Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
The Kordovian Adventurers Guild
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6895892" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 19: THE MAGEKILLER</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 7</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 7</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Darrien, half-elf ranger 6</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 7</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Gilbert Fung, human wizard 7</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 1</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 6 (Moradin)</p><p></p><p>Game Session Dates: 23 April 2016 and 14 May 2016</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>"How are you feeling?" asked Finoula, concern in her voice.</p><p></p><p>"I'm...okay," replied Darrien slowly, sitting upright with a confused look on his face. "What happened?"</p><p></p><p>"Ye don't remember?" asked Ingebold.</p><p></p><p>"The last thing I remember, I was fighting that big, burly ogre in the--aw crap, I got killed, didn't I?" The half-elf ranger looked around, surprised to find himself in an unfamiliar temple. But he recognized the sun symbol of Pelor and quickly put two and two together.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, little bit," confirmed Gilbert. "But you all better now."</p><p></p><p>"How about you?" asked Castillan, looking down at his younger brother.</p><p></p><p>"Squabbedy stomash," replied Aithanar, a sudden look of disappointment on his face once he heard the nonsense still coming out of his mouth. "Forkibble! Pespy nonshabbadoo norkle finshimble!"</p><p></p><p>"My goodness!" exclaimed the Pelorian cleric who had personally overseen the <em>raise dead</em> spells that had returned life to the two fallen heroes. "Was he talking like that before he was slain?"</p><p></p><p>Ingebold saw Gilbert silently assessing whether or not he was likely to get away with asking for a partial refund from the cleric for returning Aithanar to life in a less-than-pristine state and cut him off before he could give it a try. "Aye," she answered quickly, "he were." Gilbert just glared silently at the dwarven cleric, wondering how much money her honesty had just cost them.</p><p></p><p>"Hey, let's not bother telling my mom I got killed, okay?" suggested Darrien, standing up for the first time since being <em>raised</em>. "She worries enough about me."</p><p></p><p>"Likewise, I don't think we need to mention your recent death and return to life to Dear Old Dad," Castillan said to Aithanar.</p><p></p><p>"Shonka freeble," agreed Aithanar.</p><p></p><p>After the excitement in the ogre caves and the raising of their two slain members, the group unanimously decided they'd be best served with another night in a comfortable inn, making a fresh start for the Magekiller dungeon in the morning. After all, if they were going to take on a subterranean tunnel network specifically designed to slay intruders, they wanted to be at their strongest, with a full complement of spells available. And so it wasn't until the following morning that the Kordovians finally made their way to Arrogan's abandoned ruins. They were easy enough to find, as was the set of stairs spiraling clockwise down into the ground. Aithanar promised - with a grim nod - to stay with the animals and the wagons this time and Finoula gave him a big smile of support as she told Wrath to stay with him. The group lined up single file - for the stairwell was rather narrow - and Binkadink led the adventurers down into the Magekiller, the twin <em>everburning torches</em> tied to the antlers on his helmet providing the group's only illumination.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink lost track of the number of circuits they made as they circled their way deeper into the earth, but it was at least five or six before the spiraling stairs leveled out into a large room. This first chamber was rectangular, about 25 feet wide and 35 feet long. A sculpted pillar stood in each corner, the columns carved in the shapes of fearsome female warriors with swords. There were open passageways in the center of the walls to the east, west, and south. A set of four straight stone steps led directly into the center of the room from the north.</p><p></p><p>"Here we go," called Binkadink to those lined up behind him. He stepped onto the first of the four steps. As he did so, the statue-woman to his left said, "You are not Arrogan." The gnome fighter whipped the blade of his masterwork glaive in the direction of the statue that spoke, but it seemed to have only been a <em>magic mouth</em> effect, for the statue didn't otherwise move, nor did it make any further utterances. Binkadink stood his ground and peered at the other three statues, but they likewise didn't seem ready to animate and attack. He took another tentative step down the stairs.</p><p></p><p>"These levels are intended for Arrogan alone," said the statue to the southeast. Again, Binkadink turned to face the speaker, but that was all it had to say on the subject. "Probably just scare tactics," the gnome said nervously over his shoulder to the others, and took another step.</p><p></p><p>As expected, doing so triggered a <em>magic mouth</em> spell on the woman carved into the pillar to the southwest. "If you are here to take that which belongs to Arrogan, then know that you will die here," the statue intoned, rather matter-of-factly.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink took the last step, staring over his right shoulder at the fourth statue as he did so. Sure enough, it said, "Arrogan has designed these rooms to kill people like you. And Arrogan has never made a mistake in his life."</p><p></p><p>Behind the gnome, the rest of the party had moved forward, filling in the top three steps. "Here goes," said Binkadink, stepping off of the bottom step and onto the chamber's floor. <em>If the statues were going to animate and attack, surely it would be when intruders actually enter the chamber</em>, he thought. But the statues remained motionless. The gnome was almost disappointed.</p><p></p><p>"Boy, this dungeon really a killer so far!" scoffed Gilbert from the safety of the very back of the line.</p><p></p><p>"Which way do we want to go?" Binkadink asked. "Always right, always left, or straight down the middle?"</p><p></p><p>"I vote right," offered Finoula.</p><p></p><p>"Right it is, then," replied the gnome, heading through the tunnel to the west. This went straight for 20 feet before a set of six steps led down into another room, similar in size to the one they had just left. This chamber had no other visible exits, though, and the wall directly across from the six stairs leading into the middle of the room was filled with a vast assortment of hanging weapons, mostly swords, axes, daggers, and a few scimitars. In the flickering light of his helmet torches, the gnome noticed most of them were dinged and nicked as if from heavy use.</p><p></p><p>Standing at the end of the corridor and directly in front of the first step down into the weapons chamber, Binkadink flipped his glaive around and tapped at the first step with the back end of his weapon. When that produced no effect, he cautiously stepped onto the first step, then repeated his actions for each of the six steps in turn. Tapping the floor produced no effect, but as soon as he stepped off the stairs the mounted weapons all rose up from their hooks simultaneously and massed into an animated swarm, slowly heading towards the intruder. Binkadink jumped back onto the steps and when he saw the animated weapons were still approaching, ran back up the stairs and out of the room, back into the corridor where the rest of the group waited. The gnome breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the weapons weren't going to chase him out of the chamber they were in, but rather retreated and hung themselves back in place once there were no longer any intruders present in the room.</p><p></p><p>"Let me try something," suggested Castillan, pulling a potion vial from his belt. It was a "Winkidew special" and even though it was labeled "<em>potion of gaseous form</em>" in neat handwriting, the bounder knew it contained vapors that needed to be inhaled rather than imbibed. He blew out a big breath, popped the cork while holding the vial under his nose, and inhaled deeply. Almost immediately, his form started to discorporate and he floated serenely into the weapons chamber. He was pleased to see his presence in the room didn't activate the weapons, which he had thought would be the case as they had only first been triggered when Binkadink physically set foot onto the floor of the chamber. But before the group moved on to other sections of the Magekiller, Castillan wanted to ensure there were no secret doors leading out of the room, so he floated along each of the walls in turn. It was while doing so he noted the bottom five feet of the outer walls were covered in narrow holes, each no wider than his thumb. Squeezing his amorphous body into one such hole, he saw a sharpened, spearlike device inside, ready to be shot at those who might somehow activate it. He then checked the six stairs, and while they were free of the holes the bounder did note each step was a solid, vertical, stone slab of a different size rather than the whole set of stairs being carved from one solid slab of stone. As the floor of the weapons chamber was five feet lower than the floor of the tunnel leading to the room, he surmised the stairs each probably lowered into the ground, making leaving the room that much more difficult while in that configuration - and practically impossible for somebody as short as Binkadink.</p><p></p><p>Before leaving the room, Castillan decided to examine the weapons. As Binkadink had previously noted, almost all of them were nicked and gouged, likely from numerous collisions as a mass of animated blades flying through the air, once activated. Two weapons in particular seemed almost brand new, though - <em>possibly magical!</em> thought the elf. He had no way to talk to the others while in <em>gaseous form</em>, but he did manage to narrow the tip of his amorphous cloud and use it to "point" to the two weapons in question, a longsword and a greataxe.</p><p></p><p>"Hey, what's up with Castillan?" asked Darrien, squinting into the darkness of the room. But he finally figured out what the bounder was trying to communicate, and he aimed his <em>Arachnibow</em> at the first weapon, letting fly with an arrow that became a string of spider-silk in mid-flight. Unfortunately, his shot missed, hitting the wall instead. He tried a second shot with similar luck. "It's the flickering light throwing off my aim," he groused to Binkadink. "Why can't your permanent, illusory light source give off a steady light instead of flickering around like a flame?" But his third shot hit true, adhering to the longsword still in pristine condition. Smiling, he gave the silk strand a tug - and the sword remained where it was, stuck on its stone-carved hooks. All the tugging in the world wasn't going to lift them up off their supports.</p><p></p><p>"All that for nothing," Gilbert snorted. "Here, I get those for you!" And then, casting an <em>unseen servant</em> spell, he commanded it to go fetch the weapons Castillan the cloud of gas was pointing to. The <em>unseen servant</em> was much more reliable than the <em>Arachnibow</em> in this instance and the two weapons floated over to the rest of the group without triggering the animating effect on the other weapons. "This dungeon a pushover!" the portly wizard chuckled.</p><p></p><p>Seeing no other way out of the weapons chamber, Castillan returned to the tunnel with the others but decided to remain in <em>gaseous form</em> for a bit - you never knew when it would be useful.</p><p></p><p>"Well, looks like we have to backtrack already," Darrien said. "You guys wanna go east or south?" The consensus was east, so Binkadink, the self-appointed "meat shield" of the group, led the way back to the statue-chamber and then through the doorway on the east wall.</p><p></p><p>Another 20-foot-long tunnel led to a set of six steps that were a mirror-image of those in the weapons chamber, although these stairs were situated along the northern wall of this new chamber instead of plunging straight into the middle of the room. The hallway itself was a bit more festive, too, with the last 15 feet taken up by full-sized mural paintings of three distinct people. The first of these was a stern-looking man dressed in finery; the middle portrait was of a pinch-faced woman in frills and lace; and just before the stairs going down stood a painting of a rakish-looking fop in a feathered cap. Each bore a familial resemblance; it was likely these were members of Arrogan's family.