Evidently, we healed up at the end of last game so the only issue was lack of spells.  Brisco said he was short, healing in particular, but since Dan missed the previous game, Clarissa had plenty of hers.  So, we convince Dave to continue on for a bit more.  We wanted to avoid the main library section since the alarm had been raised but luckily there were two stairs up yet to explore.  One went to somewhere we’d been before but one went to a room in a corner of level 2 we hadn’t gotten to.  In there was a strange looking torture machine.  It had a hunk of flesh in the middle and a gem at the top.  The gem looked like the soul storing gem we saw in the outhouse but since this one wasn’t glowing, we assumed it was empty.  Evidently the flesh was what was left after the procedure.  We spread out to search, examine, grab and guard.  The flesh split into two Flesh Worms and attacked.

We had them surrounded so we had flanking.  Did some damage.  However, when they went, it was the usual devastation.  TerStegan was hit, grabbed, sucked of blood which healed it and Drained 1.  (Drained gave minuses to Con stuff like Enfeeble did to STR.  Plus reduced your max hit points.)  Oakwood ran around the table to regain flanking and missed 3 times.  When he was attacked, it was the same as TerStegan except that first hit was a crit.  (on a 16 roll.  Ouch.)  When the first one fell, it exploded in a cloud of goo.  Those that saved took 15 and those that didn’t took 30.  Oakwood was knocked out, taking 80 hit points in one round.  We scrambled to save him.  Xeelie couldn’t reach him so used her Fast Healing focus spell.  Brisco sneaked in and did First Aid to stabilize him.  TerStegan attacked the last one but didn’t do enough.  Clarissa hesitated, fearing another explosion might take us out.  She was convinced some of us would survive and unloaded a full Force Barrage.  It died and exploded.  Luckily, Brian rolled lower on the damage and only Oakwood went out again.  He was saved again but there was a bunch of rules looking up to figure out the timing.  He was Wounded 3 in addition to Drained 1.

Obviously, we needed to heal up quick and then get home.  There was some debate as to where.  We didn’t want to open an unknown room nor did we want to stay in this gore dripping room.  So, we went down into the devil’s guard room.  Despite the alarm being raised on this level, we’d hoped the ghouls would avoid this room.  We got two or three 10 minute healing actions (Treat Wounds and Focus spells) without disturbance.  Brisco burned through the last of his spells.  We next debated how to get out fast.  That’s tough since this place is so big and we can only see some of the map at a time.  The fastest route was to the elevator but that meant going through the library so we didn’t do that.  Long story (not quite) short, we made it out without being attacked.  Oakwood managed to remember to avoid the Belcora Spirit room to Brian’s disappointment.  We went to our cabin the get a long rest.  The 3 with the Drained condition got undrained but they needed another night to get those hit points back.

We then spent a day around town.  Xeelie stayed at the cabin to transform the +1 war hammer into a +1 sickle for Brisco.  Brisco stayed with her, not liking town anyway.  The rest went into Otari to discover Oakwood’s dad had lost the election.  He went to his house and the family were understandably down.  He checked on his sister who was still ailing.  He made a Medicine roll and could find nothing physically wrong with her.  TerStegan went on a date with the new mayor’s daughter.  He tried a few Society rolls and it didn’t go well.  We had some laughs imagining what actually happened.  He also took the books he worked so hard to get to Morlibent.  He offered 2.5 gold for the lot.  We were disappointed.  TerStegan decided to just keep them.  Clarisa chose to avoid her mother since Brian said she had snuck out to come with us.  (That was so long ago.)  We sold some stuff including the Smoking Spear that Brisco doesn’t use anymore.  But it wasn’t enough to put anyone over the “magic armor threshold”.  We put in an order for the supplies Xeeile will need when we do have enough.  With that, we went back to the dungeon to search for more money.

We went back to that door we stopped at and found it innocently went to an area we had already been.  Next was probably the library but we desperately looked to some corner of level 3 that we could access instead.  We could not find anything however at Xeelie’s suggestion, we did re-examine level two.  Brian gave us 1 Survival roll to discover if there was any area of the map we’d missed.  Brisco made that and we returned to a long hallway that we had never actually walked down.  We found a secret room that lead into a big meeting room.  There were no monsters or haunts.  The only thing of interest was a nice (non-magical) chair at the head of the table.  Brisco thought there was “new magic” in the area and we wasted some time with that cursed Detect Magic spell.  He thought it might be up or down a level.  We went up, dropped off the chair at the cart, searched where we thought that might be and found nothing.  Back to the library.  We discussed and pick an entry point.  We found the door barricaded.  We could force our way in but it would be loud.  We decided to loop around to another door and it was barricaded as well.  TerStegan bashed through it and made a bunch of noise.  We stopped as the ghoul librarians began to attack.  We assume access to level 4 is in there somewhere.