Our adventurers, after what felt like years, days, minutes - but what was actually months (but what is time, really), have returned to the Sea King's dungeon, where they descend a set of stairs into another frigid labyrinth, this one lit dimly by glowing wild lichen.
The path zigs and zags, and after retracing their steps to avoid a trap and taking a different corridor, the party approaches an area crackling with elemental magic. Whatever is producing it appears to reside behind a magically veiled crack in a wall; Brindi detaches her consciousness and takes a look.
She discovers four young adult white dragons sharing a room (small for them) with a wide portal. She reports this to our companions right before a multi-blast of bone-chilling cold catches everyone off guard. For a moment, our stalwart warriors consider: should they rush in and attack? Yes, of course, is their conclusion - and so Morama and Zilybar get blasted again, by the two remaining dragons in the room, as they rush in. By the time blades are within reach, only the tip of the last dragon's tail is visible through the closing portal - and it's probably for the best. The magic dissipates.
The room is a dead end.
So the gang turns around and finds another path. This one leads to a wide open room with a gigantic skull carved of sedimentary rock on one wall. Investigating this, Zilybar finds it hollow, and covering a round door. The others cannot fit through the skull's eye or nose holes, and so have to work to knock out a stony tooth.
Zilybar opens the door -
and everyone in the skull is cooked with hellfire as a wall of fire suddenly has its terminus atop them.
The room beyond the door is hot and flickering with bloodred hellfire. Crawling hideously through the flames is an arch devil with three heads, all way too big for its horrible spider body: an old man's, a frog's, and a domestic cat's. This monstrosity puts up a good fight, sowing fear, spreading fire, and lashing out with a flail hooked into the frog's long tongue. Indeed, the devil is not vanquished but instead parleyed with: Brindi and the Octavo, riding high after the defeat of Baphomet, attempts to recruit the fiend to their cause. The devil promises to think about it, and says it will let our adventurers pass unharmed if they vow to defeat the Sea King, who apparently has some hold over the devil, as he did over Cashgar at the previous stairs.
Brindi doesn't read the fine text and places her palm on the contract.
The arch devil disappears, and our adventurers gingerly step through the lingering hellfires to find the stairway, which is nearly impassable due to a partial icy tunnel collapse ...
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Morama tries one final time to convince Sage of her plan: Roy is standing by mentally reviewing the words of a revivification spell, Morama's diamond in his pocket. If Sage dies, her contract dies with her, Morama insists - and then they'll bring her back. Doesn't she remember the pact they made, years ago, to go even this far to save each other from bondage? Sage snarls and swings her axes. She is past words. Our other adventurers stay back as Morama reluctantly presses in.
Bored, Brindi notices the empty throne at the great room's furthest point. She has a wander over, and is about to approach the massive stone seat when, all of a sudden, a gargantuan archfiend is charging her! She is sent flying off the dais, and Baphomet stands laughing before the intrepid explorers.
Now with a target that's not a friend's (ex) wife, our adventurers roll into action - but after only a handful of seconds, Brindi's nearly deceased, Zilybar and Morama are afflicted with terror, and Roy is forced to focus on support: he alters the magic of his aura to address his companions' fear. Sage turns on her hated master, but Baphomet snaps his fingers and what was Sage becomes a familiar humanoid formed of grey sludge, quickly to melt and crumble. Somewhere, Sage wakes up again in her true body.
Baphomet is formidable, attacking with horns, sword, and fearsome teeth in quick succession - but his speed is also terrible, darting with a dancer's grace through the melee to charge our adventurers who had thought themselves safe out of hand-to-hand combat.
His movement draws our party to collect inside the circle of worshiping statues, and Baphomet unveils a new ability: all of a sudden, the gravity within the circle reverses: Morama and Zilybar tumble upwards. Roy is able to invert his innate flight, and zips up to toss his flying broom to his gnome ally while Stormwing the wyrmling catches his ranger.
Meanwhile Baphomet swings his cleaver from "above", and all of our adventurers are feeling it. But slowly, they are able to respond: the inverted gravity is solved, then disappears.
Settled in now, our heroes chip away at the archdemon, until finally who else but Zilybar lands the final blow. A black cloud explodes outward from the space where Baphomet's body had been, rushing from the labyrinth. His metal-clad horns clatter to the rock.
Victory is achieved.
In Brindi's hands, the Octavo exults as ownership of the abyssal plane transfers to it.
Our exhausted and damaged adventurers linger only long enough to find a hidden compartment beneath Baphomet's throne, where they collect the first uncursed items of the devilish adventure. Then Roy taps his helmet and they're back in Rezzlewick's basement where they're met by Wicky J, who reports that his father is off in the city.
The party is informed that they have been absent from the material plane for four months. In that time, Rezzlewick has enchanted Don Jungus, who is now a proper merdwarf. He says Don Jungus promised his companions would pay an exorbitant fee for the procedure, but some haggling is easily done and the wizard accepts a handful of gold and some time with the octopus who answers questions.
Then Roy reaches out to Trevayne - and learns that the gnome merc has suffered some serious adventures of his own since last we heard from him: the harpy baby which accompanied our adventurers to the Sea King's Dungeon and waited in The Lazy Lapper matured quickly and attacked him! He managed to bring the boat back to the mainland where the mephits bandaged him up. He then went back to the others at the two flying vessels, and has other news that the short message cannot suffice to cover ...
Then Roy contacts Sage - and she says she needs some time to think. In a year, she asks Morama to meet her "where it all began."
So Roy teleports the gang to the UFO and the Vengeance - where they discover that Sage killed Trek before she was transported into the abyss, fulfilling that fraction of her contractual obligation. Trevayne arrived a few days ago to discover Coriander under siege and the body of his friend rotting outside of the ships; Sage shortly after disappeared (into the abyss) then reappeared and rushed off.
Our adventurers grapple with these events.
Trevayne leaves their service, but though deeply shaken, Coriander feels she still owes Roy and remains, with the other secondary companions, in defense of the two vessels as our adventurers teleport back to the Sea King's Dungeon to complete their world-saving quest ...
Our adventurers do not hesitate upon the stoop. Blood opens the door and they rush in ... to find a dark space beyond, ripe with the pong of rot. As they cautiously approach the center of the room and discover a feast table laden heavy with food that was fresh before any of them were born, a voice hails them from the darkness.
"What do you taste like?"
A colossal ghost appears, and now that the host has arrived the gang doesn't wait to dig in - with sword and spell. Halfway through their mealee, the spirit captain splits in two! Well, more to defeat!
Honestly, this captain does not pose too much of a challenge to our weathered adventurers. More difficult is the locating of the key once it is defeated - but Roy notices one cutlery pair looking mismatched beneath the rot and pulls at the handle of a fork to discover - a wriggling tongue on the end of a key shaft!
From here, the quest pushes on to the third corner of the trinitarian labyrinth, where the "Rat Father" awaits.
The trudge is exhausting and frustrating. Brindi pulls from her pocket a potion traded for in the last dungeon that gives her an uncanny instinct for labyrinth already traveled, and the party employs this sense to choose a wall to cut through - to cut a corner, so to speak, to cut off an hour or more (who knows how time works down here?) of their drudgery. Brindi has experimented with shortcuts before, and knows the consequences are varied and dangerous. Still, our adventurers are spent. A flesh wall gives way to Zilybar's atomic rapier ...
