"I like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers." ~ Jean-Luc Godard

The party had followed the mana light willingly enough, forming up in their accustomed formation in front of the doorway leading towards the kitchen, Shuzug, still bringing up the rear as a mostly impartial observer. They moved carefully into the short hallway leading forward, ending in a rough door. Lugrub began advancing to inspect it, but Lazgar called out to her, "What say we take a short break for lunch before continuing? I suspect there'll be another fight behind that door, and I don't know about you, but I've been working up an appetite."

She gave the door one last sidelong look, then shrugged. "Yeah, alright. I doubt the dungeon's going to try to jump us in this hallway. Wouldn't be able to get more than one monster through the door at a time, and it's not like we wouldn't notice."

She still chose a spot behind her brother and with her back mostly to the wall as she kept a weather eye on the door ahead. Orbul pulled some basic rations, that looked mostly like granola bars and jerky from a belt pouch and passed them around - offering a share to Shuzug, who dismissed the offer, pulling his own food from a storage ring. His selection wasn't much better, but did include some fruit and nuts, as well as some hard dry bread he apparently had to pour water over to make palatable and a hunk of hard cheese.

The few stray crumbs lost apparently weren't enough to provide blueprints, or more likely simply represented things I'd already secured blueprints for. In any event, the break for lunch had given the slip that still coated the majority of the party time to dry into a crackling layer of brick red dust, which they had managed to mostly slap off of each other, albeit with some good humored threats of violence and a bit of coughing. I thought Lugrub was kind of hoping Lazgar would engage in a little bit more hands-on contact, at least that was how I interpreted her fleeting expression, but with an audience including the clan second and her brother (and to be fair, as a paladin in good standing), he was all business. He did look a bit wistful, I thought, but perhaps I was reading too much into their interactions.

Soon enough, they'd stashed away their food, done a quick equipment check, and formed up in front of the door. It wasn't locked and didn't appear to be trapped, as Lugrub had quietly announced, but it was thick enough she couldn't make out any sound from the room behind it.

She opened the door carefully, not really trying for stealth, but also not simply throwing it open and rushing in. The five lesser skeletons turned quickly as she moved through the door, with the three nearest grabbing knives from the heavy table and flinging them towards the doorway. Fortunately, Lazgar was in the second spot and was able to quickly raise his shield to block the knives. Lugrub had dashed quickly to the left and was out of the line of fire. The need to block had slowed the rest of the party's entrance into the room, and had given the remaining two skeletons time to hurl medium-sized jars at Lazgar and the doorway. These were filled with olive oil (which I had declined to have them heat to painful levels given the earlier critique of my danger level) and shattered, as designed. One burst on his shield directly, spraying oil not just across the shield, but up and into his open mouth and down to his armored boots. The second smashed lower into the door post, coating the initial couple of flagstones in a slippery coating.

"Pfaughh! Oil! Oil on the floor! Watch your footing, and for Drogma's sake – no fireballs!" Lazgar was spitting out olive oil and warnings at the same time.

I hadn't thought about it, but he had an excellent point. This should serve as a useful way to limit the spells Orbul could cast – her last big spell had a fire component to it, so I could assume she wouldn't be using that one here. I could have the skeleton nearest the oven try to torch the party, but I opted not to. I did have him stay near the oven as an overt threat/indicator of my goodwill, which I hoped they'd respect.

Lazgar tried to move cautiously, but between some unintentional jostling from Ushug and the need to shift his shield for the sake of visibility, the unfortunate paladin went down in a clattering heap.

Ushug's attempt to leap both Lazgar and the oil slick failed as Lazgar attempted to brace himself with his shield and recover his footing, and the two large orcs went down again.

Shuzug and Orbul, still in the hallway, shared a quick, pained glance, before Orbul moved into position in the doorway, taking down the skeleton closest to the oven with some magic projectile comprised of pure force. I had the sense that fire was easier and more efficient for her, as this spell radiated uncontrolled mana in a way I found quite fulfilling.

The skeleton was rather less fulfilled, as it crushed its spinal column against the wall, taking it out of the fight quite effectively.

Lugrub spared a quick glance at the flailing, oiled men, but kept her focus – circling forward past the oil slick to engage the two closest skeletons on her side with her own knives drawn and wielded ambidextrously.

