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The Kordovian Adventurers Guild
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 7358279" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 45: THE DUNGEON OF ETERNITY</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 13</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 13</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Darrien, half-elf ranger 13</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 13</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Gilbert Fung, human wizard 13</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 13</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 3</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 12 (Moradin)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Jinkadoodle Dundernoggin, gnome illusionist 5</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 24 February 2018</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>"Hello in there!" came a strong voice from the other side of the portcullis of Battershield Keep. The drawbridge was down, indicating visitors were welcome, but since the keep wasn't normally staffed with a security force - it was merely the home of the dwarven Battershield family and now also the de facto headquarters of the Kordovian Adventurers Guild - the lowered portcullis ensured strangers didn't get free rein of the place.</p><p></p><p>Darrien was in the courtyard and recognized the voice immediately as belonging to Vance Pelorian, a human cleric who worked for Lord Cavelthorne. The first time Darrien had seen Vance, the cleric was a petrified statue courtesy of a beholder's eye ray; Darrien had worked with the rest of Lord Cavelthorne's team to slay the beholder responsible and return the cleric to living flesh. And sure enough, standing behind Vance were his adventuring associates: Kizzie Birdsong, a halfling bard; Caliandra, a human sorceress; "Quincy" (really Jorg) Battleborn, a half-orc fighter; and Thomas the Seeker, a human monk. They all smiled at Darrien, who hurried over and began raising the portcullis to let his fellow adventurers in.</p><p></p><p>"What going on?" demanded Gilbert Fung, exiting the northwestern tower of the keep where his room was located after having heard the raising of the portcullis.</p><p></p><p>"We've got a little proposition for you," said Vance. "A bit of a two-team venture, if you will."</p><p></p><p>"We get rest of our guys together," suggested Gilbert, yelling up the tower stairways at the others while Darrien led the visitors to the keep's dining room, where there were tables enough to fit everyone. Once everybody had gathered - and Harriet Fung had served them all heaping helpings of her famous apple crumble - Caliandra briefed the group on their offer.</p><p></p><p>"We have a map to a dungeon that claims to hold the key to longevity," the sultry sorceress said, pulling a folded-up piece of parchment from her cleavage. "But we only made it to the first two rooms. The second room contains a puzzle that has eluded our ability to figure out. What do you say to a two-kingdom joint venture? We lead you to the dungeon, you help us get past the second room, and we work our way together to the end, splitting the treasure equally among us. What do you say?"</p><p></p><p>That sounded fine to the Kordovian adventurers - especially Darrien, who relished any opportunity to spend time with Caliandra. "Pack up your horses and wagons, then," suggested Jorg. "It's about a four-day trek south and west, to the end of the Clatspur Mountain Range."</p><p></p><p>"Oh, I think we beat four-day travel forecast," smirked Gilbert. "Bink! Go get carpet!"</p><p></p><p>As the little gnome scampered off to fetch the <em>carpet of teleportation</em>, Kizzie wrinkled her brow. "I don't think we'll all fit on a <em>carpet of flying</em>," she offered.</p><p></p><p>"Just wait and see," smiled Castillan.</p><p></p><p>Once Binkadink returned and unrolled the magic carpet onto the dining room floor, the visitors were each escorted aboard the dragonfly vessel with one of their Kordovian brethren - for two people easily fit on the carpet at a time. Aithanar came along to tend to the animals on board, as was his custom. Departing the bedroom at the other end of the carpet, Lord Cavelthorne's team was amazed to find themselves in basically a <em>Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion</em>, but even further astounded to find out that was merely an extradimensional addition to a flying vessel. "Where in the world did you get <em>this</em>?" demanded Caliandra.</p><p></p><p>"It's kind of a long story," admitted Darrien. "I'll tell it to you as we head to where we're going."</p><p></p><p>Jinkadoodle piloted the ship from its cloud island parking spot and took it over the kingdom of Kordovia. Caliandra stayed in the control room with the gnome illusionist to direct him (and Darrien, not surprisingly, chose to stay with them), but the rest of the joint team went topside to marvel at the sight. "Lord Cavelthorne is going to be green with envy once he finds out you've got something like this!" Vance marveled. (Jorg was impressed with the ship, but was even more impressed with the buffet back downstairs in the extradimensional hold.)</p><p></p><p>Not being used to such a vantage point, Caliandra had Jinkadoodle fly relatively low, where she could have him follow the roads they would have traveled had they made the trip by wagon, as had originally been assumed. The low-flying dragonfly vessel caused quite a few travelers on the road to point and stare; many assumed it was some sort of living monster insect and fled in terror at the sight. But the ship made the four-day trip in less than an hour; eventually, Caliandra had Jinkadoodle park it in a valley between two mountains. "The valley is far enough away from the main road that passersby shouldn't be able to see it," explained the sorceress. "And from here, it's a mere ten-minute climb to the entry to the hidden 'Dungeon of Eternity'."</p><p></p><p>"'Dungeon of Eternity'?" asked Darrien. "Kind of a pretentious name, don't you think?" Caliandra merely shrugged. "I didn't name it," she replied. "But that's what it says on the map we found."