Second try's a charm

During our short rest, I asked Sertanian more about the gnomes' involvement in his capture. He said he had not seen them before, and did not know why they might be involved, aside from falling into Sinruth's widely-reported charisma. Not much help, really, but there you have it.

We prepared to press on into the dungeon and enter the next room--the one into which the Ettercap queen had escaped. Treble scouted ahead and threw a dagger into the room before retreating back up the steps, intending to lure the goblins he had seen up, so that we would be fighting a more even tactical battle. We waited several minutes, in which we tried various tactics to lure them up: first, Treble moaned and groaned loudly about his "broken leg," and then, Horadric conjured the sounds of battle near us to make the goblins below think that we were engaged in combat with their allies. All we heard in response was some mumbling. Our front line worked itself into position, and as we did so, several of us voiced our uncertainty... we really weren't in a good tactical position on the steps, which were narrow and steep. Keh'r was insistent about pressing on, so I headed into the room, and as I reached the bottom of the steps, I was attacked by four creatures. Fortunately, one missed, but I still took an arrow and a couple of energy orbs before I was immobilized and forcibly pushed back up the steps. Keh'r took one look at my bloodied body and decided that retreat was the best option. Maybe next time I should make him go first?

I healed my wounds and we retreated up the steps. Treble propped a battleaxe precariously on the steps, in the hopes that it would fall noisily if the goblins gave chase, and Keh'r used another axe handle to bar the doors behind us. Treble scouted up the stairs, and reported back that he found a doorway labelled "von Adrez" leading to a coffin and crypts. The doorway opened into a huge room, with doors on each side. He said the room was guarded: four hobgoblin guards and two drakes. We weren't really prepared to explore; our focus was to finish what we'd started and rescue the cook. So Treble rejoined us and Keh'r suggested that we circle around and see if we could access the cook's location from a different entrance.

We worked our way back to the hallway that had the two large pits in it. Treble crossed and fashioned a rope ladder for our less-agile members, while I got into position to leap across. He threw a dagger into the room and we all headed in. We found ourselves in the same room as before, though this time we weren't navigating a narrow staircase to get in, and the enemies weren't expecting us to approach from this direction. Rhogar, Keh'r, and I took the front lines, protecting our allies behind us. In all, there were about 10 goblin-types facing us, along with the Ettercap queen and a drake. The three of us took quite a few hits and also slaughtered our fair share of goblin-types. Rhogar spat acid into the room and hit about all of them, taking out several minions. Unfortunately for us, it was around this time that the Ettercap queen threw a web at us, immobilizing essentially all of us.

One of the magic-wielding goblins slid Horadric down into the pit, and slid Keh'r back. Fortunately for us, the immobilization did not hinder our party as much as it could have: those of us in the front line still had several enemies to battle against, and those in the back with ranged attacks were just as effective as before. Treble continued attacking the Ettercap queen, and eventually killed it. I had my hands full with the drake and a tough hobgoblin soldier, along with one or two of his minions. One of the goblins restrained me, which made it a little harder to fight, but I still was pretty effective in my attacks. Elaira saw me trading blows with a hobgoblin soldier, so she threw a blow at him which slid him forward and gave me the necessary opening to finish him off with my flail.

The more melee guys we finished off, the more necessary it became to whittle down their archers. Keh'r, although still immobilized, had teleported in that direction when the Ettercap queen taunted him; he eventually shrug off the immobilization and was starting to resemble a pincushion with all of the arrows he was taking. In the meantime, I was still restrained in place, but even from there I finished off the last hobgoblin minion. One of the goblin archers tried to walk wide around Keh'r to gain tactical advantage, and must not have thought of Elaira as much of a threat, because he deliberately walked right past her instead. She was more cunning than he must have realized, because she stuck out her foot and tripped him as he walked past. It didn't hurt him much, but he cursed under his breath as he stumbled. Even his allies couldn't help but snicker at him.

It was around this point that the battle really seemed to move into the endgame. Horadric harnessed some new and surprising arcane power of thunder that allowed him to attack two bowmen, slide them towards us melee fighters, and then used a followup attack to finish one off. Rhogar then expended some reserves of energy to finish off the goblin that was threatening Keh'r, who by this point was looking to be in pretty bad shape. The last goblin ran away.

We had been so busy in combat that it wasn't until now that we had a chance to look around the room. We saw several large sarcophagi, and a religious altar. Keh'r, Rhogar, and I accomplished the quite difficult task of removing the heavy stone sarcophagus lids and we found a few treasures for our trouble: a shiny suit of plate mail; a magic khopesh; two potions of healing; and 100 gp. Horadric found a lantern in the room, which he took. There was a fancy inscription around the wall near the ceiling, and religious markings on the altars. Rhogar, who knows more about religious markings than I, pointed out to us that the altars had been defaced; where it now is written about being devoted to Bel Shalor, it used to be devoted to the Silver Flame.

Against everyone's better advice, Treble was insistent upon climbing down into the trash compactor chute. He came out triumphantly brandishing a bent-up, blackened rod, which Shamash quickly snatched out of his hand, saying something about how only warlocks know how to properly harness its magic. Treble now smells significantly less pleasant to travel with. While we rested, Keh'r went to peek around the corner in the next hallway. He took an arrow to the cheek... looks like a nasty wound. He reported that he saw four statues of displacer beasts and also large ratlike creatures in the room antagonizing a terrified woman tied to an altar. His description of the woman matches the cook Mertala; so after he bandages his cheek, we will go in and rescue her before taking Mertala and Sertanian back to Brindol.