The Ninth Adventure

[Bastet1002]

"You see friends!" explains Robur being a little pedantic with the hirelings. "This here is a wishing well. You don't drink from this kind of well or bathe in it. I should know... I ... well never mind. Anyways, we've found a safe place in case of trouble.... Well, come on! Let's not keep our other friends waiting. Let's go back now to that terrifying dwarf statue."

Robur gestures for the hirelings (and whoever else) to follow along back to the statue room.

[dtspurrier]

Bilfur makes sure nothing comes back up from the well and heads back to the statue

[acodispo]

Willie suggests they backtrack to area 7, and then north-east. He doesn't want to tangle with anything to the north that might turn him or any of his friends & comrades to stone.

[mushgnome]

The whole party is reunited at the site of the stone dwarf. (1d6=5) There are no wandering monsters this turn. A wandering monster encounter would have been Bad News; the sound of combat might have woken any hypothetical nearby monsters sleeping in their Lair!

Who agrees with Willie's suggestion, back to Area 7?

[rredmond]

Noh forms into the marching order, "back it is" he agrees, giving Carc a scritch.

[ehiker133]

"Aye," Dougal whispers. "Let's get out of here..."

[mgtremaine]

Kiplyn quietly follows along

[Bastet1002]

"Yes, let's get back. It could be dangerous," says Robur directing his last comment especially to the three naughty hirelings.

[kipper]

Dame Simonetta is relieved, and leads the way back to area 7. When we get there, she will be especially wary in case the sniper has returned. We managed to disable the crossbow, but maybe there was another somewhere that we missed...

[mushgnome]

You find yourselves in what can only be described as the "heart" of dungeon level 3. It feels cliche to use the word "cavernous" but there you have it. Not only does this cavern have a high ceiling, but someone has expanded vertically downwards, by digging (this is not a natural formation; you can see the pick marks). Your lantern isn't strong enough to see the bottom of the pit, or the opposite side, but to give you an idea of the pit's scale, you could drop an entire house into it. Near your current location (area 10) you see a ramp, spiraling down into the darkness. There are parallel grooves worn into the stone ramp, like mining carts making thousands of trips up and down from the pit over many decades.

From down in the pit-mine comes a gentle 'sloshing' sound, like ocean waves against the pier on a calm day. There is a rotting 'low tide' smell in the air. Based on your mental map, you estimate that the bottom of the pit-mine would be similar 'low' elevation to Kiplyn's Sump (NE of area 9).

It's obvious from this angle that the giant spider webs are thickest around the oddly shaped stone spire (just NW of the number 3), so that's probably their lair. But there are enough individual strands scattered here and there throughout, to keep you on your toes, that you are still within the spiders' hunting grounds (as a potential wandering monster encounter).

What next? Three obvious choices that come to mind are, move clockwise around the edge of the mining pit, move counter-clockwise, or go down the ramp.