</p><p></p><p>The entry cave was inconspicuous, barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side, and by a dozen feet in there was room only for one. The back of the cave narrowed into a dead-end wedge shape. "Um, what?" asked Binkadink. "Is this the right cave?"</p><p></p><p>"Look up there," said Thomas, pointing up the right-hand side of the cave wall. About ten feet up there was a ledge, and at the back of the ledge was another narrow passage. That led into the first real room of the dungeon, a mostly featureless square hewn from the rock. The room had no light sources, but Binkadink had two <em>everburning torches</em> strapped to the antlers of his helmet, and a few of the others dug into their packs to fetch sunrods. There was a set of steps leading up to a higher level from the back of the room, and carved into the wall to the right of the stairs was a greeting of sorts. It read:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The stairs were only about three feet wide, so it was single file into the next room, which was circular in shape. They entered up through the floor, to find seven different doors arranged equidistant around the circular wall, each a different color: red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, and purple. There were letters in between some of the doors at four different levels. The ceiling was about 20 feet high in this room. Centered on the floor was a set of knobs.</p><p></p><p>"This is the room that gave us trouble," explained Vance. "The way we figure it, there's a message to be found in these letters, but we haven't been able to make head nor tail of it. And if you try going through the wrong door, you get zapped."</p><p></p><p>"You tried all of them?" asked Castillan, looking forward to the challenge.</p><p></p><p>"All seven," agreed Caliandra. "The attacks from the doors grown deadlier with each attempt, and the attacks are variable - heat, cold, electricity...you name it. It makes it hard to shield against, when you don't know what type of energy you'll be struck with next. Our best guess is the letters have to be in the correct position, and then it's safe to open the correct door. We just don't know which one that is, and there are too many different letter combinations to keep getting it wrong without the door defenses outright killing us."</p><p></p><p>"Yeah - the electricity really stings," commented Jorg, rubbing his hands in remembered pain.</p><p></p><p>Castillan had been examining the letters. They didn't make any sense that he could see. "Watch this," Vance said, reaching for the knob on the floor. It had three different levels; he gave the outermost one a turn to the right, and with a grinding sound the upper set of letters rotated clockwise, orienting themselves so the top letters were each poised above the next column to the right. "Each of the top three rows of letters can be moved," Vance explained. "The bottom row, with the doors, is fixed in place."</p><p></p><p>"Let me try," said the bounder, moving several rows at random to see if they would make any words.</p><p></p><p>"Hey!" called out Binkadink. "Move the second row over two spaces to the right." Castillan did so. "Look: the word 'door' is spelled out," the gnome observed. Sure enough, the word "door" was spelled from top to bottom in the space between the yellow and green doors. Starting from there and reading the words formed down between the doors to the right, the following message was formed:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>"That doesn't make any sense," pointed out Finoula.</p><p></p><p>"It's got to be right, though," replied Castillan. "Look: we have "must pass thru the awl door.' That can't just be a coincidence. Now, which one is the awl door?"</p><p></p><p>"But what about the 'D-R-R' column?" asked Hagan.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink continued to stare at the letters. "It isn't D-R-R!" he exclaimed. "It's A-L-L! And that isn't 'AWL," it's 'RED'!" Sure enough, the "D" had serifs extending to the left from the top and bottom of the letter, and the letter "R" had not only been made lower case, it was just a bent line. By reading down the column with your head turned to the right, it spelled out "ALL." Similarly, because the "W" was a "U" shape with a vertical line rising up from its middle and the "A" was the same shape as the "D" turned on its side, by turning your head to the left and reading <em>up</em> the last column, "AWL" became "rED."</p><p></p><p>"'All must pass thru the red door'," translated Finoula. "That's actually pretty clever." Lord Cavelthorne's team, however, was groaning aloud at how quickly the Kordovians had figured out the puzzle that had confounded them for so long. "After you," sighed Caliandra, indicating the red door.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink opened the red door without any trouble. On the other side was a narrow corridor which was covered in pitch black darkness about 10 feet in. Hagan and Ingebold both declared neither of them could see through the darkness despite their darkvision. Darrien passed up a sunrod to Binkadink and the gnome tossed it into the area of darkness; it winked out as soon as it passed the barrier. "<em>Deeper darkness</em>," observed Binkadink. "Any of you spellcasters have anything that would counter that?" It would take something more powerful than a simple <em>light</em> or <em>everburning flame</em> spell - and none of the spellcasters had anything appropriate at the ready. Gilbert tried a <em>dispel magic</em> on the <em>deeper darkness</em> effect but was unsuccessful.</p><p></p><p>"In we go, then," said Binkadink, tapping ahead into the darkness with his nonmagical glaive.</p><p></p><p>"Wait a minute," exclaimed Ingebold suddenly, casting a <em>true seeing</em> spell upon herself. "I cannae dispel th' darkness, but now I can see within it! Th' corridor's empty, but it leads into another round room ahead."</p><p></p><p>"Then you'd better lead," suggested Binkadink, swapping places in line with her. Gilbert took a moment to cast a <em>Rary's telepathic bond</em> spell that linked him to Binkadink, Castillan, Darrien, and Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"Everybody put your hand on the shoulder of the person ahead of you," suggested Finoula. Thus situated, Ingebold led the group slowly forward. The others followed, hand on shoulder, with Lord Cavelthorne's team bringing up the rear, as if in shame at their dismal puzzle-solving skills.