The ring of weapons also helped with a constant effect of night-eye, but Laurenna's torch certainly helped. There were a few fires down the corridor, but even so, it was still pretty dark in here.

Suddenly, we could hear something squeaking and running towards us. Sacnus grabbed his sword and raced towards the creature.

The creature came out of the shadows, teeth bared, ready to bite the ankles of anyone close enough. It was a large cave rat. Sancus slashed it, the spark spell working quickly to kill the nasty old rat.

We figured there's be more. Where you find one rat, there's another nest of them nearby.

We finally made it past the other two rats we expected and found ourselves in the main burial chamber.

We found a corpse, preserved in some sort of transparent material. I had seen this sort of thing before on Lokken, but had no idea how to get through it.

If smugglers were indeed using this chamber to hide their stash, it certainly wasn't in here.

Suddenly, Sancus found a locked storage box off to one side of the corpse. A quick spell of Ondusi's Door Open spell revealed that the only things in it belonged to the corpse, not the fort.

There was a second box on the other side of the corpse, locked as well. Once opened, it to had only the possessions of the deceased within it.

Obviously, the smugglers weren't keeping the weapons here.

We checked around for secret passages behind the rocks, but didn't find anything. We all came to the conclusion that there was probably nothing to the rumor about hidden weapon stashes here.

However, on our way out, near the first dead rat we killed, I saw something we had all missed in the excitement: another passage way leading west.

"Did anyone see this before?" I asked. Everyone shook their heads. No secret door or anything, we just didn't see it on the way in.

Once again, I put on the Ring of Weapons, and we all headed down this new cavern, expecting to find smugglers.

It certainly didn't take long to find the first of the smugglers in this new cave. One guy came jumping out at me from behind a rock. My shield prevented his weapon from doing any damage.

The passage was too narrow to allow Laurenna to get in there and help, but no matter, since I managed to put him down in a few hits with my own blade.

We pulled the body out of the way so his friends wouldn't see it, alerting them to our presence. Sancus said he recognised the culprit as one of the newer guards recently assigned to the fort. We decided to push on and see where this stash of weapons would be found.

Just up ahead of the first attack, we came upon no less than three Ork guards, blades drawn, looking for blood.

Sancus, unfortunately, was one of the first to fall. The Ork that killed him now turned to help his fellow Ork attack Laurenna. I couldn't help her - I was busy fending off the third Ork, and he was a handful. I would have used the Ring of Leaches on him, but the blast from the ring would have sucked the life out of Laurenna as well.

I managed to kill the Ork, then ran over to where Laurenna was doing her own battle. She had just finished off killing the second of the two Orks that had attacked her.

"Are you injured?" I asked. "Do you need to heal yourself?" I offered her a health potion of mine.

"No, not a scratch on me." she replied. "You know, this armor is a bit heavy, but I like it." She smiled, and I gave her a hug. I used a restoration spell and healed the two wounds I had received in the battle.

In yet another chamber, more smugglers, each of them from the fort, in full Imperial armor.

I took down one. Laurenna took two more. She was really enjoying the protection that armor gave her. I think she really missed having an adventure like this.

At least it was more fun than sitting at home reading a book in front of the fire.