We had two games in quick succession, so we got through the Tomb of Moving Stones.
The party returns to Red Larch by nightfall. Maendir, Thoril, Freyja and the hippogriff camp southwest of town, while the rest of the party enjoy the comforts of civilization. In the morning, they sell off some feathered cloaks before hearing alarmed shouts -- a sinkhole opens up between some houses and swallows up some playing children. A woman runs out of a nearby house and is also swallowed up.
Naturally, the party investigates, along with assorted townspeople. Thoril anchors a rope around Su'uvarax and climbs down into the hole. He finds the children and mother more or less unharmed on a big pile of dirt in a large cavern. A passage leads north and there's a door to the west. Zook climbs down to investigate. Up top, various bossy townsfolk work on crowd control, and try to shoo everyone away. The party overhears whispers about not letting outsider see anything. Constable Harburk shows up and is buttonholed by the town leaders. After, he joins the party and confides to Su'uvarax that they didn't want him investigating, but he wants to know if anything is going to come out of the hole that would cause trouble.
Once the constable walks off, Su'uvarax "loses his footing" and "falls" into the hole. The rest of the top-side party members quickly follow suit, and get to the business of exploring. The door leads to a sloping corridor. Along the walls, the party finds two bas-relief carvings facing each other; gaps around the carvings suggest doors. They try the south door first; most of the party waits at the intersection while Su'uvarax, Thoril and Zook head south. They find an unused privy. Next they try the north door, which opens on a long corridor that eventually turns east. Freyja and Liliandra hold the intersection and the rest of the party spreads along the hallway to keep the line of contact. Su'uvarax and Thoril find a square chamber with 3 mostly skeletal corpses. The skulls are inscribed with a symbol; Thoril collects a skull for reference.
I thought I would finally get to use the cage traps as the party considered going back to the intersection and proceeding west, but no. Su'uvarax checks the north opening and finds the next room, with the floating rock. The party gathers in the new room and plays with the rock. Eventually they discover that an area of the room had a levitation effect.
Continuing south, they find a large room with a broken statue of a dwarf. Through the west door to complete the circle; this room has a half-orc who protests their presence, and a boy held under a pile of rocks. Some of the party members uncover him and give him water; the boy says his name is Braelen and confesses to being punished for failing to deliver a message. He seems to accept his punishment as appropriate. Meanwhile, the half-orc continues to insist that the party leave. When Su'uvarax goes back to the eastern room, the half-orc attacks him. And then 4 bandits appear in the room (having taken the north loop) and battle is joined.
Liliandra uses Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the half-orc, so he survives, but the bandits do not. Back in the room to the west, Braelen hasn't bothered to stick around.
The party continues eastward and finds a short passage guarded by an old, unarmed man. He promptly collapses and begs them not to hurt him, and also not to disturb the Delvers. They're the ones to excavated these rooms, and they communicate through the stones. He doesn't know anything about the bandits, but there is a priest. Su'uvarax ventures into the next room, promising to be respectful.
This room is very large with a half-dozen stones or stone structures scattered around. Along the walls are six old, dessicated corpses. Near the center of the room is a lit lantern. There's a boom! and Su'uvarax falls over. (Larrakh the priest casts Shatter.)
The party rushes in and fans out in search of Su'uvarax, who is near the back wall. There's some chanting (Larrakh tries to Slow the party but it doesn't take except for Truth, who shakes it off) and Freyja is able to pinpoint a source. As she closes, she hears more sounds in the corner, like a door. But when she gets to the corner, it's just solid rock. Meanwhile, party members converge on Su'uvarax and restore him to consciousness. The whole party searches for a hidden door, and it takes a while before they find it. There's a passage which looks like it recently had a partial cave-in, so they have to move carefully past it. They emerge in the yard of Waelvur's Wagonworks. Thoril finds tracks heading north, but they merge into general town traffic. The wagon workers didn't see anything, so the party goes back underground.
They go back along the whole set of rooms without finding any more secret doors, and return to the cavern that was opened by the sinkhole. That leaves the passage heading north, which ends at an opening in the quarry. Freyja has to go deal with her hippogriff, which is NOT pleased about being left tied up. The party figures they'll pretend to leave town and arrange a meeting with the constable. However, he finds them first. He wants to go check out the tunnels himself. Freyja agrees to keep watch on the various entrances from the air, which makes the hippogriff happy.
Constable Harburk recognizes the bandits; they were staying at the boarding house. He also knows Grund the half-orc and Braelen the bad messenger and old Baragustas the cowardly doorkeeper. He doesn't know anything about the Delvers. The party helps him recover all the corpses, which are collected in a cart by the sinkhole. Freyja reports that some people went into the tunnel at the wagonworks; the party didn't run into them.
The next step is to interrogate Grund, Braelen and Baragustus. Truth and Thoril accompany the trustee who's retrieving Grund. He's at the town marketplace, tending his pickles. He becomes agitated when approached. Thoril buys some pickles and everyone has a snack, which calms him down. They ask about the Delvers and Grund rattles off a bunch of names, which Truth notes. He agrees to go talk to Harburk.
So now I have to study up on the town and figure out what happens next. Since Larrakh escaped, Harburk can send the party to retrieve him while he deals with events in town. After that, it's the hell hounds, which would be more fun in town than in the wilderness. And then we'll have to see. It looks like we won't be playing again until after the holidays, possibly a full day game on New Years.
