Into The Darkness: The Lost Mine

Stevik played the flute at a funeral to bury the body of the creature that was slain in his cabin by Bendeg. As the last of the thing is covered by soil, Stevick tells everyone that they hear trumpets from near the burial holes but no matter how deep they dig to find the source, they can't uncover anything. Dimli asks if there is a cavern nearby, to which the buff elven man nods.

The party is taken to a pit within the forest that they had not been able to see from the road and see a gaping black hole that is the entrance. Zym watches the door as the rest go in before he decided that it would probably be best to have someone guarding the entrance in order to not be flanked. As the rest of the party enter, an elephant covered in entrails runs at them- it's Throom!

Bendeg is first to enter the dungeon, after telling Zym to 'shine my damn boots- and they better be spotless', only to find an empty room. Dimli hands Quinn a torch, in order for the elephant and human to see. Now it is fully visible that there are halfling skeletons, each of whom have died from various ways, scattered all about the room. Bendeg and Dimli are the first to enter the room to the right, noticing that the entire mine shaft smells heavily like iron. Inside, the party sees 6 chests lined together on a wall and then 6 keys on the other wall. Everyone takes a key, save Quinn and Mort, before putting it into a corresponding chest and turning them within the lock. However, the chests don't open until all the keys have been turned. After great amounts of hesitance, everyone turns all of the keys and the chests pop open! Bendeg sees a single marble in the 3 chests he views, before he takes the intuition marble. Quinn takes mystery, Morton takes energy, Throom takes cleanliness, Dimli takes the royalty marble for himself, and danger for Zym.

The party exits back into the main room and decides to go to the opposite room, the one on the left. There is a drop of water every 15 seconds and the room is empty except for a pedestal in the center with a beam of light and a chalice with liquid overflowing. Drops fall into the chalice from a stalagmite. Throom sniffed the liquid and it smelled sickly sweet, then holds his hand out towards it finding it to be abnormally cold. Mort and Quinn fill their water-skins, corking it right before Bendeg tastes the water and it turns black- the light also disappears.

The party returns once more to the center room, then they proceed forward. Throom smells wet fur just moments before a ball of mucus falls and blood rains from the ceiling. A bat creature lands nearby and Dimli pushes it back. Dimli is frightened of the bat but before it really had a chance to react, a crossbow bolt hits its face and it falls over dead. Throom's skin peels off and a direwolf explodes out of him as he tears the bat a new one at the same time. Bendeg ends up covered in acidic goop from the slime thing while Quinn backs off opting to observe rather than attack. Bendeg called a flame of dire down from the ceiling and Mort used poison spray to finish off their enemies.

Exhausted, everyone retreated back into the chest room for a long rest. Zym, who had heard the fighting, rejoins the party. He is the first to walk into the T-shaped room. though Dimli and Bendeg are close behind. There he finds 2 bulbous flesh sacs in the room, one on the left and one on the right. They had previously burst open with entrails left behind and gore coating the entirety of the rugged stone mine walls. Zym moves the entrails and finds a curved dagger with carvings. Without much thought, the soldier swipes the blade up off the floor and examines it closer but finds nothing of interest. As he turns it over in his hands, Zym feels the weight shifting to and fro as a liquid sloshes around inside of the handle. Then he proceeds to unceremoniously drop it, but Mort picks it right back up and stows it away. Throom checks the room opposite of the T-shaped room, which is covered in both dried and fresh blood, only to find a cocoon/flesh sac with a crushed fetus in the bottom. Throom, his ears flattened against his head, backs out of the room while the rest of the group traveled down the north section.

Zym and Dimli lead the way once again, which allows Zym to see an open chest with a pile of gold and 2 vials of bright red liquid. There is a layer of dust everywhere. Zym taps around the edges of the chest and it crumbles. He takes all the loot, which the majority of the party sees, consisting of 100 gold pieces and 2 health potions.

The entire party proceeds into the blood stained room that Throom had seen earlier. This time, Throom takes a closer look at the fetus only to discover a dead elephant baby with long teeth. It is speculated that Throom was in the sac and broke his way out, crushing the fetus and that is how he wound up covered in entrails. Mort also makes a mortifying discovery- he finds a halfling body of a person he knew. It is Yarrow, his mentor that showed him the path of the artificer, left rotting. Half of Yarrow's face is eaten and he’s missing an arm, where the exposed bones show clear signs of being gnawed on. His dusty knapsack was left behind with only a flute inside. Mort takes the flute and says, “I will burn this world to the ground to find out who did this to you.”

The party moves into the final room. We see a huge pile of gold with bones surrounding it in the far corner in between strands of spider webs that span from the floor to the ceiling. Dimli looks up and notice weight shift above the group from the top of the ceiling's webs. Mort tries to take Throom’s torch but Throom holds onto it. While they fight over the torch, Bendeg lights the web with his own torch. Throom’s torch splits in half, throwing pieces everywhere. The web quickly incinerates itself and galls apart. This causes a ginormous spider to fall on the party from the ceiling. Throom and Bendeg don't roll out of the way in time and get hit by the spider in full.

With its options limited, the spider woman picks Throom up and sinks its pincers into his throat. She tears out the leathery skin that was not thick enough to protect the poor Druid. He dies instantly, a stream of crimson exploding out of him. Two mutated halflings are also present, one has half of Yarrow’s face. Their body parts don’t look like they fit together well.

Almost immediately the fight is a struggle. With the party surrounded, many try to take out the spider legs or the halflings. Or peel off their own face and replace it with an elephant friends'. Luckily, the mutilated remaining members of the exploration crew from town go down without much fight. Unfortunately, the spider does not. It ends with Mort throwing his electricity marble for a great electrical explosion that not only stuns the spider queen, turning her into her human form, but also poor Quinn who was caught in the blast. He powered through, though. Zym, stuck in his head on the countless battlefields that he had participated and with his fallen comrades (including Throom), comes up behind the spider lady and begins repeatedly bringing his hammer down onto her head and doesn't stop even after she's long dead.

Mort makes an elephant noise after the death of the spider lady. The party sees an additional flesh sac behind the gold. Inside, they see a fetus and above it a floating Tabaxi. Dimli picks up the sac to throw it, but barely tosses it and it splatters on the ground, covering Dimli in entrails. The Tabaxi drops and crushes the fetu, landing on top of the gold. Quinn is pointing Monty and Mort has a spell readied and pointing toward the feline creature. Despite being covered in entrails, Dimli is entranced by the silk slippers and takes them. The Tabaxi speeds to Quinn and Mort, right as Dimli takes a bunch of items from the spider's hoard.. Quinn is intimidated by the speed and Mort is about to retaliate when Zym commands in a booming voice to stop and tells Bendeg to deal with Throom’s body. Zym takes charge before the Tabaxi asks who we are. We introduce ourselves and the cat introduces himself as Nebula. Bendeg is giving last rights to Throom and takes the marble of cleanliness.

Dimli is greedy as fuck and takes the silky slippers, decanter, and 30 gold. Everyone else in the party gets 54 gold. Zym takes the armor. Quinn takes the rapier, which he names Shiver.

The party then wraps Throom in a bed roll and drags the elephant body to the burying fields of this town. The town is watching us and the party hears their funeral dirge. Both Nebula and Bendeg light Throom's body on fire and the ash of the elephant briefly turn into a puff resembling the dark clouds we’ve encountered. Mort has a piercing headache and watches in his mind's eye as the cave painting they saw shifts... losing certain large grey creature.