The party had made it about half the way along one wall when the extinguishing of their thrown torches by pale, red-eyed humanoids made it obvious they might be in trouble.
Seamus began easing his way further Eastward hoping to get a better angle to see how many potential enemies they might be dealing with. During that time, various party members repeated in numerous languages "We come in peace", as they began putting away their weapons.
A gutteral response came from the Northern section and echoed a bit. "Leave dwarves, rest can go." The party found this unacceptable despite Fred and Thorgrim reclaiming their weapons and muttering something about "giving them some dwarf alright".
It was at this point that noises to their West, in the direction they had come made it clear they were about to be surrounded and cut off from the only certain exit they were aware of. They began backing to the wall and grouping up defensively while Rowenna stuck her torch into a stone sconce built as part of the wall, freeing her hands for spellcasting.
The fight was on.
The sound of a lever being moved and a portcullis beginning to decend made action imperative. Miera and Elanna rushed toward the lever, meeting oncoming humanoids and seeing more maneuvering toward the flank. To the North/center and East more movement could be heard and now the dwarves could make out what the company was facing. "Morlocks, damn!"
With help, Miera managed to take a larger brute between her and the lever. As the battle went on his corpse was dragged back into the darkness by two smaller, thinner Morlocks.
Seamus who had taken the ill-advised action of separating from the group now found himself surrounded and in a darker area than his companions. Fortunately Thorgim rushed to his aid when the scream of a wounded Seamus echoed loudly throughout the shadowy undercroft.
The battle went on for minutes. As Morlocks fell to the weapons and spells of the Bloody Boots, more seemed to keep coming from everywhere. Control of the portcullis control continued to shift as they inched their way closer to the exit. Most of the company were exhausted, bruised, or suffering minor wounds and all of them prayed they could get out or drive off their attackers, thankful that their original fear of vampires was just paranoia.
In what proved to be a brilliant tactical decision, the party broke and ignited flasks of oil on their East (right-hand) flank, backing away and delaying the attackers on their right. This bought them the time to get control of the portcullis control and open the gate.
Feeling they were close to being overwhelmed the party performed a combative, but organized withdraw using more oil for another flaming defense and one by one slipping the worst wounded out under the rising gate.
This second wall of fire proved to be of even greater benefit as two of the blood-maddened degenerate humanoids tried to rush through the flames only to be stopped within the fire and slain. The few remaining attackers tried to press, but were cut down by arrows and sling stones.
The Company of the Bloody Boots filed cautiously back into the undercroft, watching closely for hidden enemies. Finding none they set about putting more torches up in other sconces and searching the great room. In all 24 morlock bodies were found.
Also discovered during their search was a section of wall that apeared to be a bricked up archway with the brickwork being old, but obviously newer than the original construction. Lying at the foot of this former archway was a pile of thousands of silver coins along with an inventory of silver objects: Silver tray, tea set, 2 goblets, 4 candle sticks, a dirty silvered mirror, silver utensils, a silver necklace, and a silver hairpin.
Taking advantage of some time to rest and count coins they discovered the pile was 6,000 silver pieces plus the various objects.
The party spellcasters had not prepared any sleep spells so this fight came down to the wire. While the Morlocks made all of their morale checks, their attack rolls were poor otherwise instead of taking a few characters down to 1 hit point each and wounding most of the rest, there was a good chance for some casualties.
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