The refreshed and improved [level 7] party departs Dordo’s secret hall and enters Mithral Hall proper at the end of a hallway. The concealed door’s dwarven workmanship is so impressive that Sqyylarr can’t even recognize where she just came through.
Unconcealed doors to the left and right open to a gurgling well and larder, respectively. Briar replenishes his waterskin from the well.
Two eyeless, black hounds with tentacle manes charge around the corner. Barika’s great axe takes out one houndacle just as a third shows up. Watc firebolts the second dead, Sqyylarr’s maul gets the third.
Ander upgrades his turret for a longer stride and it keeps pace along the ceiling. Watc finds a dead dwarf in a washroom. Briar convinces Watc the dead dwarf is missing a few of his most important organs, apparently eaten by the houndacles, and is beyond repair. The body shows signs of acid damage as well. Watc tries unsuccessfully to ID the dwarf by his runic cube. More slain dwarves lie scattered ahead in a grid of hallways to the north.
Briar presses bravely forward. An eyeless, black thing with segmented carapace drops on Briar from the ceiling. Shrugging off some otherwise excellent swings from Ander and Barika, the critter takes a couple of swipes at Briar and Sqyylarr and scampers off into the darkness entirely unscathed.
With guidance from Briar, Watc attempts to circle around and contain the critter in the hallway between them, lighting it up with a few can’t-miss magic missiles. Ander scorches it with a few rays and Barika debuts her ice breath weapon on it. Barika gets a vicious double clawing for that ice breath, and the critter escapes again, though not before Barika gets an opportunity to nick it with her axe. The critter gets the last pro quo as the slashed wound sprays her with acid. Watc finishes it with follow up magic missiles.
A discussion of how much everyone hates this latest enemy is interrupted by a second one leaping from a dark corner. It grapples Briar with a hideous claw. Ander shrinks the critter and it lets go of Briar with it’s tiny, hideous claw. It tries to run and hide, but Ander’s scorching ray slays it.
Ander spends an hour harvesting the very durable carapaces for some later artificing. Injured Briar takes a wee sip of the local well water and feels quite a bit better. He keeps drinking it until he feels completely better and invites the others to fill up on this excellent revitalizing water. Amazing as it is, the well cannot swing an axe or charmingly deride one’s lack of dwarven sense and therefore could never replace Hops who has stayed back to tend to Dordo.
The party returns to the hallway complex and follows the three parallel stairways west up to a well-lit grand hall. Watc and Sqyylarr are pinned by a slung acid web as four eyeless, black, segmented arachnoid critters drop around them from the high ceiling. Sqyylarr breaks free because she is freakishly strong. Watc misty steps out because she is not freakishly strong. The arachnoids can tail-spear Briar from several feet away, and they do so. Briar is surrounded by three arachnoids and dodges just to stay alive. Sqyylarr holds off the fourth. Barika, who has been fairly chill all day, gets enraged. Watc fireballs the lot of them and drops the one that Sqyylarr and Ander have already softened up. The party picks off another arachnoid as Briar clings to his deity-infused life. The last two arachnoids, very tired from a long day, attempt to flee. Barika slays one but the other escapes.