Taking a look around the lich’s chambers the group does a quick assessment of the situation. A hasty bit of plundering follows while the group tries to orient themselves. Several doors lead to more secret peepholes and passages and one os followed into a strange cavern…complete with hexagonal rite pit, chained and caged corpses/wights a strange knot of living darkness and a brace of shadowspawn guards with wicked flails of electrical blasting. The pit is also home to a strainge and regal woman clad in armor and bearing a snake headed mace.
The group rolls up and attacks…Reza engages a guard, takes a wicked blow and then fells him with a smash from the Mace of Disruption. As he advances, the woman blasts him with a bolt of dark energy – slaying him immediately. Humbar and Feaster move to attack while Barada and Lubbitch ply the bows, shooting at the armor-clad woman and striking her with a pair of telling blows. Humbar takes up the Mace and attacks the next guard while Feaster moves to engage. Humbar is struck blind and Lubbitch drops her bow to take up the Mace and kill the second guard after taking a hit. A net of strange purple energy shrouds the pit and partially screens the woman from view. Barada’s next magical arrow vaporizes in the energy field, and an attempted shot with a normal arrow is deflected from its target.
Barada unlimbers the Rod of Resurrection and raises Reza – pointing him towards the woman of doom. Dalliance is persuaded to use the silvery fire to try and cast Dispel Magic on the energy net – it fails. When Reza uses his boots to leap into battle he passes through the net and is imprisoned in a web of crackling black energy. He crashes to the ground – immobilized.
The woman holds Feaster immobile and Lubbich escapes due to her ring of freedom, passing through the web to engage the target. Barada unlimbers his lute and tries a Dispel of his own, which also fails to affect the web, but frees Bud. Free Bud leaps into action. The woman strikes Lubbitch with the snake-mace – which poisons her and causes her to die. Feaster pops up with a helping of Neutralize Poison and Lubbitch is back in action, striking the woman with the Mace. The battle rages on, with terrible damage dealt. Dalliance uses her last bit of silvery fire to teleport into the heart of the web, attacking the woman with her staff while Feaster and Barada try to engage.
Feaster is slain by the woman, Dalliance is incapable of striking her her and it is left to Barada firing arrows at point blank range to finally deal the fatal blow (yay!), but not until he has wielded and broken the Mace of Disruption (boo!).
The Rod comes out to restore the Feaster to livingness and the wights are slain by Barada’s point-blank arrow fire. The web of dark energy fades away and the Silvery Witch possesses Barada’s body and uses him to blast the knot of darkness with pure silvery light until it is gone, The weave is restored – much to Dalliance’s delight. The group works to formulate a plan of action. Reza is loaded on the carpet of flying and the group makes haste to exit the area. They return to the village they visited before and find the dalefolk in a state of agitation.
Apparently the ranger that the group rescued has been imprisoned on charges of aiding the party in sedition. Judgement is to be passed the next day in the heart of the dale. Barada dons his hat of disguise and rides to the assembly, trailed by Bud in bird form. The rest of the group (Reza now freed) plans a general uprising to try and throw out the invaders, Barada makes his way to the assembly, sees overwhelming force and decides to lay low for a bit. The prisoner is trotted out before the crowd and his crimes are read aloud. Any dissent is dealt with by spells of silence, and the lord judges him to be guilty. He is to be imprisoned for 30 days, then sent to labor in the mines for 25 years. Barada acts, using his lute to dispel magic, breaking the silence spells, as well as an illusion which reveals the ‘lord’ of the dale to be a pretender, The crowd is outraged and mayhem erupts. The ‘lord’ is hustled back inside the tower while the skymages rain fireballs into the crowd to quell the disturbance, Although the crowd is dispersed, the embers of discontent have been fanned into the flames of rebellion. Barada makes his way back to the village and plots with the group. On the ‘morrow…revolution!

Exploring the ledges near the edge of the vast cavern reveals some footprints that lead off into the darkness. A lit path seems to pass directly through the boulder field. Investigation reveals that the boulders behave as normal rocks _except_ for the part where they whiz about in space as though unaffected by gravity. Arrows and coins that are projected into the area behave as expected, falling into the vast chasm. There is a brief amount of head scratching and some calls to ‘sleep on the matter’, but in the end it is decided that hanging about on the ledges is probably not conducive to continued drawing of breath and the decision is made to cross the chasm.
