Rosia Lightfoot's Journal - Part 15

After resting we tried again to traverse the snake-pit room. It hardly seems possible, yet our second attempt was even more disastrous than the first... I went first, carrying a rope along the ledge. I was able to fix the bridge so that it extended all the way to the eastern wall. Even so, the way was narrow for the larger members of the group. I carried the rope across to the eastern ledge so that the others would have something to hold on to. Isaac went first, and joined me with no trouble. Curbag was next, and he promptly fell into the pit again, attracting the attentions of the snakes. He was able to tell us later of the holes that let the snakes in. That solves one puzzle at least: they are not magical snakes, they must gain entrance from somewhere outside.

Quercus tried to cross the ledge, hoping to be able to help Curbag from the other side. Unfortunately he fell in after his first step onto the ledge. It seems he is not yet used to his wooden leg. He was able to grasp the rope I left on his way down, and used this to help him gain the bridge on the southern wall. Curbag, meanwhile, had been bitten by several snakes, and was in trouble from the poison. Ran did some sort of magic and was able to climb down the wall as if he was a spider. He tried to reason with the snakes, but they did not seem too happy about being hit by Curbag, and were not inclined to listen. Oren tried his best to pull Curbag up on a rope, but succeeded in falling in himself. Amazingly, Curbag (who was halfway up the rope at the time) was able to catch him as he fell, and the two of them pulled themselves up. Finally we all made the eastern wall, although Curbag was feeling the worse for this encounter with the snakes.

We explored some other rooms, but the most interesting was one with a large statue in, holding a spear. The spear was magical, but as Quercus and I approached it, two glowing balls of light came at us, whilst at the same time some large dogs appeared out of nowhere, seeming to blink into existence. As we fought them they kept blinking in and out of sight, making it hard to land a blow. We finally defeated them, but we were forced to abandon the spear, as the glowing lights proved too hard to overcome.

After more exploring some more, we found a room at the northern edge of this section which had a most welcome treasure in it: a map of the whole area! We decided to camp here for a while to allow us to copy the map to a smaller version, as the original is very large. With this we can surely find a way out, and perhaps avoid all these traps!