</p><p></p><p>Castillan, still in <em>gaseous form</em>, fled ahead to check out the chamber at the bottom of the stairs. Unlike the weapons display chamber, it was empty but contained another passageway further into the Magekiller - namely, a short tunnel along the south wall leading to a circular room with a 10-foot circular pit in its center. The bounder dropped his gaseous cloud-body into the pit and saw a number of potentially useful items mixed in with the slimy bones of several people who had apparently been slain in the dungeon in previous years. Unable to pick them up himself in his current form - and wishing to subject Gilbert's <em>unseen servant</em> to any potential dangers that might lie lurking in the pit rather than himself - he started floating back to the group, when his keen elven senses detected a slight crack in the eastern wall of the chamber with the stairs. Flying slowly over to it, he discovered a secret door - and then realized there were actually four of them, side by side, all along the eastern wall. As the crack ensured it wasn't exactly air-tight, he flowed into the tiny room just beyond one of the secret doors and found himself face-to-cloudlike-face with a withered specimen of decaying human. The creature stood upright in what was little bigger than a sarcophagus, its dead eyes staring ahead at nothing in particular. Castillan wasn't sure what he was looking at, but it was some sort of undead - in fact, it looked rather like those zombies they had dealt with at that inn earlier in their adventuring careers. Fortunately, the zombie wasn't attacking the bounder, not that he thought it would be able to harm him much in his current form anyway. But all of this was stuff the others needed to know about, so he flowed back out of the hidden room and returned to the corridor, floating past the others until he was back in the room with the four statue-women, where he returned to his solid form and described everything he had seen.</p><p></p><p>"There dead people inside walls?" reiterated Gilbert.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, zombies, it looked like," confirmed Castillan. "Not really doing anything, but probably waiting to attack if we go in there."</p><p></p><p>"Peh! We deal with zombies before!"</p><p></p><p>"What do you think triggers them?" asked Finoula. "Touching the floor, like in the other room?"</p><p></p><p>"We don't need to touch the floor," remarked Darrien, looking over at their wizard. "Why don't you send in your <em>unseen servant</em> to go get the stuff out of the pit?"</p><p></p><p>Gilbert considered it, but he had no idea how far away the pit was from his current cramped position nearly at the back of the single-file line. "Don't think spell reaches that far," he said, rubbing his bearded chin in thought.</p><p></p><p>"Here, let's give this a try," suggested Darrien, speaking the words to a spell and summoning a timber wolf at the bottom of the stairs. It immediately jumped down to the floor and padded over towards the pit. However, Finoula's assessment had been correct: as soon as the wolf's paws touched the floor the four sections of the eastern wall swiveled open, releasing the undead forms of the bodies stored there in their individual niches. And that wasn't all, for the three sections of wall containing the mural portraits of Arrogan's family members also swiveled open, revealing three more corpses standing there. Awareness instantly bloomed in their unliving eyes, and with astonishing speed they struck out at the three adventurers standing immediately in front of them: Ingebold, Finoula, and Binkadink. At the same time, the four zombies stepped out of their niches in the lower room; three of them raced up to the stairs while the fourth veered south to chase the timber wolf.</p><p></p><p>The wolf didn't even notice the undead form fast approaching it from behind - his attention had been drawn to the pit where a skeletal hand was even now grabbing for a purchase and pulling the rest of its fleshless body up to the floor level. The bones were all covered in some sort of slimy mucus, and as the first slashed out at the wolf with its claws another skeleton climbed out of the pit behind it.</p><p></p><p>In the meantime, the three zombies attacked the startled heroes above, scrabbling with their ragged claws. Finoula shrieked in surprise, not expecting a zombie to move so fast - and belatedly recognizing the frills and lace on the moldering outfit the undead thing was wearing as matching that of the pinch-faced woman in the painted portrait. Ingebold instinctively pulled out her holy symbol of Moradin and channeled a blast of positive energy at the undead, causing the two zombies in front of both her and Finoula to cower in fear, trying to shrink into the back of their individual hidden niches. Finoula overcame her initial shock and stabbed at the cowering undead woman in front of her with her twin blades, causing it to crumble into a heap as its body lost its animating force. Just ahead of her, Binkadink came to the sad realization that his gnomish glaive was a great weapon for fighting those some distance away but not particularly suited for close-quarters combat. So he did the unexpected: he stepped forward, leaving an unguarded juju zombie at his back, and lowered his glaive before him to fend off the three racing his way up the stairs, confident his friends would keep him safe.</p><p></p><p>Finoula did just that, slicing into the undead flesh of the juju zombie the little gnome had abandoned to fight the other three on the stairs. She handily dispatched it, while at the same time Ingebold's dwarven warhammer came crashing down on the skull of the zombie cowering before Moradin's holy might before her. Binkadink's glaive went swinging past the head of the first juju zombie in line, its blade cutting through the dead flesh of the second one directly behind the first, but the next in line climbed over its fallen form to get to the gnome, even as the first one stepped up and tore at Binkadink's flesh with its filthy claws. Seeing only bits and pieces of the battle ahead, Gilbert squeezed his bulk past Ingebold and shot a <em>magic missile</em> at the juju zombie currently attacking Binkadink, but was unable to see if it had much of an effect.</p><p></p><p>On the floor behind the two remaining juju zombies, the timber wolf had been pinned in the corridor between the skeletons in the pit chamber and the juju zombie in the chamber beyond; its pitiful yelps attested to the wounds it was receiving at the undead claws of the two types of foe. Darrien winced sympathetically, but realizing the wolf had been absorbing attacks which otherwise would have been directed at the heroes, gathered up the remaining spell energy he was able to hold within his mind at one time and summoned a second timber wolf just as the first winked out of existence. Stuck as he was at the back of the line with Gilbert and Castillan, he was only able to have it manifest at the bottom of the steps, where it wasted no time in attacking the juju zombie fast approaching Binkadink. The undead beast spun and attacked the wolf after he had taken a bite out of its rotting flesh, giving Binkadink the perfect set-up to bring his glaive crashing down diagonally through the zombie's shoulder, practically decapitating it.</p><p></p><p>"These narrow corridors are a pain!" complained Darrien. "I can't see what's going on up there!" He wasn't the only one who felt that way; Ingebold was itching to move forward to where she could try to turn more of these undead, but three of her companions were bunched up ahead of her, preventing her from advancing. Then Finoula dropped off the side of the stairs and ran forward to help the second wolf fight off the skeletons, which opened up a space for Gilbert to move forward. He blasted the sole remaining juju zombie with another <em>magic missile</em> and this time was able to see it seemed to have absolutely no effect on the undead thing. Binkadink cut it down with his glaive, just as Finoula did the same to the first skeleton and Darrien's second summoned wolf dissipated, the short duration of the ranger's spell having expired. Binkadink and Finoula took down the last skeleton, the little gnome noting it was the slicing through the gloppy layer of snot that seemed to hurt these particular undead; once the mucus had been severed the bones fell into a heap. In fact, he even doubted the skeletons were undead at all, but rather controlled by the amorphous blobs coating their outer surfaces.</p><p></p><p>Seeing no further immediate threats, Gilbert sent his <em>unseen servant</em> into the pit to fetch out the items lodged down there. He was excited to see it excavate a spellbook, but when he opened it in eager anticipation, he saw the pages stained with blood and other bodily fluids, smearing and obscuring the magical inks encapsulating who knew how many magical spells. "No!" he cried. "This outrageous waste!"</p><p></p><p>Castillan wasn't interested in any moldy old spellbook, however - his focus was on the small pile of other items being brought up out of the pit. He ignored the rusty old short sword and even the pair of hand axes that looked to be in serviceable condition. Instead, he grabbed up the dusty vial of what could still be a viable healing potion and quickly snatched the pair of well-made leather boots once he saw their fine condition was a likely hint at a magical effect. He was still trying them on when the <em>unseen servant</em> brought up a dented light steel shield, a wand, and several coin pouches, but the jingle of coins from the latter brought his attention back their way. Spilling their contents out into his palm, he counted a handful of coins and a few small gems. Ingebold was examining the wand, but she handed it over to Gilbert once she discovered it was arcane in nature. "Here, a consolation prize fer ye," she said, "since th' spellbook's of no use." Gilbert took the proffered wand and swung it around, getting the feel for it and allowing it to attune to him if that was necessary. In any case, his spirits were temporarily brightened over the acquisition of the new magical bauble, and he left the ruined spellbook on the floor without a further thought.</p><p></p><p>As the pit room had no further exits, the group had to backtrack to the first chamber with the women-shaped columns. Binkadink peered closely at each one, still expecting them to animate and attack - perhaps now that they had acquired some treasure from the Magekiller dungeon? - but they were as immobile as ever. Shrugging to himself, he took point again and headed down the southern corridor, the others falling into line behind him. They went down a short set of stairs but the tunnel kept them on a constant bearing due south. Then the corridor opened up into an unusual circular chamber.</p><p></p><p>The ceiling height was about ten feet, the same as the tunnel had been, but the curved wall was metallic for the first eight feet or so, leaving about two feet of stone continuing on to the ceiling. There were seven metal rods sticking out equidistant from the circular wall; had there been a rod where the doorway opening had been it would have been a perfectly uniform eight. Each rod stood parallel to the floor at a height of about three feet.</p><p></p><p>"You know what this is?" asked Binkadink. "It's one of those revolving door deals, like we saw in that dungeon where Finoula found...." He didn't finish the sentence; by unspoken agreement, bringing up Malaterminus was thought to be in poor taste.</p><p></p><p>"What's with the bottom edge here?" asked Darrien. The bottom of the metal was zigzagged, so the whole structure was supported on the tips of the triangular sections all along the bottom edge.</p><p></p><p>"No idea," the gnome admitted, walking up to the nearest rod. "So I guess we all lift it and walk in a circle? Or just all push in the same direction and let it drag on the ground?"</p><p></p><p>"Before we do that, I want to see where it goes," said Castillan, dropping down to his hands and knees and crawling along the circumference of the circular room. He was looking at the sections of stone wall visible through the triangular gaps along the bottom of the metal structure. After making a full circuit, he reported back, "There's just one other hallway, directly across from the one we came through. So I guess it doesn't matter which way we push the thing - it'll be the same distance either way."</p><p></p><p>"But, if the tunnel just continues straight south from here, why put this metal thing in the way?" asked Finoula. "What's the point?"</p><p></p><p>"Could be to slow us down," suggested Gilbert. "Or maybe make sure you can only go this way if you strong enough, or have enough people with you. Or," he said as if a brilliant idea just popped into his head, "maybe it just there to make silly elf women ask 'How come?'" Finoula gave him her best glare and walked over to another rod, positioning herself to help push it counterclockwise. The others fell into place, with Ingebold and Binkadink - the two shortest of the bunch - complaining about how high up the rods were.</p><p></p><p>"One, two, three, push!" called the little gnome. Everyone pushed, and the metal cylinder barely budged. "Let's try that again. One, two, three, PUSH!" With a loud scraping sound, they managed to move the cylinder a few inches further around the circuit.</p><p></p><p>"Hold up a minute," suggested Gilbert, leaving his station.</p><p></p><p>"Tuckered out already?" asked Castillan.</p><p></p><p>"You shut silly elf mouth," countered the wizard. "I make things easier for us." And with that, he cast a <em>grease</em> spell in a circle all along the outer edges of the circular room, making sure to get underneath each of the triangular openings. "Everything better with lubrication," he said, giving Finoula a knowing look which she studiously ignored. Gilbert returned to his station, gave Binkadink a nod, and the countdown began again.