The party has added another member to our party, a ranger with powerful combat skills using a double-ended mace, named Kit. She has agreed to come along as our guide, as we are now in the Bone Marches searching for clues on the line of Tellit. The party is here because of Ruhan’s research and following clues from an ancient poem, telling them of the line and hinting at their summer home. That may seem odd to say to anyone knowing the Bone Marches, but it used to be a very fertile and beautiful land before it rapidly decayed.

Entering through the escape route, they find it has a mausoleum, of all things, inside with a painting that takes up the whole ceiling. This is no ordinary painting, for it you look close, it’s actually a large portal to another plane! What the plane is will require much more investigation, especially if it’s a pocket dimension, another plane altogether, perhaps even another material plane! Sir Arkemis had the idea to use a grappling hook to teather a rope to the other side, as it is the opposite of us, like a mirror. Ruhan only gets a slight peek, ends up hanging from the rope and quickly found it’s a one way portal, luckily the magic was still affecting the rope, and his compatriots were holding onto the rope from the other side so they could force him back through. They decided to look up the other path first, only to find the starts turn into a slide, and into a pit trap. After braving the dangers a second time, they find on the other side the summer home itself.

The palace is an open air villa, beautifully laid out and stylized, though now nature has had it’s way with it for hundreds of years and it is in bad disarray. The party comes across several different hostile denziens who had made this place home (including one nasty rust monster), and once it was clear, they set forth looking for secret doors using Ruhan and Moonbeam to flush them out. They ended up finding a total of 7 secret doors, not surprising since servants aren’t meant to be seen, and most of them were just that…until they checked the one in what might have been the Vizier’s bedchamber.

A most vile and yet wholly interesting place, they found a vast shrine to Hextor. Murals created down the path, inside were some interesting notations, including what Ruhan thinks to be Vecna’s Anvil. When they reach the first floor they find a 50 foot radius summoning circle! Complete with everything you could want in it…including a voice activated Summon Planar Ally spell that Sir Archemis accidentally activiated, summoning a demon into their midst! On a guess, Ruhan used the correct command and was able to banish it with the help of the same voice command system.

As they take down any information they find, they find there are two other exits from this room, one goes up and one is another room on this level. Deciding to go check out the room on this level, they find another library. As they look through the library/torture chamber combo (like ya do), they find several tomes that emit evil auras (no surprise there), and one that is not only evil, but it has the symbol of Hextor, Lolth, and Vecna inscribed on the spine! Since they don’t want to even touch the vile thing, they caress it out of its spot onto a bag on the floor, and it springs open to a page! It doesn’t lazily turn a few pages then settle, no, it slams open! They both have the smarts to completely avert their gaze and gather the bag up, closing the book and hopefully not trigger anything magical.

The stairs up are apparently just to a hidden cell block which is also hidden behind the throne room. Convenient for sacrifices, no? Sir Arkemis decided to remove the child’s skull so that we could talk to it later. While that has it’s uses, it still unnerves Ruhan, and he’s not sure what to make of Sir Arkemis’ decision to do so.

They go to check the last secret door, the one in the shrine room. The room is a place of worship to the gods that the old kingdom worshipped, that includes good and evil alike. Upon opening the secret door, the find a small room with a mural of none other than the Sun himself, Pelor, on the floor. The group is shocked to see such a development, especially after where they had just been. The session ends with the group considering what this room could possibly have been used for.