As soon as we stepped foot into the room below, a magical mouth appeared, shouting a word in some language none of us knew. It was obviously some kind of alarm. We hurried explored to the west, finding a staircase down and another alarm. We opened the door to the south just as some kind of creature entered the room, from the other staircase. With horror I recognized it from the tales of fellow guards: an armadillo with twin antenna, otherwise known as a rust monster. u-Heury started doffing his armor while I held the torch, letting Stria and Kiba take the front lines. Though Kiba’s attacks did nothing, Stria’s crystal dagger struck true, and u-Heury’s oiled thews grappled the strange beast, eventually strangling it. But not before it had managed to eat his sword and a number of other minor items.
The door to the south led to a corridor. We heard movement behind the first door, so bypassed it. The rest were silent. We checked the sdoutheast door first, finding a mostly empty room that nonetheless had a concealed space under the floor. we took the hidden box, which bore an eight-pointed star, and stuffed it into a backpack to open later, over Stria’s protests. There was no way we were going to take the time to open a possibly trapped small box on site under time pressure when we could just carry it out. Besides, the box itself might be valuable.
We heard noise outside of the door, from the corridor, but waited for it to pass. With the source of the noise out of sight, we dashed across the corridor into the northeast room. It was once a library, though the books were in awful condition. There was a pile of books in the middle of the room, oddly enough, in addition to the shelves. Three braziers might have offered light and heat, had they been lit. We spent almost half an hour sorting through the contents of the room, separating out the intact books.
The Blighted Legend (20gp) The Fractured Fortress by Grundanol the Sage (115gp) The Role of Toad-Skin in Spell Efficacy (125gp) Buboes and their Medicinal Properties (130gp) Gargyg’s Treatise on Cobbling for Beginners (75gp) Bubble and Brew: The Art of Alchemy (50gp)
We were interupted by the door crashing to the ground. On the other side were three more rust monsters. They had just finished eating the hinges, and went straight for me and ate my armor next. u-Heury lost his sword and some trinkets.
Rather than fight them, I ran for the door with u-Huery on my heels; the braziers were far more metal than either of us had left and the two leather-wearing folks could stuff the books into a sack and follow. As we ran I scattered the rest of my iron spikes on the floor, hoping to slow the rust monsters down after they finished with the braziers.
On the way out we peeked into the remaining rooms, including the one that we had heard noises from before. That room held a goblin corpse with unusual blue skin. u-Heury approached with caution, catching sight of motion from the corpse – some sort of twitching. I hung back, keeping an eye out for the rust monsters, but rushed forward when several large maggot-like creatures burst from the corpse and slithered towards the barbarian. I recognize these from more tavern talk – rot grubs. They would burrow into your flesh and seek your heart; a death sentence, if not an instant one. u-Heury slew one before it got to him, but without my armor, two found purchase in my exposed flesh.
Luckily those tavern tales had also included the rather painful remedy: applying fire to the wound before the creature burrowed fully in. It hurt, but my prayers to Clocea eased the pain. I was too distracted to notice what we got from that room, if anything.
With that, we decided it was time to take our profits, such as they were for this expedition, and leave.