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink felt a slight breeze as Ingebold entered the room - and then suddenly, his hand was no longer on her shoulder. He stopped and called out to her but there was no answer. Worried, he crept forward...and then he no longer felt Castillan's hand upon his own shoulder. However, from the light of his twin <em>everburning torches</em> in his helmet, he could see he wasn't in a round room like Ingebold had claimed was ahead, but an empty, square room with a ten-foot ceiling and walls some 15 feet wide. There were no doors to be seen.</p><p></p><p>While Binkadink was checking out his new surroundings, the others in line behind him kept moving forward. As each entered the circular room and was teleported to a different location, the teleport doorways of the room slid counterclockwise, aligning a new teleport doorway to the entrance to the circular room, accounting for the slight breeze Binkadink had felt in the corridor and assuring no two people in sequence would end up in the same place. By the time Binkadink thought to call out to the others over his <em>Rary's telepathic bond</em>, they had almost all been caught up in the teleport trap and were each in their own separate chambers. Only Gilbert and Mudpie remained of the Kordovians, with Cavelthorne's team behind them. "We about to be teleported," Gilbert advised the other team. "Others already separated, we might as well move ahead and find way back to each other after." That said, he hefted the weight of his earth elemental familiar and walked into the circular room ahead, ensuring that at least Mudpie would be teleported along with him instead of the two being separated.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>After having stepped through the doorway, Ingebold suddenly found herself inexplicably elsewhere. She was in a square room, 15 feet on a side with a ceiling 10 feet above her. Each of the four walls had a doorway-sized niche in its middle, but no visible doorway. Looking down at her feet, she saw she stood upon a raised, circular platform about three feet in diameter. Around that, the rest of the floor looked different - translucent, even. And then the cleric found out why as, with a burbling noise, the floor rippled, formed a pseudopod, and slapped up at the astonished cleric. With a firm grip on her dwarven warhammer, she slammed back at the pseudopod, realizing in amazement that the platform upon which she stood was 15 feet tall and piercing straight through a gelatinous cube whose dimensions mirrored those of the lower section of the room - one with an actual floor some 15 feet below her!</p><p></p><p>The gelatinous cube absorbed its pseudopod back into its body, only to form another one behind its intended prey and slam at her from behind. Ingebold turned on her pedestal, facing this new threat, then whacked away with her hammer. She squatted low on her stone platform, allowing her to hammer at the beast's body without actually touching the paralytic flesh of its amoeboid form. The two traded blows, with the ooze at a severe disadvantage, in that Ingebold could hardly miss her foe while it did little else; eventually the dwarven maiden had slain the gelatinous cube and had to hold her breath while its body bubbled and discorporated into a frothy, smelly mess. Still not wanting to lower herself down into its corpse to explore the lower section of the room (although fearing it might have to come to that), she took a few minutes to examine each of the four niches up at her level. Aided by her innate dwarven stonecunning, she eventually discerned that one was a stone slab merely inserted into a gap. She made the leap over to that niche, pushing with all of her might. The slab pivoted, allowing her to exit the room by way of a very narrow corridor that branched off into several different directions. Calling out and hearing no reply, Ingebold picked one at random and moved off to find her friends.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Binkadink used his nonmagical glaive to poke at the floor, the walls, and finally the ceiling. Each was completely featureless; it looked as if the gnome stood inside an empty chamber with no ways in or out save teleportation - which would be a bit of a problem, for the little gnome had no way to teleport on his own.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, his probing led to the discovery of a narrow hole in the middle of the ceiling, covered over with an <em>illusory wall</em> spell - but once Binkadink knew the opening was there, it was the matter of mere moments to stare at the place and see through the clever illusion. So: a hole in the ceiling 10 feet above him, and no way to get up there. That was going to be a problem. His <em>gnomish stilt-boots</em> could only elevate him to the height of a human - not nearly tall enough to get him to the hole in the ceiling. He had two glaives, each nearly 10 feet long; perhaps he could bind them together somehow, stick one end into the hole, and climb up them? He looked through his backpack for something he could use to tie his two lengthy weapons together.</p><p></p><p>And then he found his vial of <em>sovereign glue</em>.</p><p></p><p>It would mean leaving his nonmagical glaive behind, but that was a small price to pay for his freedom. Binkadink poured some of the glue onto the bottom of his weapon's hilt, then stuck it in place and held it there long enough for the glue to dry. At the end of this process, he had a glaive standing straight up, its blade pointed at the edge of the hole in the ceiling. Gathering everything back up, Binkadink started climbing. At the top, he scrabbled up into the hole and pulled himself into a narrow tunnel leading away from the room in which he had been imprisoned. The tunnel moved past the room and then dropped back down, this time into another narrow passageway moving perpendicular from the tunnel he had just popped out of.