Mandras peered into the room with the fresh-ish body on the ground. He examined it gingerly and was struck by the two puncture wounds, set widely apart. He rifled through the belongings and found an ornamental knife, which he pocketed. A scream came from behind the party, after moments of consideration, we chose to ignore it. We entered the room which had been the source of the noise, there were four ornately carved Persian style burial pillars on each side topped by a goat headed entity, but no occupants. As we did so, the rear guard was attacked by three rotting bodies, which were slain without much ado, though thousands of copper coins spilled forth from the last of the bodies’ eviscerated chest. Not worth our effort to collect and we had bigger game on our mind.
Mandras went to inspect a southern door, while the rest of the party came in to the room. The knocking sound came again… or was it a rattle. A giant rattlesnake slithered out from behind a pillar and caught Alesandresa unawares, poisoning her. Mandras spun around striking the snake meatily, his second blow clove it in two. However, Alesandresa was dying from poisoning with little to be done other than quickly amputate the arm. While Rarder and Konrad held her down, Mandras swung the mighty axe – alas, Alesandresa died from shock. Rarder then found a bag of gems in the foul creature’s nest.
We followed a corridor and reached a large pillared room with an altar in the middle and a statue of the three-armed, goat headed fiend beyond. While we eyed the room, a voice called forth asking to be helped. Ever more cautious we peered around and Mandras went into the room, discovering a pit between the altar and the statue, which held a grumpy dwarf named Arned Cobblestone. His party had panicked and left him there not so long ago. We hauled him out with a rope and fed and healed him. We continued our inspection of the room. Suddenly a chaotic voice emanated from the statue: “you all shall pay”. As Mandras boldly inspected the statue, secret doors north and south of us opened and 10 skeletons poured forth, each bearing a pulsating gem in its skull. We made short work of them, Mandras jumping onto the alter at hew about himself heroically. But the bones started to move and knit again and we had to continue the destruction. Hats started tossing bones in the p it and we formed a chain, but to little avail as they knot again and began trying to crawl out…