Starting at the temple, staring at the tower full of bandits. Scouting the base of the tower - heavily locked door (chained on outside). All come up - scouts go inside via the roof. going to open the door, Diren sets off a rockfall trap but dives out of the way. Everyone joins up, henchmen stay outside.

Exploring - people had been living here, but nothing small or portable remains. Even some of the heavy furniture has been taken. No sign of a basement trapdoor. It's empty.

We head to the temple - people have been dragging stuff through - to the west staircase. We discuss the possibility of parley then head down. Spit follows the track of the furniture, while Diren keeps an eye out for traps.

We follow the tracks to the large room on the west side of the dungeon. We plan, get Jason & the henchmen and have some of the crew sneak around the side to help flank. Pire steps out in view of the barricade - Who goes there? Servant of St Cuthbert (lights his gauntlet).

Talk to the boss, Ragnar - "You're not St Cuthbert." "Your men are fools!" He says he's the leader of this company of mercenaries. They haven't had much trouble of incursions. Pire says we'll be stirring up trouble which will assault them - and reinforcements will be coming for the temple to. Pire yells and also tries to be reasonable. He overplays his hand by talking about monsters with tentacles flinging magic. But he also tells them we don't want to fight their zombies when they become undead. And we intend to defeat the demons deep underneath which will cause the dungeons to collapse.

They don't buy it. But they'll take it under advisement. We know there are 20 of them, and they don't have a priest. (They speculate on getting a priest - "Don't bring a druid in here!")

Spit steps up, "Fine, stay out of our way." They agree to. As we leave, "Good luck to you."

We head around to check for a secret door into a central section - find nothing. We proceed through another secret door to broad hallways we've been in. To the south we find stairs down. To north we find curtains blocking large central room - earth floor, pyramid in center.

Diren steps in first and four large earth elementals burst from the ground. He backpedals and after a couple of brief circling patrols they sink back into the ground. We form lines and Theldin steps in to summon them back. A volley of missile fire and an enlarged Gnarsh inflict a lot of damage, but don't kill the closest.

It's a slog as they resist most of the damage we can inflict. Fortunately they only attack if we draw their attention with attacks. We opt to avoid meddling with the box to avoid possibly drawing the wrath of all of them.

An enlarged Gnarsh is a vital contributor to actually damaging them. But as we charge to attack the last one, it swings two mighty fists and caves in Gnarsh's skull (hit, then crit to major negatives). We finish it soon after, but Gnarsh is well dead.

We discuss what to do with the body - a Gentle Repose should preserve him til we get back to Hommlet, where he can be buried at the church of St Cuthbert or at our house.

We take stock of our situation, and the dog is rolling in something smelly - Gnarsh. Diren checks out the bronze box - it contains a maul, a bowl, a knife, a ewer. They detect as evil. We also notice a magic thing under where each elemental appeared. After discussing how to dig them up, we move on to the southern doors.

One door is to a robing room - with some valuable items and a scroll of tongues. The other holds heaps of stone and dirt as well as a dozen kegs of fuel oil. As we move them, we notice a note on the back of door - telling Romag to pay fealty to the water temple or face the consequences. Several bad scribbles have been added to it.

We rent some picks from the brigands and spend an hour digging up a spot under where an elemental appeared. In a sack, we find 800 gp and a flask - a potion of reduce person. Another three hours we dig out coins, gems, magic weapons and armor.

We carry Gnarsh's body and the box of evil implements up to the wagon. We tell Jason Axeman and the others not to open the box. And then we return the picks and plan on heading into the second level of the dungeon.