Alert: May contain spoilers for the adventure “The Temple of Elemental Evil”

[rough sketch of corridors and rooms]

Finally a chance to get down my notes in some kind of understandable fashion.

Let’s see. Ezekiel, Yeti, and I went into the room with the harpies – but probably should have put something in our ears, since we all were…stunned? when they started singing.

Fortunately, the ghouls that came in to attack us didn’t want to get too close to Yeti (he says it’s the careful cultivation of a virtuous life), so Ezekiel had time to shake himself awake and dust them.

When we’d dealt with the harpies, Ezekiel checked out the little room where the ghouls came from – but besides the old clothes and filth they’d been “nesting” in, all he found was a chain-mail shirt about the size of an elf (they pointed out it was too small for anyone except me, and I said it wasn’t that funny).

As we were examining the borders of the room, the grate rattled and raised itself back up automatically…so that’s handy.

Raven checked out the part of the floor that must be the trigger for the mechanism, and he thinks the grate isn’t activated until someone steps off it into the room, so we could all join up in the harpy room as long as we were careful.

Corby flew up to one of the pillars where the harpies used to perch, but she didn’t find anything “shiny” in the dirty nest up there.

There was a door at the north end of the room, and as soon as Ezekiel opened it I spotted a ghoul and launched my ready arrow at it. The ghoul spotted him, too, and slashed at him with its claws.

Yeti and Mikael also got hits in before Ezekiel could wrestle his holy symbol out of its pocket to turn them (he thinks there were four total). (Never hurts to be prepared to act.)

A chest against one wall had a bunch of old clothing, plus hefty load of copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins.

Yeti opened another door in the wall where we’d come in, and we found an anteroom with the remains of upholstered furniture and pewter tableware. It would have been a comfortable place before it was trashed and filled up with undead…although the frescoes on the walls are obscene and deserve to be smashed. Maybe if we find time heavy on our hands.

Yet another door led out across the room, and Yeti insisted on opening this one, too (he says he’s sturdier than Ezekiel is, and Ez shouldn’t have gotten scratched by that ghoul).

Beyond, we spotted two pale, shriveled figures – when Ezekiel did his thing toward them, they didn’t crumble into dust immediately, but shrieked and cowered.

I tried to shoot an arrow, but smacked myself in the face instead. I’m just glad I didn’t break anything.

Raven showed off and bounced one of his daggers off the wall before it skimmed past one of the undead. Then when he threw a second dagger into it, Yeti followed up – driving it in with his hammer.

I nailed the other one through the throat (which is apparently lethal even for undead like these).

The remaining undead scampered away and scrabbled at a wall sconce, opening a secret door to escape through…but Raven ran after him (he’s very fast, after all) and even though he started gagging at the undead’s smell or something, he distracted it enough for me to nail it with an arrow.

Ezekiel calls these creatures “ghasts.” I just wonder what the world needs with so many different kinds of undead!

Well, the secret door led out into the harpy room…so we’ll be glad these creatures didn’t decide to join the skirmish outside. The ghast room must have once been a bedroom, as it has a collapsed bed among the other broken furniture. The walls here, too, are covered with horrible, ugly pictures…Yeti says they’re in an “earth theme,” and I guess I can see what he means if I think about it (which I don’t want to).

Ezekiel dug in the wall at the head of the bed and found a loose block with a huge gold cup filled with gold coins and three onyx gems. The cup is covered with disgusting engravings, and I tried not to look at it while we put it in the bag of holding.

Well, with that done, we used the harpy bodies to weigh down the pressure plate by the door to help us all get safely out the gate…and then we spent a smelly, tiresome half hour plucking the harpies.

Harpies really are ugly creatures…never trust something that looks too-human and not-human-enough at the same time.

It was late afternoon when we came in here, so it must be pushing evening by now. We decided to leave the horses in the care of Yeti’s amazing warhorse, and look for a defensible room here to hole up in (but not any of the undead rooms because none of us could possibly sleep with that stench).

We continued along the passage to the north [see sketch] until we came to another right turn – which Ezekiel took. That led to a hexagonal room, with a ceiling so high we could barely reach it with our lights.

Ezekiel and Raven checked for any sign of a grate across the doorway, then advanced with the others while I waited with my bow in the doorway.

Well, we should know by now that something is always waiting to drop on our heads. This time, it was mosquitoes-from-hell also known as stirges. We fought some in the marsh on the way to Explictika Defilas’ lair…but that was only three of them. They are much more irritating in large numbers.

I had an arrow ready, so I knocked one out of the air right away…but it felt like a drop in the bucket when at least four of them latched onto Lydia and a few others got their icky tube-line mandibles in our other companions.

Lydia smashed an egg down on the floor, and a green cloud billowed out from her, spreading as far as the doorway where I was.

I coughed a little, backed up, and worked to line up my shots while the others fled the cloud…except for Raven, who was on his hands and knees gagging, and Lydia, who was weighted down with a collection of the huge bloodsucking beasts.

The stirges started glittering and flashing as Mikael cast faery fire, and as I sniped a couple off Lydia, one of the stirges who wasn’t overwhelmed by the gas made a swipe at my head (and missed).

Lydia came coughing out of the cloud to join me in the doorway. She pulled a flask out of her pack and threw it, splashing a pool of what looked like oil.

Ezekiel charged across our field of vision, grabbing Raven and dragging him out of the cloud.

I caught a glimpse of Corby chasing after a stirge.

And then…Lydia lit a torch and tossed it, the oil ignited, and the remaining stirges popped and sizzled in death.

(Except for the one buzzing at my ear, and I grabbed my sword out to slice it in half.)

Well, with the excitement over, Mikael could take his time healing the wounded (Lydia and Raven were the worst off) while Yeti “laid hands” on Corby.

Well, the room has six sides, and the only furniture seems to be a big throne of brown marble veined with black. Both arms are broken off, and it looks in bad shape.

Yeti went around the room “detecting Evil” (useful thing to be able to do) and while Lydia was still by the wall resting, she found a ring with comets or something etched on the outside.

Ezekiel thinks it’s something to do with the “Far-Wanderer,” and the magic users who revered him. Once he said that, Lydia remembered hearing about a ring that lets you cast certain spells like Light, Lightening, and Faery Fire.

(I pointed out it wouldn’t let me cast those, and we all agreed she should probably hold on to it.)

While Corby was chowing down on a nest of baby stirges (she brought me one, which Raven says is a thoughtful thing to do), Mikael cast Detect Magic to help us find anything else in the room…but pretty much the ring was the only magical thing we noticed (though we found some copper pocket change).

When I made a fire behind the throne (plenty of debris on the floor to keep it going) we spotted what seems to be a secret door…so Ezekiel said we have to keep an eye on that, as well as the main door.

We’re keeping watch in shifts, and I get the third watch with Mikael (was really afraid I’d be assigned Lydia for a minute there).

She said she was sorry for casting the stink cloud on us all, and we all said you gotta do what you gotta do, and it all worked out (and she got hurt the worst, anyway) but I’m not quite comfortable with the way she keeps setting things on fire.

Ezekiel says dying made me paranoid, and I said what else is death good for – but really not ready for that discussion.

I wonder what else lurks in this labyrinthian place.

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To start at the beginning of our adventure in the Temple, go here.

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