Inside The Tower

Nervously, they approach the tower. Jihan goes ahead and peers through the crack in the door. Although Heathcliff made his fly through, he wants to check out the situation for himself. Peering through the gloom, he sees that there is a central corridor 15 feet wide running down to the staircase at its end against the far wall of the tower some 75 feet away. He is relieved to see that he detects no lifeforms (or deathforms!).

He opens the door a little wider and the heavy door creaks open, seeming to make a great deal of noise in the stillness of the area. Faewen'il lights a lantern so that those without infravision are able to pierce the gloom. The door is open wide and Winnacer and Zsolt enter, with Jihan and Hrust close behind them. As Heathcliff saw, there are two doors right next to you and two more halfway along the passage way.

They look at the two doors next to them and see that have been broken down, ripped off their hinges and have fallen in to the rooms. The two rooms are similar in that they both show signs of a vicious fight. As they shine the lantern into the rooms, they see that they are both 15 foot wide by 20 foot long. Inside they can see fragments of furniture, a large table, several chairs and a couple of cabinets in each that have been smashed to pieces. Scattered amongst the room are several bones. As he sees them, Hrust clutches at his ebon staff in case they start to join together, but it seems as if this is not the case. Jihan cautiously enters the room to check it further. He sees that there are ancient pool of dried blood on the floor. It is obvious that a major fight took place in the room a long time ago. He carefully picks his way through the debris looking for anything that might be of value, but there is none. Moving to the room opposite, he performs the same actions, but the story there is the same, just old bones, dried blood and smashed furniture.

Seeing that there is nothing to do there and nothing of value to take, they cautiously carry on down the corridor. On the walls on either side are tapestries, showing bodies rising from the graves. They are incredibly ancient. Jihan goes to touch them, but as he does so, they crumble to dust. They notice as they walk up this part of the corridor that there is a thick carpet of dust on it. It looks as if no one has been in or out of the tower for more than half a century. They carry on up the corridor until they are between the two doors in the center.

Winnacer points to the door on their left. Jihan nods and approaches it carefully. He checks it carefully, looking at the floor, taking a mirror as he looks at the door in its reflection, but sees no sign of any traps. He approaches the door and touches it with Langzhan and then checks the handle carefully. Being fairly confident that there are no traps on the door, he takes his brass listening cone and starts to listen at the door. After a couple of minutes of listening, he carefully walks the few feet back to the party and reports his findings:

'There's definitely something in there. I heard some snarling, but not like an animal, it sounded human, and there are several of whatever is in there as well.'

Winnacer shakes his head:

'Well, our mission is to expel these creatures from the tower and so we cannot avoid them. However, let us use the element of surprise to our advantage.'

They quietly go up to the door. Shaman Hrust stands right in front of it with Zsolt on his left and Winnacer on his right. The rest of them stand behind ready to swarm in behind the three of them.

Winnacer starts a countdown with his fingers and they all prepare to meet their destinies.

5…4…3…2…1

Winnacer grasps the handle and, in one swift movement, swings the door open. As the doors fly open, they see a squarish room of 20' by 25'. It looks like some sort of barracks. Inside it, they see the horrifying sight of nine ghouls and a ghast are in the room, some laying on their filthy pallets, some squabbling around a table.

The creatures all look up in surprise as they see the party at the door.

Shaman Hurst reacts quickly. He brings his ebon staff up in front of him and starts to growl an uttering to his god. As he does so, they see that the dark rod he is holding starts to crackle with electricity which increases in its intensity until a loud thunder clap splits the silence. Upon hearing the clap, five of the ghouls fall to the ground and their bodies start to decompose.

Upon seeing the results of his work, Hrust ducks to the side of the door to allow the warriors access to the room. The rest of them charge in. As they get inside, the carrion stench starts to cause you to retch. With the exception of the three warriors, you all start to vomit, making it difficult to concentrate on the tasks.

Seeing that the ghast is obviously their leader, Winnacer rushes for him, intent upon giving the beast a taste of 'Old Bohavia'. He hits the ghast in the side, but it does not fall. In retaliation, the ghast scratches him, but the damage is mild.

