The Death of Zhray

The Cast

Joe as:	Jax - Male Human SpellThief (Complete Adventurer)
James as:	Rookwood - Male Dwarven Totemist (Magic of Inarcnum
Matthew as:	Zhray - Female Human Wizard
Ron as:	Durgall - Male Dwarven Cleric
John as:	Lorash - Male Human Druid
and:	Mort - Wolf Animal Companion

The heroes escape Jzadirune, going back through the Keygan, the locksmith’s shop. They leave behind the Skulk they tied up. The locksmith is very unhappy about not getting his familiar back, while having possibly alerted the Skulks about someone attacking them. He’s worried that the Skulks will kill his familiar in retaliation. The heroes plan to go back to the temple of Dol Arrah to get healed and regain spells.

Keygan “You can’t just leave him down there, all alone in the dark, and hungry!”

Lorash (the Druid) “Do you have any way to heal us?”

Kaygan “… no.”

Lorash “We’re not going to certain death for your rat.”

The heroes leave behind the manacled Skulk for Keygan to watch over.

The heroes return to the temple, are healed by Jenya the acting high priest, and rest. Jenya seeing their poor condition grant them 3 more potions of cure moderate wounds, and gets an update on their progress, and introduces them to Durgall another cleric interested in joining the investigation. Glad to have more healing they return to Jzadirune, finding nothing changed with Keygan or the captured Skulk.

They explore the hall to the west of the entrance, examining the various runes on the doors there. Exploring the south of the hall Durgall & Rookwood leading the party fall 20 feet into a pit, which promptly closes before any of the rest of the party can react. Before they can get up, the pit itself falls over on its’ side impailing them on wooden spikes on what is now the floor. Being hardy dwarves both still survive, and brace themselves between the spikes ready for anything else that might happen. Zhray starts pounding at the lid of the pit with her staff, to no effect. Lorash decides to try putting some weight on it moving one foot out, putting increasing pressure on it. The lid gives, and both tumble into the pit, 30 feet down into the workings of the tilting pit. Zhray tries to soften her landing with the training she’s had as an acrobat, but it isn’t enough and she falls unconscious. The gears of the pit grind and bring the tilting pit back to an upright position, above Zhray and Lorash. Mort whines at the top of the pit, and Jax tries to find some way to open or stop the trap from above. Durgall & Rookwood seeing the spikes on the other side of the trap go and brace themselves against it, thinking it might toss them that way next. Lorash heals Zhray, brining her back to conciousness, The pit does tilt the other way, but Durgall & Rookwood were prepared, and weathered the fall easily. Jax unable to find any way to stop or open the pit, jumps on top of the lid, opening it. He manages to catch the edge and hangs there a moment before jumping to the workings at the bottom. Even with the few feet the lid gave him, and his nimble landing, Jax is hurt. The lid closes once again, leaving only Lorash’s wolf mort out of the pit. Lorash heals himself. The pit tilts back upright once again. Zhray and Lorash start beating on the workings of the pit with their staves ineffectually, while Jax picks himself up, takes a look over the gears, finds a lynchpin necessary to it’s function and removes it, bringing the pit to a stop above them.

Durgall & Rookwood tear a hole through the wooden floor of the pit and haul up Lorash and Jax. Zhray stays below and starts reading through her spells, telling the rest if they give her some time, she can prepare spider climb and climb out. The rest not wanting to wait that long work on finding a way out of the pit. Hollow gears hold the lid in place. Rookwood takes his rope and flings it through one of the gears, and climbs up, while Lorash chops the tips of the spikes off the sides of the pit so that they won’t hurt anyone. Eventually Rookwood figures that grabbing the edge of the gear will pull it down the lid partially above him. After doing so, Jax takes off all his gear, tries to scramble over him, but falls back to the floor of the wooden pit, unable to get a hold on the lid. . Durgall heals him, and Jax tries again, getting the top edge of the pit this time. He dashes off to a room they’d explored earlier getting cots and trunks to use as counterweights. He doesn’t have a rope to get down to them, and goes back to the Skulk they’d left tied up before, unties him, and takes the rope. Jax doesn’t come back after awhile….

Durgall attached the other end of the rope to himself, and carefully climbed over Rookwood, finally giving the rest of the party a way up. Lorash has difficulty tearing Zhray away from her studies, but does so, and they climb up without further mishap.