The other two skeletons took what I would have called attacks of opportunity – hurling daggers at the exposed back of Ushug as he and Lazgar struggled to untangle themselves. There wasn't much that either orc could do to prevent it, and both daggers struck home. They weren't going to be immediately fatal, but if Ushug was lucky, he was going to have a couple of additional scars on his right shoulder – and it looked like he was going to need to fight left-handed as his right arm clearly lost most of its mobility.

Orbul picked off one of the skeletons targeting Ushug, but was then blocked by Lazgar, at least, making it successfully back to his feet, albeit without his sword to hand. Ushug, having been injured, collapsed back to the floor with a bellowed array of curses. He seemed rather enraged, but that wasn't really helping with his coordination, apparently.

Lazgar managed a shield bash that knocked over the other attacking skeleton, though not managing to damage it significantly, but the effort had him lose his balance again and fall over.

Lugrub wasn't in any danger from her opponents, but she was also finding it hard to damage them sufficiently without leaving herself open. For the time being, she seemed content to hold their attention and wait for back up.

Orbul managed one more quick shot over the struggling men of the party – opting to take out one of the skeletons Lugrub was battling with a magic missile to the cranium

From there, it was a relatively quick and painless fight, with Ushug managing to crush the fallen skeleton with his axe without ever leaving the floor, and Lugrub dismantling the remaining skeleton, now that she could focus on just the one opponent.

It was all over but the laughing, at that point, with only Ushug having trouble seeing the humor in the situation - at least once the actual danger had passed. I supposed that knives embedded in one's shoulder might tend to make it seem less funny, and it had taken them a minute to get him calmed sufficiently to remove them.

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Lazgar was in the process of laying on hands to heal the calming barbarian when Orbul and Shuzug carefully entered the room, immediately hopping left through the door to avoid the worst of the spilled oil.

Shuzug grinned at the thoroughly oil-coated men. "I'm guessing the dungeon may have heard you talking about his traps awhile back. This was embarrassing, but it could have been a whole lot worse."

Ushug just sort of snarled under his breath, but Lazgar nodded slowly. "Didn't have time to think about it, but you're right. If that oil had been boiling, or worse, on fire, this would have been seriously life-threatening. He nodded his head appreciatively towards the nearest array of mana lights, "My thanks for your forbearance, Dungeon. Don't suppose you have some easy way to clean the oil off of us?"

I could absorb the oil on the floor, readily enough, and did so, but once the oil was on the adventurer's or their gear, it appeared to belong to them and was beyond my direct control. **RED**

Lazgar shrugged his acceptance. "Yeah, we adventurers don't think about that often enough, but it's a good thing – generally – that dungeons can't absorb things directly off of us. Still, this is going to be an issue for us for a bit – unless Orbul has a cleaning spell of some sort?" He looked over at her, hopefully.

She shrugged and shook her head. "I mean, I have some cleaning spells, technically, but I don't have the spell patterns memorized – wasn't expecting to need them, I'm afraid."

The oiled-up paladin grimaced but pulled a rough polishing cloth out of his pack and used it to remove at least the worst of it from his boots and gloves before tossing it to Ushug to do the same. "Well, let's just hope we don't run into anything that uses fire as a weapon, or it's going to go poorly for Ushug and me. As the philosopher said, 'You place your bets and you take your chances..."

Lugrub, meanwhile, was looting the room, and having collected the silver spoons and a couple of the spices she deemed worthwhile, chimed in with her thoughts. "It's interesting that the dungeon's traps are coordinated with the theme of each room. It's almost like the skeletons are improvising traps with whatever they have on hand – grit and slip for the potters, oil for the cooks, and so forth. If we knew the themes in advance, we might be able to plan for them a bit better, but it's a bit more thought out than your average dungeon is capable of. That might make for better training for orcs looking to join raiding parties, if nothing else."

Shuzug nodded at that. "Good observation. You may be right. Non-sapient dungeons often have traps that wouldn't make much sense in other contexts. There's certainly potential here to serve as an effective training ground, though with the dungeon holding back that would cut the realism a bit. Have to think about that. Still, I appreciate the dungeon keeping the traps basically nonlethal. Should make a note that the lethality of the dungeon is likely to go up substantially if it feels threatened."

He glanced up at the mana lights himself. "You don't have any objection to being used for training young warriors, do you?"

Did I? Not really. I wasn't really sure I condoned orcish raiding but given the benefits to me and its apparent cultural importance to the orcs, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I suspected it might be akin to raiding among the plains tribes in the US, where the goal was mainly to secure supplies and show bravery than to do mass killings.