Jihan is upon one of the ghouls. However, both Diamond Stealth and Langzhan fail to strike a hit upon the creature. The ghoul strikes back at him, misses with his claws but bites into his neck inflicting a nasty wound.

Zsolt strikes at the next one. His bastard sword carves into the abomination and shreds it into pieces before it has a chance of striking back.

Xavier goes for the next one. He lands a good blow on it, but not enough to take the creature out in one. The ghoul claws at Xavier in response although the damage is far from severe.

Bennett takes the final ghoul. Regret hits the creature hard, and the creature stumbles but does not fall. His armor saves him from the raking claws of the creature, but it bites him in the arm.

After the initial rush of warriors have gone through the door, Viirin pounces through and heads over to give Winnacer a hand. He opens his jaws and Winnacer sidesteps to avoid the frosty breath that the wolf unleashes upon the creature. The wolf's attack is as devastating as usual and the ghast is frozen rigid before falling to the floor.

Will goes to aid Jihan, but both his longsword and dagger cannot find a way to the creature. Yaz lends a hand to Xavier, but his scimitar cannot find a way to the beast.

Faewen'il stays in the doorway along with Hrust, ready to use her precious spells should the combat start to go badly.

Jihan and Will try to finish the creature before it has chance to counter. Jihan is vomiting badly, however and stumbles over the corpse behind him. Seeing Jihan's predicament, Will plunges his longsword at the creature with all of his might and runs the foul creature through, the blade of his sword piercing the creature's back

Xavier and Yaz attempt to perform the same actions upon the creature and have similar success. One powerful blow from Xavier's sword is all that it takes to fell the ghoul.

Not to be outdone by the others, Bennett tries especially hard and is rewarded by seeing Sorrow hack the last remaining ghoul neatly in two. All of the abominations are dead.

Catching their breath after the short but very sweet combat, they look around the room. They see that there is a door off to the north. Apart from that, there is little of interest in the room and the stench is such that they don't want to stay there too long. Retching badly, Jihan takes a quick look around the filth and debris of the room, but finds nothing of interest.

He moves to the door in the north wall and goes through all of his usual routine of checking for traps, but finds nothing and hears nothing behind the door. Cautiously, he opens the door a crack and looks inside. He throws the door opens as he sees that the room is obviously some sort of armory. There are several weapons in there, three battleaxes, four broadswords, a longsword, a couple of maces, six spears, four shortswords, seven daggers, a flail, and a few suits of old scale mail plus a few shields.

Jihan checks through the weapons and armor. Most of them are very rusty and covered in cobwebs. He asks Faewen'il if she could use the Witchfinder's staff in order to scan the items in order to determine whether or not they are magickal.

Trying to ignore the stench of the area, she agrees and sets off the staff. The gem on the end glows as she starts to scan.

'That battleaxe an this shield, they both be havin an enchantment of some sort.'

Wiping vomit from his mouth with a bit of bandaging from a pouch at his belt, Jihan stumbles weakly about the room, trying his best to ignore the pain while clutching his wound. Finding the armory, he leans heavily against a weapon rack, emitting a muted gasp. He blinks hard, and swallows. Upon finding out that the axe is magical, he picks it up and brings it over to Bennett.

"Lament...perhaps..." he says, trying to give it a name for the man.

Winnacer walks over and retrieve both of the weapons that Faewen'il found to be magickal in nature, inspecting the craftmanship. He shows them to Will and asks him whether he has ever heard anything about either of the items in his travels. Will examines both of the items carefully for a couple of minutes and then shakes his head sadly:

'I'm sorry, but I have no knowledge of either of these items.'

Winnacer then hands the axe to Bennett and claims the shield for himself.

Bennett, who was busy watching the door they entered by while the others searched the room, is delighted to receive the still glowing axe, and thanks Jihan profusely. His attention is totally diverted from watching the door as he swings the weapon through the air, noting its fine balance:

"No," he says to Jihan, "I have had enough of lamentation. I name this weapon "Retribution", and finally feel like it might serve it's purpose."