And all of a sudden, everyone's vision expands. The darkness still presses unnaturally, but the scope of vision has grown. In return, our adventurers quickly learn, the faintest light (as of the red altars before each door) brutally assaults their eyes. Their minds had been on the edge, when backtracking and going in circles. Now, their heads are in peril, and the pain is perilously taxing.
Perhaps, then, it is forgivable that only after another hour of travel, in which every member of the party suffers great pains, does somebody have the idea to have only one person leading the party on a rope. In fact, by this time Roy has already thrown off the effects of the punishment and is at no risk of worsening his headache. Zilybar draws out a whole ass bear from his bag of tricks for the blinded Rip Van Winkle to ride on.
The party decides shortly to rest. The passage of an hour by their clocks removes their affected vision, and they press on.
On their way to the Rat Father, they encounter a handful of monsters, but are only tested even marginally by a pair of Frankensteined ogres. Along the way, they stop to rest fully - at least, as fully as possible in the confines of the Abyss - before arriving at the door.
Upon its opening, there is a scurry of rats in the room (which is full of flayed skin of all sorts) beyond: they collect together and wind their tails over each other's and loom over the party as a vaguely humanoid mass of rats. With layered voices in three dozen languages, they ask our adventurers for secrets. Otherwise, it seems they would be content with the visitors' dermis.
Honestly it's embarrassing how few ideas these stalwart comrades conjure. Brindi's offering is accepted, that she is an agent of the Octavo here to challenge Baphomet demon-to-demon: a rat seizes a glowing gem out of the air and scurries off with it, into the shadows. The others come up with nothing, until Zilybar sidles up to the mass and whispers, "Today is the day you die."
And so, I suppose predictably, combat ensues.
This captain puts up a better fight than the last, soaking up hits, summoning more rats to strengthen itself, and occasionally exuding a foul aura that prevents its enemies from fighting at their full capacities. But this captain, too, falls - dissolving into a handful of individual rats who scurry off into the darkness, revealing a twitching finger-key upon the floor.
A chest is looted in the room, and then the gang moves on.
Eventually, they find they way to the great door of Baphomet, a towering portal featuring three holes of slightly different size in its lower center: one the size of a finger, one of a tongue, and one of an eyeball. The keys are inserted, but what is withdrawn is ribbons of flesh and fat draped over regular key-ends. The door splits, and opens as two.
The triangular chamber beyond is massive: each side 200 feet long at least. In its center lies a glowing rune on the floor, a good 50 feet in diameter, surrounded by worshiping statues, with stone Balrogs at each compass point. At the room's farthest point, a raised dais with an empty throne.
Our adventurers creep towards the glowing rune, but before they step through the statues Baphomet's voice oozes from every pore in the stone and thunders from every atom of air. It says, "To face me, first you must face your darkest nightmare. Kill your wife."
And of a sudden, on an altar in the middle of the rune, stands Sage.
Morama comes forward.
"What is that look in your eye, my love?" asks her wife.
"We must do what must be done," Morama says. She conducts a quick test, sussing out if the woman before her truly is her wife. She questions the test, but passes it.
Morama embraces her partner - long lost, only recently reunited - and drives a dagger ... into steel links as Sage jumps back, axes in hand.
Naturally, the woman is shocked. Perhaps even offended. As others of the questing party prepare spells and draw their weapons, Morama and Sage exchange further words that result in Sage approaching again the altar, where she lays down her wedding band.
"When I woke up here - in the heart of the demon's lair - and saw you, my love, I thought, 'If anyone can defeat Baphomet and save me, it's you!' Well, if this is the best plan you have - to believe the word of the demon, to kill me, and you hesitated not, then - well - I suppose I'll consider that grounds for divorce."
Brindi doesn't hold back any longer, but lobs a fireball at the altar. It drops dead center, evaporating the gold ring and sending Sage and Morama staggering back singed.
Our adventurers, with Rip Van Winkle the insect person, continue to trudge through the pulsing labyrinth. The cost of bleeding at each door begins to increase as convenient uncut skin becomes hard to find on their bodies. Some highlights from the first few hours of this instance:
Flesh chests! That is, large chests made of skin stretched over wooden frames. The first reveals two dormant skeletons of some hard black glass, covered o'er with runes. These are looted for some cursed loot. The second reveals two black skeletons which activate into life when a thread of magic snaps as Morama throws ope the lid. It's only after chopping the skeletons to bits and having them still full of cursed unlife (one arm wielding a cracked wand of fireball causing lots of damage, later to poor Brindi's extraplanar pocket) that our adventurers simply leave the room.
"Wormkin" and their "wormgod": fleshy pink demon things like men made by someone with a worm fetish and their hulking, monstrous captain (which swallows an unlucky member of the party for a short time).
A handful of slimes.
Spider-land! This is a stretch of corridors and rooms most of the way to "The Ghost" captain populated by plenty of giant arachnids. One of these, a jumping spider, causing some serious damage before suffering worse itself. Brindi uses her new wand of fireball to mixed results.
For a time, our adventurers are clearly on the main track to the heart of the labyrinth, as they pass through door after door, but they are not sidetracked. Well, they are - it's a labyrinth, and more than once they are forced to retrace their steps - but their focus remains fixed on finding the labyrinth corner housing the second demon captain.
It has been a year since Brindi appeared all of a sudden on the threshold of an abyssal labyrinth. A year, but also a day only, and a lifetime. Naked, shorn of all her equipment, carrying only the Octavo, her insidious Patron. It's been minutes, and it has been too long and not long enough. She has entered into the maze of membranous walls, translucent, pulsing with dark blood, her bare feet roughened against jagged igneous rock. She has learned: do not pierce the walls, for they cry out in pain and summon abyssal defenders. She has learned: the main path is dotted with doors, at which you must offer blood to pass. She has learned: off the main path, there are three Captains: a "rat father," a "ghost," and "the Sun." She has mapped out on stretched ghoul flesh most of the way to this latter Captain. She has learned: each Captain bears a key, and the door to the heart of the maze is locked with three locks.
Brindi is on the stoop of the labyrinth compiling her notes when a crackling portal draws her attention. Stepping out from it, her erstwhile companions: Morama, Roy, and Zilybar. Morama's serious expression and focused brow is at odds with her new hat, but Brindi makes no comment. She's all business.
No time is wasted. The gang enters the living labyrinth, following Brindi's map to the Captain. Along the way, they shed blood to check behind every door, until no doors appear. Once or twice, this backfires, the fleshy barriers opening to reveal skeleton and ghoul. But chests also, full of treasures - though our adventurers have been warned by Rezzlewick that all magic native to the abyss is twisted by curse.
Occasionally, the path leads against the igneous walls of the maze's extremities.
It has been just under two abyssal hours when our adventurers have trailblazed the final few corners and face the unmarked (oh yeah, every door has been marked with a rune or letter in one of four languages) door of what must be the Captain's lair. Whatever "The Sun" is lies beyond ...