</p><p></p><p>"One, two, three -- PUSH!" This time the revolving door was noticeably easier to move, but it still took the better part of a full minute to swing the metal structure around so its doorway now lined up with the tunnel to the south. "Whew!" exclaimed Binkadink, wiping sweat from his brow, and peered into the tunnel before him. After about ten feet of tunnel, it opened up into a square room, 35 feet to a side, with side passageways centered on the east and west walls. But the most significant feature of the room was the large, circular indentation in the middle of the room, a bowl-shaped depression with a 25-foot diameter. It was filled nearly to the brim with scummy green liquid, looking like a nonfunctioning fountain clogged by algae.</p><p></p><p>"Is that green slime?" asked Darrien. "I'll bet that's green slime."</p><p></p><p>"If it is, we don't want to go touching it," advised Binkadink, trying to remember how to get rid of green slime. "I think it burns," he said, pulling out an actual torch from his backpack and setting its tip aflame with a spark from his tinder box. "You guys stay here, while I go check this out."</p><p></p><p>Binkadink entered the room, burning torch in one hand and two illusory ones strapped to the antlers of his helmet. He stood at the edge of the corridor and tossed the lit torch into the pool of scummy water, expecting it to burn the green slime away. Alas, it wasn't green slime in the bowl-shaped depression at all, but rather an inactive arcane ooze. The torch landed on it and started to burn its protoplasm, causing it to arc up and send a pseudopod writhing towards the gnome. "Uh oh," Binkadink managed to get out before a thick wave of greenish glop came racing his way, engulfing him instantly. He immediately felt the burning of acid everywhere the protoplasm touched his skin. The little gnome tried backing away but was immediately entangled in the ooze's embrace, so he slashed at it with his glaive as best he could.</p><p></p><p>At the same time, Ingebold, Gilbert, and Finoula all yelled out in pain and grabbed their heads. "What's the matter?" cried Castillan, gripping his twin blades. He hadn't seen the ooze do anything but smother Binkadink and couldn't imagine what a blob of green matter could do to the others from that far away.</p><p></p><p>"Damn thing ripped spell right from brain!" yelled Gilbert. "Aye, same here," confirmed Ingebold, for she noted one of the most powerful spells she'd prepared that morning was now gone. Worse yet, the arcane ooze was using the stolen spell energy to repair the damage Binkadink had done to it with his torch and glaive.</p><p></p><p>"If that thing keeps eating your spells..." began Darrien, realizing the only reason he'd been spared from the creature's spell-draining attack had been because he'd already used up both of his for the day.</p><p></p><p>"We gotta get out of here!" reasoned Castillan, suddenly realizing why the revolving door had been placed where it was - and worse yet, why there were triangular openings all along the bottom edges of the metal cylinder. It would take them nearly a minute to get the doorway positioned back to the northern corridor, during which time the spell-draining creature could easily ooze its way into the cylinder with them.... "We're screwed!" the bounder cried aloud.</p><p></p><p>"We just gotta kill it!" called Binkadink, swinging his glaive into the amorphous creature's protoplasm body even as it constricted goopy strands of its body around him. The others quickly realized the truth of the situation; Castillan stepped up and slashed out at the bulk of the creature's body where it was filling the corridor on either side of Binkadink's struggling form, while Ingebold used her new mace to channel a blast of healing energy at Binkadink, keeping him as healthy as possible while being constricted by a creature whose very body oozed acidic fluids that burned into the little gnome's flesh. Gilbert cast a <em>haste</em> spell on the group, reasoning that giving everyone an extra attack would certainly help bring it down that much faster, hopefully faster than it could heal by stealing spell energy.</p><p></p><p>Castillan was soon engulfed as well as the arcane ooze's body surged forward, keeping Binkadink where he was but still managing to project part of itself into the circular room. Finoula activated her <em>whip of thorns</em>, extracting the thorns along the whip's length and sending it cracking into the advancing mass of protoplasm. Darrien sent arrows flying into it and Gilbert cast a pair of <em>scorching rays</em> down the corridor to strike the creature's back half - far enough back that he wouldn't hit Binkadink or Castillan - but was disappointed to see both rays strike true but have no effect on the ooze. And while still bound by the thick strands of protoplasm, the fighter and the bounder stabbed and slashed with their blades, slicing into the ooze's shapeless flesh. It was an uphill battle, as the ooze continued ripping spell energy from the minds of the spellcasters and using it to heal itself of the wounds constantly being inflicted upon it, but at long last the adventurers were successful; Ingebold's ranged healing spells managed to keep the two victims alive long enough for the group as a whole to destroy the vile creature. When it died, its amorphous body lost all cohesion, falling off of Binkadink and Castillan in globs and clumps, its entire body bubbling away as if being eaten by acid itself. Within minutes, there was only a series of foul-smelling green stains showing where it had been.</p><p></p><p>"I'm calling it a day," suggested Castillan. "We all need healing, and your most powerful spells are all gone. I say we go back topside and camp out - we can return again in the morning."</p><p></p><p>"Sounds good to me," agreed Binkadink, as Ingebold healed up the worst of his acid burns.</p><p></p><p>"No," countered Gilbert. "We go back up, maybe this place reset. We stay here tonight."</p><p></p><p>"Spend the night down here?" asked Darrien. "But all of our stuff's upstairs with Aithanar: blankets, bedrolls - heck, the new wagon's got four beds in it, and there are tents for the others! Plus our food--"</p><p></p><p>"Pshaw!" scoffed Gilbert. "What kind of adventurer you? We have trail rations, waterskins - that plenty for one night. We be fine."</p><p></p><p>Ingebold had no qualms about sleeping on a solid stone floor - as a dwarf, this was nothing particularly out of the ordinary for her. "We'll want t' set up guard shifts," she suggested.</p><p></p><p>"Agreed," said Castillan. "I'll take first shift." In the end, the group decided to make camp in the corridor between the room with the four carved statues and the circular revolving door room, the latter of which was declared the women's quarters for the evening. Castillan designated the circular pit south of the zombie chamber a makeshift privy, christening it as such himself. Binkadink extracted himself from his plate mail armor, realizing he'd never be able to sleep in it. But the group settled down to their evening routine and eventually they did sleep, one of them at a time spending two hours or so guarding the others from any unknown denizens that might show up.</p><p></p><p>The night passed uneventfully and in the morning they rose, donned their armor, prepared their spells, and were ready to press on with the unknown dangers of the Magekiller. "There were two side passages from the room that ooze came from," pointed out Castillan. Re-entering the revolving door, the group took their positions and pushed it a half rotation, getting the door opening synched up with the southern corridor. Gilbert looked nervously into the chamber, but the arcane ooze had not reformed - the greenish stains on the floor were all that showed it had ever been there.</p><p></p><p>The group opted to take the eastern corridor first and Castillan took the lead so he could check for traps as he went. He only made it about halfway down the corridor before he found his first anomaly: a small glyph of some type etched into the floor. "Hey, Gilbert, there's some kind of glyph on the floor here - you want to come check it out?"</p><p></p><p>"No," replied Gilbert from the back of the formation, thinking it might be a set of <em>explosive runes</em> or something similar. "You get good look at it?"</p><p></p><p>"Yeah, but I don't know what it might mean."</p><p></p><p>"Give it best shot. You doing fine."</p><p></p><p>Castillan shrugged and set about trying to disarm it as best he could. Generally, for a rune carved in a stone surface, the best way to render it harmless was to etch along it until the rune was different from its original shape. He bent over to scratch some side-marks into the thing, but accidentally triggered it - and found himself five feet in the air, floating harmlessly halfway between the floor and the ceiling. "Hey!" he called out, thrashing and swinging his body around wildly. He managed to turn himself sideways, such that he could reach one wall with his feet and the opposite wall with his hands, and walked himself sideways along the wall until gravity returned to normal and he plopped back down to the floor. "Uh, watch that bit there," he offered somewhat shamefacedly.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink was next in line. He tried jumping over it, but got caught in midair; fortunately, he was able to use the wooden end of his glaive to pull himself along the floor like a gondola pilot using a punt, until he joined Castillan on the far side. The others took the opportunity of a relatively harmless trap to simply leap into the air, get caught, and then pull themselves along the end of Binkadink's offered glaive-shaft.</p><p></p><p>"Well, that was different," admitted Finoula, "but what exactly was the point? It's not as if it actually harmed us in any way."</p><p></p><p>Gilbert gave it some thought. "No," he agreed, "but what if we ran this way from ooze? We stuck in air; ooze slides over, grabs us up. Then we yummy snack." It made sense; presumably that arcane ooze hadn't happened to have wandered by and decided to make that chamber its home but was rather added to the Magekiller dungeon by Arrogan.</p><p></p><p>Turning the corner, Castillan saw a 10-foot corridor to the south which ran into a wall. It wasn't a solid wall, though; rather, there was a two-foot-tall opening into a room beyond. Not wanting anyone to go crawling into an unknown room, Gilbert cast an <em>unseen servant</em> spell, handed it his activate sunrod, and sent it in to check the place out.</p><p></p><p>By peering through the floor-level opening into the room, the group saw a wooden chest against the far wall of the small room. The chest was inside a cell of metal bars; there didn't seem to be a cell door allowing entry. "That looks like trap," commented Gilbert.</p><p></p><p>"Possibly..." admitted Castillan, scampering around to check out the edges of the opening. It looked like the two-foot opening was the only entrance into the small room, and the wall directly above it was a stone slab that could easily be triggered somehow to come crashing down and seal anyone inside the room off from the rest of the dungeon. "I don't like the looks of this," the bounder said, after explaining his findings to the rest of the group.</p><p></p><p>"I have <em>unseen servant</em> open chest," Gilbert decided, instructing his still-active spell to do just that. The floating sunrod meandered over to the bars around the chest, but that was it - apparently the chest was locked or the lid was too heavy for the <em>unseen servant</em> to lift.</p><p></p><p>"I dinnae like th' thought of any of us goin' in there with no way t' get back out again," said Ingebold. "Hang on, though - I've got a <em>stone shape</em> spell that oughtta do th' trick." Casting the spell, the dwarven cleric carved away a five-foot section of the corridor and a chunk of wall to the left of the opening, making another way into the room. "That's better," she said, pleased with the results. Everyone funneled into the room, and Binkadink stuck his old glaive through the bars of the cage, first tapping it against the chest - "Well, it's not a mimic," he said - and then sticking the tip of the blade in the narrow crack between the chest's bottom and lid. Getting it in as deep as he could, he used it as a lever, and once Castillan and Darrien leant their strength to the task, they managed to pry open the chest's lid, finding out in the process why it was so difficult to open up: there were heavy chains attached to the lid's inside, which apparently went underneath the floor and pulled out the pins holding the door in place above the two-foot-tall opening. With a mighty crash, the door came slamming down, sealing everyone inside the room - or it would have, if not for Ingebold's side exit.</p><p></p><p>"It was just a trap," groused Castillan, looking inside the otherwise empty chest. "Not even a token copper piece for our efforts."</p><p></p><p>The group backtracked to the arcane ooze chamber and went through the corridor to the west, the bounder once again taking point and checking for traps. He found what looked to be a hidden pit trap, noticeable by the fact that the same five-foot square of floor didn't appear to be attached to either of the side walls. Binkadink passed the bounder a couple of metal pitons, which he used to wedge each side of the pit trap door into place. However, all he got for his efforts was a dead end around the corner with a closed door promising more rooms beyond. But that promise was a false one; touching the knob blasted the bounder with a bolt of electricity, and the door was a fake in any case - it didn't even open but was rather a permanent fixture of the wall.