will then bury it outside, late during the night, somewhere outside of town under a tree.