Of course, nobody hesitates. Morama donates some red stuff and rushes into a corridor and around a corner - where she comes face to giant eye with a massive Beholder!
The rest of the party is not far behind.
While the massive antimagic beam emitted from that great central eye proves complicated, initially, only Roy suffers greatly from the other eye stalks, which fire at random. The cleric is struck twice by a powerful Death Ray, before Zilybar severs the eye stalk emitting them. Others are subject to lesser beams, but nobody falls until the Beholder itself succumbs to its many wounds.
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Cashgar's fae mobility and crafty spellweaving proves tricky, but when the old gnome wizard quits wasting his magic on his no-good son and participates in the combat, things crack along smoothly. Before too long, Cashgar is trapped in Morama's ensnaring vines as Ianmop pummels him.
Complexity arises when Cashgar begins begging for his life. He claims he can provide tips on how to defeat the guardian of the next, final stair - his "cousin B". Roy and Zilybar are keen to hear more - figuring to milk the fairy for all he's worth before doing anything final - but Ianmop has no patience for the tricksy fae and ultimately has to be dragged away from the near-dead Cashgar. Cashgar offers a key from his pocket as a gesture of truth-telling, saying it opens a door into another pocket dimension wherein the sunlight of his realm emanates. The gang is halfway to the library, where the keyhole is said to be, when Cashgar disappears from the grasp of a distracted Morama, vanishing back into his own fae plane.
Still, he had been telling the truth: the key opens into a void holding nothing but a radiant sword. When Morama takes it out, its blade vanishes, leaving behind a golden, bejeweled hilt that Rip identifies as belonging to a "Sun Blade."
Poking around further, Zilybar unearths a list of names labeled "relatives" and "Cousin B" is further inferred to refer to a likely demon named Bael.
Finally, Cashgar out of the scene, our adventurers remember they're in the presence of strangers and are introduced to Rezzlewick Sr. and Jr., the latter also known as Wicky J. This is, of course, that same Rezzlewick with the basement portal to the labyrinth of Baphomet, the demon holding Sage's contract!
Turns out Rezzlewick is a portal weaver, and thought he was meeting a desert relative of his for tea when he stepped through an experimental portal into this pocket dimension. Cashgar played along, trapping Rezzlewick and even forcing the gnome to invite his son to be trapped alongside. Rezzlewick thought he had put a pretty obvious code for "Do not come" in his note, but alas.
When opportunity knocks, our adventurers answer. They gather up some rock from the dungeon walls of the stair down (discovered under the banquet table) to anchor a later transportation and follow Rezzlewick to his home just outside of Azzimar. Here, they're shown the crackling portal to Baphomet's labyrinth ("Did not stay long," says Rezzlewick. "Not a pleasant place, but I did get some tips on building a good maze.").
While the rest of the party bandages their wounds, communes with their deific patrons, and rests, Ianmop is distracted by a scratching sound at the door whence the party had entered the winter chamber. Opening the portal, he is confronted with three more winter wolves, one of which is larger than the others.
Ianmop doesn't hesitate but suplexes the first wolf before rushing into the room to stand upon the corpses of the last pack, where he begins howling and barking like a dog. His performance causes the large wolf to whine an instruction to the others to hesitate and stand back. The pack leader then slinks into the room, carefully sussing out the situation.
Ultimately, Ianmop's bravado wins the scene: the two regular wolves are instructed by the pack leader to retreat to the room's corner while the pack leader advances on Ianmop - only to be grabbed and wrestled! While this dire wolf's spines cause Ianmop some damage, both friendly combatants seem to enjoy the play. It's with seeming regret that the large wolf declines Ianmop's invitation to adventure onward with him.
While the situation was tense, only Stormwing the wyrmling had any intention of helping out, but there is no reason for anyone to regret their stance. Rest is had, friends are made, then the gang moves on.
A burst of fresh air greets our adventurers as they leave the winter room (narrowly dodging yet another trap), which leads them to a new chamber populated only by two large stony forms. Here, melting ice borders a door under which wafts a fresh, woodland breeze.
The stony forms are investigated and figured to be troll-like in appearance. Under one, which Roy tips over, a chest is discovered inset into the floor. When opened, the chest springs to life, speaking with a feminine voice and standing upon ambulatory legs. It appears horny for our adventurers to put items into it.
Roy obliges by shoving a good deal of Brindi's abandoned inventory in, which seems to satisfy the chest, who has introduced itself as Marilyn.
The other form crumbles into chunks when shoved over, revealing a bundle of bound up bones that had rested in an interior cavity of the stone. Roy casts Speak With the Dead upon the remains (which are complete but are missing hands), and an individual who calls himself Garmos is briefly interviewed. He is content that he was mummified so in the stone, but calls the shape of it a bear. He was brought where he rests to honour him.
The door opens to another realm: a corridor thickly swathed in foliage and lit by rich ambient sunlight. Butterflies flit across their path as our adventurers enter. Zilybar is disturbed quickly by the lay of these forested corridors, as they do not align with his carefully drawn dungeon maps.
A large, beautiful wood door is approached, but tugging on its driftwood handle does not budge it. A sigil appears in the center of the door when the handle is touched, however: the burnt in mark of a severed hand. Touching this proves to be the trick, and the door opens into a rich, circular library full of organically situated stacks and still ceilinged in green.
A quick peruse of the space turns up a lycanthrope romance for Ianmop and a religious testament by Garmos Saernclaws for the rest - a gospel for a sect of druids that believed violence was as necessary for sentient populations as fires were for forests: to give way to new life and ideas.
Next, our adventurers enter a twilit corridor through a tight arch of ivy that brushes against most of the party and come upon a narrow door that opens into a lush lavatory complete with a wooden toilet and a fountain "sink" that turns out to cleanse anything that passes through its water.
Then a bedroom is discovered at the end of the corridor, and Morama takes the opportunity to lie in a luxurious bed for the first time in who knows how long as the others investigate the contents of a dresser and desk, on the former of which lies a portrait of a blue elf or eladrin and in which one drawer is dedicated to child-sized garments. When Roy pockets some ink from the desk, his hands begin itching madly and he returns the items; evidently, the ivy of the entry was enchanted. His hands cease itching but remain marked with a red rash.
Returning through that ivy arch, our adventurers travel down another sunlit forest corridor. From around a bend, the sounds of feasting are heard: crunching, slurping, chewing, the clatter of cutlery.
Hesitation is not in the gang's vocabulary. They brashly rush forward and enter a large dining hall dominated by a long table groaning under the weight of a diverse feast. Two gnomes near the entry are stuffing their faces, which resemble each other's. At the far end of the fifty-foot table sits a brown-skinned gnome poring over a book. He looks up as our adventurers enter.
"Oh, fortunate days!" he exclaims. "Perhaps you can help me throw off this curse those gnomes are under!"
He introduces himself as Cashgar and Morama happily introduces all of her companions, though Ianmop is immediately suspect and unhappy about it. While figuring out the curse and getting to know each other, Cashgar says he doesn't know why they shouldn't all enjoy the spread - which, he relates, is a gift from his god Silvanus (god of the druids, don't you know?) to sustain Cashgar while he's trapped in this dungeon.