"Retribution, I like that," Will mutters to himself.

Bennett's morose attitude is transformed by the weapon, and he begins to draw out his sharpening stone and cleaning rags and perform a serious tune-up on the weapon.

Winnacer asks if any of the others can use a spear, considering how useful one would be in their ranks, but they just shakes their heads as no one has any experience with that type of weapon. Winnacer then takes the rest of the weapons out with him as well.

He then asks Will if he could borrow some of his oil and asks everyone to help him drag the corpses of the ghouls and the ghast into the center of the room. The task is far from pleasant due to the stench of the corpses, but they manage to do it and soon the corpses are blazing. The smell of the burning, rotting flesh is even more terrible than before and so, after this task has been completed, they quickly exit the room and close the door firmly behind them.

Away from the stench now, in the corridor, Jihan hobbles over to Hrust and looks with beseechment in his eyes:

"I'm going to have to start wearing a steel turtleneck..." he says, reaching towards his oft abused (of late) neck, with a bit of a forced smile. "Do you think you could patch me up, doc?"

Although Hrust doesn't understand a word that the elf is saying, the fact that he is trying to stem the flow of blood from his neck gives the bugbear a good idea as to what he is trying to tell him. As a result, he starts to mutter the words to the healing spell. The effect of the healing spell is excellent and the wound closes immediately. Although not fully healed, Jihan is not far from being back at full strength.

When Jihan has been healed, he gingerly touches the fresh scar, and comments:

"We should make a special effort to carefully wash all these ghoulish wounds before binding them up. I trust that Blesk's magic has driven out any possible infection, but these beasts are not especially known for their cleanliness, and I have heard that the filthy claws of such may be capable of inflicting horrible wasting diseases... Do you have any herbs that are capable of helping with such, Fae?" he says, speaking to her directly after several days. He seems a little ashamed of himself, and tries to keep his eyes bright.

The lass reaches into her herb bag and pulls out a number of plant leaves and distributes them to everyone who was hurt in the fight:

'Best not be riskin catchin anythin off those filthy beasts. Rub one o these leaves against your wounds and ye will be safe from infection.'

As soon as this exercise has been completed, Winnacer urges everyone onwards:

'It's best not to dally here too long. If we are all ready, then I suggest that we investigate the room opposite.'

Jihan nods and goes through his regular routine for checking out doors - checking for traps, testing the door and handle before he brings up his listening cone to find out whether he can hear anything behind the door. He listens for just a few seconds before he raises his eyebrows:

'I hear rattling bones inside. A LOT of rattling bones.'

'Skeletons, obviously' replies Winnacer. 'I thought that it wouldn't be too long before we got to face them.'

'I suggest that we use the same tactics as when we cleared the ghouls in the room opposite as it seemed to work well. Zsolt and I will stand either side of the door and then I will open it quickly so that Hrust can use Blesk's blessings to take out as many of them as possible. He can then fall back so that the rest of us can charge in and take out those that remain.'

At the mention of skeletons, Xavier sheathes his bastard sword and unhooks the mace that he took off the body of the leader of the Black Diamonds who tried to jump them at the ford, bringing it to bear for the first time.

There are nods of approval from the rest of ythem and then everyone gets into position. As before, Winnacer opens the door in one swift movement and flings the door open. As it opens and you see into the room, you see that it is almost filled with skeletons, fifteen of them in total. As was the case with the room opposite, the room is obviously a barracks room, measuring some 20' by 30', with filthy pallets lining both walls and a tables in the center. Some of the skeletons are laying on their pallets while others are sat at the table.

As they see the door opening, the slowly start to raise themselves in order to meet the intruders. As they get up, the party members see that one of them is absolutely huge, and as it raises itself to its full height, they can see that its skull almost brushes the ceiling which is twelve feet high. More frightening than the imposing height of the creature, however, is the fact that it has a small magickal fire burning within its open ribcage.

The second that the door opened to reveal the rooms contents, Hrust had started his chanting to Blesk once more and his rod once again starts to glow and crackle with electricity. As the energy builds up, it is once more released with a loud thunder clap. The others look on to see that two of the skeletons crumble into dust after the thunder clap.

