Metadata

Date: 2-9-2026 Session Number: 10 Campaign Name: Bear Witness Players:

• Cordon Withrope, Magic User 2played by me
• Kaspar, Magic User 1 played by Nobody
• Luther, Fighter 2 played by Conspite
• Pig Nose the Barker, Fighter 1 played by Oldhawkeyes
• Roland LaGrande, Fighter 1 played by Cellar Gelatin

Contents

We pick back up camped near the waterfall, safely outside the range of the ire of the elongated skeletons. Sometime during the night, Luther, who was on watch at the time, encountered the dark elves, who were apparently watching our camp while we were asleep.

He invites them to our camp and they waste no time asking about the monks who we slew by proxy last session. We explain the "truth" and they seem largely unconcerned with the details, so our skullduggery goes unchecked.

Pretty quickly, they ask us for a favor; they'll show us to the second level if we remove a ward that keeps them from entering into a specific area. Having no reason to distrust them beyond their names, we agree and set out into the Barrow together, our party of 8 supplemented by their party of 8.

We travel into the barrow and enter a large sloped room which heads east/west; a few elves post up on either side guarding the entrances while 1 elf searches for a hidden door on the northern side. We follow suit, a few milling about the secret door while the rest guard the other passages into the room.

Finally, the elf slides open the secret door. Unfortunately, behind the secret door are 3 Dwarven Ghouls! Before anyone can blink, Pig Nose the Barber rushes forward and hucks a battleaxe at one, killing it instantly. The 2 remaining ghouls turn and flee from the party as we pursue.

As they flee, they draw a sigil on the ground that Cordon can read (thanks Quantum Languages!) that basically serves to ward off Dark Elves. Pig Nose is no dark elf, though, and trudges over the sigil, muddying it and dismantling it enough that it's rendered broken.

While the pursuit rages on, the economically minded Kaspar searches the corpse of the dead dwarves and recovers a wand of peculiar make; it has strange glyphs all along its length and is oddly shaped. Kaspar also collects a crossbow from the corpse of this ghoul, who looks to be one of the leaders of the Dwarven Ghouls.

The Ghouls themselves are a pale blue and seem to glow like a phosphorescent tshirt in the dim light of the dungeon. (they are probably radioactive).

The Dark Elf entourage notices that Kaspar has taken the wand but seem content to let him have it. One of their number does remark, upon seeing a large ornate door, that the door wasn't there when they were here 50 years ago. They seem cagey about this fact when Cordon presses them on it.

We use a key that Luther had (all the way from the first couple sessions!) to enter into the room. Like that first session, we immediately run into 3 furbys past the door! They're surprised, so Cordon leaps into the room and uses a scroll of Color Spray to mitigate the threat.

The room is ornate, with statues of Dwarves and elaborate chalk sigils along the walls and floors that ward away dark elves. An overturned flagstone reveals a set of steps that lead to floor 2. In a fit of anti-racist praxis, Pig Nose wipes away the sigils and a deep laughter rings out from beneath.

It is at this point that we realize the dark elves have left us.

The second floor leads us to a room that is secret-door coded, so we search and discover one, but it's stuck! In our failed efforts to get it open, we draw the attention of a horde of rats which speak common! We flee back up the stairs to floor 1. Yikes!!

Takeaways/Threads to Look Into

• The Ghoul Dwarves
  • Man, we're not the good guys, huh? These guys really don't want the Dark Elves in there.
  • What kind of magic does their sigil power work on? Can it be taught?
    • What happens if they figure out how to make sigils for human intruders?
• The Dark Elves
  • These guys are evil, huh?
  • They've also got scouts everywhere (that's how they saw us lead the monks to their death) so it would be unwise to try and obscure too much from them.
  • Their motivations are still pretty unknown, but they're loooking for Khuaja, a demon that is supposed to be on the lower level of the dungeon.
    • How will we reconcile the Dark Elves with our allies in the Church of Ethiel?