Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Giant dwarves and the story of Melair

Online again, due to COVID. We also had reduced numbers, with only Tari, Selene and myself present. Our kind DM gave us directions where to go to for easier encounters. Or did he?

Anyway, we found ourselves before a large pair of locked ornate double doors. The dwarven runes didn't tell us much, so I picked the lock and promptly fell into a pit of acid. I flew out and played the taxi service, but the vapors took a lot out of us, and the chamber behind turned out to be a dead end. At least it had plenty of loot, in the form of suits of armor and weapons. This stretched our bags to their limits, but we made due.

Next up, we walked through a series of chambers detailing the life of some dwarf called Melair. He started out humbly doing various professions and eventually got to be the king of Undermountain. Good for him. We found some artefacts from his life, totally mundane items protected by glass. Selene couldn't resist smashing some. At least he was detailing as being obsessed with mithral which he found in abundance in the Undermountain, so at least that's a good sign that there's loot ahead.

The floating lights shaping a behold were not quite a good sign, but moving on.

We found a marble plinth with a well sculpted cradle and baby dwarf. Of course we inspected it, and it turned out the baby sculpture was enchanted as it turned into a crystal crown. The cradle itself was a work of art, which we would have carried away had we just a bit more inventory space. Ah well, next time.

Finally, we found a couple of xorn chomping on metals, and several enlarged duergar sitting around. I tried talking to them, but I didn't know their password, so they attacked.

My first barlgura soaked up all the damage, and this is how the field looked like after Selene's fireball.

The second barlgura beat whatever was left to death, at which point I commanded it to run away. It got out of control after that, but did not manage to hurt us. Win-win.

We picked up mining tools to get some mithral veins out of the walls, at which the DM called an end to the session. We might have attracted something with all the noise...