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Castillan ended up in a pitch-black room with no way to see his surroundings. He had the typical elven low-light vision, but low-light and no-light conditions were worlds apart. Rummaging blindly through his backpack, the bounder felt a sunrod beneath his grasping fingers and activated it.</p><p></p><p>That was better! He was in a square room, with walls 15 feet to a side and a ten-foot ceiling. There was only one exit, an open tunnel covered in pitch-black darkness after a few feet in. Sure enough, it was a permanent <em>deeper darkness</em> spell effect, just like the one just past the red door; Castillan's sunrod seemed to wink out as soon as he brought it inside the area of effect. Tapping ahead of him with his sword, Castillan entered the tunnel, moving slowly enough that he found the pit straight ahead before blindly tumbling into it. He couldn't feel the other side of it with his extended blade, so he assumed it had to have a diameter of ten feet or more. So: dark tunnel, dead end, pit. It was possible there was another exit at the bottom of the pit, but Castillan opted to explore around further before he committed himself to jumping into a pit of unknown depth.</p><p></p><p>By tapping the walls with his sword, he discovered an opening along the side wall of the pit, up at his level - or slightly below it. It had a solid floor, but was disturbingly narrow. It would be a difficult jump in absolute darkness, but the elf was sure he could make it - after all, bounding about was what he did for a living! He returned his sword to the extradimensional space in his magic <em>glove of storing</em> with a snap of his fingers, got his bearings as best he could, and leaped for the unseen gap.</p><p></p><p>He made the jump with ease and pulled himself into the tunnel, which was so small he was forced to crawl forward on his elbows and drag himself forward. On the plus side, the <em>deeper darkness</em> spell effect didn't extend into the tunnel, so his sunrod was back to doing its job. The tunnel zigzagged back and forth a few times and the bounder could feel an upward slope through several sections. Eventually, after several minutes of slow crawling, he came to a dead end. That was extremely discouraging! But then the elf's sensitive fingers felt a stone block in the wall ahead of him that had gaps on either side just wide enough for him to slide his fingers into. It seemed, with enough wiggling the stone back and forth, he might be able to pull it back towards him - and from its size, Castillan was pretty sure he could fit into the gap it left behind if he could get past the block itself. Fortunately, while the tunnel he had been crawling in was low, it was probably wide enough for both him and the stone block if he could just get it out. With a grimace of determination, the bounder started prying the stone block back and forth with his fingers....</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Finoula stood in a room very much like the one Ingebold had appeared in, with two notable differences: there were no niches in the walls around her, and instead of a gelatinous cube surrounding the stone platform on which she stood, it was swirling water. Fortunately, Finoula had been holding a sunrod when she teleported into the room, so she could immediately see the danger of continuing to move forward - there was no telling how deep the water might be, but it probably wasn't a good idea to go jumping in while burdened by armor and weapons! She pulled a <em>potion of water walking</em> from her belt and drank down its contents, thinking she could walk over to the walls and seek out secret passages.</p><p></p><p>And then a sudden thought crossed the ranger's mind: why was the water swirling so, when there should be nothing there to agitate it? She got her answer when the water formed a heavy, wavelike fist and pummeled her, nearly knocking her from her perch. Fortunately, she turned the movement of the blow into a pivot in place and retained her balance, and now she knew what she was up against: a water elemental!</p><p></p><p>Actually, it turned out to be two water elementals. Each would have been taller than the elf had they fully formed into humanoid shapes, but there was no need in this water-filled chamber. They took turns sending blows up at the elf, while she returned the attacks in kind, using her longsword <em>Tahlmalaera</em> and her <em>flaming whip of thorns</em>. It was two-against-one odds with the ranger stuck in place while the two elementals were free to attack from multiple directions, but the fact that Finoula managed not be to thrown from her perch gave her an advantage, in that the elementals could only do their best fighting against other creatures similarly submerged. Finoula's magic weapons cut each of the water elementals down, strike by strike. In fact, she was pretty sure she had killed one of them, but with creatures made of water striking from the water and turning back into water when slain, it was kind of hard to tell. But the fact that the attacks were coming at half their previous pace was a good indicator.</p><p></p><p>What wasn't so hard to tell, though, was that the water level was slowly lowering. Trapped as she was on the stone platform she had no choice but to strike down at her attackers, and she was having to strike lower and lower against her enemies as the water level receded. Finoula wasn't sure what was responsible for the water's recession, but whatever it was seemed to be a good omen.</p><p></p><p>Of course, it wasn't as good an omen to the person responsible: Castillan had managed to pry the block loose, and then water instantly came gushing at him, filling the narrow tunnel and sweeping him back the way he had come. He was bludgeoned against a sharp turn in the tunnel and swept away, reversing course back to the pit in the impenetrable darkness. The bounder managed to hang onto the edge of the pit rather than fall into it, and there he hung, with water cascading down around him, sneaking the occasional breath by lowering his face into his own armpit. The pit below him slowly filled up with the water, while at the other end of the zigzagging tunnel, Finoula was using her <em>boots of spider climbing</em> to adhere to the side of the stone column, lowering herself into position so she could continue to attack the sole remaining water elemental. Eventually she was successful, and it was a simple matter of allowing the rest of the water to drain out of the room before ducking down into the damp tunnel. From her vantage point, she could see another tunnel opening along the ceiling of the narrow tunnel Castillan had crawled through on his elbows (which had prevented him from discovering this alternate route), and crawled up it to see where it went. Long after she was gone, Castillan retraced his path back up the now-wet crawlspace and inadvertently followed her path at the end, after having entered her now-empty room and exited it again, discovering the ceiling tunnel in that fashion.