Delighted by past Monday night game.

Both my sons played this past Monday and it was one of the most delightful dungeon romps I've played in a long time.

Same cast of adventurers:

Gromlin Longstache, Stone dwarf Fighter

St. Pierre, Human Healer

Thorn, Petty Dwarf Mage

Cobalt, Human Burglar

 

The group wentdown to explore the rat chamber discover last session. they discoverd it was empty save for the bones of one of the big rats. After crawling about for a bit they discovered a rat tunnel was recently widen by tool-work and joined up with a proper dungeon corridor with reinforced rock walls, packed gravel floors and wooden beam supported ceilings.

 The first locked door these fellows encountered was quickly examined and unlocked by Cobalt and the room beyond was the dreaded empty room with little of note beside a more solid floor and ceiling than the tunnels had and some splinters and drag marks on the floor (a treasure chest dragged away)? My youngest son wants to make this room the groups new lair and has oddly dubbed it it "The Rat Room" and insists they should make it their new base. My other son doesn't want them to be known as the Ratroom Gang (could be too late).

Advancing down they discovered an intersection to the right and left and headed right first to find a door with occupants beyond. Thorn knocked on the door by the voices beyond were unfriendly and in no hurry to open the door to strangers. They decided to not kick in the door and attack whoever was beyond "I don't want to hurt our neighbors for no reason" and reversed their course.

Moving on they discovered a Dry Bones Skeleton decked in Simple verdin Jewelry with a rusty saber in had guarding an otherwise empty chamber, a magic missile quickly brought that threat down. The simple jewelry (2 arm bands and a chain) were claimed and the dwarves rather quickly noticed a patch of wall had been recently plastered over so they set to work breaking away the plaster to discover a decrepit old door behind it. They noted they were being watched, likely by an occupant from the room they hadn't forced their way into before but continued on without challenging the onlooker.

Breaking through the old door was barely an inconvenience, no problem at all, luckily Gromlin did not tumble into the open pit trap beyond. Screeching of hungry rats could be heard from deep in the pit and more importantly across from it was a stone idol to some rat demon with some sort of gemstone eyes. The party managed to clamber around the edge of the pit without tumbling in and despite some arguing the amber eyes in idol were pried out. The presence of a secret door aside the idol was noted but the means to open it could not be figured out by the adventurers. Eager to escape with their newfound bounty they decided returning to the surface to sell the loot was the best way to go. Hmmm... did something peek at them from the secret door as they left?

Back at the intersection the party found themselves being held up by 3 gremkins (re-skinned kobolds). One of the three could speak in broken common and was rather confident the party could be cowed (they are not an impressive bunch). Gromlin locked in a battle of verbal intimidation with the gremkins and two were looking uneasy and not to terribly dangerous when a sleep spell was used to put them all to sleep (very luckily too, the PCs are not aware while they aren't immune gremkins have a high resistance to sleep and charm spells  due to some fey blood in their ancestry). Now here my gentle reader is where things took a unique turn: The PCS trussed up the Gremkin and sorted through their belongings to find 2 keys and they dragged the Gremkins back to their presumed lair and laid them out there removing their bindings and locked them away safely in their room and shoved the key under the door edge so they could free themselves later.

On the way out the PCs determined that the second key the gremkin carried was indeed the key to the earlier discovered "rat room". 

After waiting for traveling merchants for a couple days they managed to get 90 Bronze groats for the amber eyes but could find no buyer for the verdin jewellery which the local smith appraised to be worth at least 30 silver shillings total (he's willing to trade in credit but lacks the coin to pay for it as such). They are holding onto the verdin armbands and necklace for now.

So this session over 90 zg in coin, 3 pieces of jewelry, and the key to a room in the dungeon as loot along with between 237 and 287 experience points per character.  

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I was surprised and delighted by the decisions my sons made, The youngest is still apprehensive but was certainly getting into the game and the older is a vetaran of my last long-term campaign schooled by grizzled old murder hoboes so sparring and not even stealing much from the gremkins whom they hope to make good neighbors of was a rather unique turn of events for me. Depending on how the next session or two goes I might have to stat-up gremkins as a playable character race.