Welcome to the Dungeon of Doom!

WATER!

But also....LEWT!

I grabbed a handful of gold, however much fit, grabbed ze potion, which Soggy informed me was of the same consistency of the one I already had. I downed one immediately. It tasted like pink chalk.

Gloves, bracelet, dagger, and....the parchment. I opened it up and read it while strolling into the office or sorts to get myself some water, because I was thirsty as fuck.

Soggy looked over the pile of equipment, but was unable to spot anything of interest. "This looks more like a job for the mage", he thought to himself before drawing his axe and shield and following the rogue into the office.

The dwarf grumbled as the people wandered around exploring. Let them look for loot, he was absolutely beat after that little conflict. With a sigh he trudged towards the office to take a look around, paying specific attention to the weapons. If there was nothing hammer-like there, he would lean against the wall and take a rest, looking to restore some of his fighting spirit.

Argumentus now wears the Belt of Vigor.

Fescue has retrieved a Vicious Dagger.

On the rack: javelins, spears, glaives, halberds, scythes... no hammers.

Fescue examines the scroll found in the wizard's robes. The parchment is nothing but a long, long list of names under the title "Roll of Prisoners". Fescue's own name and those of his companions are near the bottom of the list, but there are hundreds of others. Dwarfish names, elven names, goblin names, halfling names... the majority of them have been scratched out with jagged lines, including a fresh mark over the name "Hieronymus Gustafsson". Judging from his place on the list, the cranky old bastard had been down here a long, long time.

Fescue's HP 20

Seeing the human and his fellow dwarf take rest reminded Motsognir just how spent he felt after the frays. Seeing the office was safe, he too settled in for some much needed rest.

Whereas I had been slightly turned by having killed so many people in the last day, I suddenly felt a release of that tension having read the scroll.

But one word bothered me..,"roll". Were we not really prisoners? Game pieces? Was there somebody that cleaned up the blood week by week?

I filled up my waterskin, after dumping out the sour ale, and quenched my thirst. I tossed away the bloody dagger I'd used on the guard, as he had offered me a much better piece as an inheritance.

Afterwards I looked about the room for anything of interest.

Once again we had triumphed against overwhelming odds. I moved over to the mage's corpse and picked up his staff and wand, checking each for any sign of magic power. I then followed the horde into the northern room, opening the cupboard in the hopes of finding a replacement for my now rather ragged cloak. This being a wizard's study I also kept an eye out for any useful artifacts or reagents.

Fescue's casual examination of the wizard's study turns up little of interest. It stands to reason that a mage powerful enough to corral the undead would have accrued several powerful items, but nothing more powerful than a stack of stultifying paperwork is in evidence.

The bookshelf is absolutely packed (save for a gap between How To Wander Aimlessly and How To Whittle), but none of the books seem particularly interesting.

Whatever enchantment may have lain in the wizard's staff has died with him, but a weak and flickering spark of magic yet remains in the wand. The power to occasionally make an painfully loud noise — is yours!

Rifling through the dead man's wardrobe turns up nothing but robe after robe after robe, all in the same unflattering gray. The man clearly had no sense of the sartorial.

"I say, fellas, what do you make of this?" I asked, as I showed the parchment to the rest of the group.

As I did, I worked my way through the desk, and scanning over the paperwork on top of it as well.

I stowed the wand and replenished my water supply from the casks. Feeling peckish, I remembered the recently deceased crab that the big chap had already been tucking into. Prefering cooked crab to raw, I grabbed an armful of books at random to use as kindling and built a small cooking fire in the corner of the ghoul room. While I waited for the crab to cook, I flicked through the book on Aimless Wandering, a subject that had always been close to my heart.

Fescue rifles through the rest of the wizard's loose paperwork. Payroll, accounts receivable, outgoing payments, inventories, order forms. One sheet simply reads Mirtul 17th - DO NOT FORGET!!!

Bob flips the book open to a dogeared page.

How To Wander Aimlessly, pg. 7

but this simply isn't so! While many simply wander, true aimlessness comes only after a deep and subtle understanding of what it means to be without want. Aimless wandering is not for the weak. You will grow weak with hunger, but you must not seek dinner! You must bumble into the dinner, by happenstance. You may be in danger, but you must not flee in terror. You must escape death purely by a series of unlikely coincidences. This is not a life for the impatient.

