The party made their way to the second level of the dungeon and headed to the snakeman "egg incubator volcan o" area (a.k.a. Omelette Tor). There was a brief skirmish with a few badguys and we discovered a secret area when one of them tried to escape through a secret door. Pale the fighter decided to go in first and found himself hit with a charm spell and face to face with his new best friend, a snakeman wizard. Wethimyr countered with a charm spell of his own and the snakeman came under his control so we got our fighter back by proxy. Since we had a couple of their snakeman robes on hand we got him lead us into their lair where we encountered one of the red-robed snakemen and some attendants who we were able to ambush and overcome. We discovered that a large column in a room that we had only viewed from a distance previously had some odd controls hidden on its far side. Throwing caution to the wind we fiddled with the controls until they opened up a gate in a nearby wall. A few snakeman came through, we attacked them and then closed the gate and destroyed the controls, maybe a mistake. Returning to the secret area we searched thoroughly until we discovered a hidden area in the floor that concealed a good amount of coin. We loaded up our plunder and headed towards the surface but a barred door at the end of a hallway caught our attention. The area beyond it was an odd shaped room with a large pool surrounded by a miniature dolmen (spinal tap jokes were made). The pool full of coins but we were concerned they might be trapped or enchanted in some way related to the stone circle around them. Lacking better ideas we scattered the stones about and proceeded to liberate the coins from their watery resting place. No immediate ill effects were apparent so we beat a hasty retreat back to town with our newfound gold. It was at about the halfway point on our return trip that we learned the coins carried a curse. The mage's skin turned maroon (or purple, depening who you ask
) and the cleric doubled in width and had to abandon his armor. So it was that a great deal of our fortune came to be spent on a three day ritual to remove the curse and we were forced to miss the harvest festival while we lounged about in clouds of incense and things of that sort.