More of the Same

My return to the caves of chaos brought with me a plethora of emotions during the 3 day trek. Some of apprehension, others of excitement. The thrill of discovering new things, of slaying unknown monsters and drawing ever closer to my new goal of starting a library, one to rival any found in the main cities of the world. With the inability to return home to the tower until after the war I will pour my efforts into this and, with luck, I may ern myself a permanent outside position, which affords a number of benefits to me, ie. I will not be confined to the tower under close guard from the gildguardians. These thoughts swirled in my mind as I traveled again with my companions to the caves.
 
We arrived in good time and made to try a different tactic, Instead of finishing the mapping of the goblin holes we decided to try another. Inside we found ourselves caught off guard by a clever trap. A ogre had disguised his home to look like that of a bear. It was not until the oblivious one Gnar went up to touch the thing did we find it to be a ruse, a fake bear dressed in fur and made of sticks. Using our confusion to its advantage the beast attacked us. Despite its size we were able to dispatch it without much difficulty. We found that it had accumulated quite a some of money that it had stashed away and took it for reinvestment. Upon a very scrutinizing search by myself and Mr. Templeton we found that the monster had had dealings with the goblins as they had fashioned a secret door between their two caves.
 
Since the day was still with us we decided to go to another cave. We chose something we thought would be within the same level of challenge as the previous encounter and sent Mr. Templeton and my faithful companion Luna in to scout ahead. They didn't get very far as the inside tunnel was littered with decaying bodies and foliage. It made Mr Templeton so sick that he emptied his stomach and had to come back.
 
Mr Liadon then went with Luna to check the other side of the tunnel, as it was split in two, and he was less affected by the smells. They managed to find a room, or rather, a cavern, so they stopped and waited for us to catch up. We entered the cavern and immediately noticed something that looked like it could be quite valuable in a pool of water in the center of the room, but before we could investigate large sentient oozes fell upon us from the ceiling. We fought back against the oozes but some of my compatriots damage they armor and weapons in the process due to the acidity of the oozes. Once the deadly puddings were dealt with we easily fished up what we learned was a very expensive looking chalice and decided to venture home from there with our treasure. It turns out the chalice was so expensive that the merchant could not afford to buy it but instead traded for some of the value with his inventory of spell scrolls, which my companions generously gave to me once they learned of my plans to scribe them and found a library. All in all, venturing to these caves is turning to be a profitable investment of my time.