Cashgar relates that a thousand years have passed in the outside world since he's been here, but that he has tracked only 400 - perhaps he lost years when passing through Rock Bottom. He relates that the gnomes have been feasting for around a week, and surmises that they may have been cursed due to worshiping a god in conflict with the patron of the feast.
Meanwhile, Stormwing, Don Jungus, Rip, and Morama were unable to resist the lavish spread and set to with gusto. Morama finds it difficult to pull herself away to occasionally chime in with a thought during the conversation.
Ianmop slips away from the end of the table and investigates a strange napkin used by one of the gnomes, which turns out to be a note written by a father to son.
Cashgar recognizes that the others do not wish to partake of the food, so proposes a toast. Roy observes that the host's own glass is filled from a different beaker than the rest.
Roy conjures his clerical sanctuary to disenchant his feasting companions, then rushes to bring his influence to the gnomes. This brings all diplomacy to an end, and when the party looks back at Cashgar, their host has turned into a blue-skinned fairie, hovering above the ground on flittering dragonfly wings.
Our adventurers regather themselves among the fallen bones of the enchanted giant skeletons and choose a door to try next. Zilybar unlocks one of the room's northern doors, and it opens to reveal a rectangular space covered in gleaming ice. A stone cube lies to the left of the door; the only other thing of immediate note is that the ceiling has begun to descend!
At first, the ceiling descends slowly; Zilybar takes some time to step into the room, where he sees an iron door down the way. He gives the stone cube a push and it slides smoothly across the glassy ice. As the ceiling begins to accelerate, the others peer in through the door. Roy notices a gleaming sapphire on the descending ceiling in the far corner. Quickly, the gang decides to attempt to "curl" the cube to that corner - perhaps if it lands beneath the gem, something will happen!
Augleth winter sports gold medalist Zilybar takes on the challenge, of course. His aim is true but he gave the cube slightly too much momentum - but luck is with him, because the ceiling continues to rapidly accelerate, and just as the stone is about to pass the gem, it makes contact: the ceiling clamps against the cube and stops it! There is a click. By now, the ceiling, a solid block of stone, has covered all but three feet of the doorway our adventurers are looking through, but with the click it begins once again to rise, leaving behind a gleaming forcefield upon the stone cube.
Approaching warily, looking up a ceiling that stays in place, our adventurers investigate this new phenomenon. The field is translucent, revealing a tall chest within it. Gently, experiments are made that reveal that the field is indeed of a force magic, that returns equal force to whatever touches it. A soft poke will be softly shoved back.
Ianmop wonders if the glowing field is of physical light, to be reflected or redirected by a mirror; he gently pushes a silver mirror into its beams. No reflection occurs, but the silver passes through. Various members of the party who are not wearing a dunce cap recall that silver is a common arcane substance; perhaps this is the key. A silver coin is tossed through easily.
Ultimately this does not provoke an idea of how to get the chest from within the force field. Instead, perhaps predictably, brawn is fallen back on. The gang lifts the 3x3 foot cube on one side and physics do the rest: the silver chest slides off into the waiting arms of Morama.
But shifting the cube has triggered the ceiling to begin descending once again!
From last time, our adventurers know they have a minute or so before the accelerating ceiling threatens them, so Zilybar and Ianmop stop at the iron door, which the former is able to pick quickly. Now in a hurry, though, a rope is employed to drag everyone into the revealed chamber beyond - but when it turns out to be very small and empty indeed, everyone turns back to the ice room. The ceiling is nearing the top of the doorway ...
But with no desire to be stuck in a tiny chamber when the ceiling descends and does not meet a perfectly located stone cube, our adventurers desperately orchestrate an escape. Roy is immediately out the door and his flying broom is out of his pocket; a rope dangling behind him for the others to grab. The broom is not employed to fly (no room) but to pull, and is helped along by the momentum of the gang as they launch themselves off the doorway. It is a perilous race, but Zilybar has just exited the room by the south door when the ceiling crushes the stone cube and slams into the ice. A thread of his cloak is caught beneath it.
The silver chest is not even locked, and opens to reveal a decent haul of treasure in both magic scroll and item. Bolstered by this achievement, our adventurers try the other northern door. Zilybar unlocks it, but this time the intellectually hampered Morama is convinced to give opening it a go. She promptly drops through a thin layer of ice when a hidden trapdoor beneath her gives way; but she manages to hold onto the surface. The drop beneath her is a hundred feet into blackness, but nobody else is looking, because the door has opened to reveal the writhing necks of an eight-headed cryohydra!
Once again, this great beast offers little challenge, despite an admirable opening salvo of frozen breath weapon. This particular monster features a gemstone embedded in the center of each of its foreheads. These are quickly harvested.
A southern door from the hydra's chamber is picked by Zilybar and opened by Morama - who pushes the door open and has her arm cut off for her trouble. Well, it hangs on by a last, stubborn tendon that did a damn good job at twitching the arm back at the very last second. First thing Morama does is cast her strongest healing spell to restore the limb, but the nerves take a moment to rehabilitate - a moment the rest of the gang takes to size up the threat of this new chamber, one blowing with large-flake snow and populated by standing stones and horse-sized winter wolves!
Roy relies on his tried-and-true spirit guardians and enters the room. Zilybar darts in to rakishly engage some wolves alongside the flying fists and wrestling moves of Ianmop.
It's fire breath vs. cold breath as Morama's companion Stormwing the Wyrmling enters the fray, and the poor dragon comes off the worse, drawing attacks and falling, and being restored by Roy, and drawing attacks and falling.
Steadily, the pack is thinned out and then eradicated, but this time our adventurers have hardly the energy left to feel accomplished. It's been a little more than an hour since last they took significant time to meditate, bandage their wounds, study, and recapture breath, but it has been multiple levels of the dungeon and dozens of fearsome riddles and monsters. Roy conjures his little force cabin, which all but Ianmop manage to fit into for warmth and safety.
Ianmop refuses to acknowledge magic of any kind, and prefers to try and fail to build a fire using some wolf fur before crawling into some freshly killed guts for warmth.
Immediately from the stairs, our adventurers encounter a door that tests Zilybar's lockpicking abilities. Ultimately with this door, and a few proceeding, he resorts to his Weightless Blade to slice what a lockpick can't trip. The room appears empty but for two tapestries, a door opposite the entry, and two glyph wheels inset into the wall next to a lever.
The glyph wheels draw the party's attention first. Each shows the same three symbols in rotation: what are labeled as a Raindrop, a Lightning Bolt, and curved sideways lines at first called the Sideways Rainbow but ultimately labeled Thunder. Wary now in the fifth level of this dungeon (took them long enough), various combinations are set on the wheels and the lever is pulled down by way of a simple machine created by an Immovable Rod fulcrum and rope leading out the door.
