Longsaddle

The rest of the party and I are in Longsaddle, a cow town which appears to be run by the Harpell family. So far, the city is mildly interesting, but Ardanac Harpell seems to be a bit touchy. My fellow traveler asked a question about the distant Red Wizards of Thay, only to be greeted by skepticism and intolerance. We were, initially, treated as criminals, just for having mentioned criminals. It was a very interesting exercise in guilt by association.

In the end, though, storytelling and being pleasant won the day. With a couple more questions about our journey and our mission we were given a number of items that I needed for spell components, and a wand for my friend.

Enough writing, I need to get back to the spell-casting and research that I need to do in order to identify this set of magic items.

Thornhammer Liberated

My friends and I have cleared the ruins of Thornhammer.  It is apparent that a powerful wizard or sorceror with the ability to animate dead was using this ruin as a storage facility for some of his treasure (magical and non-magical).  I will be doing some research when we return to civilization to attempt to figure out who might have been using it in this manner.  Some of the items that we recovered have been in the dungeon for a long time, so it is possible that these items were stored here ages ago.

We encountered a number of monsters, mostly evil, in our trip through the ruins:

• Abishai (2)
• Achaieraie (4)
• Adventurers (3)
  
• Deepspawn (1)
• Ettin (2)
• Mindflayer
• Manticore (2)
• Phase Spiders (3)
• Skeletal Red Dragon
• Skeletons (6) with magical longswords
  
• Spectre

We were lucky, with the red dragon, as we were able to attack it from a distance because it was trapped and couldn't reach us.

We found a number of items, that we will be bringing back to civilization with us.  I won't say any more about where we are, or our path, until we have stashed the loot in a safe place.

Quiet in the Dungeon

It is all quiet, waiting for everyone else to get ready...

First Joke

Two wood elves walk into a tree. . ..

They say, "ouch!" "ouch!"

Ruins

I write this down, while the rest of the group is eating their dinner. I am waiting for them to finish, I wish they would pick it up!

We traveled to these ancient dwarven ruins, this afternoon. Travel was hot and sweaty, the horses were getting rather odorous by the time we got there.

When we were nearly there, we found a ruined fountain that was still pouring water from somewhere. As we were about to take a drink to cool off, we noticed that there were signs of a bird and possibly those left by a humanoid body (a belt buckle). Upon a little investigation by the sorceror and myself, we realized that the fountain was pouring poisonous water that was apparently some type of neurotoxin that paralyzed it's drinker. Who knows what would have happened, after that!

So, we traveled into this dwarven ruin and found a number of monsters that we haven't previously fought. There were three phase spiders, two ettin, three achaieraie which were pretty tough going, a horrible mind flayer, a deep spawn, and three other adventurers, two of whom attacked us. All of these were dispatched, with differing amounts of difficulty.

My friends recovered a number of items, some of which may turn out to be magical, some of which may just be ancient "relics" and some which just appear to have strange chemical properties. We haven't yet identified all of what we found, and we still have more of the ruins to explore once everyone is done eating. That's it for now. I'm going to take a look around and see if anyone else needs healing while we are resting, and to see if I can hurry them up!