</p><p></p><p>"This bites!" Gilbert cried aloud. "Everywhere a dead end? Where that stupid Arrogan's stupid treasure?" Then, mentally envisioning the layout of the Magekiller thus far, he called out to Castillan, "Hey! Elf boy! Go check for secret doors in ooze room!"</p><p></p><p>"Hang on a minute, I'm getting healed up," the bounder groused back at the wizard. Ingebold finished her spell, healing over the electrical burns on the bounder's hand where he had foolishly touched the doorknob. But then he gave the ooze's chamber a thorough check, finding nothing.</p><p></p><p>"Is that it?" asked Finoula. "Maybe the whole thing about treasure's just an unfounded rumor."</p><p></p><p>"That make no sense," snarled Gilbert. "Why go to all this trouble if there no treasure hidden? We just missing something." He racked his brain, going over the layout in his mind. "Wait a minute!" he exclaimed. "We go back to second room!"</p><p></p><p>The group had to reposition the revolving cylinder once again, but they made their way back to the room where the weapons had animated when Binkadink had stepped foot into the room. The wizard sent his <em>unseen servant</em> into the room to fetch each of the remaining weapons, one by one. The wizard examined each in turn as it was handed to him, but as expected they were of poor quality, no doubt exacerbated by clanging against each other when they formed a mobile cloud of attacking weapons. He sent the others in a line leading to the circular pit to the south of the room where the juju zombies had popped out of their hidden niches, and one by one the weapons were all unceremoniously dropped into the pit, three rooms away from the room where the weapons had all been on display.</p><p></p><p>"Aha!" said Gilbert as the last of the weapons was removed and sent to join the others in the pit. He pointed into the room, specifically at the wall on which the weapons had been mounted. "There our way to treasure!" Now that the weapons had been removed, four narrow indentations could be seen in the far wall, which had been covered by axe blades and the like when the weapons had been in place. Each indentation was about four inches wide, a foot or so tall, and several inches deep. More importantly, each held a lever raised in the "up" position. The four indentations were arranged on the wall in a diamond pattern, with the highest one directly above the lowest one, and one halfway between the two on either side.</p><p></p><p>"How did you know those were there?" asked Finoula, frankly astonished that their irritating wizard had figured out the hidden way to the rest of the Magekiller dungeon.</p><p></p><p>"I remember those stairs," Gilbert replied. "Elf boy here say they six separate columns, not one big piece of stone. One of those levers lower steps to ground level, and I bet there a door behind stairs, right below where we standing."</p><p></p><p>"So, which lever?" asked the elven ranger. "Is this some sort of puzzle?"</p><p></p><p>"Don't matter. We have <em>unseen servant</em> pull levers until we find right one." With that, he directed the <em>unseen servant</em> to pull the top lever. With a shriek of rusting metal, the lever flipped position, and oil started dripping down from thumb-sized holes in the ceiling, spilling onto the floor.</p><p></p><p>"Okay, not that one!" called Gilbert, directing his spell to return the first lever to its starting position. "Try one on right side!" The <em>unseen servant</em> followed its instructions and sure enough, each of the steps started lowering into the floor until they were level with the floor's surface. However, they didn't stop there - they continued sinking into the floor until they had formed an inverse set of stairs, one leading down into a lower level, but going from west to east instead of east to west. However, this new level was ten feet below the level were the adventurers stood, so Gilbert had the <em>unseen servant</em> return that lever to its starting position long enough for the heroes to step carefully into the room - and sure enough, the weapons that had been in the room were now far enough away that they didn't activate into a swarm to attack the intruders. Pulling the rightmost lever back down, the stairs reconfigured themselves and the group entered the lower level of the Magekiller.</p><p></p><p>The stairs ended at a T-intersection, with a short corridor going to the north and south. Opting to go south, Castillan turned a corner and found a large, square room, 25 feet to a side. There were three wooden chests each along the north and south walls, while the western wall held a shield, a longsword, two heavy flails, three daggers, and a heavy mace. "Now we're talking!" exclaimed Castillan enthusiastically, entering the room to examine the chests. None was trapped, but each was locked, the keys having been no doubt lost in the years since the Magekiller's construction. But Castillan's lockpicks had each chest open in but a moment. The chests each held coins and gems, to a total value of 24,000 pieces of gold; Castillan almost started hyperventilating at the thought of that much money. Gilbert cast a <em>detect magic</em> spell and determined both the longsword and the mace were magical; investigation of the masterwork shield - which held Arrogan's family crest: a ferocious, black griffon - revealed a scroll tube tucked into one of the straps. Binkadink opened the case, expecting to find a scroll to pass on to Ingebold or Gilbert; instead, he pulled out what looked to be a black handkerchief. Unfolding it, he saw it was circular, almost like a tablecloth for a round table.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert emitted a squeal of glee from halfway across the room. "You know what that is?" he asked. "That a <em>portable hole</em>!" After explaining the mechanics of a <em>portable hole</em> to the others, Finoula pointed out they could dump all of the coins and gems into the hole and carry everything out in one trip. "I love this place!" exclaimed Gilbert, his previous feelings towards the Magekiller all but forgotten.</p><p></p><p>There was only one more room left, the one at the end of the northern corridor at the bottom of the secret stairs. This room was the same size and shape as the other treasure room, although this one had only three chests lined up against the far wall. "More coins?" squealed Castillan, as excited at the prospect of more cash as Gilbert had been at the sight of the <em>portable hole</em>.</p><p></p><p>"Hold on," cautioned the wizard, holding the bounder back from entering the room. "One feature very common in dungeons like these: false treasure vaults. This maybe a trap." He sent the <em>unseen servant</em> to open the first chest, while Castillan watched in eager anticipation from the corridor just outside the room. It opened easily, revealing...hundreds, if not thousands, of little metal spheres - the chest was nearly filled to the top with them. At Gilbert's direction, the <em>unseen servant</em> brought one over for the wizard to examine. It had a small glyph on one side, which failed to explode even as Gilbert winced upon seeing it. He looked it over, then passed it on to Binkadink at his urging. "You think it's explosive?" the gnome asked. At the wizard's shrug, the gnome went back to the treasure room and hurled it against the far wall. It hit, bounced, and rolled across the room - but failed to explode.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert had his spell open the third chest, revealing it to be filled nearly to the top with similar metal spheres. But the <em>unseen servant</em> was unable to open the middle chest. Castillan went to go check it out, after promising not to touch anything. He didn't see any visible traps, but curiously, the chests all seemed to be securely attached to the floor.</p><p></p><p>"I'm kind of hesitant to try to open the chest," the bounder admitted.</p><p></p><p>"I have an idea," said Darrien, calling forth the mantis from his amulet. He waited for Castillan to leave the room, then instructed the mantis to lift open the middle chest.</p><p></p><p>It did so, with some effort - and the entire floor hinged down along the far wall, sending the mantis dropping into a 40-foot deep pit, thousands of metal spheres from the two outer chests pummeling it once it hit the bottom. Looking down into the pit, the heroes could see the spheres moving around, then rushing together to take on the form of a four-headed lizard. The orb construct hydra towered over the mantis, nearly touching all four walls at once. It didn't take long at all for the mantis to reappear in Darrien's amber necklace, its physical form having been utterly destroyed by the four-headed guardian in the pit below.</p><p></p><p>"False treasure vault," repeated Gilbert knowingly, noting with satisfaction that the orb construct had no way out of the pit. "We go back to wagons now."</p><p></p><p>Retracing their way out of the Magekiller, Gilbert was the first to step onto the first stair leading back up to the surface. Doing so - putting weight on the lowest step first - alerted the room's magical sensors that someone was attempting to depart the Magekiller. As a result, the four statue-women all activated at once. The two at either side of the stairs swept out with their swords, slicing into the surprised wizard and forcing him to jump back down off the stairs to avoid being further cut. Bleeding heavily from two deep wounds, Gilbert silently assessed his ability to take another set of blows like that one and pulled out his <em>wand of gaseous form</em>. "I out of here!" he called to the others before discorporating into a cloud of vapors and drifting towards the stairs.</p><p></p><p>Ingebold was next in line behind Gilbert, and she quickly assessed the situation: there were two statues flanking the stairs up, but once past them she knew there was a winding set of stairs spiraling up the surface, which were likely too narrow for the statues to be able to follow. "Run!" she yelled, doing just that. She took a hit from one of the caryatid columns' sword, but her armor deflected the worst of the damage - and then she was past them. The others raced in her footsteps, Binkadink taking up the rear. <em>I <u>knew</u> they'd animate eventually!"</em> he thought to himself on his way up.</p><p></p><p>Aithanar was surprised at the group's sudden appearance, a full day after having gone down into the ruins. "Squintific nonshass patine!" he exclaimed.</p><p></p><p>"We missed you, too," said Finoula with a smile.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>This was a fun dungeon crawl. None of the players figured out the "trick" I had planted in the dungeon, although Logan scared me almost immediately upon entering the first chamber with the four caryatid columns, to the point where I was worried this adventure would take all of a half hour to complete. I had made it a point to mention, both in the plot hook up front (from Castillan's card-playing buddies) and from the caryatid column's <em>magic mouth</em> spell, that "Arrogan has never made a mistake in his life." Another way to say that is "Arrogan is always right." I had designed the Magekiller (which in-game had been designed by Arrogan himself) such that "always right" was the key to navigating the Magekiller safely. If you go into the caryatid column room and take a right, you end up in the room with all the weapons. Arrogan would stand on the steps - not stepping foot into the room - and use a <em>mage hand</em> spell to first move a specific weapon out of the way and then to pull down the rightmost lever, which formed the hidden stairs. Turning around and now going down the stairs in the other direction, two more rights would get him to the real treasure vault.</p><p></p><p>So, Binkadink's first words when they found out the caryatid columns weren't going to activate and attack them? "Which way do we want to go? Always right, always left, or straight down the middle?" But they didn't pick up on it, and the adventure took us two sessions to play through.</p><p></p><p>The two magic weapons from the treasure room went to Binkadink and Finoula. To a Medium-sized wielder, it's a <em>+1 heavy mace</em>; to Binkadink, it's a <em>+1 greatclub</em>. Logan made the case that's it's really just a big, heavy thing to smash enemies with, and I agreed. So Binkadink finally got his first magic weapon, in the adventure after he finally got a Small masterwork glaive. As for Finoula, this is where I finally made up for the subterfuge with Malaterminus; her replacement magic longsword is a <em>+2 variable energy longsword</em>; what that means is that you can "load it" with a spell (much in the same way as a spell-storing weapon), only doing so "aligns" it to a specific energy type. A <em>burning hands</em> spell (or higher-level fire spell) cast into the sword allows it to deal +1d6 fire damage; likewise, <em>Melf’s acid arrow</em>, <em>shatter</em>, <em>shocking grasp</em>, and <em>sleet storm</em> (or a higher-level spell of the same energy type) give it the ability to deal +1d6 acid, sonic, electricity, or cold damage, respectively. In addition, a <em>magic missile</em> spell makes it into a <em>ghost touch</em> weapon instead. In either case, it only retains the energy type of the last spell cast into it, but it stays attuned to that energy type until a new spell is cast into the sword, realigning it to the new type. Vicki was suitably pleased with Finoula's new weapon; now she has two main goals: to come up with a cool name for it, and to use it to kill Malaterminus the incubus who tricked her into killing Ingebold. (Logan jokingly suggested the name "Malaterminus-terminus," or "Evil Slayer Slayer.")