Greetings Ma, Pa; Ruesome, Bluesome, Toothsome, Ewsome, and Groosome, and to Sister Jerry;
Welp, things been quite busy here at the Keep! Oh, and I got a bit of treasure, so I'm sending 56 Crowns with this letter to help ya'll out. Please give some for sister's dowerybox?
Lessee, where to begin? Welp, One of those prisoners we freed in my last letter is an elf, and he was able to tell us some neat stuff about those pottery swords we been finding on the Orcs. They are real proud of those swords, and write on them "made in Yellow Cauldron" which is in the mountains up north. We aim to do some Orc bashing up that way eventually, after we finish cleaning up the Caves of Chaos.
That's what we've been doing, you see, clearing out the Caves for the Castellan of the Keep. We went into a doozy last week, the same cave we met those Gnolls I told you about before. did you know they like fishies? I guess they must because we found a rock pool complete with a little pottery pirate ship and castle for decorations, and teensy fishies. I suppose they were for pretties, cause they'd be too small to eat on. So after we examined that pool, and found a bit of loot to boot (see what I did? I'm a poet!) We went on down the tunnels back to wheres we burnt up all them baddies before. Lots of bodies there all greasy and smoke ruined,we found some coins tho, so that was wurth it. We continued on following tunnels until we come on to a door past which was a room with this big Gnoll King, and his retinue (that means his gang) and we lobbed our fire barrel in there and toasted that critter with one of the best pitches I ever made in my life, beaned that guy right on the noggin with a whole barrel of oil! Whooie! that was fun fer us! When the fire wuz out we had a look-see and found some moar treasures, some quite fancy, like a necklace, which we sold later on. But then we found a SECRET DOOR! well, we followed the tunnel beyond and come to this old skeleton, some poor soul what had busted his leg while adventuring alone (which is dumb), but Clarance put him to proper rest. and we moved on deeper into the black and drippy tunnel. next, we come to this big old storeroom of common stuff, like barrels of salt and nails, and while we were taking a good look we got jumped by a big jelly cube! Well it surprised us kinda, and being off foot, everyone was having trouble hitting it square-on, until I got it but good with my new halberd! it was great! gave that critter a real chop! which is good cause poor Busk got it hard and was paralyzed like stone for a while. the jelly cube had some treasure in it that we found cleaning up the mess. So that made it wurthwhile, Busk was lots happier about it all, after he could move again, i mean, knowing he had some more change to jingle in his pouch!
After that we moved on North a-ways more, and come to this room full of coffins! they were erie, spooky, and creepy and even I was skeer'd by the old dead bodies; wrapped in black winding sheets (who does that? no one nice, 'at's fer sure), and so we peeked at bodies in each coffin; some kind of bad clerics sez Clarance... when the last one sits up! It's like a scary dusty dead thing of hateyness and it don't take no guff from us. We whollop it, but our weapons seem mostly useless on it, we tried fire, Nishim got it pretty good, but if Wendi hadn't had a magical sword we couldn't have done it the harm we did. Poor Busk got hit something awful, it kinda dazed him and he ain't been the same since, but like I said, Wendi and Nishim laid it out finally,but after that we had to hightail it back to the keep.
Well, turns out some monsters you need magic or silver weapons to hurt. So after that I went out and got the metalsmith to make me a new halberd of silver. Well, the head is silver, the handle is just normal wood, cause that would cost too much to make the whole thing silver. and then we tallied up all our treasure haul that we found; all told over a thousand gold crowns, which sounds like a king's fortune, but after we paid our debts and banked some for the future, and split the rest 8 ways, it was a sight less, still I got a silver halberd, new sword, and enough coin to send some home to ya'll. I have taken to this adventurin' life, and hope to send ya'll quite a bit more help as the years go on, so you and pop can rest easy in your old age.
With Love,
Your Boy #5; called Thewsome.