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Hagan's innate darkvision would have allowed him to see the area around him even if it hadn't had a ball of fiery illumination straight ahead. The half-orc sorcerer landed at one end of a platform which began to lower immediately under his weight. This, in turn, allowed the burning ball of fire that had been balanced in what had been the middle of the teeter-totter structure to start rolling his way. With a note of concern, Hagan realized he could smell an oily scent from the floor below him - some 10 feet or so below him - and that while allowing the <em>flaming sphere</em> to hit him wasn't something he looked forward to, allowing it to ignite the oil beneath him was even less practical. Still, a <em>protection from fire</em> spell seemed prudent, so Hagan cast it, covering not only himself but also his weasel familiar Wezhley who sat perched upon his shoulder.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, in the space of a heartbeat, Darrien teleported into place at the other end of the teeter-totter and the <em>flaming sphere</em>'s sudden movement ceased.</p><p></p><p>"You okay?" called out Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"So far!" replied Darrien, looking around him. Both heroes were in identical rooms, each a mirror image of the other. The rooms were 15-foot squares with a 20-foot ceiling; the teeter-totter was at the midpoint, 10 feet above the oil-covered floor. There were no visible doors leaving the rooms, merely an open hole adjoining the two, from which the ends of the teeter-totter emerged. Seeing the situation and coming to the same conclusion Hagan had arrived at, Darrien cast a <em>resist fire</em> spell upon himself.</p><p></p><p>The <em>flaming sphere</em> was still over closer to Hagan, but it had stopped moving. Cautiously, the half-orc crept closer to it - with Darrien serving as a counterpoint - until Hagan could cast a <em>cone of cold</em> spell from above it without sending the spell's effects through the gap to hit the half-elf ranger. Overcome by the sudden blast of cold energy, the <em>flaming sphere</em> spell effect popped into nonexistence. "That's better!" reasoned Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"Now what?" asked Darrien.</p><p></p><p>"I'm going to cast a <em>fly</em> spell, but I won't leave the edge of the platform until you're ready!" called out Hagan. Darrien reached into a pouch and pulled out his <em>ebony fly</em>. "Ready when you are!" he called back to the sorcerer. As one, Hagan cast his spell and Darrien activated his fly, then each flew off the teeter-totter platform to go explore the walls for secret doors. After a few minutes of investigation, Hagan found a part of one wall that could be hinged open, revealing a narrow tunnel on the other side. Over here!" he called, stepping into the tunnel. Darrien led his fly through the teeter-totter passageway over to Hagan's room and followed the sorcerer's path into the tunnel.</p><p></p><p>Hagan's tunnel dropped down into an intersecting tunnel below. Choosing one path at random, he came to a dead end but found another secret door. Opening it, he saw another room the same general size and shape as the one he'd just left, only this one had a stone column rising up halfway to the ceiling, which was ringed by seven zombies. They turned at the intrusion with a speed the half-orc was not accustomed to in the normally slow-moving undead; he barely had time enough to slam the secret door shut on the juju zombies before they spilled out into the tunnel. "Dead end," he explained to Darrien, who had deactivated his <em>ebony fly</em> and come up behind him. They retraced their steps and went the other way.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Gilbert arrived in a stone-hewn chamber filled with total darkness. Not having carried a light source, the wizard had to have Mudpie describe the room to him while he cast a <em>light</em> spell on the end of his staff so he could see for himself. This room was an actual cube some 15 feet to a side. In the act of putting Mudpie down on the floor, Gilbert noted they were standing in a magic circle carved into the stone floor. "This not good," he muttered to himself.</p><p></p><p>Examining the circle more closely, Gilbert surmised it was a summoning circle of some sort - and yet it seemed to be inside out, with the runes he'd have expected to be inside the circle just outside its outer edges. "Strange," he mumbled. Gilbert stuck the end of his staff outside the circle to see if it was a barrier of some sort; nope, the staff went past the circle's boundaries with no resistance. "Odd," he muttered. Then, realizing there was no time like the present, he took a deep breath and stepped outside the circle.</p><p></p><p>Immediately, two forms materialized in the air above the two figures. These were insects of some sort, with buzzing wings and wicked-looking stingers; each creature was bigger than the heavyset wizard. "This not good!" Gilbert repeated as the first of the two spider eaters dove down to try to stab him.