Combat!

We fight the dwarves.

Raymond and Louie go first, followed by dwarves 1, then 2, then Rusty, then dwarves 3, 4 & 5.

The dwarves have picks. The picks would like to be Mjolnir, but they’re not even a decent Captain America shield. They’re like a Private Benjamin stick - but they do come back after they are thrown, so that’s nice. Dwarf # 2 manages to Fear Raymond and Louie, who run away. Rusty manages to kill his opponent, then steps back to where Louie and Raymond are, carefully following the path through the trap maze. Rusty’s opponent was dwarf #2, so Raymond and Louie aren’t Feared any more, so they start to return to the fight. Forward once more! But carefully!

Rusty has been collecting picks so they don’t return to the dwarves. As a result, we discover that their unarmed melee attack is much worse! With it, they don’t roll to hit, we just make Con saves - which we aren’t that good at. So at the end of his turn, Rusty starts giving their picks back. That was the turning point in the battle, which from that point on was more of a massacre. The dwarves kept dropping adamantium ingots when they died - 3 per dwarf, so we ended up with 15.

At the end of the dwarves passage are holes in the walls on either side of the passage, with wires coming out. Ethan went above and beyond setting up the visual aids for that one, actually dismantling his laundry. Anyway, the panels buried under the rubbish in the room where the dwarves were fit the panels pretty well, and once in place, when Louie and Raymond do their best Deadpool and Wolverine impression, the doors open.

The resulting passage goes 300 feet, and at the end are sockets in the wall. At first we think it is a 3 wide x 4 high grid, which matched well with out ingots, but it turned out that there were 3 more slots on either side - so now, the ingots aren’t enough. Turns out, we had to fill the 3x4 grid, then lay the remaining bars sideways across them, which connected the outside slots.

Behind the door was a large room, filled with green light, and filled with veins of mithral. On the far left of the room is a huge statue (we know it’s a golem, you’re not fooling us). We sneak successfully across the room.

The tunnels on the far side of the room are larger - large enough for the golem to fit. At the far end, the passageway is blocked by a transparent crystal wall. On the far side is an ancient forge, blistering hot, and the sound of hammering echoes from it, even though there is no movement visible. The walls are lined with shelves filled with various ores.

We tap the crystal and immediately have to make a Cha save. We backtrack to the golem room and sneak back to the small room. While Rusty tries to figure out how to get a mithral node from the wall, Louie tries to tame a wolverineopede. Every time Rusty tries to get a node, he has to make a save. The second time he fails, he runs away to the forge.

The golem attacks!