Aura and I discussed our brilliant plan to shoot the book with an arrow with a rope attached, and pull the rope with gloves on, so we weren’t actually touching the book or anything attached to the book. Pulling the book on the rope worked, but the arrow loosened when I gently pulled it to the stairs. As we started, Knutella and five new adventurers from our group wandered in. Aura kept shooting it, I kept pulling the rope. We couldn’t get it up the stairs. We needed a ramp. Roderick suggested shoveling dirt on the stairs to make a ramp. We shot two arrows in, pulled with the rope. At the top of the stairs, We tugged the book onto my cloak, tied an end of the rope to the cloak, and pulled the book back to town on the cloak. It was unstable and took forever, and on the way, three giant toads appeared. We sidled around them, adding to our time.
After dark, we were attacked by three undead things with one big claw on each hand, they were speaking gibberish about souls, and headed for the book. Aura and three of the new guys tried to pick up the cloak and run with the book, but the two on the back of the cloak tripped and dropped the book. The ghasts picked up the book, ignored all of us, and headed into the dark, saying something about “our souls now.” Damn it! We did everything right, and we were so close to freeing our friends from the book. With some grumbling from the new guys who didn’t know how easily undead could kill us, we opted to head to town empty handed. On the way, three skeletons jumped us, killing the two new guys that dropped the book. That’s rather more punishment than they deserved. The rest of us ran.
I bought a new cloak in the morning. Roderick took over caring for Alandor’s griffin egg. We checked to see if the ghasts put the book back in the barrow (D11). They did not. So our chance to rescue our friends by getting Mazzah to free them is lost. We went to the barrow with the secret passage (D10) because it’s easier than people dying falling down ropes. Someone had filled in the hole to the door mechanism the group had made earlier to try to open the door from this side, which was weird. How are other groups getting out? Roderick was clearing out the hole for me to work on the mechanism when we heard zombie moaning coming towards us. Knutella, with an assist from Roderick, killed the zombie. I needed something to twist the gear with, so I had Aura cut off a zombie limb to use the bone. While there, she found the zombie had a great ax on its back.
I rigged the door, but there was a hissing noise and an unseen trap set off. Somebody rigged a trap with jellied oil before blocking it back up. I don’t know who would do something like that. The bone snapped when I tried to turn it, and the door shut.