After a holding a funeral for Lorcan, presided over by Iriellis, in which his body is burned on a funeral pyre, the party retire for the night, having divided his valuable possessions amongst themselves. Adokas goes to the healer's for the night, while everyone else rests at the inn. Adokas is not satisfied with the treatment he receives and berates the healer the next morning, to which the healer responds that Adokas is free to take his business elsewhere.
Back at the inn, Arik summons everyone into his room. When they arrive, he is looking much better, and is dressed and fully equipped. He tells them that they can't let Lorcan's death stop them; indeed, those are the hazards of the adventuring profession. They have only a single day left, so they need to make good progress. He is finally feeling well enough to join them, and furthermore, he has acquired the services of a local cleric of Mung, Flossaria, who will join them in the investigation.
Wasting no time, the party, along with Arik, head to the outskirts of town, where they meet with Flossaria. She introduces herself and Arik explains the situation to her. Seeing the group carrying around Lorcan's old crossbow, which is too large for any of the gnomes or halflings to use, she asks to carry it with her. Everyone then heads off towards the monastery.
Back in the cellars, the group can still hear the chatter of goblins off in the distance, but the barricade that they erected two days ago still appears to be undisturbed. Arik asks to be taken to any areas of interest that they've discovered so that he can investigate them. They first take him to some of the iron statues. He is unable to make out much more than the rest of the group - their condition appears to be due to some sort of divine retribution on the part of the Iron God. Either that, or some enemy did this to them and took great pains to make it appear as divine retibution.
They move on to the room containing strange patterns inlaid with iron into the wall. They seem to still have the same calming, mind-focused effect that Zedlyn encountered before, but no one is able to make any new deductions here. Arik suggests that they might be an aid to meditation.
Finally, the party show Arik to the room containing concentric iron circles inlaid into the floor. Arik points out that the pattern seems to indicate that something or someone is supposed to go in the center, and the party admit that they didn't continue investigating after dropping a book in the center. Iriellis steps forward to take a look. As she holds her arm above the inner circle, she feels a strange upward force. Throwing caution to the wind, she steps into the circle.
The rest of the adventurers see Iriellis float upwards and begin levitating a foot in the air, her body and muscles seemingly in a state of relaxation. Iriellis, floating in the circle, sees a vision of a pure white void, out of which a gigantic metal figure floats. The being introduces itself as the Iron God, and explains that it punished its own worshippers for their greed, and their dabbling with the forbidden arts of necromancy. Furthermore, it explains that the undead still stalk the catacombs, and if Iriellis accepts the task of destroying them, it will grant her a boon. Iriellis accepts, at which point the vision shatters.
The rest of the party see a flash of white light, and when their vision clears, they see Iriellis lying on the ground, holding an iron flail in her hands. When she explains what happened and what she saw, and Arik immediately steps forward into the circle, hoping to contact the Iron God as well. However, neither he, nor any other party member, are able to duplicate the effect. With this new quest accepted, the group head back to the catacombs.
Returning to the strange area of magical darkness, Flossaria takes a look, hoping to be able to see something that the others didn't, but she can't figure out what exactly is causing the darkness or what it is. Arik pulls out a strange metal cylinder that produces light from the end of it, but it is also unable to penetrate the darkness. When questioned by Sharla about the device, he explains that it's something that he found in an ancient ruin back in his homeland. He doesn't know how it works, but it cannot be through magic, because there is no magic where he comes from.
Iriellis casts a spell to detect the presence of evil and directs it towards the darkness, which doesn't register as evil. As she sweeps her sight around, though, she does detect a strong aura of evil coming from the northwest, in the direction of the room where they fought the giant tick. Walking into that room, they find that the evil aura seems to be coming from the cavern that is marked as the prison of the "Eater of the Dead". The group collectively decide that disturbing this area would be a bad idea.