The first few, clearly incorrect, combos lead to the ceiling of razor sharp icicles (fast-growing) falling onto the floor. Eventually the chronological solution is landed on: first Lightning, then Thunder. This combo produces a flash of white light in the room; the sharpest eyed among the gang notice something appear along one wall, and a further triggering of the combo allows Morama (stone stupid now in her magical dunce cap), who has been convinced to stand in the room by that wall, to see clearly a chest revealed by the flash. But when it is invisible again after the split-second light, she can't conceive of its existence and Zilybar has to fetch the chest, dragging it invisible out of the room, where his magically keen sword cuts it open to reveal a decent visible treasure haul.
Shortly, the tapestries are investigated, and Roy discovers an inverted door behind one. Zilybar is again relied on to open this, revealing a large dark room filled with hydra heads.
The unthinking Morama leaps through the doorway, deciding for everyone that combat is in order.
What turned out to be two six-headed "cryo" hydra are soon enough dead.
Ignoring three tangible doors in this chamber, our adventurers instead divine the location of two secret portals: one behind a cabinet of minor treasures, and another below a frieze of legendary monsters. The cabinet door leads into a storeroom of sorts that appears haunted by a wailing spirit.
A door in this chamber opens into a larger one - and here our adventurers face a fearsome foe: a handful of giant skeletons, armed and rageful!
The large bones are eventually brought down in pieces.
Our adventurers slowly collect Brindi's belongings, which find a home in Roy's bottomless bag. While Rip and the "horse" are posted to watch on either side of the corridor, the others rest for a spell. Rip hears noises around xer corner, but nothing approaches. When time comes to move on, therefore, the gang heads in the other direction.
Slowly, the encrusting coral on the walls grows sparser, revealing ancient lined stonework, until a short corridor stretches bare of signs of the sea. It ends at a large double door. In universal language above the door reads
Rock Bottom.
Zilybar sets to work on this door's double locks, which prove a handful but not beyond his skill. Yet the doors do not open when unlocked. After a batter or two from Roy's maul, boards can be seen nailed across the doors' other side. The maul eventually breaks these apart, and our adventurers spill into a bizarre scene.
They have entered a cozy, timeless public house: a comfortable haunt for the execution of substance vice. Alcohol flows by a bar, hookah steam rises in one corner, powder is sniffed on that table, a cream is applied to the carapace of a bugfolk by that one. Only a handful of the patrons are recognizable modern species, including a ragged looking gnome by the bar. The rest are of ancient form, imbibing substances foreign and strange.
Our adventurers (sans Rip who has gone to speak to xer countrybug) approach the familiar wood of the taphouse bar. A stone construct greets them there, its eyes glowing blue from a vaguely identifiable face.
"It has been a long time since the front doors have been in use," says the barkeep in universal language. "Have the invaders been pushed out? Have you defeated the so-called Sea King?"
Our adventurers order envigorating drinks and partake of enriching snacks as they engage the barkeep and receive the following story:
This dungeon was once a pocket dimension, held outside of time and planar space. It was a meditative labyrinth for the rehabilitation of those throughout time and space who through substance addiction hit that universal location, Rock Bottom. Here in the heart of the labyrinth, the public house, an individual could engage in their vice without judgement or further bodily or mental harm until a glimmer of energy returned, when they may begin to participate in the practice of the labyrinth - finding their way out, until they would reappear in their place and time, ready to be a person again.
But five or six hundred years ago, the timelessness of Rock Bottom was challenged by the occupation of the powerful individual known as the Sea King, who over a decade or so stole over the entire dungeon but for the pub at its center. The automaton keepers of Rock Bottom consequently closed off the physical and metaphysical doors to their dimension - sealing the wooden doors and not admitting new clients.
Until days ago, when their automation suggested hope of revival. The gnome at the bar is the latest guest of Rock Bottom, while everyone else in the place has been waiting in limbo outside of time for the resumption of care. The barkeep suggests to our party that they speak to the gnome, who is from their time.
The gnome introduces himself as Ianmop, a gnome lately of Augleth before fleeing the war (in Rock Bottom, there is no shame). Zilybar recognizes that his family name roots his ancestors to the northeast. He is covered in scars and dirt, except for his spotless leather heeled boots.
Rip van Winkle invites them all over to xer table, where xe invites them to partake of the rubbing salve. Only Morama and Zilybar do so; some magic of Rock Bottom has infused it, and after an initial strong burning sensation (dermis being far more sensitive than bugfolk carapace) they find they can understand and be understood by their bugfolk comrade. Even after relaying this to the others, Roy and the tagger-on Ianmop are uninterested.
In a comfortable moment outside even of the current chronology, our three adventurers are called back to the bar, where the barkeep asks them to take Ianmop under their wing as they continue their mission. The other patrons of Rock Bottom are fully in limbo, but Ianmop is a new arrival, here for rehabilitation.
Our adventurers declare they could use an additional hand (thinking of Brindi, in some demon's lair somewhere). They return to the moment with Ianmop and Rip and ask the former to accompany them.
Enticed by a full floating barrel of ale (that will slowly lose its alcohol content as Ianmop recovers), Ianmop agrees.
The barkeep guides the expanded party through the back, to the cellar door and a stairway descending into the cold ...
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There's no avoiding the combat. The black dragon is large and its scales as hard as but much more durable than glass; it proves a dangerous foe.
Morama decides to subject her own dragon friend to the subterranean dungeon and pulls on their connection, summoning the wyrmling to her support.
Eventually, the dragon is no more than a corpse. Brindi harvests a few choice pieces before the party moves on.
A very long corridor is found to feature a midden hole. A dead end provides space to rest and bandage wounds for an hour or so. A guillotine blade trap nearly slices Zilybar in half. A splashing and a humming emanate from a few corridors ahead ...
Our adventurers stumble upon a dozen horrible tentacled monsters swirling around on the walls, ceiling, and flooded floor of a corridor, surrounding a green bottle floating in midair with a single flower in it.
As Brindi uses telekinesis to grab the artifact, the others swing back into combat.
Zilybar and Morama form the front line until Zilybar falls; then, Roy brings forward some summoned skeletons to fill the gap.
The monsters are dangerous - wielding tridents they seem to draw from their spines and using psychic magic that deals grievous damage. Just facing the twelve of them seems on the edge of our adventurers' capabilities,
but then Brindi has the bottle in hand. She sees a thread-like worm swimming in the liquid in it. Despite an Identify spell telling her the bottle is very close to the immortality-chest of a lich, Brindi tips the bottle back and drinks its contents down!
Free of its subdimensional space all of a sudden, near the bottom of the dwarf woman's esophagus, a full sized aboleth appears with a great bang. An atomic crack follows as Brindi's clothes are sundered and her pockets-of-holding are burst.
Chunks of Brindi smack against every surface within twenty feet and the huge coiling tentacles of the horrid aboleth occupy the space she had just occupied. The hundreds of items in Brindi's pockets have gone flying into the air and clatter back down onto the Aboleth's bulk - thorny grapes, hammers, manacles, swords, and all.
As Morama, Roy, and skeletons hold off the aboleth's thralls, Zilybar (brought back to vivacity by Roy's dependable magic) takes on the aboleth - ultimately killing his second of the dungeon after a series of deft strokes (helped by Rip Van Winkle, who throws him a crafted antidote to the monster's mucous).
Upon the death of their master, the thralls dissolve into scum. Lucky - for only two had fallen to our adventurers' onslaught of more than a minute!
