The party awakened after a night of revelry slightly hungover but not much worse for wear. Bargar woke them with his trademark booming knock and booming voice and told them today is his day in the arena. They shook off their headaches and watched the opening with a mix of trepidation and resignation.

Delos emerged as the Champion of the day (to Esry’s dispmay) as Bargar dug in and prepared for his battle to the death. The warriors circled each other before Bargar lunged to make the first attack. Delos countered with a dizzying series of slashes, and Bargar was quickly bloodied. He charged Delos, smashing two of the columns, but his attacks were only marginally effective. Realizing this, Bargar went into a defensive stance to fend off the Champion with his superior reach. In counter to this, Delos unleashed a torrent of magical energy through his blade that left Bargar’s muscles spasming.

In the end, Delos was too much for the Avalanche, and Bargar fell to his knees, defeated. As the crowd cheered in anticipation of the final blow, Gamlock unleashed a spell transporting Bargar to safety just as the blade went through where his neck would be. Almost as if that was the signal, several of the Champions revealed themselves in the crowd or burst out from the golden doors, along with a phalanx of Custodians and a new, decrepit-looking mage.

The party elected to flee, directing Bargar to lead their enemies away (after some patching up by Gamlock) while they took to the worm tunnels and infiltrated the palace once more. The palace was deserted, confirming their instincts, which the party used to their advantage to loot Angbar’s lavishly appointed room. The palace was quiet, at least until Daman found a treasure room and took a magical sword from the pile. The action unleashed a magical treasure golem that eventually exploded into expensive shrapnel; the party took the sword and ran.

As we left the session the adventurers were going to the second level even as they heard the sound of pursuing footsteps…

The team spent a nervous night holed up in the room, though the wards provided by Geran’s “Wizard’s Curtain” and “Silence” spells gave them extra layers of protection, suppressing any noises they might make and disguising their presence in the room.

Throughout the night the party heard the sounds of footsteps, dragging and scraping, and occasional muffled muttering. Each watch in turn heard similar noises, only interrupted during Esry’s watch by the intrusion of none other than Delos himself, whose face was wrapped and eyes were haggard. The wards held however, and Delos closed the door and turned away, leaving the party to the rest of their anxious night.

After their rest, as the party prepared to venture out, they heard the sounds of slamming doors throughout the complex. Concluding the inhabitants were done dealing with the bodies and were now searching for them, the adventurers steeled themselves for battle, only to hear a knock on the door. It was Delos, looking much refreshed, and groping his way through the illusions that Geran had cast. It didn’t take long for Delos to discover himself surrounded by the party and grappled by Frey.

Delos explained that the wards had fooled him the first time, but process of elimination had led him back to them. He offered to lead the party past the patrols and searches. When asked why he would help them, his only response was, “Consider it the dying wish of a dead man.” The group made their escape, trailing through hallways and avoiding Custodians and Gladiators as well as an ominous column before getting to the exit. Before they could make their escape, however, a patrol nearly discovered them and they had to duck into a room while Delos attempted to deflect the search.

There they made a horrible discovery: three beheaded bodies hanging from meat hooks, one charred beyond recognition, the other two skinned and flayed like some macabre preparation. Closer inspection by Gamlock and Geran revealed bite marks on the blackened charred flesh, and when Geran reached to touch it the material crumbled into blackened dust, revealing bones made entirely from gold. At this point Delos returned, and though Frey threatened him and the others begged for an explanation he refused. The party made their escape and returned to their house.

Once there the party set to processing the events of the past few days. Esry, Daman, Geran, and Frey remained at the house practicing skills and sampling notagranate wine (dated a few years into the future) while Harkin wandered off to unwind. Suspicious, Gamlock followed, discovering a wake of carnage: bloodied noses, bashed skulls, and damaged property. He finally caught up to the fighter in the midst of destroying a bar, initiating a confrontation.

Harkin, enraged by the villagers’ complicity in the deaths of the combatants, was smashing a patron into – well, through – a table and demolishing the bar. Gamlock confronted him, using the full might of his blazing mordenkrad to get him talking.

After clearing the previous room of hostiles, the party continued exploring. Gamlock passed a doorway, but Frey’s curiosity got the better of her, revealing a room with several more enemies waiting in ambush. Despite their fatigue the adventurers drew upon on new-found reserves and, with help from some excellent tactics, wiped the floor with them.

