Episode 3.2

Kathy, Brad,Ernie, Tony, Greg, Bob

The room with the destroyed gate had two doors, but only the door to the south could be opened. Beyond it was an office with a table, desk and other furniture. On the table was a large open book, looking very much like a spellbook, and a crystal ball. They determined that the spellbook, the crystal ball and something in the desk was magical. Bob went to check out the spellbook. It exploded damaging Bob severly and destroying itself. Brad cautiously examined the crystal ball. Inside was an image of three triangles. The left most and right most triangle was light blue, while the center one was a faint grey. They concluded that the triangles represented the gates, the blue ones indicating inactive gates and the grey one indicating a damaged gate. Inside the desk, the found an ancient note written in dwarven which read:

I do not know when or why Coalvein betrayed us, but that no longer matters. He destroyed the returning gate when he left. I am sending everyone onto the next station, but I am leaving the gate open in case the scouts return. I have instructed the guardian to let them pass but after that, to deactivate the next gate, place the icons in their secure locations and let no one else pass.

Gelvar Stonehand – Archmage

Further searching found a key attached to the underside of the drawer.

The key opened the other door in the room with the broken triangle. Beyond was a hallway that curved to the left ending with a door. There were two other doors on the sides. Ernie opened the first door and found a room that seemed empty except for a large pillar on the center. On the floor, they noticed slots cut in the floor that ran perpendicularly to each other intersecting in almost every square. Tony cautiously made his way in and eventually mad his way to the back of the pillar, where he found a large opening containing a key hanging in front of a geared mechanism. He tried to take the key and jam a staff into the gearings at the same time, but when he touched the key, the staff broke. The doors in the room slammed shut and blades came up in random slots in the floor and raced across the room. Tony was lucky in that he was in a square where no blades appeared. Tony made his way back to the door but they could not get it open.

Suddenly, Greg used a previously unknown power and magically swapped places with Tony. Inside the room, he floated in the air, above the dangerous blades. He drifted back over to the mechanism to see if he could damage it with his soulblade. In the meantime, Tony and Brad tried to beat the door down. Greg managed to damage the mechanism in the pillar but before he could completely disabled it, Tony and Brad forced the door open.

The next room contained three locked chests and four crystal balls on rods. Bob blew one chest apart with a Lightning Bolt and Tony went in to discover that it was empty. When Tony went in to try and unlock the next chest, the crystal balls each struck him with a magic missile. His brooch of shielding absorbed the damage, but he decided to remove it and absorb the damage instead of using up his magic item. He eventually broke open the other two chests. One of them contained an icon for a triangle gate.

Using the two keys they already found, they opened the door at the end of the hallway. Beyond it was a long room with a parapet at the far end. On top of the parapet were three orc archers who immediately began firing arrows at the party. Tony fired arrows back. Kathy shot magic missiles . Ernie cast Holy Smite. Bob unleashed a fireball (which appeared to do no damage). Brad and Greg ran forward to go behind the parapet to see if they could get on top of it. Brad got there first and ran into the battle axe wielding orc that was guarding the ladder. After a brief but intense mellee, the orc went down. Brad went up the ladder and found only one orc had survived the onslaught of spells and that orc was quickly defeated.

On the of the parapet was a catwalk that led to a door. Beyond the door was a hallway going left and right. The party turned left, went around a corner and found a long hallway with a red tiled floor and three alcoves on each side.