After recovering from the choking amulet, the party returned to the big entrance room and examined the remaining door.
"How do we get it open?" Asked Selina, after determining it didn't seem trapped but certainly was locked. Locked, she reported, with a mechanism well beyond her ability to pick.
"Batter it down like the last door!" Stago shouted. Elessaria and Tick-a-Tick repeat their performance and after approximately 7 minutes of bashing, the door splinters. The destruction of the door was an extremely noisy affair, so the party is not surprised in the least that the battering attracted any monsters which might have been on the other side of the door.
The aforementioned monsters turned out to be two large and burly creatures vaguely humanoid in appearance...bugbears, to be precise. Stago is further unsurprised but interested to note that the same monsters depicted in the frescoes in the outer chambers should be the creatures encountered inside the tomb's interior halls.
Elessaria attacks, and hits one of the bugbears. It returns the attack with one of its own, but misses the elf with its axe. The other bugbear also attacks with its sword, but cuts only air.
Routunious throws a knife, but misses broadly. He throws a second blade and hits the first bugbear. It collapses. Elessaria manages a hit on the remaining bugbear with her sword. Tick-a-Tick steps on the fallen bugbear and crushes it to death. The remaining bugbear nicks Elessaria slightly with his counter attack.
With blood and gore sticking to its feet, Tick-a-Tick delivers a mighty blow to the remaining bugbear and the creature is also bitten by one of Stago's dogs. The wounds are too much for it, and the bugbear falls unconscious. Elessaria cuts its throat, and then decapitates it while Routnuious recovers his knives.
Selina searches the bodies of the bugbears and discovers the following loot:
a) 26 cp
b) 23 sp
c) 14 gp
d) 10 pp
e) 1 short sword
f) 2 hand axes
g) 1 light shield
h) 1 belt - a wide leather belt with large, ornate buckle
"Let me see that belt." Stago, said, then he considered it carefully as he moved it through his fingers as a jeweler might an uncut diamond looking for the right places to apply a chisel. He looked up with a wide smile, and said, "Just as I thought. This is obviously some sort of magic girdle, which makes perfect sense since bugbears don't wear pants. Why would they wear a belt unless it provided some benefit? The benefit in this case is undoubtedly some magical effect that bestows heroic strength. I'm going to put it on."
Elessaria stopped him with her iron grip, saying, "No, you're not. Don't you remember what happened to Routunious just a few moments ago in the last room we were in?"
"Of course I do," the gnome said with a grin, "and it was hilarious!" Distracted by his joke, Elessaria loosened her grip just enough for the gnome to finish fastening on the belt.
"I can't believe you did that!" Shouted the elf, with completely undisguised anger.
"Oh, it wasn't going to do anything bad...it wasn't hurting the bugbear any." Stago retorted.
"Didn't help him much either." Selina said, looking back at the crushed skull of the belt's previous owner.
"Point taken." Stago replied.
"Well? Are you stronger?" Asked Routunious, impatient as always.
"No. I don't seem to be stronger...exactly...but lifting things seems a little easier than before." Stago said to the priest.
Routnious, confused, asked, "I don't understand. Lifting things more easily sounds like you're stronger. Doesn't it?"
Stago, with some self satisfaction, replied, "It does, but see this bar that was reinforcing the door? I can pick it up with no strain at all--however, no matter how hard I try, I can't bend it. I surmise, therefore, that this is a girdle of lifting, not of strength."
"Well, I surmise that it is a stupid magic item and you can keep it."
"Thank you. Though I had every intention of doing so, with or without your permission." The gnome quipped.
Elessaria interjected, "This isn't a free for all. We're going to have to come up with a policy for dividing treasure. I think in general it will be a good idea if magic items we don't plan to sell to Shandar are given to the people who can make the best use of them. But...I have no problem with the gnome keeping this."
Stago smiled, and said, "No more problem than I have with your keeping that lovely bow and arrow set you pilfered from the dead man who owns them."
Elessaria didn't say anything to that...out loud, at least.
Selina, wanting to break up this line of discussion, moved down the hall the bugbears had come from, looking for traps. The search for traps was extremely slow, and after an hour's searching she'd found nothing and only covered half the corridor.
