We backed out of the room, leaving Hillgauntlet and his bony wenches behind. Immediately, the door slammed shut.

Flint listened at the secret door to the south, across the hallway and heard nothing. Ulland heard even less. The thieves also found no traps on that door. Slowly the feeling of doom that surrounded Hillgauntlet abated.

Double doors at the end of the hallway, bronze with a single stone step. The step glowed with some glowing, green translucent light. A human skull was embedded in each door, with a very large pull ring below each (A, below). Kyril was, of course, absent.

We all agreed that, if Kyril had indeed survived, he could get to us much more quickly than we could get to him, so we decided to press onward. The wizards were beginning to feel the presence of excessive amounts of mana in the surroundings as we moved more deeply into the earth.

Previously, in the safe room in the halfling’s apartments (A) we found a scroll but never got a chance to examine it. Doing so now, we saw that it contained one each of the Whirling Blade and Kheben’s Suspended Silence spells. We decided to roll out some baseline healing before examining the door. The option of finding some place to rest, possibly the halfling’s quarters, was floated but ultimately rejected. We needed to act quickly and to keep moving. Vampires are always at their worst when they’re dead.

Having more or less successfully crossed the bridge we arrived at the door into Pippen’s chamber to find it blocked somehow. Cathal smashed his way through and we re-entered Pippen’s room. Inside we found Ilierann - dead and drained, with his throat ripped out. His floating bag had disappeared or been taken.

Cathal, Kyril and Menka walked away from Otessa, back down the hallway. We decided to search the hallway. 20 skulls on one side, 20 skulls on the other. The hallway was lined with them. Ulland nocked and arrow, watching carefully for any surprises while we left no crevice untouched.

We started out at the crypt entrance marked in yellow. We have something like 33 hours left until the underground river gate opens and are trying to decide what to do with the two very evil swords we found. Cathal wants nothing to do with them and tells us that anyone who picks up either one is in trouble, right away.

The spider was unable to open the secret door so it would not be joining us on the ledge at the top of the stairs. We believe we have about 30 hours left before unknown, otherworldly powers break loose in our general area…

As we seemed to be following the underground river upstream Flint reminded us all of Hillgauntlet’s words at the end of Session 20: “The Elder Sign is below us. Follow the river in the direction opposite to its flow and it will lead you to a string of guardians which will lead to the Elder Sign.”

We rested for spells, all the while coming up with a plan to strengthen and protect Gonchar and send him into the water to fight the kraken. We came up with the following plan for Gonchar:

Kyril cast barkskin and chill metal. Tim cast invisibility, quickening, haste, strength, water breathing. Menka cast aid, prayer and resist cold.

The party decided to head underground through the entrance to the undertemple to the south of the river. Grastic was still talking Kyril’s ears off. He asked if it was time to open the gate and looked scared as he mentioned that activity. When asked why he had to open the door, he said it’s because his dad said the scary lady would be angry if he did not. Menka asked if he would not open it if his dad said not to and he said the scary lady would still require him to open it. Menka then mentioned that the scary lady was gone, M-O-O-N gone, and Grastic didn’t believe him.