[coronatiger]

Thoughts on June 22nd
As we agreed last night, Magnar woke Olivia and me for our watch in the morning. The original reasoning for the watch schedule was that Magnar should take the middle watch, when it is darkest, and Kine, who has good night vision, should take the first watch, when it’s darkening, while we mere humans should take the last watch after it starts getting lighter. The arguments aren’t really valid in the mines where it’d dark all the time, but then again, we had no real reason to change the schedule either.

After several hours of walking, we arrived at a portal, beyond which was the complex that we were going to explore. Olivia stayed outside with the animals, wagon and supplies, while the rest of us entered. Lady Karita and Kine went in front with one of the lanterns, looking for traps, Lady Karita studying the walls, floor and ceiling, Kine banging on the floor in front of them with a long stick. Magnar and I followed behind them with another lantern attached to Magnar’s belt.

We passed through a short corridor which opened up in a large chamber. Along one wall was several gruesome demon statues. The walls were covered with red paintings depicting the original inhabitants doing despicable things with people of other races. While Magnar and Kine studied the statues and paintings (yeew!), Lady Karita looked for traps at the exits, and I poked a stick at the floor in case there was a trapdoor we had missed.

There were four exits from the room, in addition to the one we entered through, and Kine noticed footprints in the dust in one of the hallways, so we went that way. We found an open trapdoor in the hallway with some scrap at the bottom. We lowered Kine down to take a look, and she discovered that the scrap was rusted spearheads. When I asked whether there were holes in the floor, she confirmed it, but noted that the spearheads didn’t fit. I remembered one of the adventurers telling us that whenever someone had found a sarcophagus down here, it only contained dust, so it was certainly a long while since the ancients disappeared. Stands to reason wooden objects, like spear hafts, also have turned to dust. There were no valuables down there, so Kine came back up again. I leapt easily over the two yards of hole. The others took a running jump to get across. Lady Karita nearly fell in, but Magnar managed to steady her, so she didn’t. Or was that another trapdoor, later? Anyway…

We found a series of four rusted grating doors along one corridor. Three of them were open, but Magnar had to smash his way through one of them. There was some gold in two of the rooms behind the doors. We can keep anything we find down here, except for the Chaotic stuff, which we’ll get paid for at the checkpoint.

We entered another huge chamber. This one had four sarcophaguses along the opposite wall. I was alarmed by the presence of the four bodies lying on the ground not far from the largest one. Magnar can see heat somehow, and he said that the bodies were dwarven corpses that had been there at least long enough to cool down to the same temperature as the surroundings. We thought there had to be a trap near them, so we entered the room cautiously.

As soon as we did, the dwarves stood up, turned towards us with dead eyes and raised their weapons. By the time Magnar had beaten one of them to the ground with his flail, Lady Karita’s hidden armor had taken a couple of scratches, and both she and Kine had used and subsequently abandoned their long-range weapons (throwing stars and a long whip, respectively), and were fighting with fists, claws and a shorter whip. Standing heroically a little behind the others, I had just managed to put the first arrow on the bowstring and was ready to release it at the dwarf farthest from Magnar.

After that first shot, I decided that it would take forever to draw another arrow, and just as I took my first step forward, a blast of green smoke exploded from the mouth of one of the dwarves. Lady Karita dodged out of the blast zone. Kine was caught in the middle of it, but it didn’t look as though it affected her very much; she just staggered a little and was able to fight on.

I ran around the fight to come at the dwarves from behind. It worked reasonably well, but I didn’t hit very hard. I thought I had put my new brass knuckles on, but I eventually discovered that I hadn’t. I managed to distract one of them, though, so Magnar could get him. After that, it didn’t take long before the other two were down. However, one of them had managed to blast Lady Karita with the green smoke, and she had crumpled to the floor after expelling a short yelp of pain.

I know I’m not very good at first aid; Olivia is much more competent. And she had my first aid kit, which I hadn’t brought because I didn’t think we’d get injured. I needed to run and get it. Kine was obviously in pain from the green breath, Lady Karita was unconscious on the floor, and Magnar had retained one of the picks the dwarves had used; it had penetrated his armor and was stuck in his chest. Walking armory, indeed! He didn’t complain, so it couldn’t be that bad. I grabbed a lantern and sprinted through the hallways, making sure I didn’t go anywhere we hadn’t yet explored, leaping over the open trapdoors along my path. As I was nearing her, I yelled for Olivia to get out the first aid kit. I didn’t stop to kiss her in thanks, I just grabbed it and raced back to the others, returning less than one minute after leaving them.

I pulled out the pick from Magnar and hurriedly applied bandages to the wound. Expertly, I might add; the bleeding stopped in no time. I was a little bewildered at the lack of wounds on Lady Karita and Kine, but I put some bandages on them, just in case. Lady Karita came to after a few minutes, and after resting for a while, she declared herself ready to proceed.

Magnar had taken a look at the dwarves we had fought, and saw that they had holes on top of their heads and on their shoulders. I figured that some underworld monster had struck at them and sucked out their brains, but Lady Karita, who had been lying on her back for quite a while, had noticed that the entire ceiling was riddled with small holes, except for above the sarcophaguses. Magnar went over to the largest one and tried to lift off the lid while the rest of us observed from the safety of the hallways.

As Lady Karita had predicted, the moment he grabbed hold of the lid, spears dropped down from the ceiling, only to be pulled slowly back up by some unseen mechanism. Magnar wasn’t able to lift the lid at all, and not even when everyone tried to lift together, did we get it off. Fortunately for us, we now had picks that Magnar and I could use to destroy the stone lid. It took a little while, but we got through in the end, dropping the spears nearly every time one of us landed a swing.

A feeling of doom descended upon us, but we tried to stay professional. The sarcophagus contained a mummy, but no treasures; the smaller sarcophaguses were easy to open, but contained only dust. However, finding a mummy where nobody had even found any bones could be worth something.

We had cleared the rest of the complex while pondering how to get past the traps of the sarcophagus, but didn’t find much of interest. Magnar and I carried the mummy carefully between us as we followed Lady Karita and Kine along a path with no pitfalls. As we neared the exit, we could hear the animals panicking. I ran forward with the other girls, leaving the mummy with Magnar.

Olivia was holding an ox with one hand and Snowflake with the other. When Magnar and the mummy came into view, Chestnut bolted down one passage and the oxen broke free from Olivia’s grip and charged the other way, dragging the wagon behind them. Lady Karita climbed into the saddle of her wild-eyed, but not too unmanageable horse, and started chasing Chestnut. Snowflake, on the other hand, was rearing and bucking. I have some experience with handling horses, but I’m not that good at comforting them, so I reckoned my best bet would be to jump into the saddle and force Snowflake to calm down by convincing her she couldn’t throw me off. After gaining a semblance of control, I dashed after Lady Karita and Chestnut.

We caught all the runaway animals, but they didn’t want to return before Magnar carried the mummy back inside. We decided to camp at the entrance to the complex before striking out for the checkpoint tomorrow, hoping to be able to hand over the mummy before camping again.

With the doomy, gloomy ambiance around the camp, neither Olivia nor I was in a funny mood, but she mercifully put her hand to suppressing my growing hunger.