Basement (month 1, day 12)

After they rescued Lavinia, Tolin and Zan, the Tropic Thunder tied up Drevoraz and Bua-Gorg, and healed Tolin and Zan. They then asked Tolin to guard the prisoners, while Lavinia and Zan would go seek help, and the heroes would look for Liamae and Kaskus.

On their way to he basement, the Tropic Thunder heard croaking from the trophy hall. Graim went through a few other rooms in his effort to surround their enemies.

Row upon row of bookshelves filled to bursting with tomes on all manner of subjects lined the first room. A hearth sat against one of the walls, embers glowing softly within. A reading table sat near the fireplace.

An old musty diary written in a strange archaic language rested on the reading table. The diary's current page was marked with a strange card of flexible gray material with holes and bumps along its surface.

The next room was a dismal excuse for a gallery that obviously once held dozens of works, but now most of the frames stood empty, save a few exotic landscapes and a portrait of Lavinia's parents.

The contents of this room suffered recently, as Lavinia was forced to sell most of the paintings herein to collectors and merchants to pay off the most critical of her inherited debts.

The exhibit hall displayed many hunting trophies, all well-preserved by taxidermy. Great saber-toothed cats, a crouching deinonychus, a bloated toad the size of a pony, and a strange badger-like creature with golden fur and eight legs rounded out the menagerie of more mundane leopards, wolves, and bears. The carpet in this room was terribly stained with mud, especially around the door in one corner of the room.

The door in that corner of the room led down to the basement.

The bullywugs hid behind the dire toad trophy when the alarm was raised, but were soon killed by the Tropic Thunder.

Water from the central pool in the courtyard flowed through the basement, cascading through a grate in one wall and then out through a second grate in the opposite wall. This second grate was nearly completely rusted through; only a few jagged chunks of metal remained. Great swaths of mud stained the floor there.

A Medium or smaller creature could use the missing grate to exit and enter the Vanderboren Estate relatively unnoticed.

The muddy floor was difficult to walk through. Bullywugs could move through mud like this with no penalty.

When the Tropic Thunder first reached this area, the sounds of deep slobbery laughter, a woman's cries of distress, and a weird thrilling chitter echoed into the area from one of the chambers.

Liamae Teslikaria, one of the Jade Ravens, wore nothing more than a tattered sheet into which three spoons and a single fork were threaded. When the Tropic Thunder arrived, she used a spell to distract the bullywugs. Covered with rust monster bites, she did not survive the attack which followed her casting.

The bullywugs had with them a pony-sized creature with four insectlike legs and a squat, humped body protected by a thick, lumpy hide. Its tail was covered in armored plates and ended in a bony projection that looked like a double-ended paddle. The creature sported two long antennae on its head, one beneath each eye.

The creature attacked Harold and the three bullywugs gathered around each other to prevent the Tropic Thunder from flanking them. The bullywugs fought to the death, but the creature waddled off into a corner to eat when it got Harold's armor and mace to gnaw on. Unfortunately, that left Harold vulnerable to the attacks of the bullywugs, which managed a fatal blow on him, before them and the creature were killed by the remaining heroes.

The bullywugs had stacked Liamae's gear next to a rough overstuffed chair. This consisted of a ring, a vial, two thin batons and tens of gold pieces.