23rd of Growth
Well, I said I wanted action, and action I got! After all our planning, today we headed down into the Dungeon. We were hoping to intercept the Shuul tunnel using a map from one of my Delver’s Guild associates. Our goal is to find Shim (our missing skulk friend), as well as make inroads in our quest to find the litorians. Nos, another skulk, is with us.
It’s a long trip through the under-realms. At one point we think we hear someone shouting for help from a well up ahead, but it was a trick, and we were all attacked by an undead water elemental. Farther on, Barbatos was drained of strength by a roper in the middle of a chamber. We try to go around it but ran afoul of a whole bunch of goblins, which almost did Diethan in. (Now he hates goblins more than ever!) A room where we sought safe shelter for a rest was trapped with foul fire traps, which also afflicted Diethan.
While we rest, Nos scouts ahead for us. When he comes back, he tells us a bridge ahead seems clear, but that he saw strange tentacled creatures with beaks floating around near there. I have no idea what they are. Getting out of our safe haven room without engaging the fire trap proves a challenge — Tharn and Barbatos get burned exiting.
In a chamber up ahead we stumble upon a shrine to Charlathan, a god with male and female aspects. We wonder whether sitting on the throne here would make you change gender, but no one’s brave enough to try. Pressing on, we hear others up ahead at the bridge Nos saw—sounds like they fell. Did they encounter these strange creatures Nos told us about?
Before we can wonder too much, one of them sneaks up behind us, its horrid bulbous body (it almost looks like a big brain) covered with gross tendrils. It lashes out at us, but we drop it like a big sack of wet meat. We remain wary for more, and there are indeed two more on the bridge waiting for us. We chuck the dead one out there onto the bridge to call them out. One of the two is HUGE. I shoot my new chaos spear from Pythoness House at it, but unfortunately I miss and it goes into the water off the bridge. Damn!
We try a number of tactics to get at these new foes without walking into their trap on the bridge. Tharn makes a sneak attack, and Barbatos lets loose with a fireball. That seems to scare them off, so we hightail it across the bridge. But the creatures reappear as we cross! We manage to dispatch the small one and race to the center of the bridge to clash with the big one. It tries to fling Tharn off the bridge. It fails at that but it does paralyze him with its tendrils. (Later I learn these things are called grells.)
Archinemus levitates off the bridge to try to detect the chaos spear. He does manage to locate it in the underground river, praise the Mother of all Machines. He also finds some treasure from previous grell victims, including a spell scroll tube.
Moving along, we manage to run afoul of a horrid cold ooze monster—it came in and engulfed Diethan and Barbatos (the latter of whom was already hurt from the fire trap). Tharn pulled out Barbatos, Diethan hacked his way out, and the rest of us took care of the creature. I am certainly taking a lot of notes about monsters on this trip, if nothing else.
After dispatching the ooze, we pass through a large area of burned-out webs (and a big dead spider) into a region of intact webbing. Here we face two giant spiders. A solid group effort defeats them. But we really need a rest now, so we find a side room with a collapsed door. I manage to jury-rig it shut again, and Tharn scatters protective caltrops before the door. We enjoy a welcome respite.
24th of Growth
The respite does not last, however. Just as we’re getting comfortable we hear footsteps beyond the door. Tharn smells the death and decay of the undead with spidery undertones. We hear a soft incantation, then spiders start streaming through all the cracks in the door. They swarm all over Tharn! Calista uses a wind spell to blow them all off him—they smack into the wall. I break down the door and spy our tormentor: An animated corpse covered in webbing, apparently a victim risen from being cocooned by the giant spiders. The spiders come out of its desiccated body and swarm onto me! The foe uses the opportunity of our distraction to summon up a stone monster from the earth—it goes at Diethan and Tharn, who smash it to rubble. We gang up on the webbed guy and beat the corpse to dust.
Thank the Mother there are no more of these creatures—Nos tracks it back to its lair to confirm that. We follow him and find a chamber filled with a big web and some treasure left by previous victims. We bed down in an adjoining room filled with carved wooden animals. (Barbatos takes a wooden piggy.)
25th of Growth
Back on track and into a diamond-shaped chamber our map calls the Mirror Room. Giant mirrors line every wall. We can tell that we approach the temple of Destor, the Lightning Lord, as the walls are decorated with a lightning bolt motif. Archinemus finds traces of fairly recent blood (spilled within the last twenty-four hours) at a door blocking our way.
Inside we see an enormous midnight blue-temple, painted bolts of lightning cutting across the ceiling. A group here challenges us, and we offer a tribute for the privilege of passing. They scorn it and attack! One conjures a foul-smelling bulbous monster (a dretch, I later discover), another summons two spiky Abyssal wolves. We face a wizard (Thorarin), cleric (Ibrahim, follower of the God of Dreams), two fighters (Jenna and Slav), and their creatures. That damnable woman fells me, but Diethan kills their wizard and the cleric flees. It seems they thought we were common bandits. Barbatos (from behind the door) lobs some magic missiles and a smelly poop-bomb he snagged from the ratmen at Pythoness House. Tharn makes a running swipe that ends their last defender, the greedy thug.
I’m sad to say I did not acquit myself well at all in this fight. Got to get in some more practice against flanking maneuvers. We revive Jenna and question her—she said they recently killed a batch of bandits and thought we were more of the same. She and her companions were out for treasure, she said. They recently killed a basilisk and she warns us of a wall of lightning up ahead. We return her things to her and take her with us in the hopes that she can find her fled cleric friend.
We follow a passage lined with frescoes of the god Destor and reach the wall of lightning in an octagonal room without finding Ibrahim. Jenna describes that, if you venture down the hall toward the wall, it moves up the hall toward you. We backtrack a bit to get around the wall and run right into Ibrahim. After a terse exchange—he was none too happy with our having slain members of his party—he departs with Jenna.
Investigating another way around, we see a room where four blue pillars generate a ball of blue light that shoots a bolt of electricity at Nos, who’s scouting the way ahead. “Disturb not the First Reliquary of the Lightning Lord!” booms a deep voice from the floating orb. Returning, Nos advises, “I don’t think we should go that way.”
So we go to Plan B. Tharn and Diethan, our fastest runners, venture down the hallway with the wall of lightning and it races toward them. This gives the rest of us, standing at the junction where it used to be, time to cross to a door that the wall had blocked. Only problem is, the two of them don’t have time to get back before the wall returns back the way it came. Barbatos gets around this by summoning a stone creature into the hall using a ring we got off the spider-mummy. The wall hits it as soon as it appears, destroying it, but we all get through no problem.
We find ourselves in a chamber that no one has entered in a long while, judging from the layers of dust. We follow a passage out (still in Destor’s temple, it seems) to a new corridor that has been bricked up. This is it! We’re very close now to the Shuul’s secret thoroughfare.