At seeing just two of the skeletons fall, Hrust bellows out in rage and then controls his anger and starts to utter the incantation that magicks his fire blade. Zsolt has his bastard sword in hand and is about to charge into the room.

Sticks and stones may break my bones..." Jihan murmurs as he stealthily enters the room behind Hrust and Zsolt.

"Xavier, Bennett, my brothers, I think we'll need you up here..."

With that, the elf grabs out a vial of holy water from the velvet lined sheaths on his battle harness, and says a quick elven prayer of guidance. Kissing it, he lobs it towards the flaming skeleton, trying to hit the fire burning in its ribcage. It is not to be, however, as the vial goes soaring over the giant skeleton's shoulder, impacting upon the wall behind it.

Winnacer looks on at the fire burning within the bones of the giant skeleton and gets a bad feeling in his gut as he charges it, bringing 'Old Bohavia' to bear. He looks towards Xavier, hopeful that he does the same with his vastly more effective weapon...

Winnacer tries to thrust at the giant form of the skeleton, but 'Old Bohavia' finds only the space between the skeleton's ribs, and the young lord fails to hit the creature. Seeing Winnacer failing to hit the giant form, Xavier rushes in to help him with his mace in hand. However, the Saxon is similarly unsuccessful in getting a hit upon the abomination.

The two warriors look on in horror as they see the giant creature reach into its chest casually and pick up the magickal fire that burns within. Seeing that the creature is about to fling the fire towards them, Xavier throws himself to the side, but Winnacer is too slow. The flame explodes with a loud 'BOOM' which damages Winnacer quite badly although Xavier is not too badly harmed. There's still plenty of fight left in the two of them yet, however.

While Winnacer and Xavier are tied up with the giant, the others try to fend off the horde of its man sized underlings. With 'Retribution' the battleaxe in hand, Bennett wades into them. The carnage that Bennett causes with his new weapon is a sight to behold. He seems to be born to wield the mighty axe and as he hacks to the right and left of him, two skeletons positively disintegrate in a shower of bone shards.

Zsolt looks mighty impressed at Bennett's actions and leaps into the fray beside him, bringing his bastard sword to bear upon the undead. Another of the boney creatures falls beneath the Pannon's flailing blade.

Will joins the battle next to the Pannon. With a fine slash from his longsword, he hacks one of the skeletons to pieces, while there is but a chink as his dagger impacts against the femur of another, but the light blade is not sufficient to down the creature.

Seeing that the rank and file skeletons are falling fast, Yaz draws his scimitar and joins his colleagues. He manages to hit the one that he was aiming for, but the force of the blow was weak and so the skeleton fights on.

Viirin squeezes through the door next to his master and unleashes a breath of cold air upon another of the skeleton. As the frost breath subsides, there is an angry howl from the winter wolf as he sees that his breath has done no damage to the skeletons whatsoever.

Seeing Winnacer and Xavier making no headway against the form of the giant skeleton and the huge scythe in its hand poised to strike at them, Faewen'il decides that it is time to use at least one of her precious spells. She starts to utter the words of the spell and then points towards the giant form. Two darts of magickal energy fly from her outstretched hands and hit the skull of the giant creature, filling the room with the stench of singed bone.

The remaining skeletons strike back at you. One of the skeletons slashes at Shaman Hrust. The bugbear, who is concentrating upon finishing the casting of his fireblade spell, is unable to dodge the blow and the skeleton's shortsword cuts him badly in the head. Another of the skeleton stabs Viirin in the side, while another manages to give Will a minor cut. The other four of them fail to hit any of you.

Winnacer and Xavier and locked in combat against the giant leader. Winnacer again manages to fail to hit the creature with 'Old Bohavia'. Xavier, however, does manage to land a blow upon his huge opponent, but the damage that he causes is far from severe. In retaliation, the giant brings his scythe down to swat away the two warriors as if they were little more than flies. However, the lumbering creature is slow and the two of them easily manage to dodge the swing of the weapon.