**RED**

"Right then," Shuzug turned to his party of adventurers, "ready to try the next room?"

The somewhat worse for wear party formed up, moving a bit carefully for the moment, and eyed each other. Lazgar spoke for the rest. "Guess so, we're not injured, just a bit tired and dirtier than we'd like between those last few traps. No reason to turn back, so best we just push through. Though if the dungeon's got any place to clean up, I at least would love to take advantage of its benevolence."

I did, but they were still a goodly way short of the showers at the end of the second floor, so I just kept my counsel for the time being. Didn't want to lead them on too much, after all.

They pushed on, entering the hallway leading to the farrier, after carefully checking the door at the far side of the kitchen for non-existent traps. They hadn't run into any trapped doors here, as yet, so I was assuming that was just standard practice. It was a matter of 30 seconds or so, in any event, with Lugrub simply examining the door as a whole, and the knob in particular for any indications of funny business.

They passed through without event, and paused to do the same at the far end of the hall. Lugrub again spotted no traps and could hear and smell nothing of note. I supposed for verisimilitude I should try to mock up some horse manure, but I wasn't particularly inclined to do so, especially since skeletal warhorses didn't exactly have bowel movements.

The party wasn't exactly surprised when they opened the door, but I didn't think they were expecting the massive warhorse skeleton either. The two greater cavalry skeletons were also a step up in danger from the lesser skeletons they'd encountered so far.

For a change, the entire party made it through the door before being engaged, though the apprentice skeleton did have time to cast an array of 2-inch tall caltrops before them as his master drew his saber and pointed the warhorse in the correct direction. The ceiling was too low for him to mount up, but the warhorse didn't actually need guidance.

Lazgar, in turn, for the first time called upon his divine Lady to try turning the undead, I assumed in order to at least break up the concerted attack while the party tried to clear the caltrops. His sword held pointed upward, it glowed briefly, slowing the advance of all three skeletons, but effectively turning only the apprentice, which retreated to the far corner of the room still clutching its hoof knife and blacksmith's hammer. I wasn't sure if I could have interrupted that, or prevented the goddess from intervening, but I didn't even try. I had the sense I'd have had to call on my own patron to do so, and if I ever received a response, I didn't want it to be for something so inconsequential.

The other two shook off the effects with a silent shudder, and the skeletal warhorse lashed out with both forehooves at the paladin. Lazgar had just enough time to interpose his shield, which absorbed most of the blow but threw the paladin back far enough to bowl over Orbul. She'd dodged most of the impact and kept her footing, fortunately, but whatever spell she'd been casting was disrupted, fizzling away in a tasty shower of sparks in my mana sight.

Ushug had engaged the farrier, axe meeting the cavalry saber in a clashing strike. It didn't look good for the skeleton, in my opinion. The barbarian was clearly stronger, and despite his appearance, also apparently well-trained. His blows were carefully measured, designed to keep the skeleton reacting as he steadily proceeded to push the sword out of alignment. It took only a quick flurry of strikes, and one sacrificial gash across his bicep, before Ushug used a sweeping blow to crush the skeleton's skull from its body.

Lugrub appeared uncertain how best to join the battle, seeming uncertain that her standard daggers would have much utility against the warhorse skeleton. I'd guess she had a variety of poisons to hand, as well, but those were equally futile. In the end, she'd extracted a short length of weighted wood and attempted to attack the cannon bone of its back left leg.

While not quite as fragile or damaging to the skeleton as it would be to a real horse, it did throw the creature off. It had managed to shift its leg in time to avoid the worst of the blow but circled to the left to face her.

The distraction proved effective, though, and between the return of Lazgar and the refocusing of Ushug, the warhorse was quickly outmanned and taken down - though not before Lugrub had taken a kick to her left hip and Ushug lost a chunk of his left bicep to a nasty bite. I had the sense that the orcs were quite familiar with horses and were anticipating a slightly different set of reactions - the lack of flesh resulting in some significant differences.

Once the warhorse was down, the apprentice never stood a chance, with Ushug felling it with a clinically precise blow (if such a thing is possible with an axe) to the neck.

The party wheezed a bit, all but Orbul feeling the effects from the sheer physicality of the last fight. Ushug had picked up another set of scars, courtesy of Lazgar's healing hands, but for the moment at least Lazgar and Lugrub were both nursing nasty bruises they'd elected to wait on healing. Shuzug called for a half hour break to nurse their wounds and recover their mana, and the adventurers were more than willing to abide by his decision.

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