Rosia Lightfoot's Journal - Part 5

Back to normal now! My temporary brain haze has passed, and I am functioning at full capacity. We spent some time exploring the rubble strewn eastern area of the dungeon. We discovered a secret door, when Oren opened this the lintel collapsed, taking the doorway and part of the wall with it. The door lead into what was clearly an ancient torture chamber, full of skeletons in manacles, the walls covered in burn marks, which Isaak assures us are magical in nature.
We moved on to examine some other rooms, then returned to the room where we had discovered the secret door. This room was more or less clear of rubble, and had some sleeping pallets in it, so we thought it would make a good place to rest. I thought it might be useful to have some manacles, so I went into the torture chamber to retrieve some. However, as soon as I touched them I was assailed with horrible visions of what had occurred in this room in the distant past. I shouted out loud in fear, and dropped the manacles, feeling dazed and sickened. I retreated to our makeshift camp and told the others what had happened. Curbag and Oren managed to move the stone door back into the doorway as a barrier (despite breaking it in half in the process) and we passed another nervous night in this strange place.

In the morning we realised we were running out of food and water. Quercus was able to create water (thanks and praise to Pelor etc.) to fill our waterskins, and he has some extra food which I hope he will share with us! However, the food situation does not look good. We had not planned to spend so long in this dungeon.

We decided to finish exploring to the north and west. We found a series of three rooms, all with a pillar in each corner. In the first room the pillars had a channel cut into them, and fresh water flowed down it! It seems our water problem is solved, as long as we remain in this part of the dungeon. When Oren entered the room to explore further he was attacked by an ogre who had been hiding behind a pillar. In the fight that ensued Oren and Curbag were badly injured by the ogre's mighty club, but finally we beat him back. I lost another 3 bolts in the fight, I have no idea where I am going to get any more. The ogre, who identified himself as Brandor, begged us to spare him, but there was no pity to be had from the raging Curbag, and the ogre fell under a blow from his great sword. It's shame we weren't able to question him, but at least we are all alive!

The other two pillar rooms were most strange. The middle one had no function that we could derive, but the end one was shrouded in magical silence. I postulated that perhaps these rooms had some religious function, the first for ablution, the last for silent prayer. But what of the middle room? Isaak detected that there was some sort of illusion magic in this room. We all tried concentrating on a particular scene or desire, and eventually Quercus was able to summon the image of a woodland glen. This was most welcome after 2 days underground, but it soon faded, leaving us back in the dark gloom of the underworld.

Moving on we explored further to the north. We found a room with more manacles on the walls (which I studiously avoided!) and a throne in the middle. On examining the throne I found 2 red jewels set in the back of it. I prised these out with my dagger, and we had a fine addition to our growing treasure hoard.

We then entered a section of the dungeon filled with narrow corridors, all twisting and turning, some leading nowhere. There are doors all over the place, leading to more corridors. We seem to be in some sort of maze, let us hope there is not something nasty waiting at the end of it...