Embic's Hall. Round 1. (Fight!)

Yup. That donkey was missing. Best guess is that we left it at the base of the cliff. But, if you think forgetting a donkey is weird, it turns out that Ozzie was carrying around a 70 pound chest since we left that beast. That means that he climbed a 200 foot cliff carrying a 70 pound chest that he just kind of overlooked. That dwarf is a beast.
 
Anyway, having recently defeated some Owlbears, we hid the chest and scouted the area to make sure we remembered what we had seen a few minutes ago. Our options included a door in an ice cliff face and a couple windows. We checked out the door. Runes, no magic. Also no evident, workable, lock or other possible access.
 
The two windows were 20’ and 60’ up the cliff. Ozzie and Dash climbed up to the closer one. Then the rest of us did as well. We found ourselves in the oddest situation. In this room was a dwarf woman. Ozz tackled her and it was clear that she was a non-combatant. She might be a bird keeper as the room has cages. She had released a bunch of them and they did not seem like a threat either.
 
She was mostly uncooperative. Or possibly just stupid. In any case, we managed to learn that her name is Ermanguard and that this complex might belong to one Embric. Ermanguard ended up hog tied and knocked out. That this was the best solution we could come up with is a bit distressing. Still, you have to go with the information you have, and she is an uncooperative inhabitant of a place that is tied to Soloman and his missing party.
 
We started exploring. Up some stairs we found an observatory. It seems to have been unused for quite some time. Approaching the telescope produces spectral tentacles that grapple and an Air Elemental that has a bit of a nasty bashing attack. We won the fight at the cost of a bunch of blood loss. We caught our breath and searched. The desk had nothing worth our notice. We stashed Ermanguard up here (gagged) and continued the search.
 
We found a kitchen without a water supply. Soup was on. Tuath went to take it off the heat and caused a fire elemental to pop out of the fire. Again, we beat it at the cost of a bunch of blood loss. I was going through the healing spells.
 
The next rooms were storage and bedrooms. We did no significant searching. At the end of the hall, we found a larger room with a Cthulhu troll. Instead of the usual biting troll action, this guy has a squid like mouth. With that, he attempted to bite our heads. He succeeded in doing this to me and it stunned me for a fair while. We chopped the troll thing down but had to deal with the regeneration. Luckily, we are all up to speed on how to fight these things. Tuath’s big contribution was to run for flammable material. This led to the first down comforter attack in the history of the party. Oddly enough, we were all into this as sound tactics. Even if it did take us a few rounds to figure out how to light the thing in a room full of burning torches. Like the other fights here, this was a bloody one.
 
At this point, we are in the troll room, low on spells, moderate on hit points. We need at least a short rest, perhaps a long one.