"No one is afraid of heights, they are afraid of the fall. No one is afraid of the dark, they are afraid of what's in it."

- Unknown

To be honest, I wasn't really expecting them to find the second floor all that exciting. Sadly, it leaned heavily on the use of skeletons, and with two overleveled paladins on hand, that was going to represent no challenge at all. At least, assuming they had the traditional ability to turn or destroy undead. Even if Sir Milback stayed out of it, I expected Lazgar to have no issue with wiping out my skeletons. At best, I figured he'd humor me and simply fight them with his normal weapons alongside his party members.

The adventurers were in pretty good spirits as they came down the spiraling stairs. sniping at each other good naturedly, paying particular attention to Lugrub's lapses. She snorted defensively and snarkily offered to let Ushug play the role of trapfinder, but as seasoned professionals, all talk ceased as she threw up a hand. "I'm going to take a look at the landing space for the second floor and see what we're facing. I'm hearing some movement below, but it's got that kind of whispery, bone on stone, sound - I'm guessing skeletons or bone beasts of some sort. More than one, but less than five moving about at a guess."

She was good at her job, I recognized. I hadn't thought about the sound skeletons would make as I had them more or less enacting a pantomime of the jobs they were supposed to be doing, but her estimate was pretty close. The landing ran into the carpenter's shop and I had the three lesser skeletons there moving about – one was wielding a length of hardwood in the form of a rough club a bit less than a meter long and 10 cm thick, a second had a substantial looking mallet, and the third was wielding a rather nasty looking hatchet. I'd changed it up a bit from the uniform mallets I'd given them originally, just for the sake of individuality. I'd done that at the same time I'd changed up their loot from the dungeon coins I'd forgotten were frowned upon to the equivalent amount in raw metal form; it grated a bit on my desire for verisimilitude, but it wasn't worth annoying the relevant officials.

The trapdoor into their storage area was hopefully well positioned. The fall itself should be harmless to the adventurers but separating them mid-battle might give an opening or two for the skeletons.

Lugrub had used a small mirror to peer around the corner and while I could have notified the skeletons, I played fair and let her scout a bit. She held up a hand with three fingers, then made some hand gesture involving rapping her head silently that I assumed indicated skeletons before waving her colleagues forward.

Lazgar and Ushug took the lead, securing the landing as Orbul and Lugrub brought up the rear. The skeletons were alerted by their movements but didn't charge. Instead, I simply had them mass up in a somewhat defensive posture in a group between the large work tables defining the path through the room.

The orcs advanced briskly, but not at a run; as a result, Ushug almost managed to avoid the trapdoor as his sister tried to alert him, but he didn't quite make it. Of course, somewhat comically, the trap didn't quite work like I'd envisioned either, as the trapdoor was unable to close back up with the massive orc cursing and brandishing his axe blocking the way. Lugrub snorted at his predicament but gave him a quick once over as Lazgar moved carefully around him to prevent the skeletons from taking advantage.

While Ushug battled with the spring-loaded trapdoor and extracted himself from the shoulder height cellar, Lazgar swept his sword horizontally, doing no real damage but forcing the skeletons back and taking a chunk out of the club as it swung toward the group. Orbul fired a magical projectile of some sort, that in my mana sight appeared to be essentially pure force with no elemental component.

That appeared to be a successful choice as it took the skull right off the club wielder. I wasn't entirely clear what constituted lethal damage on the skeletons, but shattering its cranium certainly seemed to do the trick. The club flailed one last time, rather uselessly, before the postcranial remains collapsed in a heap.

The skeletons clearly lacked any sense of self-preservation, unlike my nominally alive dungeon creatures, and without my direct guidance, seemed intent on simply maximizing the damage they did. In this instance, that translated to the remaining two lunging past Lazgar as he recovered his backswing to take a shot at Ushug, who'd dropped his axe to lever himself out of the hole. Lugrub blocked the hatchet strike with her long knife, but the mallet wielding skeleton connected with an overhand swing. Ushug had managed to lean his head out of the way successfully, but the mallet smashed into his right shoulder causing him to fall back into the cellar with an enraged curse.

