The morning after we joined the others on the Ardan we all set out early for Punten's house following the map provided by Ingond. It was a clear morning with light, breezy winds, and the temperature rose to about the mid-nineties fairly quickly after the twin suns rose into the sky. These Sindaran collectors are interesting, and Ingond told us last night that her grandmother collected imperfect things. Ingond also told why Punten collected imperfect things; her theory was that Sindarans are intellectually perfect because of their two brains, and that imperfect people of other races were able to use magic because of their imperfection. Clearly, she had never been touched by the divine hand of Fortuna, or any other deity for that matter. Interesting theory, but I think that the theory is imperfect because any person can become a vessel for the divine and channel that divinity into magical effects.

The map to Punten's house was very accurate and we found the place without any trouble. Although the map was only of the outside of the house as Ingond informed us last night that she has never been inside the central, wooden rooms, where Punten's laboratory is located. The fact that Punten had wooden structures was somewhat strange given the Sindaran architecture that I've seen thus far. As we approached the cliff that the house was built up against, we could see the flat roof of the wooden rooms, to which were attached sand-colored tarps that formed the roofs and walls of the more typically Sindaran construction. There were no windows, but a single doorway granted access through the front wall. There was a small tin chimney sticking about three feet about the roof, and about three feet from the cliff face. Around the house was rocky ground with some cactus and scrub, as well as numerous lizards, insects, and disgusting spiders.

We entered the outer tarped section of the home and searched around the wooden structure first. We found the normal things a person living out in the desert would have, and the things that a Sindaran would own; a hammock, water trough, table, shelves, stools, wheelbarrows, shovel, pick, barrels, stove, and a Trivarian game. Curiously, we found a sectioned off area filled with rubble. After thoroughly searching the outside patio and tarped-off rooms, we decided to examine the wooden structure. There were two doors at different locations on the wooden structure, but one of them was clearly the main entrance. Hanging near the door is an oval mirror that was about two feet high, and the frame was gold with onyx gems set into it. I didn't find it particularly pretty, but it was obviously valuable because of the materials. This was one of the heirlooms that Ingond wanted us to recover.

The Djaffir merchant Djharim hand some lockpicks handy claiming that he was trained as a locksmith, imagine that! He tried to pick the lock on the front door, but couldn't crack the lock on it. Since no else was skilled with locks we were kind of at a loss of what to do next. It seemed that brute strength was called for at this point, and Jarl naturally was the one to break the door down. We all stood back a good distance, and Jarl hafted his massive waraxe and shattered the door with a single and mighty stroke! As the door shattered into a spray of splinters, a barbed blade swings through the doorway at about four feet off the ground. Luckily, Jarl was standing back outside the doorway about a foot or so to get a good leveraged swing at the door and was missed the trapped door when the trap was sprung.

After moving the barbed blade out of the doorway, we peered inside the exposed room. There wasn't much to see as it was pretty much barren and devoid of the normal trappings of a house. The floor was stone, and there were a few nick-knacks hanging from the walls, and few shelves along the walls, but that was pretty much all that was there. There was another door directly opposite the front door set into the far wall. After the trapped entrance we were naturally a little leery of just walking into the room. So Thrand, the Cymrilian Wizard, summoned a Wood Whisp to aid us. The creature was so cute! I just wanted to reach out and pet it, but I restrained myself. Thrand sends the creature into the room to scout it out. We could see it flying about the room examining the walls and items, but after a few minutes it returned to Thrand and landed on his shoulder. After several questions from Thrand, it communicated to us through pantomime that it didn't find anything out of the ordinary and so we eventually decided to enter the wooden structure.

We all walk into the room cautiously, and me leading my Jarl by holding his arm. Unfortunately, Djharim discovers a pressure plate trap on the floor by activating it. Suddenly, a trap door in the ceiling opens up and a glass vial of incendiary powder falls to the floor and shatters releasing an instantaneous burst of flame that envelopes the room and all of us! The smell of burning hair and flesh immediately fills the room, as well as our screams of shock and pain. It was over in a moment, but in the aftermath Thrand discovers his cute little Wood Whisp friend was incinerated and died. I couldn't hold back the tears as they welled up in my eyes thinking about the poor creature. Thrand was pretty upset about his summoned friend dying as well.

