May 23, 2021 - Exploring Old Owl Well

We met up with Sildar in the morning and talked about the goings-on in the area. He mentioned the Dragon, which has been getting closer to Phandalin. He offered us 300 gold to take care of the threat and an additional 300 to take care of all of the current problems in Phandalin.

Jax went up to the Bar Maids room for some reason; probably to play Dragon Chess with her. She attacked him, but he jumped through the window and fled. When we went up to confront her, she was nowhere to be found. We found some footprints heading towards the Triboar Trail, but they only went so far before disappearing. We questioned the Barkeep and he said that she had worked for him for years and that it was very out of character for her. He said she has been very quiet lately, which is uncharacteristic of her.

We headed east to investigate the rumors of undead and Orcs. On the way we encountered a large group of undead Humans and Ogres. They may look scary, but don't put up much of a fight, except the exploding ones, which were quite the messy surprise.

A short while later we arrived at Old Owl Well, a ruined watchtower with a well in the courtyard. It was there we discovered Harmun Kost, a Necromancer who was using the undead as servants to excavate the place in search of who knows what. The undead we encountered earlier were his doing, but he claims they weren't intentional and he simply lost control of them.

While we were there his servants uncovered an opening near the top of the tower. Harmun said if we explored inside we could keep any non-magical loot we found. We agreed and descended into the tunnel which led to some sort of crypt-like dungeon. We were immediately trapped in the dungeon by some type of magical barrier, so we needed to find a way disable it. The place was filled with lots of sarcophagi, urns full of black goo, and large cylindrical containers that seemed to be hollow, but we couldn't figure out how to open them.

During our explorations we encountered several shadow-like creatures, but they didn't put up much of a fight. We also discovered a demon who had been trapped in a force field for over 100 years. He offered us a Belt of Dwarvenkind and a Tome of Understanding if we freed him, but some members of the group thought it would be unwise to make a deal with a demon.

After exploring some more we found a strange orb floating above a pedestal. Removing it from the pedestal disabled the magic powering the place, disabling the barrier that trapped us in and the ones trapping the demon, who left us with nothing but a copper piece.

We discovered a couple of partially flooded rooms, one containing Gelatinous Cubes, which we made quick work of, and the other containing another disabled magical barrier that trapped a Mind Flayer, but it was deceased.

We returned to Harmun, gave him the orb, and then called it a night.

 LOOT 


 * Reward from Harmun for the orb: 83gp each

 EXPERIENCE 


 * Zombies: 1000xp each
 * Shadows 1: 67xp each
 * Shadows 2: 100xp each
 * Gelatenous Cube: 150xp each


 * TOTAL: 1317xp Each