Caelesti's notes

Date

8/24/2006

Log

Caelesti talked Grimble into flying in the direction that the creature indicated, instead of wasting a lot of time squelching through the swamp, to see if there were indeed ruins there. He came back in twenty minutes reporting that he found some ruins. Grimble led the party to them.

As the party approached the ruins, Grimble scouted the area. He reported back that there was a pale human on the far side of the tower. Caelesti started moving around the tower calling greetings as she proceeded so as not to surprise the human. When she got far enough around the tower to see the human, she noticed that the human looked incorporeal.

As the figure was clearly not a beauty/bile creature from the previous encounter, and since it seemed kind of glum, Caelesti tried some perky conversation. She asked if there was anything she, or her companions, could do to help. The ghost, Luren, said he was unhappy because somebody slew him horribly and just left his body. Carric, appearing beside Caelesti, asked where his body was. Luren said "this way", and walked through the door. The party tried to follow, but the door wouldn't budge.

Caelesti climbed the ruined wall to see how intact the ceiling to the room was. There was a hole in it, so she used a rope to help the rest of the group up (except for Grimble, who flew somersaults in the air to show off on his way up). The party then entered the room through the hole. There was little of interest in the room. The front door turned out to be barred, and Caelesti unbarred it, then opened the door to provide more light. Also, the party found a trap door under a pile of debris.

Carric opened the trap door and entered the room below using the rope. Caelesti did a hanging drop into the room. Siobhan tied the rope to the door, and she and Talon slid down. There was little of interest in the room below. There were two doors, one was locked and the other led down into water.

Since the party could not unlock the door and was not yet ready to destroy it to get through, the party took the wet passage. Caelesti lit a sunrod and led through the passage, which leveled out in about 2' of water. The passage opened up into a large natural cavern (or cave-in) that got deep quickly. Carric cast Daylight on a rock, and he and Caelesti swam around the cavern. Carric discovered an underwater passage.

Carric suggested that he could swim down the corridor and see what was there. Caelesti asked if he could summon a creature to search for him. Carric thought that was an excellent idea, and cast Speak with Animals followed by summoning a porpoise. Carric sent the porpoise to investigate. It reported that the tunnel did open up to air, and that something attacked it with a clawed, cold hand.

The party discussed options. The final plan was to open the other door in the last room before fighting the unknown creature on the other side of the underwater passage. Carric summoned a small earth elemental and asked it to earthglide to the other side of the door and see if it could unlock the door. It could, and did.

The room was small, probably a closet or vault. There was a small chest in the room. Caelesti searched the chest for traps, but found none initially. She discovered the fire trap as she opened the chest and was badly burned (fortunately Misssta was still with her wet clothes that Talon was looking after). Siobhan quickly cured most of the damage.