Jorn

"Thank you, gods of the mountain, for blessing us with these stairs."

Unlike the entrance to the dungeon which was just a steep incline, the way down to the second floor had stairs that seemed to have been hewn into the stone. Unfortunately, the dungeon was still not going to let them have an easy time of it, and the stairs were coated in a very slimy moss. Still, the descent was much more pleasant and they found themselves in the first room of the second floor in no time at all.

Looking around it looked much like the room upstairs but with a much wider variety of fungus species.

"Jorn, come take a look at this."

"What am I supposed to be looking at Liam? You don’t need to be a dwarf to see that this is a wall,"

"Yeah, it's a wall but look. The plants are less populous over here and the wall is too smooth to be natural."

Now that the druid pointed it out, Jorn could see a rough circle of wall that was not covered with moss as thickly as the rest of the room.

"It might be a quick escape from the last room, you know the type with the lever on the other side of the wall. That or a discarded dungeon expansion. What is your take on the mushrooms and mosses?"

"If I had to guess Jorn, I'd say it’s a sort of breeding den for plants here. The dungeon wants more varieties of cave dwelling plants and cross breeding them like this is one way to do it. A lot of the fungus has a higher mana potency that it would in nature, but not so high that it is a probable to be a plant monster."

The second floor was much more reasonable than the first. Instead of a labyrinth of empty paths it was much more straightforward, consisting of 6 rooms and hallways connecting them. Each room was filled with traps and more plant life, and in the fourth room the dwarf even managed to spy a small vein of iron ore. The party recorded each of the new-to-this-dungeon uninspired traps as they arose. They managed to collect a few coppers and a couple more bats corpses from the medley of dungeon creatures scattered through the rooms. The only thing that even came close to injuring the group was a spider the size of Jorn’s head that had a mushroom growing from its back. When they dispatched it, the fungus spread a stunning spore in the room which Jorn pushed away from the party with a gust spell.

Once again Jorn lamented on how average the dungeon itself seemed to be, until he got to the fifth room.

As the party entered the room they could feel something was wrong, a sort of electricity in the air. The luminescent moss that had provided a guiding light throughout the dungeon so far was glowing far less brightly in this cavernous room. Jorn and Pak began casting their magelight spells, warry of a new trap hidden in the dim lighting. As their mana fueled lights burst into being there was a screech.

"Invaders!" The voice was raspy, like someone unpracticed in the language they were speaking. As the magelight rose higher into the room, Jorn got his first glimpse of the offended party. On the opposite side of the cavern were 7 enraged creatures. They walked on two legs and seemed to be armed only with wicked looking talons and rows of teeth, which were bared at the party. Jorn had never seen anything like them. They had any number of eyes ranging from one to four, some with scales and other with fur, and all were a disgusting flem color. The new creatures were gnashing their teeth and then one of them shouted out again.

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"Food! Fight!" With that, all seven of them charged the party.

"Fucking nightmare fuel."

The fight was brief but brutal.

Pak played his minor illusion cantrip to distract the creatures and allow his party time to prepare for battle. While it was effective for a short moment, once the creatures realized that they couldn't eat the illusions they were even more enraged than before. They threw themselves at the beastmaster and paladin, who were interposed between the creatures and the rest of the party, with no caution or sense of self-preservation. Due to being swarmed, there was no room for Jameson to use his broadsword effectively. Dropping the large weapon, he started trying to create space using the shield strapped to his left arm. Thanks to his plate mail it was much harder for the primitive creatures to do real damage to him, although it did not stop the occasional claw or tooth from slipping through.

Ragnar was not faring nearly as well however with his leather armors. He was only fighting three of them but the fact that he was able to use his two short spears managed to lull him into a false sense of security. Whereas he could utilize his weapons unlike Jameson, the nasty creatures did not seem to care when impaled and quickly swarmed over him, ignoring mortal wounds and charging anyways. Bleeding from several cuts and bites he was forced to back off and let the others help.

Liam managed to blind a couple of them with his sling, and Jorn supported the group with haste, reflex, and dodge buffs. All throughout the fight Robyn dived from the upper cavern, dropping dead dropper-bats on the parties foes. Even though the creatures were so reckless, they managed to do a lot of damage to the party. 

Liam spent several minutes mending the gashes and chunks of flesh that were torn out of his companions while Pak made use of the time to update his map. Near-sapient creatures. Finally, Jorn had a reason to rejoice, with sapients in the dungeon it would be invaluable as combat practice. New adventuring parties would flock to practice their combat skills and the local lords might even send their armies to train there as well. On top of that, dungeons with sapients were known to drop better loot. Scholars predicted this was because we only encountered the warriors, and the sapient communities they were based on would grow and create goods that the dungeon disseminated to adventurers as rewards.

Whatever the reason, Jorn was ecstatic about this change in luck.

"If I could reach your lips Jameson, I'd kiss ya. Who knew a luck goddess would be so lucky!"

"Goddess of Fortune."

"Oh, and a fine fortune it will be. We're set boys. Let’s evaluate this core and get out of here, I’ve got a bird to send out."

The cave goblin creatures dropped two coppers a piece, which were swiftly collected. The dungeon's core was located in the next room, much to Jorn's pleasure. A 15 cm black gem, possible onyx, and still imbedded into the wall. There wasn't much to see, the dungeon still was not capable of having a boss monster. with a quick glance at the walls to confirm the fact that they were porous, the group quickly left the dungeon and shortly thereafter the forest. They were so caught up in their victory that nobody bothered to think about how much faster they managed to leave the forest, almost as if the path out was shorter than the path in.

"Everything checks out, I think we aren't going to be going anywhere for a while. We're going to have to go up to Ostlind to send off a messenger bird, then we come back to talk to a girl about a guild outpost and a clan house."