The great goddess Fortuna answered my prayers and allowed me to channel her divine spark to heal my Jarl, and our new companions. Unfortunately, I am not able to withstand more of Fortuna's divinity and cannot fully heal all of us, but it was enough to alleviate the majority of the pain of the bad burns, and transform them into minor wounds. After that terribly unlucky moment, we decide to go forward and change our luck, Fortuna be praised!

Djharim takes his time to examine the door on the southern wall and thinks that it's not trapped, and that it is locked. After a moment or two, he has successfully unlocked the door. He turns his masked face to look at us, and I was drawn to his eyes; they had a determination in them that was infectious. He turns back to the door and opens it and goes into the next room, which turned out to be Punten's alchemical laboratory.

The room was the largest room of the wooden structures, and it was filled with tables of various height, all covered with alembics, pots, vials, and tools. The south wall is covered from top to bottom by a thick, heavy tapestry depicting three Sindarans playing a game of Trivarian and has the date of 220 N.A. Clearly, it was depicting an important Trivarian game in Sindaran history, but none of us was sure who the Sindarans in the tapestry were and why this game was significant to Sindarans.

Also in the room was a shelf along the north wall that had two vials of some substances. Thrand examines them and determines that both were some form of solvent, and he takes them. He said that he was also an alchemist, so no one really objected to him taking the items. Besides, he did seem to know the approximate worth of the things we found in the room. Near the south wall was a free-standing oven with a tin chimney leading up through the roof. There was no fire and it wasn't hot.

However, we notice a portrait of a stern-looking Sindaran woman wearing a checkered sash hanging on the north wall. Obviously, this was the portrait of Ingond's ancestor that she wanted returned along with her grandmother's body. Thrand also finds four drams of contrary vine, one dose of vitriol with a quicksilver vial, three more quicksilver vials, seven drams of blamroot, and miscellaneous alchemical tools and items.

Spirit Hawk, the Ariane Seeker, looks behind the tapestry and tells us that the south wall behind it is stone, and that the east and west walls are embedded into the cliff face along the wall. Also, there is a door in the center of the southern wall behind the tapestry. Spirit Hawk moves the tapestry aside to move to the door, and suddenly there was the sound of breaking glass and there was a flash of light on the floor just below the tapestry. A grayish powder surrounds Spirit Hawk and affects Jarl. Thrand recognizes it as morphius powder, which he said was a powerful sleeping powder. They both became very drowsy, but otherwise were still capable of functioning reasonably well. Djharim moves behind the tapestry and examines the door. Once again, Djharim says that he doesn't detect any traps on the door, and is able to unlock it. He opens the door and suddenly a dense amber vial flies from down the hallway at the Djharim. Praise to Fortuna, his reaction was incredibly quick and he dodges the flying vial. The vial shatters on the door spraying deadly acid nearby. Djharim's desert robes were burned with pinholes of acid. Thrand examines the acid and tells he thinks that it was an alchemical mixture called alchahest. Certainly, if Djharim was hit by the vial he probably would have died horribly by burning acid.

After another close call, we looked into the stone hallway and find that it was dark and unlit. Thrand uses his arcane arts and creates a light spell and puts it on the end of his staff. We enter the now lighted hallway and discover that is cracked and strewn with small pieces of rubble lying on the floor near either wall, and the central path down the middle of the corridor was clear. The corridor itself was about twenty feet long and opened up into a large chamber that was about thirty feet by thirty feet in dimensions. We see that there's a writing desk and chair that is overturned one side of the room, and on the other side of the room on the floor we found an overturned lamp that had spilled and burned its oil, a Sindaran left foot, and a fair amount of Sindaran blood. Looking around the room further revealed to large mosaics, one on the north wall and one on the east wall. Suddenly, a land kra comes bursting out of the ground and down the hallway into the chamber to attack us!