The most famous perhaps of all aimless wanderers was Garlo Sand, who meandered pointlessly from one ludicrous incident to another for a period of over 40 years. His long career of avoiding accomplishment came to an abrupt and bloody end when he wandered directly over a cliff. This illustrates only one of the dozens of hazards that threaten a committed wanderer, and this fate befell Sand not in spite of his vast experience but as a direct result of it. You must be prepared to meet death at any time; seeking to avoid danger is a gross violation of the wanderer's code.

You must be prepared, as well, to cut all ties to your mundane life. Friends and loved ones rarely understand the call of wandering, and will try again and again to seek you out and drag you home. It goes without saying, but aimless wandering demands that you shed not only your own aims, but those of others! Once you've committed to aimlessness, it will be impossible to truly resist them. You must destroy these entanglements before you begin. While this period of divorce from ordinary life may be painful, you can persevere. You know that your calling is far more important than any ordinary life. This is your chance to become a creature of legend, without all the destruction and theft that accompany the life of an ordinary "hero". You can be a beacon to all the world that unnecess-

At the curious paper, I folded it up and pocketed it, for later reminder.

As the rest of the group either bumble about the room, or lie in it tending their wounds, I wandered back out into the room littered with bodies. The stench had gone unnoticed when I was in peril, but now it was back in full force. The wizard was building a fire in the corner - reasonable, seeing as the guard burning over the fire barrel was a fair addition to the stench. I walked over and kicked him off the top of the barrel, and let his remains smolder.
I took a bit of the meat and cooked it over the wizard's fire, conversing with him a small bit about what he thought we were here for, but he seemed to be very absorbed by his book he had found. The crab meat was tough and lacked flavor.

"Aye, mate. You seemed intent on scurrying out this door earlier. Shall we find out what's behind it?" I said to the elf.

Does my character know what "Mirtul" is? How much gold did I grab earlier?"

Eat crap meat. (Assuming it does something useful)
Go to west door with Bob.
Examine door closely before opening it...slowly.

This room is dark, but the multiple fires in the connecting room make the major features of the room dimly visible. The door opens onto a room of marble, with the sign of crossed hammers emblazoned onto the floor. Two crude statues of roughly dwarven proportions stand side to side, holding out empty bowls. The smells of mildew and rancid grease are barely perceptible.

M

"You're a dwarf! Come look at these." I yelled at the hammer fetishist who was merely leaning on a wall.

Inspired by the book, I ate a not altogether unpleasant meal of crab claws then meandered back into the northern room. All obvious items of interest and or value having been removed, I double checked for any secret switches, doors or cubby holes, paying paticular attention to the bookshelf and desk. The solitary gap in the bookshelf was bugging me but with no other books about I could not imagine what might go there and anyway, I had just burned the rest of the books cooking dinner.

The space in the bookshelf where a "How To" book is missing seems suspicious. Careful examination reveals a small round hole in the shelf, just large enough to fit a tightly-rolled parchment inside.

The dwarf awoke with a bit of a start and, grumbling the whole way, trudged off into the new-found room after picking up his throwing hammer on the way.

"Aye, I'm a dwarf and you're an idjit. What do you want?"

With the benefit of Gabriel's low-light vision (and the sunrod still tangled in his beard) the room's details are much more visible. Both statues (carved of sandstone) are badly worn by the ravages of time. The southern figure is dotted with scorch marks, concentrated mainly in the bowl. The northern figure is badly stained in various pale yellows and greens, and spattered here and there with various damp-looking fungi.

With the benefit of the light, Fescue notices a discontinuity in the southern wall; a slab of the stone wall is actually just painted-over bricks, and the mortar around them still looks fresh.

The dwarf rubbed his eyes and looked at the statues.

"So why did you need a dwarf to tell you you're standing in a room with a fire bowl and a water bowl, exactly?"

"I needed your night light." I muttered sarcastically, still not sure what to do with this room.

Get fire from books in corner and set in south bowl.
Put some water in north bowl.