Fort Gunnlaeif Dungeon
As they are lowered down from the fort, the party arrives in a small room and steps out of the wooden cage, the elevator is then winched back up. A hewn corridor leads to first room, it has a flagstone floor and is filled with ancient barrels that are close to falling apart. Beyond the room are crossroads, Harpin uses the wand and it tells him to turn left.
The next room has black and white floor tiles and disabled dart traps. Continuing on they come to a huge underground cavern crossed by a brook. At the far end is another hewn stone corridor that leads to what must have been a classroom with a wooden floor. Something is written on the blackboard in Ancient. Fortunately Cassandra speaks this language and Harpin casts a spell so he can read it as well. The same text repeats over and over: “orange hair does not make you immune”. In the corner there’s a skeleton sitting on a stool, wearing a dunce cap.
Continuing on they arrive at stairs going both up and down, the wand says to go down. Soon they come to an interesting sight; a 100’ wide exercise yard. There's sand on the floor, debris of target dummies that have long since turned to dust. A number of ancient breastplates hang on far the wall, rusting away. At both ends of the yard stands a copper goat, statues of some kind? Reb has an interest in the breastplates but as they have a look, fire starts to burn inside the copper goats, leaking from the eyes holes and their hooves.
The automatons charge and hit hard! Harpin is hit severely but Reb uses an ability none of the others knew he had to take all the damage from the first attack. The battle is on and even hitting one of the goats with a melee attack does fire damage back to Reb. As if she knew this was coming, Cassandra had prepared a Create or Destroy Water spell and makes it rain, temporarily dousing the flames on the outside of the enemies. This helps a lot and though they still pack a mean punch, the goats are soon turned into scrap.
Our friends take a short break where Regius casts a Prayer of Healing to cure their worst wounds. Reb sits down and starts to go through the pages of the small brown book that he carries, that saved his life in the fight with the wolves in Hollenvik. Harpin sneaks up and touches the book so he can read the orange title on it with his Comprehend Languages spell. It says: Vigilant's Primer. Reb allows the gnome to also have a look at the text on the inside but strangely enough the tiny script just seems to be gibberish, not even the spell can make sense of it.
This does remind Reb and Regius that they took the small cards that accompanied the items they took from the Kasarian Embassy in Korint. They could not read the text on those cards but Harpin might be able to with this spell. And indeed, he can! The card that came with the book reads as: "Empty book, given to Uyots priests’ bodyguards." Regius took a vial containing a thick, red-orange substance that moves slowly inside of it. The text on the card says: "Fire elemental with knowledge of Balturan times."
The party continues on an comes to a large robing room with a stone tile floor and a disabled pendulum trap. Most cabinets in the room, and their contents have rotted away but one cabinet has just about survived. Reb goes to check it out, hoping to find maybe some interesting clothes in there, he is quite surprised and disappointed when it turns out to be a mimic! Luckily the creature misses its attacks and the party kills it without taking any damage.
The wand continues to point the way and they first come to a cistern, still filled with water, the room has a flag stone floor. Next they come to what looks to be an observatory but the ceiling is all stone, looking like most of the other rooms. However, the floor is transparent like glass but has the consistency of steel, showing what looks like a laboratory below. A large telescope points at the stone ceiling, Reb has a look through it, it shows nothing but the ceiling. However, as he steps away, he now has a black ring around his eye. The others laugh and he tries to convince them to have a look themselves, but without success.
Swimming in the Dark
There are no stairs down to the laboratory so they continue on, coming to a bathing room with tiny mosaic tiles on all surfaces, depicting naked people frolicking in the water. The baths are empty and scummy. Onward, and now they arrive at a room that sloping quite a bit, almost at 40 degrees, and most of the room is filled with water. The wand shows that a doorway under the water level is where they need to go. There is some discussion if they could send Harpin's cat to have a look first.
But then Reb uses his tent to make his equipment as water proof as possible and dives in. A light spell that Regius cast on his armor lights the way and the fighter goes in the direction of what looks to be an exit. He manages to hold his breath long enough to surface in a small room and sits down, through the doorway beyond he sees what looks to be a church maybe, there are many wooden pews.
Regius then decides to go into the water next, keeping his armor on though. He casts a new light spell, plunging Reb in utter darkness. The fighter feels around his backpack and takes out his lantern, eventually also finding flint and tinder. It takes a while but he manages to light the wick. Regius meanwhile has a harder time holding his breath, and the same is true for Cassandra who follows right behind, even grabbing the half-orc's foot at one point.
It's close but they surface in the same room as Reb, who, when he sees Regius, throws his empty oil flask at the priest, but misses. The two clerics get onto the dry part of the room and the fighter takes his lantern and explores the church a little. The pews are rotted through and through, even a gust of wind would destroy them. There is a mural on the wall that is covered in grime, what is still visible shows a woman carrying a lyre.
The others wait for Harpin but the gnome doesn't arrive. Regius decides to go back to see what happened, did the gnome drown? Well, Regius almost does, he almost immediately loses his breath. Luckily this is still just within sight of Cassandra who dives in and pulls the gasping half-orc back to the surface.