Dalliance wishes a bridge into existence and the group readies itself for a brief transit that skirts the edge of one of the boulder fields.
Reza carries a length of rope and crosses first and it is only his potion of spider climbing that prevents him from being knocked into the chasm by the boulder that homes in on, and smashes into, him.
Worried glances amongst the group members. Perhaps it will be harder than hoped for. Secondary measures are readied and the march resumes.
Each party member save Barada is struck by one or more smallish stones and the rope saves most of them. Humbar must resort to his potion of Gaseous Form to avoid death – but eventually all are grouped on the opposite side.
A short hall leads to doors that bear a sigil they have seen before.
While Humbar solidifies, Barada and Dalliance share lore about the various wizards of which they know. Finally they decide they have sussed out the rune originator but he died over four centuries past.
Dalliances muses on the possibilities. One – a wizard’s tomb, full of nasty traps and the like, but stuffed with neat-o magic items that can be plundered. On the other hand, it could be the above, but with an undead occupant. Mayhap this is a lich’s lair? Hmm. Oh well, enough musing, time for action.
Opening the doors presents new mysteries. Booted, Sandal Shod and Clawed feet have all traversed the area within, coming from various points and leading to a common one. Choosing to investigate sandals first brings the group into a large bedroom suite and face to face with a pair of dusky-skinned humans in plate mail. Reza squints menacingly then springs into action. The guards react with a combination of flame blasts from wands and attacks from halberds. As the party streams into the area, black, rubbery tentacles spring out of the ground and starts crushing the life out of Lubbitch. While Reza makes short work of his opponent, Bud and Barada engage the more distant one with fist and arrow.
Dalliance is feeling safe in her Globe of Invulnerability, but a Feeblemind spell ends that train of thought..and delays the departure of any future trains. Luckily, Dalliance has been tongue-kissing goddesses lately and she uses one third of the silvery kiss to restore her intellect. She uses a wand of invisibility detection to reveal the presence of a shadowy woman clad in rich brocade. While Dalliance watches, the woman appears to step into the shadows and vanishes.
Reza suddenly finds himself confronted by a shadowy woman clad in rich brocade who seems to step out of the shadows. She seizes him and attempts to drain him of most of his vitality. Luckily for Reza – scarabs of protection are built for just these occasions and he is saved. As the lady steps back into shadow and reappears across the room, Reza pauses to grab his handy Mace of Disruption in the hope she is some sort of undead. His boots of springing bring him to her in an instant and as she turns, he smashes her with the MoD and destroys her. Moments later the second guard is dead as well. Lubbitch’s tentacles are slain and she is healed, While the party strips the cooling corpses and laments about the mace annihilating ‘all the good stuff’, the room is investigated while decisions are made about sleeping. A secret door is found, then opened, then investigated. A hallway leads to more decisions than can be dealt with in short order and the group settles down for a nap.
No visitors come to disturb their slumber and once refreshed they decide to press on,. Dallaince is alarmed to find that she can no longer retain as many spells as previous, probably due to the unraveling effect on the weave of magic. A highly motivated group moves quickly through the corridors and finds peepholes and more secret doors.
The first door reveals a ‘blinded’ beholder and the group moves to attack. Reza falls into a pit and is near death before it is discovered that the whole room is a trap and the beholder is illusionary. After Humbar restores Reza, the group decides to return to the secret passage. Eventually they come to a locked stone door.
They open it quickly and find themselves in the lich’s laboratory. A stunned undead stares at them. A mere moment’s hesitation is all, but that brief pause proves decisive. Reza thrusts forth the wand of illumination and flash-bangs the decaying wizard, them leaps across the room with his boots – landing on the mage’s workbench and smashing him with the MoD. No easy kill this time, but damage is still meted out, then another strike from Reza rocks him on his heels. Meanwhile, Lubbitch and Feaster are running to the fray. Dalliance and Barada assist and it is ON! The mage cast a mass hold spell, but the group is awash in rings of freedom and magical protections and only Bud Feaster falls victim. Reza thrusts the wand towards the mage and flashes him again, them smashes him again. The smash and flash maneuver renders his opponent in bad shape and Lubbitch and Barada help to make it worse. The mage turns invisible, but Dalliance is hep to that trick.
The wand doesn’t care if you can be seen, just if you are undead and the burst is fatal…the lich lies dead upon the stony floor.