Stago, frustrated by the delay, sends his dogs down the hall as trap testers--and nothing happens. Selina is perturbed, but joins the rest of the party following behind Stago as he followed his dogs up the passage.
8:00pm
The long stone hall ends in a stone chamber furnished only with cracked, moldering tables on which lie rusted implements of iron. Rain falls into the middle of the room from a shaft in the ceiling that must run all the way to the top of the tor. From the bottom of the shaft angles a rope, swinging slightly. A drain in the center of the floor allows the water to escape, but old, dark stains suggest that it was used to carry away other fluids long ago.
A dishevelled and stained bed of mildewing straw lies in the corner, and near it, a chest.
After examining the room carefully, the story unfolds from clues found there. Knowing that bugbears are lazy, shiftless beasts who have not made the effort to batter down the door to the outer chamber themselves, it is unlikely that they dug the shaft into this room. It is more likely that they blundered onto the shaft after it had been dug by tomb robbers, and have now been using the rope to climb into and out of their new hideout.
Selina examines the chest and picks the lock with ease. When she opens the chest a cowbell clanks loudly, echoing down the passages.
"That's about the extent of a bugbear's trap making expertise." The thief said through a wide smile.
Inside the chest were 235 copper pieces and a segmented spear that fits together by means of threaded screws on each end. Each section is 2 feet in length.
The value of the coppers doesn't seem worth carrying the added weight, so they leave them in the chest.
8:30pm
Stago sends King ahead to the end of the adjoining corridor, where he stops and growls. Stago then sends him to the side corridor and the dog gets stuck on something, and begins an unholy racket of yelping and howling. The party comes closer with great caution and discoveres that a fine filament of webbing is holding the dog fast, no matter how much it wriggles and tries to claw itself free.
Stago grabs the segmented spear, and assembles it. He sticks the tip on the thread holding his dog, intending to slice through the webbing with its keen edge. The spear becomes stuck as well.
Stago pulls a candle from his pack and slowly extends the lit wick toward the nearly invisible fibers of the spider web. Before anyone can pull him back or shout a cautionary word, the webbing erupts in violent flames!
With a horrible whoosh and a blinding flash, the web is consumed by fire...unfortunately most of the party and the poor dog also take fire damage.
The entire party is also temporarily blinded by the flash of light from the explosion. In the artificial darkness they hear something scratching and clicking against the stone walls of the passage. The entire party draws a collective breath when they hear the tortured dog let out a yelp of pain and a whimper...followed by the sickening thud of meat hitting stone. Something, likely whatever spun the web, attacked the animal and was moving toward the party.
Stago casts a sleep spell in the direction of the clicking and chittering, then tells his other dog to attack. The dog, ever faithful and fearless, does so. The party hears another yelp and they know that the spell has done nothing and the dog has been lost.
Vision begins to return to the company, and as eyes adjust to the darkness, they see an enormous spider, poised to attack. Stago moves backward and sees that his dog is not quite dead. The noble hound bites the spider as it moves toward the gnome. The giant arachnid staggers and stops. It sinks to the floor, twitching. Elessaria wastes no time in delivering the killing blow.
9:37pm
Stago administers some anti-venom to the living dog, and once its wounds are tended to, they explore the hallway which had been the spider's home.
At the end of the corridor, they find a singed hairy ball that all agree is most likely an egg sack. They destroy it, and cautiously move into the room at the end of the hallway.
Inside the room are 3 large lumps, wrapped in webbing, and many many smaller lumps.
Stago cuts one of the smaller lumps in half and reports the contents. "Rats." He said, with mild disgust.
Routunious cuts open a larger lump. "Another rat...but this one is human." He said.
Routunious pulled away the webbing and examined the dessicated corpse it hid. Selina did the same for the second large lump and finds another mummified body. The corpses of the spider's victims...most likely the tomb robbers who dug the shaft, had few possessions. Having few possessions is one of the primary motivations for robbing graves, after all. They had little on them but rusted weapons. Selina did find a silver ring with onyx gemstone set in it, and a bag of 75 gp.
A third lump of webbing contained another dried husk of a man, this one clutching a back with 100 pieces of gold in it.
After their exertions, the company decides to rest in the chamber the Bugbears had used for their hideout.
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