Once more, I decided to venture past the gates of this town with Kjeld the Cleric, and Duzain, the Elf who knows a little of everything. We acquired the services of two hired hands; Azok and Chin. Azok is an able-enough man, and Chin is a handsome beast of a woman who has obvious affections for our own Duzain. I guess they don’t call them “the fine-folk” for nothing.

After our recent enlightening but not exactly purse-filling trip out into the woods, all of our pockets were a bit lighter, so we decided to hit the mines this time around. If nothing else, we hoped to find something shiny to sell back in town.

On our trip down to the mines, we ran in to a bit of a kobold issue, so we had to take the long way, but eventually we made it without incident.

Navigating using Kjeld’s map we found ourselves deeper in the mines than I had been before, although Kjeld seemed to recall some of it from one of his previous adventures.

The first notable experience we had once we were deep in the mines, was a run in with a giant frog. Our group dispatched the frog with ease, and something compelled me to gather up it’s remains, as you never know when a very large and very dead amphibian may come in handy.

We wandered around for a bit and came across an opening. Everything about this opening was screaming “Ancient” to all of our senses. So of course, we dove in. Well, quickly we found traces that we were not the first group of adventurers to explore this ancient place. We came across a massive room with carved pillars, and three doors on the opposite end. The pillars had some terrifying carvings of Dwarven faces in agony. On one wall of this corridor we spotted an opening, that at first looked like it could have been caused by an explosion from a nearby room. We decided to take a look, and we found something none of us expected. After crawling through a small passage, we came into a somewhat spherical area with what appeared to be a cowering statue in the center. After a bit of investigation (I poked it with a stick, to the terror of my companions), I decided it didn’t pose a threat, but to make sure, I attempted to decapitate the statue as the rest of my party backed it’s way toward the entrance (to get a better position to help me in case of a fight I am sure). I fumbled a bit with my sword, touched the statue to brace myself, and a great stone creature reared up in front of my eyes. Duzain attempted to communicate, but his attempts proved futile for even he does not speak the language of giant rock monsters. We found the creature neither a threat or a source of information, so we moved along.

We headed back to the main corridor, to investigate the three doors. Kjeld recalled that one of these doors may have been successfully opened on a previous trip of his, so we first decided to focus on the other two. While attempting to open doors, we were confronted by a few shambling undead Dwarves led by what appeared to be a spherical automaton, possibly crafted by these dwarves when blood still ran through their veins. After the scuffle, Duzain’s best attempts at picking locks were met with failure, so we pushed through the previously unlocked door.

We came through a room slightly illuminated by glowing runes. We recognized them as being Dwarven, but the shapes meant nothing to any of us (my life as a ranger has never compelled me to study the old dead languages, but at times like these I would seriously consider trading my tree-climbing abilities for a bit of old knowledge). We moved along, dealt with a few more undead Dwarves and another of their spheres and eventually came to the climax of this little adventure. We came upon a statue (and this time around we were fairly certain it was just a statue). This statue seemed to beckon us, like it was asking for something. I can’t reveal all of my secrets here, dear reader, but let’s just say the statue and I made a fair trade, and I found my something shiny to leave these mines with.