Back amongst the regular skeletons, they try to dispatch them as quickly as possible so as to assist the two warriors against the giant.

Jihan lashes out at another of the skeletons with both Diamond Stealth and the weighted length of spidersilk rope, but neither of his attacks are successful. Bennett's run of luck with 'Retribution' ends as he too fails to find his mark. Zsolt, however, is still in fine form and hacks another of the skeletons in two, sending bones scattering onto the floor. Will has little success, as neither his longsword nor the dagger strike home. Yaz too does not manage to land a blow, nor does Viirin, whose huge jaws are snapping at the bones before him. Shaman Hrust, however, manages to take out another one, as his flaming blade cuts through another of the skeleton's ribcages, felling it instantly.

Seeing the warriors still making little headway against the giant, Faewen'il repeats the words of the spell and send another two bolts of energy streaming towards the creature. The giant reels a little from the force of the impact. It is obvious that it can't take a great deal more of this punishment.

In retaliation, one of the five remaining skeletons cuts deeply into Zsolt's side, inflicting a deep wound upon the Pannon. Another of them causes a similarly deep wound in Viirin's silver coated flank, leading the wolf to howl at the pain. Two of the skeletons miss, but the final one manages to cause another cut on the Pannon.

Winnacer once again has no luck at hitting the creature before him, his failure starting to lead to some frustration among the young lord. He need not have worried, however, as Xavier puts all of his force behind the mace and smashes it into the giant's skull, sending huge chunks of it across the room. Both Winnacer and Xavier are forced to dodge as the giant frame of the skeleton come crashing down between them, scattering its huge bones across the combat area.

Jihan lashes out with Diamond Stealth once more, but to no avail. The spidersilk rope in his other hand, however, leaps out and wraps itself around the leg of one of the skeletons. Jihan gives a tug on the rope and the skeleton falls to the ground. Bennett brings 'Retribution' to bear upon another of the skeletons, and once more its boney form disintegrates like firewood. Zsolt, who was not at all amused by getting hit by two of the skeletons, gets his own retribution by hacking his attacker to pieces. Will lands an attack upon the skeleton that he has been fighting, but it is still not sufficient to take it down. Yaz fails to hit the same one that he has been fighting from the start, but Viirin gives him a hand as he pulls one of its arms off, although the skeleton keeps fighting with the other. Shaman Hrust finishes off the last remaining undamaged skeleton with another well aimed shot from the fireblade.

With one of the last three remaining skeletons down, there are only two to fight back. One of them lands a blow upon Viirin, while the other aims at Will, although his magickal armor protects him from any damage by its blade.

Were the skeletons to have any gray matter left inside their empty skulls, then they would have surely realized that they were doomed. However, the senseless creatures fight on, unaware of the fate which is surely to overcome them.

One of them manages to inflict yet another wound upon poor Viirin who is not covered in cuts and bruises while the other standing skeleton misses Will. The prone skeleton tries to get up, but Jihan nicks it as it does so. Yaz manages to hit the other skeleton, the force of the blow sending shockwaves up his arm as the blade impacts. It is Viirin who finishes this skeleton off, however, as his mighty jaws clasp around the skeleton's head, ripping it off. Will's blades just manage to fail to connect with the skeleton that he has been facing off against, but Bennett has no problem in hacking the damaged creature to pieces with his new weapon. Zsolt assists Jihan by striking the once prone skeleton hard with his bastard sword, but somehow the creature still survives. Shaman Hrust just fails to connect with the skeleton, as does Winnacer and so the honor of the killing blow goes to Xavier, who easily manages to stove the abomination's head in with his mace. All of the skeletons are now dead.

They take a while to take deep breaths after the exertions of the fight. Many of them are bleeding quite badly, particularly Viirin, who took the brunt of the skeletons' damage.

While the others are recovering, Jihan spots a door to the north, hardly surprising considering that the room is identical to the one containing the ghouls and ghast. He goes through his checking procedure once more and, after five minutes, determines that there are no traps. The door is, however, locked. Jihan takes his tools and tries to open it. However, after several minutes of fiddling with it, eventually admits defeat. It seems that the lock is secure. The elf announces the situation to the rest of them.

