Another interesting day spent underground. We found several areas that are continually lit. Looking around casually, it appeared that they were not looted yet. However, closer inspection seems to indicate that anything of value has been taken. It would appear that looting did go on, but was far more organised than we have previously observed. Even the safes are shut, but empty of anything valuable.
We spent a while in the continually lit area, checking several building just to make sure that they really don't have anything of value left.
Later we came across another area designed to hammer an oncoming army. Gurzurk heard some sounds of fighting, but didn't see who it was between.
Oh, we also encountered a stone giant. Gurzurk spoke to it briefly before it attacked us. Some mage summoned it, and it had orders to attack people like us. Unfortunately we had to kill it. There was no sign of the mage. At this point we decided that we should return to the surface to rest and re-memorise.
Not exactly what I'd call a productive day.
It started out ok. We entered one of the galleries, and proceeded along it. Arrows from the same gallery had shot us at earlier. When we entered the gallery, we were shot at again, but the aggressors soon ran away, to be replaced with trolls. Trolls really have the potential to be nasty buggers, but I'm afraid they don't hold up to fire very well. End of trolls.
So far, so good. And then there was the fireball. Bastard! Of course, since we couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from, we ran. Before there was another fireball.
Presumably the fact that we're carrying around continual light stones in an otherwise dark environment kind of reveals our position. Solution: remove the need for continual light stones. When we returned to the surface (to recover), I managed to purchase the infravision spell, at the hugely inflated price of 500 gold pieces and a copy of Melf's minute meteors. Since it has such a large duration, we're able to rest, cast it on everyone who needs it, then rest again in order to re-memorise other useful spells.
Hopefully having infravision will help tomorrow.
The army has also decided to retreat back to guard the entrance to level 2. They don't feel that they were in a defensible enough position.
Furthermore, one of the other adventuring parties has gone missing. The missing party was also wandering around the same general area.
Damn! Another unproductive day!
First of all, it appears that the enemy can now get into the galleries. Orcs had been stationed every 300 feet. So we sent in Gurzurk and Turia to remove them. They were successful for the first couple, and then they were lightning bolted. Not nice.
Turia fled back to us to let us know. Gurzurk stayed behind, hidden in the rock.
And then the floor beneath us was turned to mud, which was immediately followed by a solid fog being cast upon us. Not just one mage, but two. How frustrating.
We managed to avoid any loss of life, and we did all eventually escape. But we never saw out enemy, who never cast spells that would reveal their position. All subsequent spells that were cast appear to have been mind based ones. We looked for the attacker, but to no avail. Either we looked in the wrong places, or they were invisible. It's also possible that they are undead. Apparently it is hard to see undead with infravision. Tess believes them to be vampires, although I don't think we have enough information to justify that belief. Which isn't to say that they aren't vampires, of course.
So we had a ``fight'', where we got attacked, and didn't have a clue where the attack was coming from.
On the bright side, Gurzurk summoned an earth elemental that killed off all the other orcs in the galleries.
Turia and Tess chose to stay behind and observe for a while after we left. More orcs replaced the ones that were killed.