That was the highlight of the struggle for my side, though, as Lazgar pivoted through to smash the mallet wielder's skull. Lugrub was easily a match for the other skeleton, as she kicked its leg out from under it and used its loss of balance to neatly separate its skull from its neck (right between the C2 and C3 vertebrae, I noted instinctively – the skeletons were giving me a chance to brush up on my osteology).

Lazgar gave Ushug a hand climbing out of the cellar, inquiring as to his need for healing, but the barbarian simply shrugged off the offer. "Save it for later. It's going to leave a bruise, and I'll be stiff tomorrow, but nothing's broken. Hopefully, we won't need your healing, but I'd rather save it, just in case."

Lugrub chimed in with her opinion, in an acerbic tone. "Yeah, maybe it'll serve as a reminder to him not to just rush in blindly... big dummy that he is." Her voice was sharp, but her face revealed a quick look of relief that she carefully did not show her brother.

Instead, she turned to looting the skeletons in a briskly professional manner that spoke of long practice. "A couple of small silver nuggets, a thin gold chain, and I guess the hatchet if anyone wants it?"

Finding no takers, she did a quick search of the room but found nothing worth taking - seasoned wood and woodworking tools apparently not being considered sufficiently portable for their value.

They pressed on. The stonecutters' shop was next but took them much longer to clear - largely because the dummy spike trap there gave Lugrub fits. To my amusement, she took 20 minutes at the doorway seeking a trigger for the readily apparent trap without finding one. She was cursing in frustration before Ushug simply muscled past her, apparently out of sheer boredom, apparently planning to simply tank the traps - which of course failed to trigger. I'd come out ahead on the deal as between Lugrub triggering her trapseeking skill and Orbul casting some form of detect trap spell, they'd spent both significant time and mana on the dummy trap.

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They took it out on the poor skeletons, though, as without the handicap of a trap the trio of lesser skeletons went down with barely a fight, surrendering a similar scatter of silver nuggets and a gold chain.

I'd used mana lights to bring them back towards the potter's shop, rather than lead them towards the manor already. I'd had to spawn in a logbook to indicate to Sir Milback that I was going to need him to follow the small tunnel leading off towards the east and the gnomish city, and I spared a line to let the orcs know I would light up a preferred path for them. I'd already begun the process of forming gnome sized handholds down the vertical parts, adding periodic mana lights, and securing the traps last night.

They made their farewells readily enough. There was a healthy respect on each side, but not a deep bond, clearly, with the orcs merely promising to wait up to three days for his return near the dungeon entrance. That being, apparently, as far as they were willing to drift from their own home territory.

Sir Milback had acknowledged the courtesy with a gruff expression of thanks and a sigh as he eyed the gnome sized tunnel leading off to the east, and vanishing from the orcs' sight in a matter of minutes, his small frame receding into the darkness with no visible hesitation.

The orcs, for their part, reformed and pushed west, back past the stairs and into the next craft workshop and its skeletal defenders.

The potters made a better showing than the carpenters or stonecutters, ironically, and I was rapidly learning that combining traps and fights had a lot of potential against most parties. Traps on their own or just monsters were much less effective - a good rogue could spot traps, given an opportunity, and adventurers were practiced against most creatures (and much better coordinated), but traps gave my creatures opportunities and threw off the adventurers' coordination.

The potters had taken advantage of that, with the powdered glass cast into the air in the adventurers' direction limiting their vision. Only Ushug and Lugrub had actually gotten any in their eyes, but Lazgar had been forced to close his eyes, and the siblings had been an active hazard to the rest of the party, flailing blindly to keep the skeletons back.

The head potter had seized that opportunity to trigger the slip and fall trap, which had the three frontliners down and coated in a fine layer of slippery red clay. Ushug had even managed to gash his own leg with his axe as he fell. The three might have been in actual danger had Orbul not been both quick on the draw and behind the range of the traps. Given the rapidly devolving situation, she'd made the perfectly reasonable decision to go big. I wasn't at all sure what she called the spell, but she released a concussive wave of flame and force that pressed the three skeletons back into the wall hard enough to burst their back half into splinters. She nearly collapsed herself, with the spell clearly taking a substantial toll on her reserves.

