Temple of Death, Part Nine

Cell, a Bit
With eight guys making their sneak rolls (yeah right, fortunately the castle was not heavily populated), they crept around, through a large room without touching anything despite the tempting items on an altar and two Displacer Beast guards ready to react, and onto the first set of cells. Hey, look, there's someone in them! Two problems, not Elven, not female. The heroes free him anyway, and thus they are joined by Narellus, 7th level fighter.

The next room along was just too tempting to ignore, what with the large coffin and all. The party entered, are attacked by another Confusion spell, and some weird guy, but nothing stops Habenath from ripping the head off the old guy in the coffin (the man has priorities!). The weird guy fights on, starting as a mouse... then a man.... then a mouse... then a man.... then a dead!, and his soul is unable to transfer back to his original body (dead old guy) and so is sent back to the magic jar it originally came from. Despite a quick search, no magic jar was found, so the party proceeded.

Cell, a Lot
The next stop was a huge mass of cells, right under the castle. Unfortunately, the way was barred by a Diviner guard and two bugbears, and his cunning ability to switch the lights out. Fortunately, the party (but mainly Habenath and his dark-defeating infravision) had a Wand of Cold. Funny how these things balance out.

Inside the cells were two thieves that Narellus had encountered before, and one Elven princess by the name of Marialena. (Woo! Tick number two!) The party bravely prods the two thieves to run down into the dungeon area before them, then proceed at a more leisurely distance. (The logic being that the thieves would be killed first... or that they'd tip off the next section, whatever works.)

Next up, as it happened, was a torture chamber, with two guys (a guard and an Inquisitor) standing around, chewing the fat. While the Inquisitor became permanently less inquisitive, the guard held up the party surprisingly well (although it didn't help that Morf couldn't hit for squat, and got hit for more than squat). Employing a cunning 'slowly fallback move' (so cunning was it, that the party didn't even know he was doing it), the guard pulled back to a large cave. A large cave with twelve goblins, eight orcs, five bugbears and a Hill Giant! (Oh, my!)