</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>T-Shirt Worn: We got up to the part where the PCs had encountered the arcane ooze before we ran out of time during our first session, and I was still wearing my Dalek "EXTERMINATE" T-shirt from the first adventure we had played through that session. For the second session, where we finished off this adventure, I opted to stick with the same shirt, since it had subsequently been cleaned in the three-week span between game sessions.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6895892, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 19: THE MAGEKILLER[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 7 Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 7 Darrien, half-elf ranger 6 Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 7 Gilbert Fung, human wizard 7[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 1 Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 6 (Moradin)[/INDENT] Game Session Dates: 23 April 2016 and 14 May 2016 - - - "How are you feeling?" asked Finoula, concern in her voice. "I'm...okay," replied Darrien slowly, sitting upright with a confused look on his face. "What happened?" "Ye don't remember?" asked Ingebold. "The last thing I remember, I was fighting that big, burly ogre in the--aw crap, I got killed, didn't I?" The half-elf ranger looked around, surprised to find himself in an unfamiliar temple. But he recognized the sun symbol of Pelor and quickly put two and two together. "Yeah, little bit," confirmed Gilbert. "But you all better now." "How about you?" asked Castillan, looking down at his younger brother. "Squabbedy stomash," replied Aithanar, a sudden look of disappointment on his face once he heard the nonsense still coming out of his mouth. "Forkibble! Pespy nonshabbadoo norkle finshimble!" "My goodness!" exclaimed the Pelorian cleric who had personally overseen the [i]raise dead[/i] spells that had returned life to the two fallen heroes. "Was he talking like that before he was slain?" Ingebold saw Gilbert silently assessing whether or not he was likely to get away with asking for a partial refund from the cleric for returning Aithanar to life in a less-than-pristine state and cut him off before he could give it a try. "Aye," she answered quickly, "he were." Gilbert just glared silently at the dwarven cleric, wondering how much money her honesty had just cost them. "Hey, let's not bother telling my mom I got killed, okay?" suggested Darrien, standing up for the first time since being [i]raised[/i]. "She worries enough about me." "Likewise, I don't think we need to mention your recent death and return to life to Dear Old Dad," Castillan said to Aithanar. "Shonka freeble," agreed Aithanar. After the excitement in the ogre caves and the raising of their two slain members, the group unanimously decided they'd be best served with another night in a comfortable inn, making a fresh start for the Magekiller dungeon in the morning. After all, if they were going to take on a subterranean tunnel network specifically designed to slay intruders, they wanted to be at their strongest, with a full complement of spells available. And so it wasn't until the following morning that the Kordovians finally made their way to Arrogan's abandoned ruins. They were easy enough to find, as was the set of stairs spiraling clockwise down into the ground. Aithanar promised - with a grim nod - to stay with the animals and the wagons this time and Finoula gave him a big smile of support as she told Wrath to stay with him. The group lined up single file - for the stairwell was rather narrow - and Binkadink led the adventurers down into the Magekiller, the twin [i]everburning torches[/i] tied to the antlers on his helmet providing the group's only illumination. Binkadink lost track of the number of circuits they made as they circled their way deeper into the earth, but it was at least five or six before the spiraling stairs leveled out into a large room. This first chamber was rectangular, about 25 feet wide and 35 feet long. A sculpted pillar stood in each corner, the columns carved in the shapes of fearsome female warriors with swords. There were open passageways in the center of the walls to the east, west, and south. A set of four straight stone steps led directly into the center of the room from the north. "Here we go," called Binkadink to those lined up behind him. He stepped onto the first of the four steps. As he did so, the statue-woman to his left said, "You are not Arrogan." The gnome fighter whipped the blade of his masterwork glaive in the direction of the statue that spoke, but it seemed to have only been a [i]magic mouth[/i] effect, for the statue didn't otherwise move, nor did it make any further utterances. Binkadink stood his ground and peered at the other three statues, but they likewise didn't seem ready to animate and attack. He took another tentative step down the stairs. "These levels are intended for Arrogan alone," said the statue to the southeast. Again, Binkadink turned to face the speaker, but that was all it had to say on the subject. "Probably just scare tactics," the gnome said nervously over his shoulder to the others, and took another step. As expected, doing so triggered a [i]magic mouth[/i] spell on the woman carved into the pillar to the southwest. "If you are here to take that which belongs to Arrogan, then know that you will die here," the statue intoned, rather matter-of-factly. Binkadink took the last step, staring over his right shoulder at the fourth statue as he did so. Sure enough, it said, "Arrogan has designed these rooms to kill people like you. And Arrogan has never made a mistake in his life." Behind the gnome, the rest of the party had moved forward, filling in the top three steps. "Here goes," said Binkadink, stepping off of the bottom step and onto the chamber's floor. [i]If the statues were going to animate and attack, surely it would be when intruders actually enter the chamber[/i], he thought. But the statues remained motionless. The gnome was almost disappointed. "Boy, this dungeon really a killer so far!" scoffed Gilbert from the safety of the very back of the line. "Which way do we want to go?" Binkadink asked. "Always right, always left, or straight down the middle?" "I vote right," offered Finoula. "Right it is, then," replied the gnome, heading through the tunnel to the west. This went straight for 20 feet before a set of six steps led down into another room, similar in size to the one they had just left. This chamber had no other visible exits, though, and the wall directly across from the six stairs leading into the middle of the room was filled with a vast assortment of hanging weapons, mostly swords, axes, daggers, and a few scimitars. In the flickering light of his helmet torches, the gnome noticed most of them were dinged and nicked as if from heavy use. Standing at the end of the corridor and directly in front of the first step down into the weapons chamber, Binkadink flipped his glaive around and tapped at the first step with the back end of his weapon. When that produced no effect, he cautiously stepped onto the first step, then repeated his actions for each of the six steps in turn. Tapping the floor produced no effect, but as soon as he stepped off the stairs the mounted weapons all rose up from their hooks simultaneously and massed into an animated swarm, slowly heading towards the intruder. Binkadink jumped back onto the steps and when he saw the animated weapons were still approaching, ran back up the stairs and out of the room, back into the corridor where the rest of the group waited. The gnome breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the weapons weren't going to chase him out of the chamber they were in, but rather retreated and hung themselves back in place once there were no longer any intruders present in the room. "Let me try something," suggested Castillan, pulling a potion vial from his belt. It was a "Winkidew special" and even though it was labeled "[i]potion of gaseous form[/i]" in neat handwriting, the bounder knew it contained vapors that needed to be inhaled rather than imbibed. He blew out a big breath, popped the cork while holding the vial under his nose, and inhaled deeply. Almost immediately, his form started to discorporate and he floated serenely into the weapons chamber. He was pleased to see his presence in the room didn't activate the weapons, which he had thought would be the case as they had only first been triggered when Binkadink physically set foot onto the floor of the chamber. But before the group moved on to other sections of the Magekiller, Castillan wanted to ensure there were no secret doors leading out of the room, so he floated along each of the walls in turn. It was while doing so he noted the bottom five feet of the outer walls were covered in narrow holes, each no wider than his thumb. Squeezing his amorphous body into one such hole, he saw a sharpened, spearlike device inside, ready to be shot at those who might somehow activate it. He then checked the six stairs, and while they were free of the holes the bounder did note each step was a solid, vertical, stone slab of a different size rather than the whole set of stairs being carved from one solid slab of stone. As the floor of the weapons chamber was five feet lower than the floor of the tunnel leading to the room, he surmised the stairs each probably lowered into the ground, making leaving the room that much more difficult while in that configuration - and practically impossible for somebody as short as Binkadink. Before leaving the room, Castillan decided to examine the weapons. As Binkadink had previously noted, almost all of them were nicked and gouged, likely from numerous collisions as a mass of animated blades flying through the air, once activated. Two weapons in particular seemed almost brand new, though - [i]possibly magical![/i] thought the elf. He had no way to talk to the others while in [i]gaseous form[/i], but he did manage to narrow the tip of his amorphous cloud and use it to "point" to the two weapons in question, a longsword and a greataxe. "Hey, what's up with Castillan?" asked Darrien, squinting into the darkness of the room. But he finally figured out what the bounder was trying to communicate, and he aimed his [i]Arachnibow[/i] at the first weapon, letting fly with an arrow that became a string of spider-silk in mid-flight. Unfortunately, his shot missed, hitting the wall instead. He tried a second shot with similar luck. "It's the flickering light throwing off my aim," he groused to Binkadink. "Why can't your permanent, illusory light source give off a steady light instead of flickering around like a flame?" But his third shot hit true, adhering to the longsword still in pristine condition. Smiling, he gave the silk strand a tug - and the sword remained where it was, stuck on its stone-carved hooks. All the tugging in the world wasn't going to lift them up off their supports. "All that for nothing," Gilbert snorted. "Here, I get those for you!" And then, casting an [i]unseen servant[/i] spell, he commanded it to go fetch the weapons Castillan the cloud of gas was pointing to. The [i]unseen servant[/i] was much more reliable than the [i]Arachnibow[/i] in this instance and the two weapons floated over to the rest of the group without triggering the animating effect on the other weapons. "This dungeon a pushover!" the portly wizard chuckled. Seeing no other way out of the weapons chamber, Castillan returned to the tunnel with the others but decided to remain in [i]gaseous form[/i] for a bit - you never knew when it would be useful. "Well, looks like we have to backtrack already," Darrien said. "You guys wanna go east or south?" The consensus was east, so Binkadink, the self-appointed "meat shield" of the group, led the way back to the statue-chamber and then through the doorway on the east wall. Another 20-foot-long tunnel led to a set of six steps that were a mirror-image of those in the weapons chamber, although these stairs were situated along the northern wall of this new chamber instead of plunging straight into the middle of the room. The hallway itself was a bit more festive, too, with the last 15 feet taken up by full-sized mural paintings of three distinct people. The first of these was a stern-looking man dressed in finery; the middle portrait was of a pinch-faced woman in frills and lace; and just before the stairs going down stood a painting of a rakish-looking fop in a feathered cap. Each bore a familial resemblance; it was likely these were members of Arrogan's family. Castillan, still in [i]gaseous form[/i], fled ahead to check out the chamber at the bottom of the stairs. Unlike the weapons display chamber, it was empty but contained another passageway further into the Magekiller - namely, a short tunnel along the south wall leading to a circular