Looking at the chest in the room, they are worried that it might be cursed or protected by the Iron God, but Iriellis has an instinctive feeling that the Iron God doesn't care about the treasure - the priests weren't supposed to have it in the first place; that's part of the reason why the Iron God chose to punish them. She attributes this knowledge to her vision of the Iron God; it must have been imparted to her then. Given this explanation, the party take the treasure (which consists mostly of silver and gold coins) from the chest, dumping it into a bag for Arik to carry.
Deciding to finally brave the darkness, Iriellis steps on ahead with a rope tied around her waist. Inside, she hears a low, growling voice, warning her to "enter only with reverence for the quiet dead". After a pause, it goes on to explain that "the dead walk unquietly in the Sacred Catacombs, and the walking dead are an abomination to the Iron God". Iriellis attempts to question the voice, but it doesn't speak any more than those two sentences. She starts walking forward through the pitch blackness; after about thirty feet, she hits a wall. She uses the rope to find her way back.
The party decide to try using the ceremonial implements that they found nearby. They take the long-axe, lantern, and incense burner, tie themselves together with the rope so they don't get separated, and step into the darkness. However, the implements seem to have no effect - the darkness is still absolute. Preferring not to continue in pitch blackness, the party decide to retreat and enter the catacombs from one of the two other entrances that they had discovered. They pick the one near the library / archive room.
Heading into the catacombs from the new entrance, the path soon splits into three directions - northwest, north, and east. To the northwest, the passage continues before ending in another wall of seemingly impenetrable darkness. To the north, the passage continues onwards before opening into a cavern. To the east, the passage goes for some distance before curving north. The party opt to follow the east passage.
After it curves north, the east passage continues on in that direction, and also contains a cavern opening to the east. The party step into this cavern and find that its walls are covered in inscriptions and pictures. No one recognizes the language of the carvings; Sharla mentions that she might be able to decipher them, given enough time, but even a preliminary reading of a small section will take a few hours. Arik points out that they may not have a few hours to spare, so the group forge on ahead, resolving to come back and investigate the carvings if the time is available.
The carving room contains an opening to the north, which opens into another cave after a short passage. This cave contains six iron statues, arranged in two rows of three. However, these statues are different than the others encountered thus far - they are of guardsmen or warriors rather than priests, and they have calm, neutral expressions rather than expressions of pain or fear. The party are wary that they will come to life and attack, but after they step into the cavern, the statues don't react in any way.
Attempts to communicate with the statues or cause them to react fail, until Zedlyn walks up while carrying the ceremonial longaxe and salutes, which causes the statues to salute back. The party experiment with various combinations of the ceremonial axe, lantern, and incense burner, before finally discovering that, if three characters march together carrying all three items, the statues will follow behind. With these new allies gained, the group head out of the room through a passage to the southwest.
This passage leads to a Y-shaped intersection; their options are the south and the northwest. The southern passage joins back up with the passage that led them to the room full of ancient carvings, so they head to the northwest. This leads them to a very large cavern, dominated by a giant statue of the Iron God. The room also contains a set of stairs leading downwards carved into the cavern floor, an exit to the south, and most strikingly, a corpse lying on the ground near the statue.
Iriellis steps forward to check out the corpse, and determines that it is a human male who died a week or two ago, with no visible wounds or obvious cause of death. He is wearing chainmail armor and a mace and shield are lying on the ground next to him. The party discuss the possibility that this is the missing caravan guard who disappeared from the caravan that passed through Asuna before their own. The dates fit, but none of the characters are familiar enough with the missing man's appearance to be able to say for sure.
Searching the body for anything of interest, apart from a small coin-pouch, the party discover that the man is wearing an amulet that depicts a half-closed eye. Flossaria recognizes the symbol as being very similar to that of Sirami, the Lord of All Forgetting. However, Sirami's symbol is a closed eye, whereas this symbol is a half-closed eye.
The southern passage out of the room leads back to the cave that they glimpsed to the north at the first intersection after entering the catacombs. This cave appears to be empty. Thus, the party are left with only a few choices remaining to explore: the two walls of impenetrable darkness, the third entrance to the catacombs, and the stairs in the statue room.
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