Tonight's Roster:
Tharum - Elf Thief/Magic-User
Firban Brighthand - Halfling Thief
Radovan - Human Cleric (of Odin?)
Khazgar Stonehand - Dwarf Fighter
Boris - Dwarf Fighter/Thief
Seed - Human Fighter
Sylvester - Elven Thief
Two hirelings also went with the party:
Moira, the Magic-User
Tomas, the Paladin
The party started tonight's session by asking around, gathering rumors, and shopping. Oil, holy water, plate armor (ordered last week by Khazgar) and a few other things were purchased. It was noted that the price of oil is going up... 15 flasks were bought, and no store had any left.
Three potions of healing, one potion of extra-healing and a potion of fly were available. Seed, Firban (I think,) and Khazgar grabbed the potions of healing. Khazgar scraped up enough gold to also grab the extra-healing.
They asked about the runestones first. They were told several pieces of information about them:
1. There were weapons that runestones could lock into and empower.
2. Shields also were once slotted for runestones.
3. Some runestones could be used to power spells. The example given by the Old Man was "using a fire runestone will create the biggest fireball possible." (Translation: using a runestone while casting will max out the spell.)
4. Runestones can be used in ritual spell casting. Not much else is known about this ...
Next, Firban headed to the temples to get the curse from the coin looked at. He was told it was basically a soul jar, except someone else had control of when the soul would "jump." Remove Curse? 4000 gp.... Firban didn't have that much, so he made a deal with the Church of Lady Luck 250 gp and a favor....
Rumors were bought, nothing truly notable.
The party headed back to the "goblin section" of the Citadel. Along the way, one of the teleporters activated, with a 10' tall, gray skinned humanoid carrying a primitive axe and dressed in rags stepping out. The party moved into a standard attack vector. The brute attacked Tomas, chopping off his head. As it did so, a second creature stepped out of the teleporter. Someone shot the second "ogre," but it ignored the party. As it stepped up, the first creature fell dead from arrows and blows. The second creature grabbed it by the hair and drug it back to the teleporter, grabbing Tomas's head as a trophy.
Khazgar, "trying to appear casual," watched this creature jab its finger into a rune-hole to activate the teleporter. They were gone.
Since they were still close to Var Nae, they returned Tomas's remaining body to the city before continuing. The gate guards told them that the creatures were some type of statue bound in skin, but they hadn't been seen before (at least not since the Fall of the City.)
Without further incident, they found their way back to the throne room. But, the secret door was open! Tharum creapt up to see what was going on and found a green-skinned dwarf as it finished un-burying the Goblin Mirror. He was polite, introducing himself as "Ander."
The party took some time conversing with Ander, and almost threatening him. He shape-changed into a green dragon, and continued the polite conversation. Ander asked if goblin was a delicacy among the people of Var Nae as well. Boris said yes, but everyone else looked a little sick from the question.
Ander requested that they delay a rival, a red dragon in the Forge. He suggested that they would not be able to kill the red, but if they could "lock him in for a month or so, they would be rewarded with magic treasure." Ander gave them a Scroll of Communication as well, "in exchange for the mirror, with generosity." The scroll allows one brief conversation with Ander.
Ander heads out with a bunch of food (to lure goblins!) that Firban gave him and the mirror.
The party then moved up the stairs, finding a large room with a stone oak tree, 7 paintings, a couple of doors and the stairs continuing to ascend. Hanging from the tree were 10 sapphires, rubies and citrines. Seed shot a citrine off the tree with his bow. They inspected it, and found an eye "inside of the gem. It looked to be etched on the inside of the gem." None of the gems on the tree had an eye. A ruby was plucked from the tree, and immediately an etched eye appeared within that one. Seed used his pick-axe to destroy the citrine, which caused a thump somewhere above them.
Moving up the stairs to investigate what evil this could be, they find a room with two passageways out. There is also a painting of a young dwarf boy hanging on the wall. Khazgar deduces that this is young King Johan, and grabs it to return to Var Nae. They head through the south passage.
They follow it around a corner, and see 6 statues, all of which have looks of pain on their faces. They were not made of the same stone as the citadel. Instead, they were made of a "material almost like concrete."
Next they checked the two doors from this room, and found a bathroom with still-running water and a handless dwarven skeleton. As Boris is "inspecting" a toilet, two skeletal hands attack him! One attaches, almost killing him. Sylvester and Tharum throw holy water, killing the attached hand. The other hand attacks seed, but misses. The party makes quick work of that one as well. The corpse had a silver and mithril belt, worth 1000 gp.
The next door was once a bar, but nothing of note was there.
They head down the hallway from the statue gallery, and open a door to find the remnants of a library, with a large glowing crystalline golem inside. Through trial and error, they find that it is an information "robot." Seed, Boris, and Khazgar all successfully use it to ask questions.
Then Tharum touches it. And it zaps him with lightning until he is dead. Apparently, dwarves are racist against elves.* Before Tharum died, he spotted a secret door on the far side of the library.
The secret door led to a small chapel, with a golden chalice and silver bowl on an altar. The chalice was noticed to have a symbol of Bashael Ashmouth hidden on it underside. The bowl had 5 good gods symbols on its underside. Both went into loot bags.
The party pushed ahead one more room, as it was getting late, and found the source of the THUMP from earlier: a stoneflower. My poor stoneflower could not make any good rolls, only scoring a few points of damage, spread around the party, before succumbing to the onslaught of the PCs. But, they found an artifact attached to it! The Rune Burruk, a magical bell, that when rung removes all enchantments within 30' of it. Permanently.
*The reason that elves cannot touch the golem is actually in the histories of Mord Mar. Egg, the great wizard, was human and created the golem for the dwarves. But, it was during a time of war with the Dark Elves. So, as a precaution, they decided to make it unusable by elves. Poor Tharum paid the price of paranoia.
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