Quickly, Zilybar is looking to collect the pieces of Brindi, knowing Roy has the ability to revivify the dead. But what he finds are not chunks of dwarf meat, bleeding and sundered, but hunks of fleshy clay: the substance of a homunculus.
That's around when Brindi contacts Rip through the psychic connection hosted in Rip's cloak. The bugfolk does xer best to act out Brindi's words, effectively communicating that the dwarf woman woke up in the abyss and looks forward to seeing them all soon.
What is not communicated is that Brindi wakes up thus seemingly immediately following the demon-summoning ritual of a few days prior, wherein she mocked the demon Baphomet and challenged him to face off against herself and the power of her patron, the Octavo.
The body of Brindi has then not been with our adventurers for the duration of the dungeon ...!
The gang retraces their steps to the room full of rusted tools, now accompanied by a "quadropus" (the giant octopus with the magic saddle on). While they are greeted by the gregarious merchant, they are also greeted by the blade of an angry stranger (a water elemental with varicoloured bones in) and the magic of a sea elf.
The former is dispatched quickly; they had been direly wounded to begin with. The sea elf as quickly identifies the futility of continuing to battle and surrenders - before looking at Roy and Zilybar with a curious expression on her face. "Aren't you members of the Kanye West Guild in Augleth?" she asks.
It turns out she is the cousin of Porsche, deceased member of said guild, and that sea elf memories are like the water cycle: never lost. This sea elf, Peugeot, inherited the part of her cousin's memory to do with Porsche's time in Augleth.
Peugeot makes an effort to draw our adventurers into an alliance to fetch the throne piece, saying that the Sea General (not to be confused with the local Sea King, architect of this dungeon) would reward them handsomely. Ultimately she is rebuffed and some threatening looks provoke her to retreat: she vanishes back towards the stairs to the upper levels.
So our adventurers move on - after Zilybar trades a flute to the merchant for some obtuse advice.
After some windings, they find themselves in a chamber dominated by a stone sphinx, which reveals a trapdoor beneath its haunches as it yawns and stretches before greeting them.
Of course, it presents our adventurers a series of riddles before allowing them to pass.
Miraculously, the answers come easily to the often dense party, and the sphinx yawns again to reveal a descending stair.
The next level of the dungeon is pitch black, mucky, and labyrinthine. Our adventurers spend a frustrating time winding back and forth before coming across their first movement: some writhing shadows cast by a multicoloured light down a long passage.
Desperate for variety, this is investigated - but as soon as the shadows' source is identified as a maddened hydra with ten heads, the brave warriors' interest evaporates and they turn about.
They continue through the dark labyrinth.
The next time they see movement it is unavoidable: barreling around a corner fifty feet away is a black dragon with stunted wings, and it sees them ...
The horrible monsters of epochs past swarm forward with the wave of tomb-howls in four ranks: a quartet holding golden orbs, a trio wielding spiked swords, a quartet of monsters wielding halberds, and behind them all and collecting in a circle nine in ceremonial raiment.
The four orb-holding creatures launch forward just as Brindi withdraws a black horn from her pocket and winds a demonic note. It ripples forward and deals damage to Roy and Zilybar as well as the first two ranks of the antediluvian beasts. One of the orb-wielders stumbles and falls, pulling a pin from its orb and hurling it at the feet of Roy and Zilybar. The ball explodes, sending Roy and Zilbar back - and then the three remaining suicide attackers have shoved their pinless orbs into their mouths and are leaping to bite into them!
Zliybar is latched onto and the focused blast rips out his side. Blasted by two ancient grenades and Brindi's horrible note, he falls.
But Roy doesn't want to fight the front lines alone, and casts a little healing magic as the reptilian warriors advance. Shrugging off his near-death experience, Zilybar joins the stalwart ex-officer to rebuff the charge.
The incorrigible Brindi hurls a fireball in the mix, singeing friend and foe alike.
Morama meanwhile fires a few arrows at the priests, whose chanting has prompted vibrations in the ground of the corridor. One of the arrows conjures binding vines that cut their victim with sharp thorns, but the priest ignores the pain to continue chanting.
When Morama joins Zilybar at the front line, Roy activates the blood magick of his breastplate and moves as a cloud of blood to the center of the priestly circle, where he slams his thunder buckler to the ground. This disrupts the summoning, but the priests do not cease.
Brindi joins Morama and Zilybar, but soon falls to a halberd.
Roy casts another healing spell over his shoulder - but all of a sudden, water is pooling by his feet, swirling up from cracks in the juddering ground. Roy attempts to hold it back even as his conjured guardians assail the enemy. Shortly, he is pushed back as a gigantic arm formed of seawater thrusts up through the stone. Its fist batters at Roy.
The trio behind are steadily dispatching their opponents, but Roy's spiritual guardians do the most work: within a few exchanges, the priests fall dead to a body.
A momentous voice rumbles out disappointment that the arm was all that was able to join the combat ...
Zilybar, however, gets the final blow of the combat. As he dispatches the dagger-wielding halberdier, the void of light behind the party dims for a second: within the large doorway stands a blue-skinned burly man dressed in colourful raiment. He thanks our adventurers for the tutorial, and the white light returns and washes out the scene.
The smell of brine and the sound of waves against ship planks fades in. Our adventurers have been returned to the illusory ship's helm! Their wounds have disappeared and their energy has returned. The lighthouse beam tracks across the planks but reveals no trapdoor.
Now our party, with their companions returned to them, must backtrack. They wind back a few corridors, through the mirror room, and investigate an unexplored northern passage. This leads them ultimately to a door, marked by eight carved icons of sea creatures next to eight locks.
Zilybar unlocks one after the other without much plot, discovering each to be trapped according to its sigil. The urchin lock produced venomous spines, the eel produced a burst of electricity, the tuna filled the corridor with the reek of rotten fish. The fifth lock tackled happens to have an octopus next to it; Zilybar expects perhaps a burst of ink.
Instead, his work simply unlocks the door. It swings open to reveal a large room filled with a clear, sandy pool with a large spherical island in its center.
When Brindi cannonballs into the water, her activity awakens the island, which turns out to be the head of a giant octopus. It offers to provide true answers to eight questions.
Our adventurers deliberate for some time, but ultimately their selection matters little: the answers are either too specific or not specific at all. "What is the path to the throne piece we are seeking?" "The path is perilous." "Where can I find a portal to Baphomet's abyssal domain?" "In Rezzlewick's basement." and so forth.
Brindi puts the magic saddle that turns anything wearing it into a horse onto the octopus, who seems content to go wherever. It says that it will be able to answer eight more questions in eight years. The singing frog returns to its small green form.
Rested and bandaged, our adventurers look more closely at the corridor's only door. Above it, the grotesque face of a gargoyle. When Zilybar goes to play with the lock, he discovers that the door is a perfect 2D facsimile: there is no handle, no lock, no jamb!
That's when the gargoyle opens its mouth to deliver a riddle. It stumps the party for a moment or two until Zilybar poses a theory and Morama gives it a shot. The latter is the first to find the doorknob suddenly three-dimensional - but the others watch as she mimes opening the door and stepping through the solid wall. Soon enough everyone gives the password (Brindi leading Don Jungus on the frog-turned-horse) and is into the room beyond.
