The adventure

They crept up yet another passageway, one that they had ascertained was, yet again, the only way up. As they reached the top they found a giant insect blocking their way; it looked rather like a six-foot ant. Three wolf spiders further back in the hall; each spider was grossly oversized by normal standards, but looked pathetic in comparison to Gregor, the roach king.
Quentin immobilised it with a spell, before the wolf spiders showed how dangerous they were by spitting paralysing poison at him. Salva kept them at bay with his stone gun, while Shu Ting and Karen set about the frozen Gregor with gusto. Margreet failed to send the spiders to sleep, but they seemed to have spent their venom on Quentin, and once Karen and Shu Ting had chopped the giant roach to pieces, just as the spell wore off, the spiders presented no challenge.
The venom wore off after a few minutes, which would easily have been long enough to be eaten if they had caught a man on his own.

The friends continued exploring, taking one of several exits from the hall. They found that the metal bridge they had seen earlier could be raised to cross the ravine higher up, but peering across the ravine showed that there was just some sort of sealed door on the other side. They followed the walkway along the ravine edge and came to an open space where a humanoid figure stood, counting things into a cloth bag as he looked out over a fantastic ocean vista.
"Hello there!" he ventured to the friends. The creature was dressed in a loincloth, but since he looked like a humanoid cross between a weasel and a chimpanzee he didn't have much to conceal. Margreet talked to him while Salva fiddled with a chest that was lying under an overhang on this secluded ledge in the cliffs, which they could see now were part of coastal mountains.
Burz, as he was called, explained a lot, and gave away more than he explained, although he did sometimes need prompting with a few gold pieces.
The building they had entered was a monastery complex; the monks, of a race called the Higardi, who were very human-like, had left the place deserted because they were seeking an object called the Destinae Dominus. Burz seemed to find the mission amusing because he knew that they wouldn't find it: it had been stolen a long time ago by a thief called Marten, whose legend seemed to arouse pride in Burz, more than outrage at the theft. Since he himself gave away that he was a looter, perhaps his empathy with a legendary thief was understandable.
Margreet and Quentin pored over his goods, and even experimented with mixing some of the potions they had found to try to make imitations of Burz's. It worked, and when he bought their powerful healing potions with glee, they bought his lesser potions and worked their magic on them. He wasn't the cleverest of creatures, but all agreed that even he might notice being fleeced by having his potions mixed and sold back to him on the spot.
Burz told them more about the surrounding area; he suggested that they hike to a nearby town called Arnika, the only major Higardi settlement in the area. He also highly recommended his home of Trynton. He was happy enough on the rocky ledge, so they gave up on the conversation, which was rendered difficult by his poor grasp of language. Whether this was his race's stupidity, his own, or his child-like nature which suggested that he might be young they couldn't tell.

They explored further, slaughtering the remains of the nest of giant roaches before finding, down another exit from that hall, what looked like a small chapel, with a statue at one end. Along the sides of the chamber were coffins. Karen pushed the lid off one, to shocked exclamations. Inside they found more money and some weapons. They took the loot, and proceeded to go down the side of the hall, pillaging the dead bodies.
The coffin at the end gave them their comeuppance, as a disembodied head floated out of the coffin with a shriek. The shriek reverberated in the room, knocking their thoughts from their minds. Karen, Margreet and Salva started babbling; Karen attacked Quentin with her sword, giggling gleefully, and Margreet thrust her short staff at him a couple of times while Salvador sat down and cackled to himself.
Quentin hit the head a couple of times but struggled to find the opportunity as he defended himself from his friends. It was left to Shu Ting to chop the thing up, its attempts to bite her and Karen proving fruitless. Once it had died Karen stopped her assault, and they soon recovered their senses, to much admonishment. Karen's mad giggling had clearly used up her quota of happiness, as she sank into one of her apologising moods. Shu Ting seemed unconcerned, her attempts to act stern and reprimanding, as always, seeming more cute than pained.

The last unblocked exit from the hall led to a room, again infested with wolf spiders, which they dispatched with ease, in which they found a large lever. Karen pulled it down, and a deep rumbling sound shook the room. They scooted out of it, back to the hall, only to find that the end of the hall, which had been blocked by a metal grille, now stood open. It was the last exit from the hall they could try, so onwards they went.