By Beth Griese

Date:   September 30, 1995

Quote of the Day:
"Stop! We're profit-minded!" -- Jim Leitzel

To Garen Thundersson, cleric of Mielikki. From your faithful servant, Jade.

Our group was faced with two choices; the door in the pantry to the wine cellar or the trap door in the floor of our haunted house. We decided to investigate the pantry door first. The wine cellar, like all the rooms we had seen so far, had been ransacked. Broken bottles lie scattered around... a body. A dead man lay in the middle of the floor, still with armor on.

It was a strange change from the rest of the building. Everything else had been picked clean; why was this man still lying here? I reached him first, and when I rolled him over, worms boiled out from the man's body and armor and tried to swarm over my arm. What a disgusting sight! I managed to shake them all off but one, who immediately started burrowing into my arm.

Borreau was there immediately, just as I'm starting to count on him to be. The others in the group started stomping and cutting to get rid of the rest of the worms that were trying to find new hosts, although I didn't really realize that until later. I was more concerned with the lump under my arm that was trying to work its way to my shoulder. Borreau tightened his fingers around my arm to keep it from crawling any higher. I remember the time these same carrion beasts tried to attack him and he managed to cut it from his own arm. Apparently, it was my turn. It was actually less hard than I thought it would be. Cutting my own skin seemed an easy choice compared to this thing eating its way to my heart. I cleaned the worm out and managed not to throw up while Borreau put fresh cloth on the wound.

The others set fire to the body to give it rest and destroy the worms within it. The armor it wore was magical, so we decided we would come back for it after we had investigated the trap door and the fire had purged it clean.

So our next step was the trap door. We headed down it and dropped into a room with ten beds in rows along the wall. The second step from the trap door screamed when we stepped on it, and we found a table in the room with a still-burning candle on it. I had no doubt by this time that the mystery of this house rested with ones who are still very much alive, not undead. And they were certainly ready for us by now. It wasn't a pleasant prospect, but we didn't even question whether to continue on our hunt.

The room had two doors - one barred on this room's side, the other unlocked. We tried the unlocked door first, since nothing would be coming at us from the other direction. It was apparently the headquarters for the leader of this band - it had a plusher bed, a chest, and a desk with books on them. B'rinth, true to form, nearly crawled over my back to get to the books. I found a signal lantern, candle, and a parchment with numbers and symbols on it. It must be related to the code they use the lanterns for, but it's beyond me to figure out exactly how.

B'rinth had cast his spell to find magic, and said that a stone beneath the bed hid something magical. Borreau lifted the bed out of the way and B'rinth and I worked on prying away the flagstone to find what was hidden beneath it. Unfortunately, I managed to get my finger pricked on a needle that was hidden in this compartment we found. Nory later expressed exasperation with me that I would fall for such a simple trap, which I suppose is merited. But as it turned out, the needle was venomed only with blue dye. I suppose it was mostly to discourage thievery from one of their own, but I'll be proud to show the stain to this leader if we find him. The compartment held some bottles of magic potions - we have no idea what they are yet, of course - and some platinum.

The bolted door was scratched with a skull symbol, and we opened it next. I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised to find six living skeletons inside. Borreau turned them back with Tempus' power, then he and I waded in to destroy them. The others apparently have high faith in our ability to handle those bone monsters, because they hunted around the main room and found a secret opening down to caverns while we cleared out the skeletons.

This was the point where, finally, Ned decided to take his leave of us. The thief had still been clinging to our heels the entire way so far, but now he at last saw the wisdom of leaving and going home. Maybe we should have taken it as a bad sign for the wisdom of descending those stairs, but if any of us did, we didn't say anything about it.

Nory could hear sounds at one end of the passage we found at the bottom of the stairs, so we headed that way first. The moment the gnome peered around a corner, though, a crossbow bolt tried to split his skull. As it was, it only managed to part his hair. Before I got so far as stringing my bow, though, Telaran burst through us all to charge the hall. He suggested later that he was trying to reach the shooter before he could reload the crossbow, but at the moment I thought the furies had gotten to the man. He made short work out of the guard at the other end of the hall who was, thankfully, alone.

The guard was apparently assigned to a cell. I peeked inside the barred window that was nearby and found two people inside. One man, a wealthy merchant by the looks of him, was unconscious. The other fellow, a thin man by the name of Verence, was very much awake and not the most charitable. We released them both, of course. Verence, who as it turns out is a follower of Mystra and therefore an instant friend of B'rinth's, told us that this band is led by a man named Sanbalay who is guarded by gnolls.

We decided it was time to return to town. Verence and the merchant could both have used the attention of a temple, and we had certainly burrowed out the secret of this house. We could return with some of the city guard to help them clean out the place. Our discretion, though, was for naught, because before we could reach the stairs to leave another man came down the hallway and spotted us. He turned his heels and ran, so Telaran and I both gave chase. We ended up running smack into a room with a man who fairly wore a sign to tell us he was a magician... and two gnolls guarding him. It seemed we had found Sanbalay.

The battle didn't take long. Borreau, bless his quick thinking, cast a silence spell in the room to effectively shut down the magician from casting. It made fighting those gnoll beasts strange - our weapons smashing together, wound being given and taken, with no sound whatsoever. But we did manage to clean up all the guards and I brought the magician down as he tried to take after us with his dagger. It wasn't until Borreau ended the silence spell that we could hear Verence yelling at us for killing the leader. Apparently he had some questions he had wanted to ask, but there was sadly little we could do about that now. Now, hopefully, we would be able to return to town in peace and make our report.

Your faithful servant,

--Jade

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