The only thing of any note in this room is a clump of tiny red mushrooms apparently growing out of the floor all around the room's fireplace in a roughly semicircular formation. Otherwise the room is bare.

Neide took a long glance around the room. Once again, the witch was nowhere to be seen...

Irritated, she checked the second door in the corridor.

OOC: I hope it's not like those old click-and-point adventures, where a tiny thing like a mushroom could be a vital clue for making progress! :))

The next room is empty. The only matter of any possible interest is that the quantity of plaster fallen from the ceiling onto the floor is significantly greater in this room than elsewhere.

"Hmmmmm...", Neide thought, as she looked at the fallen bits of plaster...

OOC: I guess it's a WIS roll?

23:32, Today: Neide rolled 7 using 2d6 with rolls of 5,2.

This whole immediate area clearly suffers somewhat from mold and rot.

It suggests that the upper floor may be somewhat unstable.

It also suggests that this side of the house may be the particularly weak side of the house, and the opposite side the most structurally-strong.

Having made her observations, Neide retreated to the corridor.

"Nothing there...", she informed her friends, "Let's check the upper floor"

And so, she walked back to the entrance hall and started climbing the stairs...

The stairs creak ominously as Neide ascends, but they're apparently safe enough. At the top she and her allies reach the gallery which is on the north and west walls of the hall. To east and west, the corridor appears to stretch the full width of the house, with doors leading off it to the south. Opposite the western portion of the gallery is another corridor leading north.

(So, halls leading west and east, and one just around the corner headed north. One can see that there are doors, all of which open to the south, both east and west.)

Neide pondered briefly on where to go first. She suspected the witch wouldn't be hiding in the eastern part of the house, as it seemed to be the most damaged part. But should they try going north or west..?

In the end, Neide decided to try checking the corridor going north.

(Dex check, please...)

01:36, Today: Neide rolled 8 using 2d6 with rolls of 3,5.

Neide takes a left, heading to the intersecWHAT TH--

The floor gives way between the top of the stairs and the hallway intersection. Neide twists and turns, and manages to somewhat control her fall. Combined with her armor protecting her, she's not too badly hurt...

(Neide takes 1 new damage.)

OOC: Huh. Where is she now, then?

Neide couldn't help spitting out a few loud curses. Falling through rotten floor? Not only was this painful, it was also... embarrassing...

... not to mention, they were all being probably watched by the witch. Who could be waiting for an opportunity to spring some trap...

With that in mind, Neide jumped to her feet and ran back to the staircase to see if her friends were safe.

"We're fine, we're fine," Kerran assures her. "We didn't fall through the floor..."

"Yah, you're not just armored because you're a soldier," observes Aden wryly. "It's also because you tend to walk in front of the rest of us. That was all the warning we needed..."

"Oh, give it a rest", Neide growled, frustrated by her embarrassing fall, "Let's go on, all right?"

This time around, she headed west - and was on watch for any faulty floor sections.

(It'll be a little risky anyway-- you might want to look for another set of stairs to check west and north?)

                  wall     wall
                  wall     wall
                  wall     wall
                  wall     wall
wall wall wall wall     wall wall wall wall wall wall wall wall
wall                             HOLE                                        wall
wall door w door    railrailrailrailr         wall door wa door wa
                wall    rail          rail stairs wall
                wall    rail  open    rail stairs wall
                wall    rail  area    rail stairs wall
                wall    rail          rail stairs wall
                wallwallrail

OOC: Okay, hmm. Let me correct my plan, then:

"Let's go on, all right?"

As the hole in the floor was in their way, this time around Neide headed east. She planned on checking the doors leading south and seeing where the eastern corridor led to, exactly.

The first room is a bedroom, dirty and decayed; there is no furniture in here. The floorboards appear intact, but rubbish is scattered everywhere, and spiderwebs are profuse on the walls and ceiling. From the doorway, you can see a glint of light in the fireplace from what appears to be a small, highly reflective object.

The shiny object in the fireplace caught Neide's attention. She walked inside to check on it...

...It looks like some sort of crystal...?

(GM rolls dice)

Before Neide can get closer, two large spiders attack! They must've been by/above the door...

Each is about the size of a large housecat, more or less...

Both of them succeed in biting Neide... or they would have, except that but her armor protects her (for the moment)...

"Goddess..!", Neide spouted, as the two disgusting critters jumped at her. She has never seen a spider that big before!

... gross.

OOC: Hacking at one of the spiders with Neide's sword:

01:57, Today: Neide rolled 5 using 2d6+1 with rolls of 3,1.  Die, eight-legged freak, die.

... and missing, apparently.

(Neide gets one new point of xp, but gets a -1 on her next roll.)

(GM rolls dice...)

Ondreya attacks ferociously with a surprising physical attack... Aden and Kerran finish off the other spider.

"Just as well we finished that fast," says Kerran. "This kind is poisonous. Wouldn't kill you, but you'd feel weak as a kitten for a little while..."

"Wait, you have seen such spiders before?", Neide asked, surprised, "I didn't know we had such things in our woods"

She shuddered a little, looking at the awful dead arachnids...

Then, she recalled why entered the room in the first place. She went over to the fireplace and looked for the shiny object...

"Not in any woods..." says Kerran, "but we have... many things, in Quayern..." Oh, right. It was a reminder that Kerran was the Northerner of Neide's little group... Even though all this time they'd been slowly traveling toward the Northlands, well, Ondreya was so very Eastern, and Aden so Western, that it was often easy to forget that Kerran wasn't actually from Sefonia, either...

The object in the fireplace is a fist-sized chunk of crystal. "Not really valuable," says Kerran, unimpressed.

"You could get a few coins for it from a mage," says Ondreya. "That sort of crystal is sometimes used a a focus for spellcasting." She looks at it more closely. "This one's used up, though."

"It's not really a witchcraft thing," notes Aden. He looks around. "Just another leftover from the mage who first lived in this house... like the fear-inspiring spell downstairs in the one room..."

Neide gave the crystal a disappointed look, then pocketed it anyway. If it could be sold for a little money...

That done, she left the room and checked the next door in the corridor...

OOC: How many doors are there in the eastern corridor? Also, does the corridor take any turns that could lead further into the house?