room with a 10-foot circular pit in its center. The bounder dropped his gaseous cloud-body into the pit and saw a number of potentially useful items mixed in with the slimy bones of several people who had apparently been slain in the dungeon in previous years. Unable to pick them up himself in his current form - and wishing to subject Gilbert's [i]unseen servant[/i] to any potential dangers that might lie lurking in the pit rather than himself - he started floating back to the group, when his keen elven senses detected a slight crack in the eastern wall of the chamber with the stairs. Flying slowly over to it, he discovered a secret door - and then realized there were actually four of them, side by side, all along the eastern wall. As the crack ensured it wasn't exactly air-tight, he flowed into the tiny room just beyond one of the secret doors and found himself face-to-cloudlike-face with a withered specimen of decaying human. The creature stood upright in what was little bigger than a sarcophagus, its dead eyes staring ahead at nothing in particular. Castillan wasn't sure what he was looking at, but it was some sort of undead - in fact, it looked rather like those zombies they had dealt with at that inn earlier in their adventuring careers. Fortunately, the zombie wasn't attacking the bounder, not that he thought it would be able to harm him much in his current form anyway. But all of this was stuff the others needed to know about, so he flowed back out of the hidden room and returned to the corridor, floating past the others until he was back in the room with the four statue-women, where he returned to his solid form and described everything he had seen. "There dead people inside walls?" reiterated Gilbert. "Yeah, zombies, it looked like," confirmed Castillan. "Not really doing anything, but probably waiting to attack if we go in there." "Peh! We deal with zombies before!" "What do you think triggers them?" asked Finoula. "Touching the floor, like in the other room?" "We don't need to touch the floor," remarked Darrien, looking over at their wizard. "Why don't you send in your [i]unseen servant[/i] to go get the stuff out of the pit?" Gilbert considered it, but he had no idea how far away the pit was from his current cramped position nearly at the back of the single-file line. "Don't think spell reaches that far," he said, rubbing his bearded chin in thought. "Here, let's give this a try," suggested Darrien, speaking the words to a spell and summoning a timber wolf at the bottom of the stairs. It immediately jumped down to the floor and padded over towards the pit. However, Finoula's assessment had been correct: as soon as the wolf's paws touched the floor the four sections of the eastern wall swiveled open, releasing the undead forms of the bodies stored there in their individual niches. And that wasn't all, for the three sections of wall containing the mural portraits of Arrogan's family members also swiveled open, revealing three more corpses standing there. Awareness instantly bloomed in their unliving eyes, and with astonishing speed they struck out at the three adventurers standing immediately in front of them: Ingebold, Finoula, and Binkadink. At the same time, the four zombies stepped out of their niches in the lower room; three of them raced up to the stairs while the fourth veered south to chase the timber wolf. The wolf didn't even notice the undead form fast approaching it from behind - his attention had been drawn to the pit where a skeletal hand was even now grabbing for a purchase and pulling the rest of its fleshless body up to the floor level. The bones were all covered in some sort of slimy mucus, and as the first slashed out at the wolf with its claws another skeleton climbed out of the pit behind it. In the meantime, the three zombies attacked the startled heroes above, scrabbling with their ragged claws. Finoula shrieked in surprise, not expecting a zombie to move so fast - and belatedly recognizing the frills and lace on the moldering outfit the undead thing was wearing as matching that of the pinch-faced woman in the painted portrait. Ingebold instinctively pulled out her holy symbol of Moradin and channeled a blast of positive energy at the undead, causing the two zombies in front of both her and Finoula to cower in fear, trying to shrink into the back of their individual hidden niches. Finoula overcame her initial shock and stabbed at the cowering undead woman in front of her with her twin blades, causing it to crumble into a heap as its body lost its animating force. Just ahead of her, Binkadink came to the sad realization that his gnomish glaive was a great weapon for fighting those some distance away but not particularly suited for close-quarters combat. So he did the unexpected: he stepped forward, leaving an unguarded juju zombie at his back, and lowered his glaive before him to fend off the three racing his way up the stairs, confident his friends would keep him safe. Finoula did just that, slicing into the undead flesh of the juju zombie the little gnome had abandoned to fight the other three on the stairs. She handily dispatched it, while at the same time Ingebold's dwarven warhammer came crashing down on the skull of the zombie cowering before Moradin's holy might before her. Binkadink's glaive went swinging past the head of the first juju zombie in line, its blade cutting through the dead flesh of the second one directly behind the first, but the next in line climbed over its fallen form to get to the gnome, even as the first one stepped up and tore at Binkadink's flesh with its filthy claws. Seeing only bits and pieces of the battle ahead, Gilbert squeezed his bulk past Ingebold and shot a [i]magic missile[/i] at the juju zombie currently attacking Binkadink, but was unable to see if it had much of an effect. On the floor behind the two remaining juju zombies, the timber wolf had been pinned in the corridor between the skeletons in the pit chamber and the juju zombie in the chamber beyond; its pitiful yelps attested to the wounds it was receiving at the undead claws of the two types of foe. Darrien winced sympathetically, but realizing the wolf had been absorbing attacks which otherwise would have been directed at the heroes, gathered up the remaining spell energy he was able to hold within his mind at one time and summoned a second timber wolf just as the first winked out of existence. Stuck as he was at the back of the line with Gilbert and Castillan, he was only able to have it manifest at the bottom of the steps, where it wasted no time in attacking the juju zombie fast approaching Binkadink. The undead beast spun and attacked the wolf after he had taken a bite out of its rotting flesh, giving Binkadink the perfect set-up to bring his glaive crashing down diagonally through the zombie's shoulder, practically decapitating it. "These narrow corridors are a pain!" complained Darrien. "I can't see what's going on up there!" He wasn't the only one who felt that way; Ingebold was itching to move forward to where she could try to turn more of these undead, but three of her companions were bunched up ahead of her, preventing her from advancing. Then Finoula dropped off the side of the stairs and ran forward to help the second wolf fight off the skeletons, which opened up a space for Gilbert to move forward. He blasted the sole remaining juju zombie with another [i]magic missile[/i] and this time was able to see it seemed to have absolutely no effect on the undead thing. Binkadink cut it down with his glaive, just as Finoula did the same to the first skeleton and Darrien's second summoned wolf dissipated, the short duration of the ranger's spell having expired. Binkadink and Finoula took down the last skeleton, the little gnome noting it was the slicing through the gloppy layer of snot that seemed to hurt these particular undead; once the mucus had been severed the bones fell into a heap. In fact, he even doubted the skeletons were undead at all, but rather controlled by the amorphous blobs coating their outer surfaces. Seeing no further immediate threats, Gilbert sent his [i]unseen servant[/i] into the pit to fetch out the items lodged down there. He was excited to see it excavate a spellbook, but when he opened it in eager anticipation, he saw the pages stained with blood and other bodily fluids, smearing and obscuring the magical inks encapsulating who knew how many magical spells. "No!" he cried. "This outrageous waste!" Castillan wasn't interested in any moldy old spellbook, however - his focus was on the small pile of other items being brought up out of the pit. He ignored the rusty old short sword and even the pair of hand axes that looked to be in serviceable condition. Instead, he grabbed up the dusty vial of what could still be a viable healing potion and quickly snatched the pair of well-made leather boots once he saw their fine condition was a likely hint at a magical effect. He was still trying them on when the [i]unseen servant[/i] brought up a dented light steel shield, a wand, and several coin pouches, but the jingle of coins from the latter brought his attention back their way. Spilling their contents out into his palm, he counted a handful of coins and a few small gems. Ingebold was examining the wand, but she handed it over to Gilbert once she discovered it was arcane in nature. "Here, a consolation prize fer ye," she said, "since th' spellbook's of no use." Gilbert took the proffered wand and swung it around, getting the feel for it and allowing it to attune to him if that was necessary. In any case, his spirits were temporarily brightened over the acquisition of the new magical bauble, and he left the ruined spellbook on the floor without a further thought. As the pit room had no further exits, the group had to backtrack to the first chamber with the women-shaped columns. Binkadink peered closely at each one, still expecting them to animate and attack - perhaps now that they had acquired some treasure from the Magekiller dungeon? - but they were as immobile as ever. Shrugging to himself, he took point again and headed down the southern corridor, the others falling into line behind him. They went down a short set of stairs but the tunnel kept them on a constant bearing due south. Then the corridor opened up into an unusual circular chamber. The ceiling height was about ten feet, the same as the tunnel had been, but the curved wall was metallic for the first eight feet or so, leaving about two feet of stone continuing on to the ceiling. There were seven metal rods sticking out equidistant from the circular wall; had there been a rod where the doorway opening had been it would have been a perfectly uniform eight. Each rod stood parallel to the floor at a height of about three feet. "You know what this is?" asked Binkadink. "It's one of those revolving door deals, like we saw in that dungeon where Finoula found...." He didn't finish the sentence; by unspoken agreement, bringing up Malaterminus was thought to be in poor taste. "What's with the bottom edge here?" asked Darrien. The bottom of the metal was zigzagged, so the whole structure was supported on the tips of the triangular sections all along the bottom edge. "No idea," the gnome admitted, walking up to the nearest rod. "So I guess we all lift it and walk in a circle? Or just all push in the same direction and let it drag on the ground?" "Before we do that, I want to see where it goes," said Castillan, dropping down to his hands and knees and crawling along the circumference of the circular room. He was looking at the sections of stone wall visible through the triangular gaps along the bottom of the metal structure. After making a full circuit, he reported back, "There's just one other hallway, directly across from the one we came through. So I guess it doesn't matter which way we push the thing - it'll be the same distance either way." "But, if the tunnel just continues straight south from here, why put this metal thing in the way?" asked Finoula. "What's the point?" "Could be to slow us down," suggested Gilbert. "Or maybe make sure you can only go this way if you strong enough, or have enough people with you. Or," he said as if a brilliant idea just popped into his head, "maybe it just there to make silly elf women ask 'How come?'" Finoula gave him her best glare and walked over to another rod, positioning herself to help push it counterclockwise. The others fell into place, with Ingebold and Binkadink - the two shortest of the bunch - complaining about how high up the rods were. "One, two, three, push!" called the little gnome. Everyone pushed, and the metal cylinder barely budged. "Let's try that again. One, two, three, PUSH!" With a loud scraping sound, they managed to move the cylinder a few inches further around the circuit. "Hold up a minute," suggested Gilbert, leaving his station. "Tuckered out already?" asked Castillan. "You shut silly elf mouth," countered the wizard. "I make things easier for us." And with that, he cast a [i]grease[/i] spell in a circle all along the outer edges of the circular room, making sure to get underneath each of the triangular openings. "Everything better with lubrication," he said, giving Finoula a knowing look which she studiously ignored. Gilbert returned to his station, gave Binkadink a nod, and the countdown began again. "One, two, three -- PUSH!" This time the revolving door was noticeably easier to move, but it still took the better part of