Lorash asks Mort to track down Jax. They track him back to the room where the Skulk had been tied up, and find a small pool of blood on the floor. Tracking beyond that they find a chamber with Jax lying face down on a cot, with a bloody rag on his back.

They carefully enter the room, and approach Jax, whereupon the chameleon skinned Skulks there spring from their spots and attack the party, who quickly dispactches them.

Durgall heals up Jax. And Jax opens a chest there, where they find 2 robes and some silver. Rookwood and Lorash don the robes, there is a brief argument between Rookwood and Zhray between who should have the robe, but Zhray gives in, and lets Rookwood have it.

They decide to see if they can find the rat before leaving, traveling the new rough tunnels to a huge chamber with lights floating about it, and a large fountain. Jax leads now carefully scanning the way ahead for traps. They go to investigate the fountain. As they near it, two more skulks leap out from the shadows, one badly injuring Durgall with a precise thrust of his rapier. Zhray casts a charm at the better of the two Skulks, and it’s eyes glaze over.

Zhray yells “Stop attacking my friends! We’re with you!” Meanwhile the rest of the party converges on the other Skulk ending its’ pitiful life. With some further quick talk Zhray convinces the charmed skulk to lower its guard, and that they need to feed the rat that is hostage, so they still have it to control the locksmith. The Skulk takes them through more rough honed tunnels into a small room in which the tunnel comes out in the floor. There is another Skulk there, but with the other skulk, Zhray manages to convince it to let them by.

They enter a room with a chest with a rat in a cage on it. They start to approach the chest, and it starts talking to them, in a language only Rookwood & the Skulk recognizes as Undercommon.

Chest: “Hey if you’re going to feed the rat, feed me first!”

Rookwood agrees tossing it some jerky.

Chest: “I’m still hungry”

Rookwood translates, and the Zhray tosses it a chunk of cheese.

Chest: “I’m still hungry”.

Rookwood attacks the Skulk suddenly, but misses. Then says “Oops, sorry my weapon slipped” Zhray’s magic is strong and the charm doesn’t break. Zhray tries to grab the cage off the chest, but finds it stuck fast. Jax attacks the chest and gets his rapier stuck in it, and can’t free it. The Chest retaliates whipping out two giant tounges which smack Zhray and Jax hard enough to knock them out, and proceeds dragging them to it’s ravenous maw. The rest of the party kill the skulk in the other room and offer it to retrieve the two snacks from the chest. It agrees, and lets them have the rat as well, spitting out it’s two other victims.

They get the charmed Skulk to fill in what blanks it knows about on the map they got from Keygan, including finding that the missing children were sold off to someone down an elevator. They go find the next to last skulk it knows about, finding him transparent, and wearing a wolf suit, they finish him off, and take his treasure, then go to the Skulks treasure room and retrieve their treasure from a moldy rotting carrion crawler, after thoroughly searching the room for anywhere else it might be.

They decide to retreat and rest before going further. Returning the rat to Keygan he’s happy, and sets off to start changing the locks around town so that the keys he made the Skulks no longer work. While Keygan is gone, Larash and Rookwood take the manacled skulk back down to Jzadirune without informing the rest of the party, and dump it down the pit they’d had so much trouble with.

They sell off what treasure they’ve found, and buy some additional healing potions and scrolls from the Temple, and return again to Jzadirune.

The Heroes come to the invisible room with the construct. They stop outside. Figuring they just want to get by, and not finding another way they decide to run across the room one at a time, so as not to be bunched up and provide a nice target for the construct’s scream. A couple get through with no incident, but when Larash and his wolf go, the construct comes to life and screams at them. They manage to get through, and aren’t persued, so next Zhray goes through, but gets screamed at as well. It’s so loud she passes out. Larash drags Zhray around the corner and heals her, while Jax at the front of the line looks for traps and the dark ones they expect in the room they’ve come to. Rookwood goes through, but again the machine screams, he survives the onslaught and gets around the corner though. Durgall goes last but bumps into the invisible machine. He tries to push his way past, but the machine throws him back to the ground. Rookwood comes back and pinpoints where it is and gives it a solid strike, but it just moves off to where it can scream at both him and Durgall. Durgall finally gets through and the party starts fanning out into the room where they are sure the dark ones are hiding, just to get away from the machine.

They are surprised when it follows them to the room, where Zhray gives it the last blow. They start searching around for the dark ones, when they spring on Zhray and pierce her through the heart ending her life prematurely.

Will the heroes survive? Is Zhray really dead? Will the missing children ever be found.