Trouble in Deceit

even dungeons existed in Britannia. And I had only visited two of them yet: Covetous and Hythloth. A friend told me that the Deceit Dungeon was a popular hunting spot with exceptional loot, especially if you reached the "Bone Knight Room" alive. However, the place was regularly raided by murderers who liked to become rich by stealing other adventurers' treasure. High risk - high reward! My friend had a rune to Deceit, a place that could otherwise only be reached by boat. I felt relieved, as I did not have the money to buy a boat yet.

Deceit is located on the Ice Island in the northern part of Britannia. The whole island was covered by snow. I already knew that, as I had been here before on my last pilgrimage. We found the path that lead into the mountains and followed it carefully, always keeping our eyes open for a possible ambush by murderers. We reached the black dungeon entrance and descended. This time we had brought Night Sight potions, which helped a great deal seeing in the darkness of this evil place. We had entered some kind of catacombs or underground cellars, which were said to be haunted by undead monsters.

We quickly walked through several narrow corridors, proceeding downward on an old stairway. On our way we came across skeletons, ghouls, shades, spectres and other undead, which we tried to leave behind in order to reach the bone knight room as quickly as possible. At the end of the second level of Deceit, we finally found what we were looking for. We already noticed a couple of other adventurers fighting together against the heavily-armed skeletons. We were welcomed and joined into the battle. The bone knights appeared in waves. They hit hard, and I wouldn't have had a chance to kill them by myself. Sometimes I was able to loot something from a skeleton corpse, and they carried most valuable items: A large pile of gold (around 200 coins) and different pieces of desirable plate armor.

We had been fighting in the room for quite a while, and I had gathered several pieces of plate armor and the gigantic sum of 2300 gold pieces, when some of the adventurers left us. With only the two of us, it was quite dangerous to stay, because it usually took at least 2 or 3 fighters to engage a bone knight. We just had repulsed another wave of bone knight attacks, when suddenly I recognized two red name tags behind me! My heart stopped beating. I had not seen where these two murderers had come from, but their intentions were obvious: Kill us and rob our loot! Immediately we hid by the dungeon wall, hoping that they would not discover us. But they knew we were here! I decided to try and recall away, hoping that the spell would not fizzle. My friend must have had the same idea at exactly the same moment, because as I cast "Kal Ort Por", he just did the same thing, while the two murderers shouted their attacking spells.

I lost my friend's trace as I had no idea where he had recalled to. At least he was safe! After storing my loot in the safe bank, I went to the park in the middle of Trinsic and rested. The shock was still creeping through my bones, so I lit a campfire and enjoyed the recollection of my lucky escape. By a hair we had almost lost a small and hard-earned fortune.

03/98

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