'We'll soon see about that!' grins Bennett as he holds 'Retribution' in his hands as if it were a new born baby.

Zsolt seeing Bennett about to begin to hack the door down points to 'Regret' on Bennett's back. Bennett hands it to him and together the two warriors manage to hack the door into splintered pieces of wood in just under five minutes. Triumphantly, Bennett finishes the job with an almighty kick to the door, sending it flying off its hinges where it lands with a loud crash.

Bennett peers inside. As was the case with the room on the opposite side of the corridor, the door leads into a small armory. Inside are two longswords, six broadswords, five scythes, four shortswords, four shortbows, a scimitar, four polearms, six daggers and around 30 arrows.

Faewen'il enters along with her Witchfinder staff. She passes the staff over all of the weapons and watches carefully as the gem flickers occasionally.

'The scimitar, one o tha daggers an ten o the arrows, thats what be havin magick out o this lot.'

Will separates all of the weapons that the lass identified as being magickal and investigates them all carefully. After looking them all over, he shakes his head sadly:

'No, I've not heard anything about these either,' he says.

While all of the activity has been going on in the armory, Winnacer has been separating the bones. Well, those which Viirin has not been chewing on in any case. He goes back into the corridor and looks around and then comes back:

'Well, it would appear that we have cleared the first of the levels, but by my reckoning, we still have the basement and five levels above us to go.'

He looks around at the rest of them, noticing how many of them are injured:

'Should we carry on today, or should we take our time? Several of us are quite badly injured and I would imagine that the spellcasters are getting a little low on spells now. Although we have spent less than an hour in here, it may be best to pace ourselves. What say you all on this matter?'

Bennett enthusiastically responds:

"What, leave? Come on, we aren't in that bad of shape. Fae, Yaz, what spells do you have left. What say we go hog-wild and use everything we have left and get through one more room? Basement first, I think. If we hit a trap or anything debilitating, then we come right back. Zsolt and I will take front, and Hurst can turn and then back off. Our less militant members can provide back up, as they are mildly injured at best. I think our canine companion should stay out of the fight entirely, as he can't have too much left and I don't want to risk anyone dying in there, but I really do think we have at least one more room left in us."

Looking around at his wounded companions, Jihan shakes his head, reeling up the weighted length of spidersilk rope and tucking it back up his sleeve. He makes his way around, trying to help bind the wounds of those who were injured in the fight, Viirin especially.

Will submits himself to Jihan for bandaging:

"Thank you brother."

"We haven't been in here long today," continues Jihan, "but I think we've done all we can for now. We could try one more room if Hrust and Yaz have any healing graces left, but I think that those are getting stretched pretty thin right now. This tower will be the work of many days, so we'll have to try and conceal our camp from any interfering eyes from Dobroushka. I say we carry out all of the stuff from the armory here, and wrap it up to bring to Holitze for the people there."

"Come on, Jihan, we've got enough left for one more room" interrupts Bennett. "I am really feeling it and I don't want to lose the touch from a whole day of rest." Bennett's eyes are almost pleading, as if he has had a lot of difficulty getting it together for the Tower and now that he feels good he doesn't want to let the fear return.

"I would let our holy men say whether or not we've got enough left, brother" replies Jihan. "If anything, perhaps we could take a peek in the basement, though I'm a little concerned about how easy traps would be concealed beneath the water that's down there. What say the rest?"

"What should we do with these enchanted ones?" Jihan asks. "I think that you've found yourself a keener blade, my brother," he says, turning towards Yaz.

"And I think that these may come in handy for you, Will," he says, gesturing towards the arrows and dagger.

"For me?" asks Will. "Does anyone else wish to lay claims upon these items? I will gladly accept them. Thank you, and I hope I can employ them to good ends."

"Too generous, Jihan," Bennett interjects. 'You should at least take half the arrows, if not all of them. You are the best archer of all of us already, and with magic arrows you should be quite deadly."

