Ch-16

With the area cleared temporarily I had the Minotaur lift the gate while moved into the main hall where we decided to take a short rest as both rose and I had flame some light damage.

While we did that I had cast Flock of Familiar and had a a swarm of spiders began to scout the various rooms of the place allowing me to make a crude map of the keep.

Deep at the bottom of the keep is where I found the what was keeping this place so clean a swarm of 50 small golems all no bigger than a toddler stationed around the main ward stone.

(Besides the ward chamber a number of "sealed" chambers and small hidden vaults were found.)

To reach the room one would have to travel through multiple chambers of traps, complex puzzles, and what looked like a couple Bogarts.

But after some thought and calculations it seemed that the ward stone was directly below the main meeting hall, Probably a little over 30 feet below the main chamber so after getting Rose to step back and Dan began to cast Stone Shape and began to shift the stone into that of a tube that stretched to directly above the ward stone.

(This actually happened in the fucking campaign one of my fucking players who has been Playing Dan did this and completely bypassed HOURS of a dungeon with no consequences I was super impressed and super proud as a DM in that moment.)

Tying a rope to himself and giving the other end to the Minotaur Dan slowly lowered to the ward stone and began to analyze it in hopes of shifting its ownership to himself.

So while humming the mission impossible theme song he crawled all over the ward stone finding the various nexus points and deciphering the various codes and layered ruining arrays that doted it, till an hour passed of him dangling there he finally cracked it.

(This part was a mix of a puzzle and Arcane roll that gave more clues, basically my player had to translate a multiple layered "ritual" where the found the series of various components that would bind the stone to himself)

Having the Minotaur pull him up he wrote out the translated runes and phrases that he found till he had a rough idea of what he needed to do.

One he must complete a ritual of manhood, this varied over the years and the earliest was to kill some large beast in combat or to do the lifting stone challenge.

Two, what he killed must have it remains placed upon the ward stone allowing the ancestor to judge its worthiness.

And last he must bleed upon the stone and say a oath to always serve this house and put aside grudges and personal feelings to make sure it reached greatness.

While Dan began to pace as he tried to figure out how to get ahold of the creature or the implications of even attempting it with out the bloodline of the old house, Rose brought up a vary good point.

Rose-"Why don't you just blow it up, shouldn't that drop the wards de power any traps and golems on the property."

Dan blinked and thought for a moment, "Huh, that may work this ward stone predates any conventional explosives and is only protected against magical explosions."

It also just so happened that they were in wales one of the most active mining areas in Britain and also holds a lot of abandoned mines that probably hold some unused ordnance.

So Dan had his undead guard the position and he and Rose went to the nearest active mining facility, which was only like a 2 and half hour drive.

(Again my players did this, it is one of the downsides of running "modern" settings for dnd because they fully can just stop drive and get more gear and come back with heavy ordnance if they do it right.)

So they snuck into one of the facilities under Roses invisibility cloak and some extra spells, grabbed about 10 pounds of explosives.

With that they drove back to the estate and began to place the explosives around the edges of the stone, after about half an hour they had it read.

Then Dan And rose placed walls of force over the hole to hold in the explosion, then walked out of the main keep.

Dan-"Would you like to do the honors?" He said handing her the radio detonator.

Rose-"Gladly" and with a slight manic smile the girl pushed in the plunger and with a muted *Thud* the flow of magic shifted as the wards fell and with it every magic trap in the keep fell.

With that they headed back into the estate and looted the place books and gold, anything of worth was taken (that could fit in a bag of holding) most of it would have to be collected by some of the villagers and given to the village/town (Besides the gold and rare books) as we didn't need all of the furniture and paintings.

[Of what was collected most would eventually be placed in a museum in town as a future tourist destination]

August 20th, 1994

Back home I let Rose for the night while I headed for the Gaunt house to grab the Gaunt ring which holds one of the Souls of Voldemort.

It will be not problem to get as with it I had another soul to barges with if need be, as with remove curse spell and Intellect Fortress which gives me resistance to mental effects.

So in the middle of the night with some undead back up I entered the property of the Gaunts, the home if you could call it that was more of a shack.

Upon nearing it I under the effects of (See Magic) could practically see the hate and misery radiating off it. Not even wanting to enter the shack I summoned even more undead to swarm the shack tearing through it looking for the ring.

Eventually they brought the ring inside a small wooden box, then I started to her the whispering wanting me to place it upon my finger. Shrugging it off I removed the various curses placed on the ring and with the soul still attached I placed it in my "Secret Chest" for future use.

With that done I desummoned my undead and teleported back to the village where I had placed a teleportation circle.