a full minute to swing the metal structure around so its doorway now lined up with the tunnel to the south. "Whew!" exclaimed Binkadink, wiping sweat from his brow, and peered into the tunnel before him. After about ten feet of tunnel, it opened up into a square room, 35 feet to a side, with side passageways centered on the east and west walls. But the most significant feature of the room was the large, circular indentation in the middle of the room, a bowl-shaped depression with a 25-foot diameter. It was filled nearly to the brim with scummy green liquid, looking like a nonfunctioning fountain clogged by algae. "Is that green slime?" asked Darrien. "I'll bet that's green slime." "If it is, we don't want to go touching it," advised Binkadink, trying to remember how to get rid of green slime. "I think it burns," he said, pulling out an actual torch from his backpack and setting its tip aflame with a spark from his tinder box. "You guys stay here, while I go check this out." Binkadink entered the room, burning torch in one hand and two illusory ones strapped to the antlers of his helmet. He stood at the edge of the corridor and tossed the lit torch into the pool of scummy water, expecting it to burn the green slime away. Alas, it wasn't green slime in the bowl-shaped depression at all, but rather an inactive arcane ooze. The torch landed on it and started to burn its protoplasm, causing it to arc up and send a pseudopod writhing towards the gnome. "Uh oh," Binkadink managed to get out before a thick wave of greenish glop came racing his way, engulfing him instantly. He immediately felt the burning of acid everywhere the protoplasm touched his skin. The little gnome tried backing away but was immediately entangled in the ooze's embrace, so he slashed at it with his glaive as best he could. At the same time, Ingebold, Gilbert, and Finoula all yelled out in pain and grabbed their heads. "What's the matter?" cried Castillan, gripping his twin blades. He hadn't seen the ooze do anything but smother Binkadink and couldn't imagine what a blob of green matter could do to the others from that far away. "Damn thing ripped spell right from brain!" yelled Gilbert. "Aye, same here," confirmed Ingebold, for she noted one of the most powerful spells she'd prepared that morning was now gone. Worse yet, the arcane ooze was using the stolen spell energy to repair the damage Binkadink had done to it with his torch and glaive. "If that thing keeps eating your spells..." began Darrien, realizing the only reason he'd been spared from the creature's spell-draining attack had been because he'd already used up both of his for the day. "We gotta get out of here!" reasoned Castillan, suddenly realizing why the revolving door had been placed where it was - and worse yet, why there were triangular openings all along the bottom edges of the metal cylinder. It would take them nearly a minute to get the doorway positioned back to the northern corridor, during which time the spell-draining creature could easily ooze its way into the cylinder with them.... "We're screwed!" the bounder cried aloud. "We just gotta kill it!" called Binkadink, swinging his glaive into the amorphous creature's protoplasm body even as it constricted goopy strands of its body around him. The others quickly realized the truth of the situation; Castillan stepped up and slashed out at the bulk of the creature's body where it was filling the corridor on either side of Binkadink's struggling form, while Ingebold used her new mace to channel a blast of healing energy at Binkadink, keeping him as healthy as possible while being constricted by a creature whose very body oozed acidic fluids that burned into the little gnome's flesh. Gilbert cast a [i]haste[/i] spell on the group, reasoning that giving everyone an extra attack would certainly help bring it down that much faster, hopefully faster than it could heal by stealing spell energy. Castillan was soon engulfed as well as the arcane ooze's body surged forward, keeping Binkadink where he was but still managing to project part of itself into the circular room. Finoula activated her [i]whip of thorns[/i], extracting the thorns along the whip's length and sending it cracking into the advancing mass of protoplasm. Darrien sent arrows flying into it and Gilbert cast a pair of [i]scorching rays[/i] down the corridor to strike the creature's back half - far enough back that he wouldn't hit Binkadink or Castillan - but was disappointed to see both rays strike true but have no effect on the ooze. And while still bound by the thick strands of protoplasm, the fighter and the bounder stabbed and slashed with their blades, slicing into the ooze's shapeless flesh. It was an uphill battle, as the ooze continued ripping spell energy from the minds of the spellcasters and using it to heal itself of the wounds constantly being inflicted upon it, but at long last the adventurers were successful; Ingebold's ranged healing spells managed to keep the two victims alive long enough for the group as a whole to destroy the vile creature. When it died, its amorphous body lost all cohesion, falling off of Binkadink and Castillan in globs and clumps, its entire body bubbling away as if being eaten by acid itself. Within minutes, there was only a series of foul-smelling green stains showing where it had been. "I'm calling it a day," suggested Castillan. "We all need healing, and your most powerful spells are all gone. I say we go back topside and camp out - we can return again in the morning." "Sounds good to me," agreed Binkadink, as Ingebold healed up the worst of his acid burns. "No," countered Gilbert. "We go back up, maybe this place reset. We stay here tonight." "Spend the night down here?" asked Darrien. "But all of our stuff's upstairs with Aithanar: blankets, bedrolls - heck, the new wagon's got four beds in it, and there are tents for the others! Plus our food--" "Pshaw!" scoffed Gilbert. "What kind of adventurer you? We have trail rations, waterskins - that plenty for one night. We be fine." Ingebold had no qualms about sleeping on a solid stone floor - as a dwarf, this was nothing particularly out of the ordinary for her. "We'll want t' set up guard shifts," she suggested. "Agreed," said Castillan. "I'll take first shift." In the end, the group decided to make camp in the corridor between the room with the four carved statues and the circular revolving door room, the latter of which was declared the women's quarters for the evening. Castillan designated the circular pit south of the zombie chamber a makeshift privy, christening it as such himself. Binkadink extracted himself from his plate mail armor, realizing he'd never be able to sleep in it. But the group settled down to their evening routine and eventually they did sleep, one of them at a time spending two hours or so guarding the others from any unknown denizens that might show up. The night passed uneventfully and in the morning they rose, donned their armor, prepared their spells, and were ready to press on with the unknown dangers of the Magekiller. "There were two side passages from the room that ooze came from," pointed out Castillan. Re-entering the revolving door, the group took their positions and pushed it a half rotation, getting the door opening synched up with the southern corridor. Gilbert looked nervously into the chamber, but the arcane ooze had not reformed - the greenish stains on the floor were all that showed it had ever been there. The group opted to take the eastern corridor first and Castillan took the lead so he could check for traps as he went. He only made it about halfway down the corridor before he found his first anomaly: a small glyph of some type etched into the floor. "Hey, Gilbert, there's some kind of glyph on the floor here - you want to come check it out?" "No," replied Gilbert from the back of the formation, thinking it might be a set of [i]explosive runes[/i] or something similar. "You get good look at it?" "Yeah, but I don't know what it might mean." "Give it best shot. You doing fine." Castillan shrugged and set about trying to disarm it as best he could. Generally, for a rune carved in a stone surface, the best way to render it harmless was to etch along it until the rune was different from its original shape. He bent over to scratch some side-marks into the thing, but accidentally triggered it - and found himself five feet in the air, floating harmlessly halfway between the floor and the ceiling. "Hey!" he called out, thrashing and swinging his body around wildly. He managed to turn himself sideways, such that he could reach one wall with his feet and the opposite wall with his hands, and walked himself sideways along the wall until gravity returned to normal and he plopped back down to the floor. "Uh, watch that bit there," he offered somewhat shamefacedly. Binkadink was next in line. He tried jumping over it, but got caught in midair; fortunately, he was able to use the wooden end of his glaive to pull himself along the floor like a gondola pilot using a punt, until he joined Castillan on the far side. The others took the opportunity of a relatively harmless trap to simply leap into the air, get caught, and then pull themselves along the end of Binkadink's offered glaive-shaft. "Well, that was different," admitted Finoula, "but what exactly was the point? It's not as if it actually harmed us in any way." Gilbert gave it some thought. "No," he agreed, "but what if we ran this way from ooze? We stuck in air; ooze slides over, grabs us up. Then we yummy snack." It made sense; presumably that arcane ooze hadn't happened to have wandered by and decided to make that chamber its home but was rather added to the Magekiller dungeon by Arrogan. Turning the corner, Castillan saw a 10-foot corridor to the south which ran into a wall. It wasn't a solid wall, though; rather, there was a two-foot-tall opening into a room beyond. Not wanting anyone to go crawling into an unknown room, Gilbert cast an [i]unseen servant[/i] spell, handed it his activate sunrod, and sent it in to check the place out. By peering through the floor-level opening into the room, the group saw a wooden chest against the far wall of the small room. The chest was inside a cell of metal bars; there didn't seem to be a cell door allowing entry. "That looks like trap," commented Gilbert. "Possibly..." admitted Castillan, scampering around to check out the edges of the opening. It looked like the two-foot opening was the only entrance into the small room, and the wall directly above it was a stone slab that could easily be triggered somehow to come crashing down and seal anyone inside the room off from the rest of the dungeon. "I don't like the looks of this," the bounder said, after explaining his findings to the rest of the group. "I have [i]unseen servant[/i] open chest," Gilbert decided, instructing his still-active spell to do just that. The floating sunrod meandered over to the bars around the chest, but that was it - apparently the chest was locked or the lid was too heavy for the [i]unseen servant[/i] to lift. "I dinnae like th' thought of any of us goin' in there with no way t' get back out again," said Ingebold. "Hang on, though - I've got a [i]stone shape[/i] spell that oughtta do th' trick." Casting the spell, the dwarven cleric carved away a five-foot section of the corridor and a chunk of wall to the left of the opening, making another way into the room. "That's better," she said, pleased with the results. Everyone funneled into the room, and Binkadink stuck his old glaive through the bars of the cage, first tapping it against the chest - "Well, it's not a mimic," he said - and then sticking the tip of the blade in the narrow crack between the chest's bottom and lid. Getting it in as deep as he could, he used it as a lever, and once Castillan and Darrien leant their strength to the task, they managed to pry open the chest's lid, finding out in the process why it was so difficult to open up: there were heavy chains attached to the lid's inside, which apparently went underneath the floor and pulled out the pins holding the door in place above the two-foot-tall opening. With a mighty crash, the door came slamming down, sealing everyone inside the room - or it would have, if not for Ingebold's side exit. "It was just a trap," groused Castillan, looking inside the otherwise empty chest. "Not even a token copper piece for our efforts." The group backtracked to the arcane ooze chamber and went through the corridor to the west, the bounder once again taking point and checking for traps. He found what looked to be a hidden pit trap, noticeable by the fact that the same five-foot square of floor didn't appear to be attached to either of the side walls. Binkadink passed the bounder a couple of metal pitons, which he used to wedge each side of the pit trap door into place. However, all he got for his efforts was a dead end around the corner with a closed door promising more rooms beyond. But that promise was a false one; touching the knob blasted the bounder with a bolt of electricity, and the door was a fake in any case - it didn't even open but was rather a permanent fixture of the wall. "This bites!" Gilbert cried aloud. "Everywhere a dead end? Where that stupid Arrogan's stupid treasure?" Then, mentally envisioning the layout of the Magekiller thus far, he called out to Castillan, "Hey! Elf boy! Go check for secret doors in ooze room!" "Hang on a minute, I'm getting healed