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.
