Buckin' the Mud

The four Grue were efficiently sliced to bits by Grunt Jr. A few jabs, from the rest of the party, but Grunt stood tall in the crowded corridor.

Next, the group proceeded on and found an intersection in the packed earth corridor leading off in 4 directions: two to the left and two to the right. Each path had stones packed into the dirt of various colour groupings; red, blue, white and brown. Careful examination by Lucky Luke revealed that they were relatively inexpensive rough gem stones. Who knows how much they'd be worth cut, but uncut, they looked to be a GP a piece for a few dozen stones, scattered along each path. Luke was about to start attemting to pry them out of the ground when he deftly recalled the warning at the entrance to the Barrow and withdrew his dagger. "Take nothing but that which is offered..." whispered through his mind.

A brief discussion and the crowd headed off down the corridor marked with red stones and arrived at a circular chamber 60 feet in diameter with a 20 foot domed ceiling of the same packed earth. A fire burnt in the centre of the room atop some sort of squared off rocks. The dirt was warm there. Savario and Grunt led the way, advancing towards a coffin, those rocks they'd seen from afar, located at the centre of the room. The rest of the party hung back at the entrance. Ten feet in and a wall of flame burst from the ground singeing Grunt and Savario, not quite fast enough to tumble away from the scorching flames. The flames spread into a wall surrounding the chamber, ten feet from the walls, floor to ceiling.

Grunt and Savario advanced, as the rest of the party threw themselves through the wall of flames. As they approached the centre of the room they could see objects moving within the flames and some sort of objects atop the coffin. Advancing further another wall of flame leapt up scorching the crew and then a Fire Elemental attacked, the flames atop the coffin were alive!

Those Flames Ain't Flames!

The adventurers made quick work of the Elemental and recovered a fine sword and deerskin gloves. They returned to the fork in the paths and chose the white stones path.

The next chamber was much like the last, a packed earth chamber of similar dimensions, but this time the floor dropped away just past the edge of the entrance, falling sixty feet to the rocks below. Lucky Luke and Merrick scaled down the walls and crossed to a central pillar where Luke took a few tries before he managed to scramble back up the sixty foot tower. Meanwhile, Savario arranged to have Grunt fire a bolt with a rope attached from Grunt's heavy crossbow. The shot was a bit miraculous and pieced the stone coffin atop the pillar. Savario deftly walked across the rope after a few false starts getting Grunt to focus enough to anchor the near end of the line. Savario, Merrick and Luke arrived at the top of the central pillar at nearly the same breath as the coffin slowly dragged towards the edge. (Savario was lucky to weigh in at a mere 40 pints. Err, pounds?) Grunt made further good use of his bubble pipe.

As the crew stood up and dusted off, where applicable, a being of solidified air dropped from the ceiling. "Air Elemental" hollered Sellwyn, and everyone drew their weapons...