The corridor ahead of us split into two paths, one to the east and one to the west.
I did not fail to notice that the 'ruined' school basement was brightly lit. The torches by the walls, while looking like normal torches, were in fact enchanted. Not so good for sneaking around.
Heading eastward first, there was little sign of trouble until I came upon an ochre jelly while scouting. I peered at it carefully from around the corner.
My eyebrows furrowed. Was that the only enemy? I kind of recalled there was another jelly as well. There was in fact another corridor just past the ochre jelly.
What I wanted to do was sneak past this slime and check that other corridor. I used to sneak right by slimes of all kinds in the game. In-person though, well, how does one actually sneak past something which has no eyes? It's not like I know which way it was looking.
Maybe I didn't need to know. Then what should I do instead?
After some thought, I sneaked out some provisions from my pack. Dried meats, pretty standard fair for rations. I crept to the corner, and flicked the piece of meat over. It plunked nearby the ochre jelly, a little aways from the corridor.
The ochre jelly slithered away from my position, towards the piece of ration I had hurled. As the jelly preoccupied itself with enveloping and dissolving the piece of dried meat, I crept forward silently and peeked around the corner.
True enough, another slime awaited down that corridor. Slimes in D&D were always hard to spot due to being translucent, and they relied on ambush tactics to hunt prey. If we had rushed to attack the ochre jelly, the mustard jelly would be lobbing toxic balls of slime down the corridor with frightful force (5d4+3, poisons and slows. Deadly for low-level party).
I crept away before the ochre jelly took notice of my passage.
Our fight plan wasn't too complicated. Khalid draws the ochre jelly forward, we kill it, and only then tackle the mustard jelly on its own. Khalid took a huge hit from the mustard jelly and was poisoned, but an antidote took care of the poison and he managed to engage it in melee right after. Once engaged, other than needing non-piercing enchanted melee weapons, destroying the mustard jelly was straightforward enough.
Once we had scattered the mustard jelly across the room, the remains of a dead adventurer was evident where it once, uh, slithered. Well, not so much the remains of the dead adventurer, as the body, bones and all, was completely dissolved by the mustard jelly. All that was left was the adventurer's equipment; a sword, splint mail, a gem, and a Potion of Mirrored Eyes. Yay for more anti-basilisk measures.
There were no further corridors beyond that point and no sign of tomes, so we head back to the entrance and took the corridor leading westward. We came upon a rotten body in the corner which had a Potion of Genius (ha!), a dagger +1.
I scouted further ahead, using a mirror on a stick to peer around corners as I went along. Most times, the mirror would show the coast was clear. This time, I saw a few wolves. Uh, very big wolves?
Seriously, since when to wolves get that big? These had to be Dire Wolves. They were sniffing the air, laying in wait. Apparently, they had caught our scent, and were ready to pounce as soon as they caught sight of us.
Well, no point letting them have the initiative. Khalid took point. He tossed a torch around the corner to approximately where the giant wolves were, then retreated back quickly.
There was a yelp, and scampering of feet towards us. Yep, that got their attention.
As they turned the corner, we focused our ranged fire on the first one while Jaheira casted a spell at the other. The first dire wolf moved forward to engaged Khalid, but I was waiting in the darkness to the side. Sweeping low, I swept the wolf's legs right out from under it. It fell over, and skidded right into Khalid's awaiting longsword.
The second Dire Wolf stopped just short of pouncing on me. Jaheira's spell, Charm Person or Mammal, had taken affect.
One minute! That was the duration of the spell, so we rushed forward with our new doggo leading the fight. There was a Potion of Strength on the ground which I picked up. Who should take it, Branwen? Imoen? Later, dire wolf charm running out! Onward!
The dire wolf ran ahead of us into a room, and we soon heard growling and snapping of teeth. What was it fighting? What was that skittering sound?
We turned a corner and lo and behold, it was engaged with four huge spiders! The room itself was filled spider webs, but not webbing nearly so large as to trap a human.
Funny thing about fighting spiders of most large varieties. Their teeth aren't particularly lethal. It's the venom that eventually kills you, especially if allowed to accumulate. Our new giant doggo friend had no problem surviving the bites long enough for us to kill the spiders. The venom from all the bites was another matter. Death was an inevitable.
The charmed Dire Wolf met its end in battle against another two Dire Wolves. It didn't last very long, but it bought us enough time to mount a defence and put them down.
Ulcaster had plenty of traps of the magic variety. Normally traps would involved a hidden crossbow or a fall. Here, triggering a trap here meant getting hit by a fireball. As Imoen worked to disarm them, the rest of us stood far, far back.
