Chapter 3: Exploring the Church

February 9

The group rests for a moment, then Agnarr and Neiia go to examine the chests in the next room. From the second smaller chest, they find a small bag of full of copper. They leave the money in the chest and Agnarr opens the other larger chest. A small arrow flies from the chest, hitting Agnarr squarely. Inside the chest, they find a bag, a fine gemstone box, three magic potion bottles, one set of horseshoes, a small cube, and one heavy iron mace. The bag contains silver coins and the gemstone box holds five moonstones.

From the next chest, they find a sack of bronze coins weighing close to ten pounds. Agnarr takes the iron mace with him and Neiia takes the small magic cube. The horseshoes also contain magic. Neiia takes the items from the chests before Ertak searches for secret compartments by breaking the chests into small pieces.

After this, Ertak tries to clean away any traces of their presence from the room, but the cleaning doesn’t succeed particularly well.

The group then returns to where they entered and Agnarr picks the lock of the door leading there. After that, the group searches for the secret door through which they were brought from the inn to here. Agnarr finds the secret door and shows the others how to open it. Then the group returns to where the secret door went downward and continues in the direction they were warned was dangerous. Kieron sneaks ahead and tries to open the door, but fails because it’s stuck. The door does creak though. Agnarr comes to the door, oils it, and lifts it off its hinges.

Behind the door opens a staircase going down that turns right. The group advances with Kieron sneaking ahead, Agnarr next at a distance of a yard, Neiia with a light about a yard behind Agnarr, and Ertak last, also with a lantern. When Kieron reaches halfway down the staircase, the stairs suddenly transform into a ramp, and Kieron, Agnarr, and Neiia start sliding down the ramp. The ramp ends in a three-meter drop. They fall into a dark room where hissing can be heard. There’s apparently a large snake or something in the room. The snake attacks Agnarr, and Agnarr in turn strikes the snake so hard that it flees. Ertak, who remained above, has removed his sleeves and wrapped them around the lamp, then rolls the lamp down the ramp. Neiia catches the lamp in mid-air.

They notice that there are two statues in the room and a snake-sized hole where the snake apparently fled. Kieron decides to investigate that as well and starts crawling into the tunnel. She gets stuck, so Agnarr helps her out, and after that, she tries again. The tunnel continues for a few yards and then opens into a two yard by two yard chamber. There lies a weakened snake, which attacks Kieron. Kieron quickly kills the snake. Kieron examines the room but finds nothing there. After that, Kieron returns to the others and the group climbs up to Ertak.

Ertak heals everyone and then the group rests for half an hour. It’s half past midnight when the group sets out again. Agnarr and Kieron sneak ahead, and Kieron remembers that the next door is very noisy and that there are two recruits on guard behind it, so even if they remove the trap, they cannot get past those guards in any way. A third recruit is on guard in the armory behind another door.