up," the bounder groused back at the wizard. Ingebold finished her spell, healing over the electrical burns on the bounder's hand where he had foolishly touched the doorknob. But then he gave the ooze's chamber a thorough check, finding nothing. "Is that it?" asked Finoula. "Maybe the whole thing about treasure's just an unfounded rumor." "That make no sense," snarled Gilbert. "Why go to all this trouble if there no treasure hidden? We just missing something." He racked his brain, going over the layout in his mind. "Wait a minute!" he exclaimed. "We go back to second room!" The group had to reposition the revolving cylinder once again, but they made their way back to the room where the weapons had animated when Binkadink had stepped foot into the room. The wizard sent his [i]unseen servant[/i] into the room to fetch each of the remaining weapons, one by one. The wizard examined each in turn as it was handed to him, but as expected they were of poor quality, no doubt exacerbated by clanging against each other when they formed a mobile cloud of attacking weapons. He sent the others in a line leading to the circular pit to the south of the room where the juju zombies had popped out of their hidden niches, and one by one the weapons were all unceremoniously dropped into the pit, three rooms away from the room where the weapons had all been on display. "Aha!" said Gilbert as the last of the weapons was removed and sent to join the others in the pit. He pointed into the room, specifically at the wall on which the weapons had been mounted. "There our way to treasure!" Now that the weapons had been removed, four narrow indentations could be seen in the far wall, which had been covered by axe blades and the like when the weapons had been in place. Each indentation was about four inches wide, a foot or so tall, and several inches deep. More importantly, each held a lever raised in the "up" position. The four indentations were arranged on the wall in a diamond pattern, with the highest one directly above the lowest one, and one halfway between the two on either side. "How did you know those were there?" asked Finoula, frankly astonished that their irritating wizard had figured out the hidden way to the rest of the Magekiller dungeon. "I remember those stairs," Gilbert replied. "Elf boy here say they six separate columns, not one big piece of stone. One of those levers lower steps to ground level, and I bet there a door behind stairs, right below where we standing." "So, which lever?" asked the elven ranger. "Is this some sort of puzzle?" "Don't matter. We have [i]unseen servant[/i] pull levers until we find right one." With that, he directed the [i]unseen servant[/i] to pull the top lever. With a shriek of rusting metal, the lever flipped position, and oil started dripping down from thumb-sized holes in the ceiling, spilling onto the floor. "Okay, not that one!" called Gilbert, directing his spell to return the first lever to its starting position. "Try one on right side!" The [i]unseen servant[/i] followed its instructions and sure enough, each of the steps started lowering into the floor until they were level with the floor's surface. However, they didn't stop there - they continued sinking into the floor until they had formed an inverse set of stairs, one leading down into a lower level, but going from west to east instead of east to west. However, this new level was ten feet below the level were the adventurers stood, so Gilbert had the [i]unseen servant[/i] return that lever to its starting position long enough for the heroes to step carefully into the room - and sure enough, the weapons that had been in the room were now far enough away that they didn't activate into a swarm to attack the intruders. Pulling the rightmost lever back down, the stairs reconfigured themselves and the group entered the lower level of the Magekiller. The stairs ended at a T-intersection, with a short corridor going to the north and south. Opting to go south, Castillan turned a corner and found a large, square room, 25 feet to a side. There were three wooden chests each along the north and south walls, while the western wall held a shield, a longsword, two heavy flails, three daggers, and a heavy mace. "Now we're talking!" exclaimed Castillan enthusiastically, entering the room to examine the chests. None was trapped, but each was locked, the keys having been no doubt lost in the years since the Magekiller's construction. But Castillan's lockpicks had each chest open in but a moment. The chests each held coins and gems, to a total value of 24,000 pieces of gold; Castillan almost started hyperventilating at the thought of that much money. Gilbert cast a [i]detect magic[/i] spell and determined both the longsword and the mace were magical; investigation of the masterwork shield - which held Arrogan's family crest: a ferocious, black griffon - revealed a scroll tube tucked into one of the straps. Binkadink opened the case, expecting to find a scroll to pass on to Ingebold or Gilbert; instead, he pulled out what looked to be a black handkerchief. Unfolding it, he saw it was circular, almost like a tablecloth for a round table. Gilbert emitted a squeal of glee from halfway across the room. "You know what that is?" he asked. "That a [i]portable hole[/i]!" After explaining the mechanics of a [i]portable hole[/i] to the others, Finoula pointed out they could dump all of the coins and gems into the hole and carry everything out in one trip. "I love this place!" exclaimed Gilbert, his previous feelings towards the Magekiller all but forgotten. There was only one more room left, the one at the end of the northern corridor at the bottom of the secret stairs. This room was the same size and shape as the other treasure room, although this one had only three chests lined up against the far wall. "More coins?" squealed Castillan, as excited at the prospect of more cash as Gilbert had been at the sight of the [i]portable hole[/i]. "Hold on," cautioned the wizard, holding the bounder back from entering the room. "One feature very common in dungeons like these: false treasure vaults. This maybe a trap." He sent the [i]unseen servant[/i] to open the first chest, while Castillan watched in eager anticipation from the corridor just outside the room. It opened easily, revealing...hundreds, if not thousands, of little metal spheres - the chest was nearly filled to the top with them. At Gilbert's direction, the [i]unseen servant[/i] brought one over for the wizard to examine. It had a small glyph on one side, which failed to explode even as Gilbert winced upon seeing it. He looked it over, then passed it on to Binkadink at his urging. "You think it's explosive?" the gnome asked. At the wizard's shrug, the gnome went back to the treasure room and hurled it against the far wall. It hit, bounced, and rolled across the room - but failed to explode. Gilbert had his spell open the third chest, revealing it to be filled nearly to the top with similar metal spheres. But the [i]unseen servant[/i] was unable to open the middle chest. Castillan went to go check it out, after promising not to touch anything. He didn't see any visible traps, but curiously, the chests all seemed to be securely attached to the floor. "I'm kind of hesitant to try to open the chest," the bounder admitted. "I have an idea," said Darrien, calling forth the mantis from his amulet. He waited for Castillan to leave the room, then instructed the mantis to lift open the middle chest. It did so, with some effort - and the entire floor hinged down along the far wall, sending the mantis dropping into a 40-foot deep pit, thousands of metal spheres from the two outer chests pummeling it once it hit the bottom. Looking down into the pit, the heroes could see the spheres moving around, then rushing together to take on the form of a four-headed lizard. The orb construct hydra towered over the mantis, nearly touching all four walls at once. It didn't take long at all for the mantis to reappear in Darrien's amber necklace, its physical form having been utterly destroyed by the four-headed guardian in the pit below. "False treasure vault," repeated Gilbert knowingly, noting with satisfaction that the orb construct had no way out of the pit. "We go back to wagons now." Retracing their way out of the Magekiller, Gilbert was the first to step onto the first stair leading back up to the surface. Doing so - putting weight on the lowest step first - alerted the room's magical sensors that someone was attempting to depart the Magekiller. As a result, the four statue-women all activated at once. The two at either side of the stairs swept out with their swords, slicing into the surprised wizard and forcing him to jump back down off the stairs to avoid being further cut. Bleeding heavily from two deep wounds, Gilbert silently assessed his ability to take another set of blows like that one and pulled out his [i]wand of gaseous form[/i]. "I out of here!" he called to the others before discorporating into a cloud of vapors and drifting towards the stairs. Ingebold was next in line behind Gilbert, and she quickly assessed the situation: there were two statues flanking the stairs up, but once past them she knew there was a winding set of stairs spiraling up the surface, which were likely too narrow for the statues to be able to follow. "Run!" she yelled, doing just that. She took a hit from one of the caryatid columns' sword, but her armor deflected the worst of the damage - and then she was past them. The others raced in her footsteps, Binkadink taking up the rear. [i]I [u]knew[/u] they'd animate eventually!"[/i] he thought to himself on his way up. Aithanar was surprised at the group's sudden appearance, a full day after having gone down into the ruins. "Squintific nonshass patine!" he exclaimed. "We missed you, too," said Finoula with a smile. - - - This was a fun dungeon crawl. None of the players figured out the "trick" I had planted in the dungeon, although Logan scared me almost immediately upon entering the first chamber with the four caryatid columns, to the point where I was worried this adventure would take all of a half hour to complete. I had made it a point to mention, both in the plot hook up front (from Castillan's card-playing buddies) and from the caryatid column's [i]magic mouth[/i] spell, that "Arrogan has never made a mistake in his life." Another way to say that is "Arrogan is always right." I had designed the Magekiller (which in-game had been designed by Arrogan himself) such that "always right" was the key to navigating the Magekiller safely. If you go into the caryatid column room and take a right, you end up in the room with all the weapons. Arrogan would stand on the steps - not stepping foot into the room - and use a [i]mage hand[/i] spell to first move a specific weapon out of the way and then to pull down the rightmost lever, which formed the hidden stairs. Turning around and now going down the stairs in the other direction, two more rights would get him to the real treasure vault. So, Binkadink's first words when they found out the caryatid columns weren't going to activate and attack them? "Which way do we want to go? Always right, always left, or straight down the middle?" But they didn't pick up on it, and the adventure took us two sessions to play through. The two magic weapons from the treasure room went to Binkadink and Finoula. To a Medium-sized wielder, it's a [i]+1 heavy mace[/i]; to Binkadink, it's a [i]+1 greatclub[/i]. Logan made the case that's it's really just a big, heavy thing to smash enemies with, and I agreed. So Binkadink finally got his first magic weapon, in the adventure after he finally got a Small masterwork glaive. As for Finoula, this is where I finally made up for the subterfuge with Malaterminus; her replacement magic longsword is a [i]+2 variable energy longsword[/i]; what that means is that you can "load it" with a spell (much in the same way as a spell-storing weapon), only doing so "aligns" it to a specific energy type. A [i]burning hands[/i] spell (or higher-level fire spell) cast into the sword allows it to deal +1d6 fire damage; likewise, [i]Melf’s acid arrow[/i], [i]shatter[/i], [i]shocking grasp[/i], and [i]sleet storm[/i] (or a higher-level spell of the same energy type) give it the ability to deal +1d6 acid, sonic, electricity, or cold damage, respectively. In addition, a [i]magic missile[/i] spell makes it into a [i]ghost touch[/i] weapon instead. In either case, it only retains the energy type of the last spell cast into it, but it stays attuned to that energy type until a new spell is cast into the sword, realigning it to the new type. Vicki was suitably pleased with Finoula's new weapon; now she has two main goals: to come up with a cool name for it, and to use it to kill Malaterminus the incubus who tricked her into killing Ingebold. (Logan jokingly suggested the name "Malaterminus-terminus," or "Evil Slayer Slayer.") - - - T-Shirt Worn: We got up to the part where the PCs had encountered the arcane ooze before we ran out of time during our first session, and I was still wearing my Dalek "EXTERMINATE" T-shirt from the first adventure we had played through that session. For the second session, where we finished off this adventure, I opted to stick with the same shirt, since it had subsequently been cleaned in the three-week span between game sessions. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
The Kordovian Adventurers Guild
Top