</p><p></p><p>The spider eaters both ignored Mudpie, realizing he was a source of neither food not a host organism in which to lay eggs. Instead, the concentrated their attacks on Gilbert, who, having expected a puzzle-laden dungeon, had prepared plenty of divinations but not many attack spells. He resorted to using the katana he'd taken from an enemy samurai back in Kozakura; he wasn't very proficient with the curved sword, but it had a greater reach than his dagger and he wanted to keep the hungry insects as far away as possible from him. He actually did pretty well for himself with the unfamiliar weapon, but then he was in a rather cramped room for two large flying creatures, making it almost difficult for him to miss. Still, he was bitten and stung more than once and it was only the <em>heroes' feats</em> he'd consumed that morning that boosted his immune system to the point where he didn't have to worry about the spider eaters' paralyzing venom.</p><p></p><p>Mudpie got in a good punch or two when the creatures lowered to attack Gilbert with their stingers; Gilbert eventually got tired of the katana's weight and swapped to his trusty dagger, and together they managed to eventually slay the two spider eaters. As summoned creatures, they disappeared once slain, giving the mage and his familiar the empty room to themselves.</p><p></p><p>"Whew!" Gilbert sighed, wiping his brow. "Now we see if we find way out of here!"</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Eventually, the heroes started running in to each other in the tunnels. Binkadink was the first to find his way out of the narrow tunnels altogether, coming into another round room with seven doors and a knob in the middle that turned the four rows of letters. Instead of being different colors, these seven doors each had the carved image of a different species: a human, a dwarf, an elf, a half-elf, a half-orc, a gnome, and a halfling. Hagan discovered the room shortly after Binkadink did and helped the gnome figure out the correct letter combination to form a useful clue as to which door to try. Darrien had followed a different tunnel and discovered a secret door at the dead end he wound up in; opening it, he saw none other than a flustered Gilbert Fung and his faithful Mudpie. The ranger led the trio back to Binkadink and Hagan. Ingebold discovered the empty room Binkadink had escaped - that was obviously his old glaive standing straight up from the floor - and backtracked another way before meeting up with the others.</p><p></p><p>By then, Binkadink had figured out the solution to the second word puzzle. By arranging the letters in the right configuration, he ended up with:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>"E-I-M-Z?" asked Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"Turn your head," instructed Binkadink. "That's 'WHEN' - 'Kill the elf when he's your age.' Oh, crap!"</p><p></p><p>"What?" demanded Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"It's a stupid joke!" complained Binkadink. "Remember the engraved letters at the side of the stairs in that first room? 'I can show you how a human can live longer than an elf' - that stuff? Well, here's the answer: kill the elf when you're both the same age! We've been had."</p><p></p><p>"Well, we still need to find a way out of here," pointed out Hagan.</p><p></p><p>"I suppose," grumbled Binkadink. His demeanor didn't get any brighter when he grasped the handle to the elf door and was immediately zapped by a jolt of electricity. "What the Hell?" he yelled, rubbing his hand in irritation.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe it's this one," reasoned Hagan, trying to open the half-elf door. It didn't open; instead, his body was flooded with a surge of poison - which had no effect on the half-orc at all, given he'd helped consume Ingebold's <em>heroes' feast</em> that morning and was thus currently immune to poison.</p><p></p><p>Finoula found her way into the room and was briefed by the others what they'd tried. She frowned, thinking it over, before Binkadink had a sudden thought. "We're supposed to kill the elf," he said, causing Finoula to look up at him in sudden alarm, but he thrust his glaive's blade not at her but at the elf carved onto the door. Then, having symbolically "killed the elf," he tried the door again - and it shimmered and disappeared from view, revealing an open chamber beyond.</p><p></p><p>Hagan entered the lightless room before him. With his darkvision, he could see the room was an oddly-shaped one: nearly a perfect square but for one corner, which held a set of steps leading up into a smaller, circular room. Hanging along the two walls on either side of the steps were eight desiccated corpses, four to a wall. Their bloodstained robes hung over skeletons with little more than a single layer of parchmentlike skin. Below each pair of feet was an open container, like a lidless chest, from which a coppery smell emanated. There were recent trails of blood coming from the four receptacles on the right, leading into the center of the room, where the floor was covered in bloody footprints. A lump of blue flesh lay in a heap over by the stairs.</p><p></p><p>And then, from the receptacles over on the left, four crimson blobs crawled up and over, making their way towards the astonished half-orc with amazing speed. Before he could react, one of the blood-blobs had crawled onto Hagan's feet and was slithering up his body, inserting bloody, tendril-like extrusions into the sorcerer's nostrils, mouth, and ears. On his shoulder, Wezhley hissed in anger and fear.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink stepped into the room, plucking a bead from his <em>necklace of fireballs</em> and throwing it down onto the stone floor. It exploded upon impact, killing outright two of the blood puddings - including, fortunately, the one that had been trying to insert itself into Hagan's body through his facial orifices and even by seeping through his pores. Hagan's <em>protection from fire</em> spell was still in effect so the sorcerer hadn't been harmed; Binkadink hadn't known that, but had been willing to take the chance in order to get the blood-thing off his friend.</p><p></p><p>As Binkadink attacked one of the remaining blood puddings with his magical glaive, he discovered a blade of steel didn't do much against a creature whose amoeboid body seemed composed of blood. Finoula stepped into the room and attacked a blood pudding with her whip, as a water-soaked Castillan found his way back to the group and asked what was going on. "Fill you in later!" promised Gilbert.