Will replies to Bennett's suggestion:

"I must agree. Although I will gladly accept any of these, I must agree with Bennett, you are the best archer Jihan, you take the arrows."

"And yet, I am only one," replies the elf. "We may have need of more than just Weitbeissen in the days to come. By all means, let us bowmen split these up, for special occasions, as it were. Just remember, try and retreive the heads after the battle has concluded, as the magic of these arrows might be brought back by freshly affixing them to new shafts. Even if not, these are of excellent craftsmanship," he says, running a finger along the razor sharp blade of one such.

The others notice him jingle a pouch full of such at his hip. He has saved all the elven arrowheads from his original arrows, as they are especially fine and keen, in waiting for a time when they need fresh ones. He gathers up the sheaf of arrows, and holds them towards Will, then to Bennett, letting them take as many as they wish, then putting the rest in one of his quivers at his back.

Winnacer states that he believes the arrows should be split between Will and Jihan. He then leaves Yaz to take the scimitar. Faewen'il already has a magic dagger she doesn't use, so Winn will leave it up to whomever would get some use out of it. Winnacer cannot help but nod in appreciation of the upgrading of their arsenal.

"Before we go," continues Jihan, "I think we should chop up those bones, just to be sure that the twisted magicks of the tower don't reform them. I wish we could set up someone to watch this place, in case the Father from the town sneaks towards it to set something nasty up for us, but it's just too dangerous..."

He helps gather all the weapons and armor into neat piles for those stronger to carry, then asks:

"Well, then. What say the rest of you?"

"Well, I've had my say about this place and us staying," adds Bennett, "but if we choose to leave, I volunteer to watch the place. Give me some advice about getting into a good hiding place, Jihan. I have remarkably good night vision, developed from late night training, I guess. Plus I don't need as much sleep as the rest of you, having stayed awake for days at a time with no bad effects in the past. Maybe you could hang with me out here and I could wake you if I see anyone and you could knock them out with some of your new magic arrows?"

"I wish it were possible for a lone one of us to stay outside and watch, even two," comments Jihan, "but the horrors that live on the top of the tower may have different ideas about this. Perhaps it would be possible for us to seek deep concealment, but I'd rather take a good bit of time to check, and know that there was backup at the ready should the concealment prove ineffective. I am not worried about sleep, as I get most of mine during the day in reverie while we take breaks. Never have I been afraid of being out in the night until coming to this place... Planning a watch will take a good bit of time, and I think we should worry about hiding our camp and keeping Robert, Min and the horses safe before we start worrying about it, for today at least."

Winn recommends poking your heads downstairs, after some healing spells are spread around the party. He certainly could use one. All in all, the young lord is quite miserable, as he certainly did not like getting cooked yet again nor did he like the fact that he was completely ineffective against a target the size of a barge. He recommends that the group takes extra precautions and prepares to retreat hastily if it looks like they have gotten in over their heads. Viirin, as Bennett mentioned, should head for the exit.

Will looks around at the bones on the floor and smiles while shaking his head in unbelief at the great success they have seen so far:

"My friends, we have battled well, and I am proud to be apart of this expedition. Let us take a rest for the evening while checking on the status of Robert, Min and the horses. With the expenditure of our good priests' healing abilities for the day, it would probably be wise to retire for the evening. We have indeed done well, but our reserve strengths have been exhausted for the day. Let us play from strength rather than desperation and haste. Let us rest the evening and continue in the morning with the next floor. It is probably true that the denizens here are much stronger after dark. I would also like to spy on the village and see if our actions will cause any retribution toward them."

The magickal items are distributed. Yaz takes the scimitar, Will the dagger and the ten arrows are split between Jihan and Will.

As he looks around and sees the state of the wounds, Hrust casts healing spells upon Winnacer, Xavier and himself. The effect upon both himself and Winnacer are fairly good, but not so great upon the Saxon. After casting the three spells, Hrust shakes his head and shrugs. It is obvious that he is now out of any more healing spells for the day.

There is a little more debate about whether or not to continue for the day or to return so as to lick their wounds. Eventually, after much pressure from Bennett, the decision is made to continue downstairs in order to check out what is there.