Stonehell: Orcs, Ghosts, and Dragons!

This session was played on Friday 2/5

Tink
Wilhelm
-Hanks the dog
Shelly
Lexi
-Wormy

The party while recovering in town meets up with Wilhelm, who’s looking for his cousins to Klaus and Jorgen. Wormy decides to again accompany the party into the dungeon, though it’s obviously something he questions the wisdom of.

The trip to the canyon is without incident, and the gatehouse is again avoided, as are the side caves. Heading straight into the dungeon, Tink pulls out her paper and begins to map their progress. They decide that they should return to the fish room (Don’t mess with the fish! they warn Wilhelm) and head through the ogre mouth. Shelly thinks it looks like a beaver’s mouth, and Wormy wonders what she was on.

Coming to a 4-way intersection with a sign reading “Da Dragon’s Den” they decide to head in the opposite direction, which leads to a room full of trash, and some snakes, which Shelly talks down. From there they moved into a room that had been blasted by some powerful magic that burned the shadows of some poor souls onto the walls. Exiting that room into a corridor, they were spotted by a party of pig faced orcs. Shelly waved at them, and yelled that they were just passing through. Wilhelm smacked her upside the head and hissed at her to be quiet, and not yell in the dungeon.

The orcs watched in baffled amusement before deciding that they could take them, and charged in. Wilhelm and Tink blocked the initial rush, while Lex used her bow, and Shelly snuck between Tink and Wilhelm to stab at the orcs with her dagger. The front rank of orcs was cut down as the second wave charged in. They were also cut down, and Lex’s arrows were taking their toll on the back rank.

As the second to last orc was cut down, Shelly threw her dagger at the last orc, who decided to flee. The dagger hit, but didn’t stop the orc, and he ran into the dark. Shelly yelled “Hey! That’s my silver dagger!” and took off in the dark after the fleeing orc. The rest of the party watched her run off into the dark with aborted calls to wait. They paused to bind their wounds, and listened to hear the death cry of either the orc or the halfling, neither of which echoed back to them. Figuring that the orc was running for help, they opted to go in the opposite direction.

The next chamber glowed with a faint greenish light. As the party entered, the light came together into a fuzzy phantom of an armored man. The figure stood before the far doorway, drew his sword, and pointed it at the party. Wilhelm, Wormy, and Hanks’ courage all broke, and they ran blindly away. Lexi and Tink looked at the phantom, at each other, and decided no, backtracking the way they’d come, hoping to find their fleeing friends.

Meanwhile Shelly charged after the longer limbed orc, hurling curses since he had her dagger. Somehow she managed to keep up with him for a good distance, finally yelling “Just drop the damned dagger!!” The orc did, and Shelly stopped chasing him to pick it up. She looked around and realized that she had no idea where she was.

Wilhelm, using his dwarven senses managed to find his way back to the stairs, with Hanks at his side the whole way. About a quarter of the way back to the surface his courage returned, and he stopped to catch his breath. He and the dog returned to the bottom of the stairs, and looked helplessly at the 5 doors.

“Wormy!” Lex yelled at the 4-way intersection. The sign had been knocked down, and she hoped that he was nearby. Wilhelm and Shelly both heard the call, and went to it. Wormy, however, did not respond to the call. Figuring that maybe he knocked the sign down the way he’d run, they looked down the hall toward “Da Dragon’s Den.”

The hall quickly turned from worked stone into a natural cavern. The sound of dripping water and whistling air echoed around them. Deciding to avoid the suspicious whistling (the snoring dragon?!?) they went toward the dripping water, and entered a chamber with a pool covering the far end. Between them and the pool lay Wormy’s body in a pool of his own blood. Rushing forward to see if they could aid him, they didn’t see the giant reptilian form clinging to the ceiling until it landed on Hanks, and bit his head off before he could even yelp. (critical hit and maximum damage)

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, and recognizing that both Hanks and Wormy were beyond help, they ran. Still without any treasure to show for their efforts, they went to the whistling, and discovered a well in the caves with a bucket next to it. Nothing could be seen, so the bucket was lowered down. It hit bottom out of sight with a jingling noise. The bucket was brought back up, and a candle placed in it. The light from the middle of the bucket revealed that the well opened into a larger chamber, and also that whatever surface was below it was not firm. Since fire makes everything better, some oil was poured down and lit, revealing that whatever the surface was, burned pretty well, and that there were coins on it.

Black smoke billowed up through the well. While it burned, they decided to keep exploring, passing through a cave with a glowing moss on the wall, then back into the dungeon proper. They discovered a chamber that was riddled with cracks, and decided not to enter it. They returned to the well cave checking on their fire. It was out. Feeling worn out, they decided to camp for a bit, grab something to eat, and check their wounds.

Gains:
Kills: 7 Orcs
Losses: Wormy, Hanks