She recovered quickly enough to shout her teammates into stillness without further injury. She used her waterskin to clear first Lazgar's eyes, and then the two of them did the same for the siblings. Lazgar had, in fact, decided that healing was necessary to get their vision fully restored, and had coincidentally recovered Ushug's leg and shoulder while doing so.

The abashed adventurers had ruefully eyed their observer, but hadn't found any visible judgment, with the more senior adventurer clearly commiserating. Shuzug had given voice to their shared assessment. "Both very simple and remarkably effective, combining traps and attackers that way. That's a nasty encounter for pretty much anyone. That's exactly why you want a combination of front line and back line members - Orbul saved you there. Good call on the big spell, ma'am. Was that flame wall?"

Despite being visibly taken aback at being called ma'am, the older mage simply nodded. "'Fraid I'm not going to be able to do that again today, though, so let's hope this gets easier..."

Lazgar nodded his agreement for the rest of the party. "Seriously. It's been a long while since most of the party was down and vulnerable like that. Thank Drogma. And most especially, thanks to you too, Orbul." Ushug nodded his appreciation while his sister patted the mage thankfully on the back.

Lazgar turned to speak with Shuzug. "I don't think the danger rating the earlier inspectors was wrong, exactly, but unless the dungeon goes easier on less practiced adventurers, we might lose more beginner parties than expected. Just because a dungeon with decent tactical awareness is a whole extra level of challenge, apparently. Are all sapient dungeons like this?"

Shuzug just shrugged. "It's a new experience for me, too. I've been to just one other sapient dungeon and it's had a lot more time to calibrate its challenges to a range of visitors. Given that this dungeon isn't, by all reports, particularly interested in killing adventurers, I expect it may make some adjustments. That said, you all came through fine in the end, so who knows?"

I'd already decided that it was too soon to nerf my traps. I hadn't killed anyone yet, but a legitimate level of threat seemed like a reasonable option to me. Probably a good lesson for beginners, as well, as long as I didn't wipe them out. I figured I could play that be ear for the time being.

It didn't take long for them to loot the skeletons' meager possessions, and they showed no interest in the pottery – either as loot or as historical representation. They did at least avoid random smashing of pottery, a la classic video games, opting instead to simply give them a quick shake to listen for contents. There was no longer any linkage to my core room for them to find, really, and though I suspected Orbul had a sense that the mana flows indicated I was nearby, she said nothing.

Soon enough, they were pushing west into the large warehouse space and its varied inhabitants, eying the decaying floorboards with all the distrust of individuals averaging nearly 2 meters in height and 175 kgs. Ironically, they were more concerned with the floor than they were the skeletons or kobolds. Fortunately for them, most of the floorboards were only actually decayed at the surface for the sake of appearances; the exceptions were all intentional traps, and they managed to avoid hitting any of them before taking out first the skeletons and then the kobolds. The kobolds would have had a better chance if I'd held them where they were, behind a broken line of traps, but I decided that the noise of the brief battle the skeletons had put up would have drawn them in, had they been natural creatures. They didn't set off any traps either, but the kobolds were completely outclassed in a standup fight. I needed to decide at some point if I wanted to have them exemplify the classic trapbuilding stereotype attributed to kobolds in my old world – or at least let them take advantage of the ones that already existed here.

Lugrub had spotted the shade owl in plenty of time to take the poor creature out with a hastily thrown knife, and it wasn't until they were searching the kobolds for loot that Lazgar had fallen into the first pit trap. He'd been largely protected by his plate armor, though and while he didn't enjoy the filth he'd fallen into, he also wasn't cut, leaving no ready avenue for infection. After they'd hauled him out of the hole, they'd held in place while Lugrub probed the floor for other weak spots, locating and triggering the remaining pit traps with a long section of floorboard.

That left just the cave wyverns to deal with, and Lugrub had taken a single look at the sky pier and straight up noped it, with a shake of her head. "Not going out there on that rickety thing. Someone else can volunteer if they want to, but I'm voting we move on."

Shuzug strolled out to the foot of the pier and eyed it carefully, but he too declined to step out on it. It would have held him, but I could understand the disinclination to take that risk, given the long drop below. I considered sending the cave wyverns out for a quick strike, but saw no real potential in it, and I simply triggered the mana light above the door in the northeast corner, instead.

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