Broken elevator going down.
Reached the room with the elevator going up. Discovered. Several members of the House of Five Blades (one was Colter, the other was new; both were disguised by illusion as members of the younger generation of the Circle of Orin: Colter was disguised as Hep'ztar and the other unknown NPC was disguised as Vira). They also had a shrouded undead servant on a chain. When the PCs entered the room, Colter and Friends were killing some miners just as the elevator was coming to rest.
Battle was joined. The shrouded undead turned out to be the animated corpse of the PCs former mentor Haroran, who summoned two more undead. Colter was slain relatively early on, and the other disguised NPC managed to escape up the elevator. A bubbling red potion was left in the elevator mechanism. After a while, the potion detonated, vaporizing some of the hydraulic mechanism within the elevator (and several PC wineskins), bringing the elevator to a halt.
The undead Haroran was forced into a corner and defeated after a gruelling melee.
The dwarf then managed to cut the metal cables in the elevator mechanism box, causing the platform to fall back to the chamber, along with coils of metal cable. No sign was seen of the other NPC.
We play D&D. In our company's board room. Every Monday evening given enough players.