At the end the party elected to hole up in a room and try to catch some rest to prepare themselves for the coming day.

The party is victorious! After a protracted battle with Custodians, Gladiators, Blademasters, and an undead challenger named Angban Sommos they party emerged drained of powers and exhausted, but little the worse for wear.

After initial skirmishing through the doorway where Esry was dropped to the floor multiple times and stabbed repeatedly, Harkin opened up another front by teleporting into the middle of the melee. Blademasters were no match for Harkin’s fighting prowess and armor, and Geran laid down supporting fire and healing zones. Gamlock helped everyone recover from the brutal unholy flames of Angban and blocked the doorway with Blade Barrier. Esry moved enemies in and out of the damaging zones, allowing Daman to get some well-placed backstabs off.

The question is, now, what will happen when the rest of the palace’s inhabitants find out?

The party returned to the palace, trying to figure out the gladiators’ secrets. After infiltrating the building through the arena entrance they sneaked past several doors holding sleeping occupants. After momentarily splitting up, they reunited only to be discovered by one of the gladiators. They dispatched, only to alert one of the the gorilla-like Custodians, who went on to awaken more of its compatriots. Holed up in an office with the body of the slain gladiator, they avoided detection only through the quick use of the door’s lock by Harkin.

Venturing forth once more, they ambushed a few more Custodians, passed by a room full of treasure, only to disturb a pair of blademasters training. Bunched up in the hallway, they were unable to contain the threat, and one of the blademasters escaped Geran’s Written in Fire. After a fierce melee the second likewise escaped, but not before being heavily bloodied, temporarily blinding Frey, and using a smoke bomb to mask his escape.

The party chased after them, only to open a room filled with blademasters, gladiators, and custodians. Until next week…

The party continued their exploration of the palace, finding rooms of incredible wealth but curiously disused. Their secretive advance in the darkness almost met disaster when Esry knocked a glass wall sconce from its pedestal, but her quick reflexes saved them from drawing attention.

Moments later they heard voices and footsteps as the light of lanterns grew steadily down the hallway. They hastily retreated to the spotless and unused kitchen, leaving the door slightly cracked to overhear the conversation. Over the tread of many feet, two voices discussed their distaste for their situation, the apparent diversion of a disaster by Delos, and an infestation of Carrion Crawlers as the group passed by the hidden adventurers.

Appropriately enough, it was at this moment that the voices discovered that Crawlers had broken into the dining room the party had first entered. Taking advantage of the distraction, they hastily made their way through the occupied portions of the palace, defusing magical alarms and traps, avoiding detection by guards and inhabitants, and finally unlocking an external door into the arena itself.

Despite all probability the party escaped undetected and unnoticed, and with the help of teleports or ephemeral wings vanished out of the pit and into the city. Once home, they were visited by Bargar and a guest, the old man Drage. Drage seemed to have realized that they were here for more than gold and assumed it was glory or immortality that they sought. He outlined a plan by which he would see the party’s method of combat in exchange for tips on how to combat the champions, the implication being that he could use those tips to his advantage when they inevitably became champions themselves.

They agreed to meet two days hence to fight a battle he had prepared for them as a demonstration and test of their skills. In the meantime, Gamlock expressed frustration that they had worked so hard to enter the palace only to leave it without discovering what they wished, and pushed for them to return to the palace immediately to uncover its secrets…

Comments: A hilarious string of absurdly low insight checks, followed by maximumized Aid Another rolls. Characters with +20 rolled 1s and 2s, then another character would roll a 20 on the roll to aid.

Exploring the ruins of a collapsed section of the palace in Morenor, the party encountered a hive of Carrion Crawlers and their hatchlings, a veritable swarm of poisonous worms of all shapes and sizes. Harkin managed to miss most of them, aggravating them to the point where Gamlock came to his rescue the dwarf ended up taking most of the hurt. In the end, the party smashed, sliced, or (the most effective option) incineration blasted the crawlers to pieces.

In the aftermath, Gamlock and his dwarven stonesense felt a small breeze in one of the antechambers of the collapsed wing of the palace, leading to a secret passage. After exploring it, avoiding a few traps and discovering more hidden ways, the party found its way into the palace. The rooms they explored have been thus far clean but empty, and Esry discovered the entire place was suffused with magic, seemingly bound to the gold that made up its construction.