Progress in Axeholm.

I am barely seeing straight after being kicked around by undead dwarves when we hear an explosion. This is no little bang but something that shook the mountain. Still, given the bloodied condition of the party, we take a minute to ask Mitra for some immediate healing. We head upstairs where we can look out the arrow slots. It seems that there is an unconscious human is on the doorstep. He is in a bit of a crater. There seem to be a couple bodies of some kind a bit down the road. With a Healing Word, Mitra heals this human and we start to talk.
 
His name is Murlend and he is part of Solomon’s adventuring party. They were sent by Harbin Wester to do exactly what we are currently doing. Harbin had provided them with a map. This is greatly annoying in that Harbin provided us zero help in finding this place. It also seems that Solomon and the rest of that party (less Murlend) had been captured. (Harbin is working hard to kill these guys. But, come to think of it, this place nearly killed us just a few minutes ago.) Clearly, we will have to look into rescuing Solomon at our earliest opportunity. Murlend did not have a great description of the group that captured the rest of his party but there do seem to be a couple examples to check out on the road. Murlend is some kind of spell caster and his favorite spell seems to be something that causes explosions. He may not have the strongest grasp of the forces he is playing with. I sure hope he does not kill us by accident.
 
In any case, we brought Murlend in, healed up, discovered that Murlend’s explosion cracked some of the stone floors here, destroyed at least one wall, and managed to kill one of our pack animals. Tuath strung up the dead donkey as possible food. Post rest, we went back to exploring Axeholm.
 
As we go, we check chimneys. Murlend’s explosion destroyed the chimney that we had used for initial entry to Axeholm. We would like a new way to get in and out without opening the front door. Back in the temple of too many dwarven ghouls, we found that the well dressed dead guy had a signet ring. We find a bunch of other rooms like a barracks, a dining hall (with a shaft with handholds heading down), a smithy, a tool room. We get attacked by stirges but are able to beat them down without too much issue.
 
We head up a new set of stairs off the temple. We run into the scariest Elf spirit I have ever heard of. This apparition screams at us to get out of her house. It actually seemed like a reasonable suggestion at the time. In any case, we fought. And we [killed?] her. [Again?] I’m not perfectly clear on the proper words for killing spirits. You think I would know this. This fight took us into a new room. It looked like a fancy bedroom but there were signs of undead (meaning ghouls). There was also a clawed break into a chimney that would have been how all those ghouls got into the temple below. I wish we could have spoken enough with the scary elf spirit. Tuath later mentioned that she reminded him of someone. Dash nodded in a knowing way. In any case, I would have hoped that she could tell us what happened here. This place was abandoned but the Dwarves took many things with them so it was it was not a rout. Why did she call this place her house? Why an Elf? Did she turn the Dwarves into ghouls? Speak with Dead might be the trick here but it is beyond my abilities.
 
We continued our search. In another bedroom, we ran into another group of stirges. We stumbled onto a secret room which held a couple items that look super promising. A helm and a pair of gauntlets. We will have to study these further. I should add that as far as treasure goes, the fancy chest that uses a signet key for a lock seems quite valuable all by itself. Bonus if we find a buyer with an interest in dwarven history. This bedroom has a chimney with airflow. It is likely our new exit point.
 
We checked a couple more rooms before it was time to write down my notes. We have a couple places that we know to check out here. These are one set of stairs and the shaft down out of the main floor dining hall. Then I should do a sweep with Detect Magic to make sure we have not missed anything. Lastly, we will need to give proper burials to all the dwarves we have encountered here. Then it will be time to go see if we can find and rescue Solomon and crew.
 
While my mind wanders a bit, I have to wonder what any local dwarves would think of a group pf humans (meaning Harbin and the town of Phanlyn) taking Axeholm over. Hmmm.
 
(Out of character, when we started talking to Murlend, I was reminded of Monty Reed interrogating a character attempting to join us. Monty’s character was unstable. The discussion took place at the top of his lungs and ran a little like this: “WHAT’S YOUR NAME? … SHUT UP!”. The new PC spent the session tied up, hanging upside down. Probably not an optimal role playing session but I remember it 30+ years later.)