This room is full of rusty tools and implements, and at its far end our adventurers discover a dungeon salesman: a fishman wearing a thousand pockets with an overflowing backpack by his feet. This trader greets them gleefully in all the languages our adventurers speak and ropes them into commerce, always offering to throw in something special if they "show [him] a good trade."
Everyone gets at least something, though everyone but Brindi lets a few choice items go when checkout time reveals bizarre costs such as dreams, colours, and other immaterial currencies.
Entertainingly equipped, the party moves on, hearing from the fishman that this level challenges the intellect more than the body.
Sure enough, a few winding corridors later, the group encounters a puzzle room full of rotating mirrors that they have to arrange in specific angles to direct a light beam to the room's other side. Brindi's notes are finished just before the rest of the group's practical approach unlocks success.
The next room baffles the group: they open the door to reveal the helm of a sailing ship! They feel the wind and smell the sea. The beam of a lighthouse sweeps over the deck. The floor is wooden beams, and when the enter they look back and the door they came through appears to be in the aft cabin. Quickly the illusion's limits are discovered: the helm is the entire room, and invisible walls prevent them from climbing to the poop or jumping overboard.
The accessible deck features a rush mat, a silvered horn that Zilybar pockets, and a shard of driftwood with a childish painting of a lighthouse and a rhyme about lighthouses pointing the way.
When Brindi pockets the mat, Roy notices out of the corner of his eye golden lines appear in the deck where the mat had been when the lighthouse beam sweeps over it. Next rotation of the beam, he studies it closely, and finds the outline of a trapdoor!
This trapdoor opens to reveal a dark, narrow, precipitous stairway.
Our adventurers descend, and time loses meaning.
Eons later, they arrive at a low, wide passage wreathed in magical darkness. Its walls are lined with glass display cases.
More un-time passes before of a sudden our adventurers realize they can see! The display cases hold the mummified bodies of horrible reptiles unlike anything any of the party has ever seen before - and the walls spread out before them full of murals that detail the rise and fall of an antediluvian civilization that battled with the sea and descended into the heart of the planet to escape it.
Soon enough, disturbed by all these discoveries, our adventurers are freshly offput by a new sound, the sound of rushing wind or water.
Soon, everyone but Roy has been knocked off their feet by a sudden rush of briny seawater. Roy grabs Zilybar before he careens with the others towards a void of pure light that deadends the corridor.
Then, all of a sudden, the water is gone, and the noise has been replaced by the howling of lost souls.
Roy and Zilybar turn to see the horrible forms of the reptilian mummies lurching towards them ...
Brindi has fucked around and now she finds out: the door she's kicked open reveals a huge, writing hydra with eight heads and all of them go for her jugular one after the other. Quickly, she is bleeding out on the threshold.
Roy drags her to safety while Zilybar looks in at the situation. The hydra appears to be sitting on a stash of treasure. Ultimately, Roy plays his trump card and banishes the great beast to a void plane for a minute. Those sixty seconds are spent collecting the treasure and bursting through one of the two doors out of the hydra's chamber.
The gang shores up the door and has just about Mended it with magic when the hydra returns, maddened - but it cannot fit through the doorway even if it were sure they were through it.
Our adventurers find themselves on a dry platform looking out at a long swimming pool. Poor Don Jungus, now a water-breather, is held on this platform, drowning, when Zilybar dips a toe in the pool and discovers that it is electrically charged. Well, until Roy "gives him what he wants" and tosses him in, where he suffers a minor heart attack and falls unconscious. He's dragged back onto the platform and Brindi gives him a bowl of potable to breathe through.
A message is carved into one of the long walls:
ONE OF YOU MUST DI E
When Zilybar crawls along the wall to look closer, he confirms his suspicion: there is a V between the I and E; only, the paint the other letters have in their inset lines is missing in this important letter.
So Roy pulls up the hood of his Cloak of the Manta Ray and is at the bottom of the pool in a flash, where he discovers a lever. Pulling it, the electrical charge disappears from the water. He then swims to the pool's long end, finding a sealed steel door beneath the water's surface. Beside this, another lever. He pulls it and the water begins to siphon from the chamber.
But as the group collects around the metal door, they are stumped by a further difficulty: it is perfectly sealed into the wall and has no keyhole or knob.
Experimentation leads Brindi to traipse a hundred feet back up the drained pool floor to pull the first lever - and sure enough, the others are gratified to hear a hiss as the metal plate gives way a little. With an easy push, it glides open on oiled hinges and reveals a more typical dungeon passage beyond.
However, the lever has also reset the room! Water gushes in, filling rapidly and crackling with electricity.
Brindi has still the lingering effects of a water walking spell and races down the filling corridor, stumbling over the irregular and changing surface of the roiling pool. Before she is halfway, the steel door begins closing!
Zilybar puts a stop to that with his Immovable Rod, but that means charged water is pouring through the doorway, crackling around our adventurers' hips and lower! Zilybar is jolted badly.
It's only seconds before Brindi reaches the portal and leaps through it, however, and Zilybar snatches his rod back. The door closes, leaving them in another coral passage, its foot of water still and slowly sparkling again with bioluminescent plankton.
Shortly, sounds are heard, as of a fracas! Our party scouts ahead carefully and observes a smaller, reddish hydra joining two others in a wide and long corridor. Beyond their whipping heads and gouts of breathed flame, there is the sounds of mortal struggle and magical effort, but nothing can be seen.
Luckily, there is a side passage, and our adventurers creep into it, intending on bypassing this dangerous melee.
Buuut Brindi misses the memo. She really wants to fight a hydra. She shoots off some ineffective beams of magic, which serve only to get the last hydra's attention. Unable to reach past its fellows to help them there, its happy enough to turn and have some action of its own.
Sadly for it, maybe, one triple gout of flame from three of its five heads is enough to take Brindi out.
Zilybar grabs her - and the struggling Don Jungus - and slips into the side passage just in time. This passage being narrower, our delvers are hopeful that the hydra will be slow in pursuit. They set off down a turn and hallway or two and come to a passage where there is a whirlpool filling the space in front of a side door.
This water, spinning strongly into the enormous mouth of an oubliette, almost catches the diminutive Zilybar, but Roy gives him a flying broom which the gnome uses to access and open the door.
A room is revealed with erotic tapestries on its walls. On a platform in the room's center sits a divan. Zilybar ensures no doors hide behind the wall hangings; finding none, the room is left behind. Everyone carefully navigates past the whirlpool and continues, hearing the blasts of fire from the slowly pursuing hydra.
A few further turns and choices are passed and our adventurers discover the stair down, opposite a storage nook of sorts full of rotting food.
Halfway down this, a dry breeze from below wafts sounds up with it: multiple gargling, gravely voices. Morama pulls up the hood of her cloak and scouts ahead, discovering a passage floored with fine yellow sand. At its end, three gangly trolls playing a game at a coral table. One sits, curiously, upon a horse's tack.
Their long necks crane away from their game as their sharp senses detect the spying ranger, and quickly they are up and angry.
