IN OUR LAST SESSION…
… Our heroes delved further into the lost dwarven kingdom of Dol Seguria. Tovlakov sought to confirm that the elven ranger Jacoba “Jake” Marius was still waiting outside the entrance to the dwarven site. He was. After informing Jake that the fugitive (“Diedrich”) that Azan and his rangers had chased into the dwarven underground was dead, he agreed to leave the body somewhere that they could fetch it. Tovlakov returned to the inner sanctum of the dwarven complex, and the heroes searched the fugitive Diedrich. On him, they discovered that he had, among his weapons, a shiny metal ring and a leather item on a chain around his neck that Norm was able to determine had a faint Evocation magic about it. The heroes dragged Diedrich’s body through the entrance to the dwarven complex and closed the door.
The heroes then moved forward, deeper into the dwarven complex. The already wide, high-ceilinged passage widened further and the ceiling stretched even higher away. Stairs carved into the bare rock led up. The heroes climbed the stairs. They searched the first “apartment.” Dain smashed the door open. Inside he heard a weeping sound. He moved further in, down a short hallway to a front room, leading to a hallway which continued into a bedroom. Two balconies extended into the main hallway. Dain followed the sound of the weeping into the hallway leading to the bedroom.
A dwarven woman, glowing like an apparition, sat in a wooden chair, weeping about her “Baby,” her “pet.” When Dain approached, she complained that there was nothing to feed her dog. The dwarven woman looked up at Dain and he could see that half of her face had been gnawed away. A rumbling growl had been growing in the back room. Now the creature, an enormous, horse-sized dog with two heads charged. It was emaciated. Some of its flesh was missing from its limbs and belly. The dwarven ghost faded and disappeared.
The heroes fought the giant “dog.” Dain was able to block the hallway and absorb bite after slavering bite, while the rest of the party was able to attack with missile weapons and spells. Eventually, the party wore the creature down, and with one final blow from his war hammer, Dain dispatched the beast. It began to quickly decompose.
Searching the house, the party found a few items. Most interesting were mithril coins.
The heroes decided to rest in the house. During the rest, Tovlakov noticed a small mob of undead of various races shambling down the main corridor in the direction of the entrance used by the party.
After some recovery time, the heroes decided to continue to climb the stairs. Two more tiers of homes perched above the home they had stayed in. Above the third tier, a 10 foot wide catwalk hugged the wall, the ceiling still high above; painted to resemble some long lost night sky.
The heroes proceeded along the catwalk. After a few hundred feet, the long corridor emerged into an even wider space. The catwalk seemed to end at the point that, it seemed, a perpendicular corridor interjected the passage the heroes had so-far pursued. Stairs led down to the corridor, stairs guarded by a human-like beast — a hobgoblin. The hobgoblin fired at Tovlakov as he approached. As the heroes rushed up to engage the guardian, he continued to fire his bow. The party was able to take down the hobgoblin before he could alert others: Tia’s arrow entered the bell of the guardian’s signal horn and emerged from the back side of the hobgoblin’s skull. Perhaps he could now play a nice tune in Hell.
Other creatures seemed to be on duty at the intersection of passages. Where to go from here?