9th of Marpenoth, 1492 (Morning) The party awakens after a long, much-needed rest after the events of the prior day. One after another, they make their way into the main room of the inn, where they find Tolben manning the bar. He comes over and handles their morning needs with water, breakfast ail, apples, bread, some jerky, and a butterskull. Having had their little misadventure to the coast, wanting to mix things up a little bit and venture out on their own for some sunken treasure, the party turns back to their remaining two tasks to do for Phandalin. The first, the Townmaster asks for any interested party to explore the ancient fortress of Axeholm to the south and make sure it's safe for the populous of Phandalin in case they needed to retreat to safety if the Dragon decided to attack the town. The second task asks the group to pay Falcon a visit to the Neverwinter Woods and assist him in the eradication of some half-orcs who got into some terrible magics, making the forest that much more dangerous to travel. The party after filling their bellies decided to head south to Axeholm, so they ready themselves before heading out. While this occurred, Briar had prepared a remove curse spell and helped Kia with her lycanthropy curse, finally freeing her of its plaguing hold. The family head out, stopping by the town master's hall to see if there were any more tasks Phandalin needed, but finding the notice board bare. So they headed out south, making the full day's trip to the mountains where the ancient fortress sat, locked up and still of any life. They decided to make camp for the night before tacking this fortress. The next day, they awake bright and early and are met with the first challenge of the fortress, getting in. Finding a wrought iron portcullis, lowered completely shut and rusted in place, either side of the entryway they find arrow slits where old ballistas sat dormant for many years, still ready to fire. Finding no way in the usual way, Naisys uses a psychoknife to teleport into the western bulwark. She finds a crank and attempts to move it, but has difficulty as it's rusted in place. After several attempts to move the crank, she comes to her siblings and asks for oil and rope. As Alatar and Kia offer her the requested items, Briar sends out Phoenix to scout the area, finding many collapsed stone chimneys and the stone roof of the two-story bulwarks that were still intact. Using the oil to lubricate the crank, she ties the rope to the crank and feeds it out to her siblings so they can assist her in pulling the crank loose. Together, they manage to knock the rust loose and they pulled the portcullis up about 5 feet, Naisys locking the crank in place. The three siblings remaining outside head into the entryway past the portcullis, finding a 20 ft tall 10 ft wide double doorway, large oak doors reinforced with iron, and finding it locked shut. Naisys finds one of the arrowslits looking in on the other side of the door, so she teleports into the main hallway. Not having the time to really check up on the area outside of making sure it was safe, she turns to the door and finds a large oak drawbar keeping the door shut. After some deduction of simple physics mechanics from her knowledge of traps, she sees a way to utilize the iron hooks holding the drawbar against the door to leverage half the bar's weight. After a bit of struggling, she manages to get the drawbar off, dropping it onto the flagstone with a thunk echoing into the halls of the fortress. Taking a moment to hold her breath, she listens out if anything was disturbed by the noise. For a moment there was silence until it was broken by a distant echoing shriek wailing into the fortress hallways. The wail was bone-chilling, even to those outside who could hear the muffled cry pour out of the arrowslits to either side of them. It put the siblings on edge, unsure what that was all except for Briar who heard of a story about this place long ago. Suddenly, they heard the door creak open, shocking the siblings as the door seemed to open invitingly to them, before Naisys' head pops out from around the door. Relieved to see her, the family rejoins her and they press on. Once inside, they started checking around, Briar spots something unsettling in the arrowslit nearby. Kia looks in and spots the long decomposed body of a long dead dwarf leaning against the wall inside the eastern bulwark, and it looks over to her. She watches as a ghoulish dwarf gets up and tries to reach her and Brair through the arrowslit, its stumpy fat hand not able to reach through. Kia finding no danger with it being in there she walks away as Brair casts a spell on it to attack it's mind. The ghoul backs away, holding its head before he hears a mechanical click. He dives out of the way as soon as the ghoul's head explodes, Kia looks back to see a ballista bolt stuck in the wall on the other side with a rotten and wet destroyed dwarf helmet wedge into the wall with the bolt. Alatar while this happens decides to check all the doors and finding them locked. Kia spots a balcony looking over the hall above the eastern door, so she goes out and grabs a ladder, setting it up to gain them access to the upper floor. As they do this, Naisys quietly picks the lock of the western door. Kia and Alatar had made it up to the balcony and Briar was about to follow suit until he heard the click of a door behind him. They look and see Naisys unlocked the door, and she smiles proudly at them, the doors swinging into a hallway where Brair can see 4 ghouls over some kind of animal carcass. Suddenly they get up and leap at the siblings. Briar quickly casts a fireball into the room, blasting away 3 of the ghouls while the last bites into Naisys. They quickly dispatch this remaining ghoul and the family regroups to check the western side of the fortress. Finding a long-abandoned barracks and a few ghouls inside, they head into the bulwark and spot webbing coating the room that heads up the stairs from this bulwark. Naisys gives Briar the order to shoot her with a fireball if she yells down at him too, before Brair can protest, she rushes the stairs and checks out what's what up there. She finds pretty much an entire wall of webbing completely covering this room, and large masses moving inside this webbing. Before she could react, she is suddenly surrounded by giant spiders. The rest of the family gather around the stairway as Naisys is hit hard with venom bites and webbing, Kia rushing up to her aid to try and pull her away. However, the webbing was connected to a spider and she couldn't out strengthen the spider. Naisys yells out "FIREBALL! FIREBALL! FIREBALL!!" down to Briar, who responds quickly by casting a fireball on her, filling the entire stairway with flames. Miraculously neither of the sisters was hurt, but they lost Phoenix as he was sitting on Kia's shoulder, and the blast took out a number of the giant spiders and a large section of the webbing, revealing more of the room and hidden giant spiders. Slowly but surely, with heavy hits, the family fight back the giant spiders, both sisters taking some hits, Naisys the worst for wear at half health, and Alatar hitting the final blow as he rounded the corner of the stairway, seeing the last spider right around the corner. Reacting quicker than the spider he drove his blade into the spider's eyes, slicing the brain of the creature and killing it almost instantly. Briar comes up to assess the usefulness of his fireball, standing triumphantly upon the corpse pile of the spiders as Naisys just stares at him being hurt the worse. Session Pause 10th of Marpenoth, 1492 (Highsun)