Session 41

The party decides to almost immediately head out for the Shrieking Pits without any sort of preparation. Dain leaves the uncharged wand with Chandira, who says she will charge a small fee (100 GP) to recharge it. It's a Wand of Secrets. They set out to find the cave pictured in Mara's vision.

Upon arriving in the general area Mara described, the party isn't able to find the cave, so Icarus flies around for a while looking for the cave and manages to find it, then using his Bow of Sunlight as a signal flare to bring the other players to his location. Once they arrive, they proceed inside and find a long dark tunnel that opens up into a cave area with a soft green glow emanating from near some of the many stalagmites. They look around for a bit, noticing a set of stairs that descend into a lower area in the cavern where there is a dark stream separating another section of the cave.

As they explore the plateau, the party finds a large number of Human corpses and skeletons, seemingly a dumping ground. They move closer to investigate and are attacked by a Zombie Brute and several zombies who rise from the corpses of the deceased Humans. After a long, moderate difficulty battle, they continue on across a bridge going over the stream in the lower region of the cavern, where they find a smooth section of wall with a large gaping skull adorning it, seemingly screaming. The party notices what seems to be a keyhole on the wall in the mouth of the cavern and uses the key made from the mold they took from Belegor's office to open it.

Inside, the party begins to explore the straight, featureless hallways that make up the Shrieking Pits, and find a number of things. They locate what seem to be prison cells with a moderate number of Humans inside, including one Elven girl… Myriani Faremel. They rescue and feed the prisoners. They also find what seems to be the sleeping quarters and overhear a conversation about the recent attack on Wolfwater. They also find the vault where they overhear a couple guards discussing what they think is inside the vault, discussing a strange knife that "Aubron" stashes in there every night. One man attempts to open the vault to steal the knife, but dies mysteriously (Icarus turned and ran when he heard the man was going to attempt to open it). They checked back after rescuing the Humans to see that there is a large stone wheel with strange symbols on it on the door to the "vault", a lever, where the withered corpse of the man who attempted to open it now lay, and some recessed square areas in the stone.