The story so far…

Our fear­less mer­ce­nar­ies are back on the job after two weeks of recov­er­ing in the rel­a­tive safety of the car­a­van. While they were recov­er­ing, The­rion the Thau­maturge nego­ti­ated a truce with the gnomes of Clan Iron Bad­ger: a 500 gold piece weregeld for each of the five gnomes that the adven­tur­ers had slain ear­lier. This 2,500 g.p. debt weighs heav­ily on the adven­tur­ers’ minds…

Dur­ing their first scout­ing mis­sion after the fight with Clan Iron Bad­ger, they found a clear­ing in the deep­en­ing woods with the ruins of what used to be a cir­cu­lar stone struc­ture. Near the mid­dle of it is a large, talk­ing tree and a spi­ral stair­case lead­ing down into the ground. After quizzing the tree, our heroes dis­cover that there is a great evil lurk­ing below, and the tree’s role as a “guardian of the green wood” is to main­tain the bal­ance of good and evil in this wood. He has been at this spot for about a fort­night and observed the com­ings and goings of crea­tures, both four-footed and two.

The adven­tur­ers gather dead fire­wood for the car­a­van, care­ful to be very respect­ful of the trees from which it came, and sally forth into the dun­geon. There, in the dank and slimy dun­geon, they find an ancient alchemist lab, com­plete with an itin­er­ant fire bee­tle which Gar­shak quickly dis­patches. They har­vest the glow­ing sacs in the bee­tle in order to sell them at the next town they find.

In the next room is a beau­ti­ful thief called Nadja and a small hoard of cop­per. She tells them a tale of woe in which she fool­ishly decided to raid the dun­geon alone, against the advice of the rest of her party. Now that our heroes have found her, she can guide them to a mag­i­cal trea­sure that will help them escape the demonic pres­ence she says is will trap them all down here.

Tim the Younger and Mil­ton the Illu­sion­ist are skep­ti­cal, to say the least, but even­tu­ally the party agrees to fol­low her. As they pass the stairs that lead to the sur­face, the two make for the stairs. Nadja, hor­ri­fied that even approach­ing the stairs will arouse the demonic pres­ence, draws her scim­i­tar and cuts Tim down as he pesters her by feign­ing step­ping on the bot­tom step.

Con­vinced that she is sin­cere after dar­ing to attack such a numer­i­cally supe­rior party, they adven­tur­ers stanch Tim’s bleed­ing and fol­low her to a cir­cu­lar, water-filled cis­tern. After press­ing a secret switch to raise the portcullis to a land­ing jut­ting out into the water, Nadja flees and three slimy ten­ta­cles and two eyes pop out of the water.

A des­per­ate fight ensues. Grom is pulled in first and drowned; Mil­ton casts phan­tas­mal force and cre­ates a ten­ta­cled mon­ster to attack the real one that is men­ac­ing the party; how­ever, the illu­sion breaks when he is yanked into the water by the monster.

Roy II dives in the water to attack the mon­ster, free­ing Mil­ton, but is grabbed and eaten. Mil­ton swims to the other side where the treach­er­ous Nadja said a switch to drain the water was hid­den, but to no avail!

Gar­shak is grabbed and pulled in the water, but escapes and makes for the land­ing. He throws the glow­ing fire-beetle sacs into the water to dis­tract the mon­ster. He then draws his two-handed sword and con­tin­ues to fight the beast, land­ing wicked blows on  the thing’s eyes. He is grabbed yet again, but uses his great strength to escape sure death a sec­ond time.

Mean­while, Mil­ton has dived to the bot­tom and finds a mys­te­ri­ous fold­box that just keeps unfold­ing and unfold­ing as he opens it. He escapes with the won­drous box while the mon­ster dines on poor Grom, and the two sur­vivors head for the stairs. The wounded Tim and the cop­per coins they left at the foot of the stair are miss­ing! So they make for the surface.

As they emerge from the dun­geon, the car­a­van arrives. The­rion, Hamza, and the two sur­vivors inspect the fold­box and dis­cover a fine longsword and dag­ger, a ring, and four spell scrolls. It is decided to rest, then go back down with six vol­un­teers from Hamza’s guard force to find Tim, clear the dun­geon and bring The­rion back any arcane books or magic items they find.

What awaits them down below? Where are the wounded Tim and the cop­per pieces? And what of Nadia, the treach­er­ous thief?

Our heroes will find out…