Everyone fights for their lives and each others against this heartless predatory creature. I threw my knives, Spirit Hawk and Djharim fired their bows, and Thrand hurled Arcane spells at the ravenous kra. The creature's size made easier for Jarl to hit the creature with his massive waraxe; although, he did nearly cut off Spirit Hawk's left foot with one badly placed blow. In the end, it was Thrand's final Arcane Bolt that felled the toothy beast. Having destroyed the massive creature, we were free to search the chamber. Near the north wall we found hundreds of colored tiles that were each about an inch across. They are laid out in a pattern showing a standing Sindaran with a red band or cap on his head. It appeared to us that Punten was trying to piece together the deteriorating mosaic on the wall. The mosaic was incomplete, but the heads, and some body parts, of three Sindarans are still visible. On the east wall of the chamber had another ancient mosaic that depicted a strange scene. In the scene there is a Sindaran and a Man are facing each other, each with one hand raised as if in greeting, and behind the Sindaran is a dark shape that is much like a circle resting on a square with a light gray triangle centered in the circle. Behind both the Sindaran and Man are several trees of the trees of a temperate forest, and many of the tiles of this mosaic are missing. However, we did notice that some of the tiles had been glued back into place fairly recently.

None of us really understood what the mosaics were trying to depict, and after examining them for a while we decided to exploring the earthen tunnel in the southwestern corner of the chamber. We found that several large stones near the tunnel entrance that had been recently displaced, and we deduced that these stones were placed to block the tunnel entrance off from the chamber. With the clarity of hindsight, it appeared to us that the land kra broke through the make-shift stone blockade and attacked Punten. After Thrand cast a light spell on his staff, we entered the tunnel entrance and discovered that it was a natural system of caverns and caves. The deeper we went into the caves the smell of bat guano and heat nearly became unbearable, and it was difficult to breath. Finally, we came to what seemed to be the terminus cavern of the complex, and we then returned to surface.

Once we returned to the mosaic chamber, we retrieved Punten's foot and carefully climbed over and round the land kra carcass to return into Punten's house. Well, it was Spirit Hawk who took care of the grisly task of recovering Punten's body part. Once inside the house, Thrand set about picking and choosing the choice items from Punten's laboratory for us to take in payment of our services as agreed upon with Punten's granddaughter, Ingond. We used the wheel barrel to load up the items we decided to take from the house, and set out for the town of Uthan and Ingond's house there. We retrieved four drams of contrary vine, one dose of vitriol in a quicksilver vial, three empty quicksilver vials, seven drams of balmroot, a small oven, and miscellaneous alchemical equipment and tools. Even though it was a pleasant day and an easy trip back to Uthan, it was an uncomfortable walk because we were all still injured in some way from our battle with Punten's traps and the hungry land kra there.

Once we reached Uthan, we go to the market square and Djharim went about the business of haggling for the alchemical goods and wares we recovered from Punten's house. Seeing Djarhim in action, I am convinced that the man certainly is an expert in his craft; he was to fetch five hundred and fifty gold Lumens for all the items! As a trained alchemist, Thrand thought that this was a very good price for the items sold. In good spirits from the sale, we searched for and found Ingond's house. She was home and invited us inside warmly. She served us some tea and hard biscuits as we told what we encountered inside her grandmother's house. We gave her the family heirlooms recovered, as well as Punten's foot. Ingond was saddened by the news that only her grandmother's foot could be recovered, but she thanked us with great dignity and was pleased that there was, at the very least, something to conduct a proper burial. In a somewhat despondent mood, we departed Ingond's house and returned to the Ardan sometime in the late morning and just before noon.

Captain Peris and the crew readied the ship immediately to set sail upon our return, and soon we were underway to our next destination- the Sindaran town of Kiran. It was a fairly pleasant trip as the Ardan rumbled down the road and across the Sindaran landscape. We arrived at the town of Kiran sometime just before the twin suns set in western sky, and were disappointed to discover that the town of Kiran wasn't much of a town at all. It appeared that the town was really more of an outpost to support the sun-signal apparatus, and cater to travelers along the road. As we neared the town, Captain Peris stopped the Ardan near the town and slightly off the main road. The crew went about their normal chores and soon we were settled in for the night. We all stayed the night on the Ardan and waited to see what the town of Kiran held for us the next morning.