The adventurers gather up in the side door labyrinth of Mithral Hall after decimating a brood of newborn spiderlings. Hops directs their attention to a sign marker clearly indicating that the path to the right is for the benefit of their elven brethren. Hops goes left.
At the next juncture, an intricate bas-relief of the Spine of the World mountain range adorns the walls. Embedded in the work are deific symbols for Faerûn’s pantheon. Hops locates a gem shape embedded in the mountain, symbol for Dumathoin. Ander observes Dumathoin is the only dwarven deity represented. Hops turns in the Dumathoin direction. Sqyylarr concurs.
Watc pauses when she detects smoke ahead. Hops advances to introduce himself to Snory Exhom, a dwarf simmering a cauldron of stew over a campfire. Snory has plenty of boar and root vegetable stew to greet all visitors with a hot meal, but is not informative regarding the closing of Mithral Hall or the whereabouts of Queen Waybeard. His specialty is stew, always has been. Hops, Briar, and Frank avail themselves of stew. A close examination of Snory reveals nothing sinister, fiendish, undead, holy-symbol-averse, or elsewise alarming.
Ander, Sqyylarr, Hops, and Frank fall unexpectedly and suddenly asleep. A huge slurping worm picks this opportune moment to round the corner with the intent of scooping Hops into its big, moist mouth. Barika intervenes with her great axe. Watc grabs Hops by the ankle, dragging him away from the worm. The jarring wakes Hops and he scrambles up to charge the worm. Watc gives Sqyylarr a kick in the midriff. She kips up, critically slinging a bullet at the worm. Watc wakes Ander and they foosh a couple of firebolts at same. Barika kills the worm.
Leaving Frank to sleep for some reason, the party bids farewell to Snory in a variety of languages, each to which he competently responds in kind. Briar lingers for a few final goodbyes while Hops, Barika, and Sqyylarr explore dead ends ahead. Hops finds a sign marker that indicates “end”.
Doubling back to a passage parallel, both physically and symbolically, to Snory’s, Briar finds a chest labeled in dwarven. Barika transliterates “skoff”. Briar takes a few steps back. Barika opens the box and removes one of several wrapped, dried meat sticks. Hops samples one. Tasty. Cold meat meal underground: good path. Hot stew meal underground from weirdo un-ironically named Snory: sleepy and worm-devoured. Got it.
Briar leads the party onward right into a couple of skeleton warriors. Hops whips out his holy symbol for the skeletons’ consideration. They are not impressed by the Three Ladies. Briar, paladin of an unrealized or undisclosed deity, whips out an egg, and the skeletons turn to flee.
Sqyylarr leads the party behind the skeleton fleeing north to a room with a lever. Hops finds a sign marker nearby which clearly depicts two choices, coincidentally the exact number of possible lever positions. Hops intuits the selection is something to do with two celebrations of Barronar Truesilver, winter or summer. Application of that knowledge to the lever is interrupted by the sound of two opposing spike walls rapidly converging momentarily through half of Briar’s vital organs. Ander, hearing the rumor of a lever, runs in. Watc directs him to perforated Briar’s location. The trap closes again on Ander and through the other half of Briar’s vital organs. Briar drops.
The unturned skeleton turns to fight. Sqyylarr’s maul crunches it in one hit.
Hops finds summer and winter indicators on the lever and moves it to the winter position. He heals Briar back to life and boosts Ander while detailing his solution to the summer / winter lever riddle. To demonstrate said solution, he drops the skeleton’s skeletal remains on the trap’s trigger plate. Nothing happens.
Ander’s turret catches up to the party. The party proceeds along to the next section of the labyrinth.