(Resuming from session 003)
While following the tunnel further we stumbled across a room containing the usual bioluminescent lichen, scattered purple fungi, and amethyst chips. Kestyn was uninterested and attempted to continue on, but Whipp wanted to examine the room. Upon entry, they were attacked by three seemingly animated versions of the purple fungi. These hit hard and often with their stalks, but proved easy to hit and destroy. Enna transformed into a giant rat, scaring and scarring us all (with mild amounts of awe). Whipp gathered a mixture of the bioluminescent lichen and the purple fungi and stored them in a bag. Marro and Kiev extracted some small pieces of amethyst from the walls.
We continued to walk for several more hours until arriving at a set of iron double doors. There was an inscription above that says (in Common) "Turn back while you still can", and another in Dwarven script but apparently encoded above it.
After much work we were able to decyrpt this message into "Only friends of the second son of Aeon Grayshield may enter". This required insights from several characters: Enna was familiar with the Caesar cipher but determined that this must be more complicated, Kiev suggested that it might be some kind of progressive or cyclic variant of the cipher, Kestyn remembered that Dwarven codes of this nature often include the word "friend" or "friends", and Orla and Morro did the work of discovering the key and decrypting it.
Miraculously, Orla knew that Aeon Grayshield was a long-dead Dwarven king, and that his second son was named Yathno. When she spoke his name, the doors suddenly opened. We entered the room and felt like no one has been here in a very long time. The room was filled with badly decayed furniture, books, and other detritus. We found two similar doors exiting the room in other directions, and a spiral staircase upward. From the inside, the doors are labeled "To Ikhil" (the one we came through), "To Crazula" (across from it) and "To Barston" (to the right).
Morro followed Kestyn up the stairs. Near the top, they tripped a pressure plate that caused arrows to fly out of the wall, killing them both. Kiev used Lay Of Hands to restore them to life. Whipp successfully disabled the trap by wedging pitons into the holes. The party discovered that the door led to the outside, in a small valley between steep mountain peaks.
With everyone hungry and several characters severely injured, we decided to rest the night inside the large room, and the night was uneventful.
In the morning Kiev healed Whipp of their Death Dog disease, leaving only Kestyn still infected.
We decided to explore outside and were able to orient ourselves based on the rising of the sun, and decided to explore eastward in hopes of finding Ikhil. After only about a 20 minute hike, we found ourselves looking down at Ikhil. While others disagreed, Orla was convinced that we were near the border of Edna and Iona counties. We saw a farmhouse about half a mile away, and decided to head eastward until we found a major road.
It will still be pretty early on Saturday when the next session begins.
Party Experience Before Session: 1,962XP.
Experience Earned:
Party Experience After Session: 3,687XP.
Needed For Level 3: 900 * 6 = 5,400XP