MAL Ep. 7

Big glorious dungeon raid today. The bullet point recap:
 * Red and Avery drank Red's potions of Hide From Undead and successfully advanced on the tower. They passed a boggy moat which they intended to tell the rest of the group about when they came back into Message range, but due to ensuing events never did so.
 * Red used Stone Shape to open a hole on the second floor, but the magic of the tower dispelled their invisibility and the skeleton archers started lighting Avery up.
 * Zadkiel and the livestock waited just out of effective longbow range while the rest of the team, hastened and mostly invisible, charged the tower at high speeds. Red and Avery were fighting skeletons, so the chargers almost got nailed by the bog, but everyone got excellent rolls and the mounts leapt right over.
 * Zadkiel used Benign Transposition to change places with Adriel's horse, getting it back out of arrow range. Meanwhile Aler exchanged fire with the skeletons on the roof and got the worst of it.
 * Everyone eventually made it into the tower alive, but then Adriel's horse started screaming and she ran back out to rescue him. It turned out the sheep had been infected with some undead plague, had killed Jon's horse, and was tearing hell out of Adriel's. She successfully slew it with her blessed chainsword.
 * Meanwhile, the rest of the party started up the spiral stairs, impeded by inconveniently placed stone protrusions from the center post, and were ambushed there by incorporeal ghosts. They were forced to flee until the ghosts were turned by Zadkiel and Jon managed to use countersong against the magic drum (which he has now commandeered for himself.)
 * Eventually, the rest of the skeletons and their leader were vanquished, and the reunited group went to the ground floor and spoke with the spectral butler, Mr. Jenkins, who at first was friendly to Adriel, addressing her as a "new recruit." When she revealed her demon head and gave her real name as "Steven," Jenkins said that neither Steven nor Red had been properly checked in and attacked them, provoking another combat. It was eventually revealed that the names of the four PCs who had passed through the graveyard were written in the guest book, in blood, in their own handwriting (including Adriel.)
 * The party befriended two animated skulls mounted on poles, Frank Lee and Nunya, with Zadkiel promising to bury them in hallowed ground. The skulls gave the party a hint about where to find a key to open the door to the basement, where their boss Dayant Arakin lives.
 * Jon found a wax seal inside a hollow book in the same skull-and-snake shape you found on the letter from Harasket.
 * Aler found an unsent letter from Dayant to someone named "Holden" concerned about the Duke's attitude towards necromancers and mages, and a creepy parchment from Chavalk congratulating her on completing a curse for him and welcoming her to the "League of Snakes."
 * The group found a pentacle ringed with skulls and determined it too small to have transported the bone demons you fought in Tell's basement.
 * Aler got attacked by a mimic posing as a trapdoor. Once it was dispatched, Red solved a puzzle with levers to open the real trapdoor.
 * Descending into the lightless basement, the group lit everburning torches and saw the head of a unicorn mounted to one wall and a large mirror mounted to the other. The face of Chavalk flickered into view and taunted Adriel, who evaded Jon's attempt to restrain her and smashed the mirror, triggering a magical explosion.
 * Jon pulled a knife on Adriel, who drew her sword on him, but Red's snake intervened and restrained Jon, who the party feared was possessed. He turned out to just be REALLY PISSED. Still to be resolved.
 * Oh, and the unicorn head fell off the wall right after this happened. No explanation for that.

And there we broke for the day. Onward!