</p><p></p><p>The flame from Finoula's whip managed to slay the pudding she'd struck with it, as Hagan finished the other one off with a <em>magic missile</em> spell. It now being safe to do so, the rest of the group entered the room. Darrien walked straight over to the blue flesh over by the steps and gave a gasp of surprise. "What is it?" asked Finoula.</p><p></p><p>Darrien turned the corpse over so the others could get a better view. "It's a dead shocker lizard!" he explained, the blood draining from his face.</p><p></p><p>"So?" demanded Gilbert. "What big deal about that?"</p><p></p><p>"Caliandra had a shocker lizard familiar, named Zapper!" Darrien explained.</p><p></p><p>"Hey, where are those guys?" asked Castillan, as gasps of realization sounded from around the room: If that was Zapper, then Caliandra had been here before! Probably with the rest of her group! And those were their footprints in the middle of the room! Where there had been a combat with four other blood puddings!</p><p></p><p>"Oh no," moaned Darrien at the thought that their friends - especially Caliandra - from the southern kingdom had been taken over by blood puddings.</p><p></p><p>"We got to get out of here, back to ship!" declared Gilbert. They investigated the circular room at the top of the steps, where Gilbert recognized the runes of a <em>teleportation circle</em> carved on the stone floor. Hidden among the runes were seven letters arranged in a circle: A, R, T, U, D, E, and P. "Artudep!" Gilbert cried, to no effect.</p><p></p><p>"Tudepar!" he tried, with similar results.</p><p></p><p>"Departu!" called out Finoula suddenly, causing everyone in the cramped room to vanish. They ended up back in the narrow entrance cave, to find a bound and gagged Jinkadoodle waiting for them. "What happened?" demanded Binkadink, removing the gag from his cousin.</p><p></p><p>"It was the big half-orc, Quincy or Jorg or whatever! They all came running back to the ship, and the woman said there had been an accident in the cave and that you were hurt badly! Then that damned half-orc clocked me but good! I woke up here, all tied up, but I could see the dragonfly ship rising up out of the valley!"</p><p></p><p>"Crap!" cursed Gilbert.</p><p></p><p>"That's not all: they had Aithanar tied up to the main mast, at the top of the ship! I don't know what they're doing with him, but at least he looked alive."</p><p></p><p>"When was this?" demanded Finoula.</p><p></p><p>"Not too long after you guys had left the ship in the first place - maybe half an hour? Twenty minutes? I dunno." By then, Binkadink had untied the illusionist's bound limbs and Jinkadoodle was rubbing his wrists, trying to restore circulation to his hands. "I'm sorry, guys," he said, tears forming in his eyes. He had been the planet's foremost spelljammer pilot, and now their dragonfly ship was gone!</p><p></p><p>"It's not yer fault," reassured Ingebold. "Ye had no way of knowin'."</p><p></p><p>"So what do we do now?" wheedled the illusionist.</p><p></p><p>"That simple," affirmed Gilbert Fung. "We get our ship back!"</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Well, this adventure certainly ended on a note of surprise! None of the players had seen any of this coming until they hit the last two rooms, which is what I had been hoping for. And now they're eager to get their ship back at all costs. I was a bit disappointed in the speed by which the players figured out the two word puzzles - they had taken me a lot of effort to make, as I not only had four embedded circular layers built at the correct scale for our battle maps with all the letters on them so they could be moved around, but I had also made up four strips of paper with the seven letters/spaces printed out twice in a row for each player, so they could each manipulate the rows as needed. For the scant few minutes it took Logan to figure out the puzzles, I probably needn't have put in all that work! But oh well.</p><p></p><p>We actually played this adventure all the way through in the same session as the previous adventure, since that one only took us about 2 hours to finish. It made for an almost six-hour session overall, which is about as long as we ever like to go. The next adventure ("Grand Theft Airship" - I couldn't resist) will undoubtedly take the whole session to play through.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>T-Shirt Worn: My Dalek "Exterminate!" shirt, because it was the same session as the previous adventure.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 7358279, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 45: THE DUNGEON OF ETERNITY[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 13 Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 13 Darrien, half-elf ranger 13 Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 13 Gilbert Fung, human wizard 13 Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 13[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 3 Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 12 (Moradin) Jinkadoodle Dundernoggin, gnome illusionist 5[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 24 February 2018 - - - "Hello in there!" came a strong voice from the other side of the portcullis of Battershield Keep. The drawbridge was down, indicating visitors were welcome, but since the keep wasn't normally staffed with a security force - it was merely the home of the dwarven Battershield family and now also the de facto headquarters of the Kordovian Adventurers Guild - the lowered portcullis ensured strangers didn't get free rein of the place. Darrien was in the courtyard and recognized the voice immediately as belonging to Vance Pelorian, a human cleric who worked for Lord Cavelthorne. The first time Darrien had seen Vance, the cleric was a petrified statue courtesy of a beholder's eye ray; Darrien had worked with the rest of Lord Cavelthorne's team to slay the beholder responsible and return the cleric to living flesh. And sure enough, standing behind Vance were his adventuring associates: Kizzie Birdsong, a halfling bard; Caliandra, a human sorceress; "Quincy" (really Jorg) Battleborn, a half-orc fighter; and Thomas the Seeker, a human monk. They all smiled at Darrien, who hurried over and began raising the portcullis to let his fellow adventurers in. "What going on?" demanded Gilbert Fung, exiting the northwestern tower of