Shield Bash

5 Kuthona 4709
Hold of Stonehelm

Rainox the Great, which Rogar seems unwilling to put down, wants to kill a “shadow king.” The shield did tell us, much to my relief, that we are in the Five Kings Mountains— we aren’t really too far from our last known location. The shield also tells us that he was previously carried by “Grundar the Unstoppable”— I have to assume that Grundar did stop at some point, as he is not to be found in our current environs.

We had not yet checked the doors behind the throne; as we opened the doors, poor Kasa trumpeted and tried to bolt from the area, clearly frightened by what lurked within. The large room appeared to be a king’s chamber, complete with red curtains, a massive stone bed, wardrobe and table— and something not quite dead. Another shadow! We lined up to attack it, but Rainox the Great had been waiting for this opportunity for centuries, it seemed, and the lion face on the shield reached out and bit the shadow, killing it. Kasa calmed down once the shadow was destroyed.

Not finding anything else of interest except more doors and corridors, we continued our search. We walked single file down a hallway behind Tythe and came to a door. As she examined it, a huge stone divider dropped down, trapping Rogar and Candal on one side and the rest of us in a section that started to fill with noxious gas which poured from a dozen holes around the tops of the walls. Kasa and Salma were weakened by it as I crammed wads of cloth into the holes and Tythe looked desperately for a means of disarming the trap. In the end we had to destroy the stone divider to get out.

At this point, we decided a proper rest was in order, and camped uneventfully for about eight hours.

That accomplished, we continued on past the trapped area into a new room, and almost immediately found a lever that would have disarmed the gas trap. There were also three doors leading from this new room. One went right to a collapsed pile of debris, that room completely lost to us, and we started to explore the other two (empty) rooms, when we noticed that Salma was no longer with us. She reappeared in one of the empty rooms— apparently when she went in alone the door closed and, upon opening it, she found herself in a different area entirely. Thankfully closing the door again brought here back to where we stood. This proved too interesting, so we all gathered into the room and closed the door….