Ride The Lightning
The party meets up in the tavern and discusses the hanging plot threads they’ve unearthed so far. Elmer announces that they have received a vision from Dwarfoe that in the temple under the cloud was wheat, special wheat, that they could use to make pretzels. The party goes outside intending to visit the cloud and realizes it’s gone and has been for several days, in fact. They still decide to go back to the temple to search for Dwarfoe’s wheat, Gary’s ability with land navigation will let him find the temple even without the cloud as a signpost.
Before visiting the cloud though, they go to the general store to stock up on bags they can carry the wheat back in. Dubya also negotiates, no doubt with very expressive sign language, with Mason to purchase a small supply of gunpowder and some glass bottle to store it in, as well as some equipment to make flaming arrows with.
The party heads to the temple and explores the exterior a bit more than the previous set of adventurers had, it’s still a square building, fifteen or so feet tall and about forty five feet along each side with a fifty foot spire made of some sort of metal sticking straight out of the center of the roof. While exploring Elmer pushes open the double doors that appear to be the only entrance, carved with a crown and lightning bolt on each door. The interior is dark since there are no windows but Reed lights a torch which provides enough light for them to explore the interior and Gary notices a number of torches on the walls that he lights as well. They find a chest full of treasure at the back of the temple but as soon as they open it they’re set upon by a number of sets of animated armor.
The party finds this relatively tough going. Midway through the fight Reed uses Expeditious Retreat to run outside and snipe from there. Dubya manages to smash one construct flat against a wall with repeated casting of Thunderwave, then Elmer uses their Command spell to put both remaining constructs to sleep, allowing Gary to finish off the construct he’d been fighting. After dispatching his opponent, Dubya turns into a giant owl, picks up the remaining still immobilized construct, then flies out of the temple and drops it from a substantial height, after taking a couple punches to the cloaca after the construct woke back up while being carried. Reed and Nahala managed to dodge the debris of the falling construct as they stand just outside the temple doors.
Reed experiments with casting a lightning spell on the spire in the center of the temple and notices there’s a small niche at the bottom of the spire, a few inches wide and several feet tall, facing the doors that sparks every time he casts lightning on the spire itself. They experiment and investigate trying to determine what is meant to go in there, noticing that there are hooks or attachment points at the top and bottom of the niche and when lightning strikes the tower it arcs between those points. Gary tries grabbing them both and gets shocked, they try shoving various things in there including Elmer’s lightning bolt shaped sword but eventually give up, grab all the treasure they can carry and depart.