"Finally, something more interesting than a bad game of Humans & Business," one cries in its horrible language.
The ensuing combat is fast and fierce. Morama is nearly torn in half by the trolls' sharp claws, but her orcish resilience and magical amulet prevent the worst.
Ultimately, four bodies end up lying on the sand, but Morama's is quickly doctored and lives yet.
But everyone is utterly spent. Bleeding and exhausted, they drop to the sand breathing hard. Finally, two dungeon levels and countless obstacles passed, they concede: they must rest.
And so the corridor's sole door is left uninvestigated.
Over the next eight hours, our adventurers suture and sleep, recovering mana and vitality. Occasionally they poke around in the trolls' pockets and around the table, and rested Rip is happy to ritually identify some discoveries.
Zilybar befriends a singing frog before strapping the one troll's saddle around it, turning it into a horse. Too excited by this development, the frog jumps - straight into a wall with its newfound horsepower, breaking a leg.
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Fifty arcane skeletons are scrambled all together in a corner of the chamber, their bodies all of glowing purple bones and the eye-sockets of their pale skulls glinting with treasure. Zilybar and Morama get to bashing and slashing, but only the skulls are vulnerable to anything but Zilybar's Weightless Blade with its atomic cutting edge. In a fell, cold swoop, however, Brindi comes in with an icy blast and sends more than 30 skulls clattering mundanely to the frozen ground - though she catches her frontline companions as well.
Gold coins and a few scroll cases spill from the skulls as they fall. Now only comprising some 17 skulls, the arcane being forms into one giant conglomerate with a proportionally silly humanoid head-skull and shoulders made from 16 other skulls. Its lower 3/4s remain glowing arcane bone.
Slowly, the gang whittles this monster down - but its attacks cause severe damage: possessing Zilybar twice and Morama once, for a long spell, forcing them to look out from the empty sockets of random skulls as the flesh of their bodies age in front of them.
But skull after skull falls from the thing until Brindi lands the final blow with a triple blast of some arcane power of her own.
Our adventurers pick up the treasure and take a breath, observing that the water mephits from earlier were frozen by Brindi's early spell. The gang then passes through a room full of noxious muck (whence Brindi harvests a key, some coins, and two large ruby eyes from a demon statue) and push through a door to discover, after a short winding hall, a descending stair full of shifting Shadows ...
Dispatching these aberrant beings is a matter of seconds for our experienced dungeoneers. Zilybar having taken point for this episode's exploration, Roy imbues him with Protection as he descends the stairs and finds himself wading in a foot of water glimmering with the phosphorescent bodies of glowing plankton.
Around a near corner, Zilybar is confronted with what is mistaken for a horribly writing ball of giant eels whose attempt to subjugate Zilybar's mind is rebuffed by Roy's wise ward.
The rest of the party catches up and battle ensues against what turns out to be a horrifying single organism with a dozen slimy tentacles. The mucous coating these does a number upon our party, inflicting Zilybar, Roy, and Brindi with disease that turns their skin slimy and translucent. Zilybar is temporarily afflicted with an interior mucous that fills his lungs and refuses to accept oxygen not carried through water, but a spell from Roy after the combat rids him of the need to swim face down through this new dungeon level.
This latter disease delights Don Jungus and Brindi, who harvests some mucous from the dead beast to feed to the merdwarf, which to his delight infects him with water breathing!
Brindi and Morama do some scouting ahead and discover what appears to be a dead end. The party rests for an hour in this corridor, binding their wounds to the pleasant humming magic-laced song of Rip van Winkle.
Then Brindi throws herself at the wood planking at the dead end, falling through the back end of a bookshelf into a large, empty room. The room is searched, but nothing is found of note. Two doors lead from the room: the one to a winding corridor and the other to a large, low-ceilinged hexagonal chamber. This latter is the path of the party, and they discover here four different routes, including one hidden behind an illusion in an alcove. Brindi burns through the illusion and kicks down the revealed wooden door, discovering a small chamber beyond, filled with the massive body of a marine hydra ...
While shooting fish in a barrel is literally the archetype of easy work, our adventurers manage to complicate it. Well, just a little, anyway. Roy and Morama exert some effort to grapple the chest, but the turtle-monsters bite the rope in half. Brindi wades into the pool as a giant to hurl the ornate stone chest out of the water with her potion- and size-imbued might; consequently, she is the only member of the gang to get bit by a turtle's sharp teeth. Morama summons some spirit-frogs to distract the monsters, which works for a while. The chest collides with the wall and silver coins spill from its broken corner, but when Brindi attempts to rip the chest apart, its top third reveals itself as a mimic and attacks!
Roy and Morama now do settle into that simplest of activities, seemingly just out of spite, now that the chest is free of the turtle-beasts' protection, while Brindi and Zilybar dispatch the tentacly mimic.
The treasure haul is mostly silver coins, around 800 of them, and a single magic wand which Brindi pockets before identifying.
The monsters dead and the treasure looted, the delvers turn around to retrace their steps, this pool room being a dead end.
Ultimately, they are forced to traverse the passages wherein the intrepid Brindi had previously heard the mucking about of some large feet - and sure enough, after a turn or two Zilybar makes eye contact with an immense green ogre at the end of a hallway.
The ogre rushes, and has companions doing the same behind it. Wild eyes and brandished clubs lead our adventurers to respond in kind - but then the ogres rush past them, as if running away in fear. Do our bloodthirsty heroes let them flee? Of course not. They are cut down in retreat and attacked from behind. Roy ends up standing upon the back of one fallen ogre as he maul-uppercuts the last conscious beast while it scrabbles away on its ass.
Two ogres remain barely alive in the muck, but only one is needed for questioning. Despite Zilybar's conscience, Morama flattens one's head. Roy wrangles the other into a position to answer questions ... but of course, none of our party speaks Aquan!
But the ogre's pleas are understood by Don Jungus! Turns out that he learned an obscure Aquan dialect spoken only by a single tribe of merrow ogres. So he learns that the ogres are fleeing what is likely the party of undersea adventurers from the inverted ship outside the dungeon; indeed, they were already wounded. The ogre claims to have grown up in this dungeon as prisoner-tribute.
So Brindi withdraws a scroll of revivify from her depthless pocket and brings back to life the only dead ogre with its head not mushed, and the two survivors are allowed to scramble away.
The party moves on, coming up against two dead ends. Both are investigated, and the one reveals, behind an arcane tapestry, the nozzle of an acid-spraying trap and a secret door.
This door opens in a chamber that Brindi blithely enters. She is ambushed by two puddles, which form into water mephits - but before anyone else can react, she gives them a stern talking to and they return to the muck.
A pile of skulls with glass and metal glittering in their sockets draws the attention of the rest of the group, as Brindi heads to a different wall to pocket a tapestry hanging there. Morama withdraws a phial of oil from a skull's eye socket ...
And all of a sudden, every skull in the pile comes to life with necrotic light glimmering in their eyes! Black aura spills down their spinal columns, spreading to form ribs, and arm bones, and pelvis, and legs, until a horde of roughly 50 black magic skeletons with natural bone heads stands jumbled together in the room, facing our startled adventurers!