Mirror around the corner revealed more wolves in a larger room. Smaller, but decidedly unhealthy looking. Was that rot and exposed bones on its sides? So these were undead wolves?! Or is it still alive? Half-undead wolf? Whatever it was, I figured that had to be a Dread Wolf. Super creepy looking in person compared to its in-game avatar, I'll say that much. Four of them at that, two closer to the edge of the corner and two further off.
Well, divide and conquer, as they say. We took a defensive stance a bit further back, and threw a pebble across towards the room. Two dread wolves came by, sniffing. We backed off, and threw another pebble to lure them closer. By the third pebble, the wolves caught sight of us and attacked, but by then we were far away enough from the other dread wolves that our objective of fighting them a few at a time was achieved.
Attracting the attention of a few monsters at a time is so much easier in the game, let me tell you!
Checking with a mirror revealed one last wolf around a corner. I examined the wolf in question through the mirror. It was jet black without a hint of color, except for its eyes which glowed bright orange. Seriously, the eyes were literarily glowing!
Could that be what I thought it was? A VAMPIRE WOLF? Ack, I forgot this dungeon was so wolf/undead wolf-themed. Why on earth was Ulcaster's dungeon, uh, former school, filled with wolves? Was that their main magical research, the art of making undead wolves? Did the developer just look at this dungeon and think to himself, yeah, the theme of this dungeon is wolves, and not think too hard about it?
Vampire wolves are a significant threat to low-level, unequipped parties. Like the mustard jellies, magical weapons were required to even harm it. Its bite paralyses, like a ghoul, and it has pretty impressive martial stats. Its attack also heals itself, just to be extra annoying. Thankfully, it was not particularly durable and unlike ghasts, vampiric wolves only has 1APR. So another Protection from Evil was adequate to protect Khalid while the whole party slashed and battered at the ferocious thing. A backstab from behind helped us put it down before it could paralyse anyone.
The vampiric Wolf was guarding pile of bodies, which had much loot and indeed a tome. A dusty history book, which we examined.
"It's a book chronicling the struggles between the goddesses Selune and Shar," I said.
A pity I didn't have Rasaad or Viconia in my party to comment on the contents of the book. Or Shadowheart, for that matter. "Not exactly easy reading, but I think it's harmless enough."
Satisfied that we were not helping the spirit to restart a school of demon summoning, binding or something dangerous to that effect, we headed back out of the dungeon to bring it to the spirit.
It was still night outside, and the spirit was still roaming around, aimless and mourning continuously.
I took the book from my pack and, tentatively, presented the tome to the spirit.
The spirit's eyes cleared of its melancholy, and it took the book from my hands gently. The ghost pulled the book into its breast, sobbing bitterly. The spirit grew more and more substantial, allowing us to see the very crease in its clothes.
When it looked up at me, at us, we could see it's face clearly. He was smiling.
"That's Ulcaster! We've been speaking to Ulcaster himself!" Neera gasped. "Turlang, my teacher, showed me a picture of him."
The spirit spoke thus, "…knowledge returns with the simple words on parchment… to teach once more… in a celestial class… I will prevent the same from happening… some day…"
The spirit bowed, book in hand, and stopped sat atop the ruined wall before the stairs leading below. It opened the book, and started to read.
Ulcaster's spirit would disappear at the break of dawn, gone without a trace while the sun was in the sky, covering the world in its warm rays.
When the sun set, Ulcaster's spirit would appear again, clutching a book, reading on top of the ruins of his former school. The same book, read over and over again.
He had been wandering aimlessly for the past 80 years through the ruins. Now, he waits patiently, reading.
What was he waiting for? Perhaps, for the day the school is rebuilt. When the halls are filled with students, keen on learning the secrets of the universe. When scholars gather to share their findings and donate precious tomes to the library, adding to the knowledge of the school's halls.
Perhaps he will wait forever.
Including the items we had found earlier, our loot from our trip to Ulcaster was:
A Dagger +1,
10 Acid Arrows, 10 Arrow of Ice, 3 Arrow of Piercing (+6 to hit, bonus piercing damage), 2 Arrow of Biting (poisons),
5 Potion of Healing, 1 Potion of Genius, 1 Potion of Hill Giant Strength, 1 Potion of Strength, 1 Potion of Absorption, 1 Oil of Fiery Burning, 1 Potion of Mirrored Eyes,
and an unidentified wand. (The dragon motif on the wand was rather suggestive though)