the keep where his room was located after having heard the raising of the portcullis. "We've got a little proposition for you," said Vance. "A bit of a two-team venture, if you will." "We get rest of our guys together," suggested Gilbert, yelling up the tower stairways at the others while Darrien led the visitors to the keep's dining room, where there were tables enough to fit everyone. Once everybody had gathered - and Harriet Fung had served them all heaping helpings of her famous apple crumble - Caliandra briefed the group on their offer. "We have a map to a dungeon that claims to hold the key to longevity," the sultry sorceress said, pulling a folded-up piece of parchment from her cleavage. "But we only made it to the first two rooms. The second room contains a puzzle that has eluded our ability to figure out. What do you say to a two-kingdom joint venture? We lead you to the dungeon, you help us get past the second room, and we work our way together to the end, splitting the treasure equally among us. What do you say?" That sounded fine to the Kordovian adventurers - especially Darrien, who relished any opportunity to spend time with Caliandra. "Pack up your horses and wagons, then," suggested Jorg. "It's about a four-day trek south and west, to the end of the Clatspur Mountain Range." "Oh, I think we beat four-day travel forecast," smirked Gilbert. "Bink! Go get carpet!" As the little gnome scampered off to fetch the [i]carpet of teleportation[/i], Kizzie wrinkled her brow. "I don't think we'll all fit on a [i]carpet of flying[/i]," she offered. "Just wait and see," smiled Castillan. Once Binkadink returned and unrolled the magic carpet onto the dining room floor, the visitors were each escorted aboard the dragonfly vessel with one of their Kordovian brethren - for two people easily fit on the carpet at a time. Aithanar came along to tend to the animals on board, as was his custom. Departing the bedroom at the other end of the carpet, Lord Cavelthorne's team was amazed to find themselves in basically a [i]Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion[/i], but even further astounded to find out that was merely an extradimensional addition to a flying vessel. "Where in the world did you get [i]this[/i]?" demanded Caliandra. "It's kind of a long story," admitted Darrien. "I'll tell it to you as we head to where we're going." Jinkadoodle piloted the ship from its cloud island parking spot and took it over the kingdom of Kordovia. Caliandra stayed in the control room with the gnome illusionist to direct him (and Darrien, not surprisingly, chose to stay with them), but the rest of the joint team went topside to marvel at the sight. "Lord Cavelthorne is going to be green with envy once he finds out you've got something like this!" Vance marveled. (Jorg was impressed with the ship, but was even more impressed with the buffet back downstairs in the extradimensional hold.) Not being used to such a vantage point, Caliandra had Jinkadoodle fly relatively low, where she could have him follow the roads they would have traveled had they made the trip by wagon, as had originally been assumed. The low-flying dragonfly vessel caused quite a few travelers on the road to point and stare; many assumed it was some sort of living monster insect and fled in terror at the sight. But the ship made the four-day trip in less than an hour; eventually, Caliandra had Jinkadoodle park it in a valley between two mountains. "The valley is far enough away from the main road that passersby shouldn't be able to see it," explained the sorceress. "And from here, it's a mere ten-minute climb to the entry to the hidden 'Dungeon of Eternity'." "'Dungeon of Eternity'?" asked Darrien. "Kind of a pretentious name, don't you think?" Caliandra merely shrugged. "I didn't name it," she replied. "But that's what it says on the map we found." The entry cave was inconspicuous, barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side, and by a dozen feet in there was room only for one. The back of the cave narrowed into a dead-end wedge shape. "Um, what?" asked Binkadink. "Is this the right cave?" "Look up there," said Thomas, pointing up the right-hand side of the cave wall. About ten feet up there was a ledge, and at the back of the ledge was another narrow passage. That led into the first real room of the dungeon, a mostly featureless square hewn from the rock. The room had no light sources, but Binkadink had two [i]everburning torches[/i] strapped to the antlers of his helmet, and a few of the others dug into their packs to fetch sunrods. There was a set of steps leading up to a higher level from the back of the room, and carved into the wall to the right of the stairs was a greeting of sorts. It read: The stairs were only about three feet wide, so it was single file into the next room, which was circular in shape. They entered up through the floor, to find seven different doors arranged equidistant around the circular wall, each a different color: red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, and purple. There were letters in between some of the doors at four different levels. The ceiling was about 20 feet high in this room. Centered on the floor was a set of knobs. "This is the room that gave us trouble," explained Vance. "The way we figure it, there's a message to be found in these letters, but we haven't been able to make head nor tail of it. And if you try going through the wrong door, you get zapped." "You tried all of them?" asked Castillan, looking forward to the challenge. "All seven," agreed Caliandra. "The attacks from the doors grown deadlier with each attempt, and the attacks are variable - heat, cold, electricity...you name it. It makes it hard to shield against, when you don't know what type of energy you'll be struck with next. Our best guess is the letters have to be in the correct position, and then it's safe to open the correct door. We just don't know which one that is, and there are too many different letter combinations to keep getting it wrong without the door defenses outright killing us." "Yeah - the electricity really stings," commented Jorg, rubbing his hands in remembered pain. Castillan had been examining the letters. They didn't make any sense that he could see. "Watch this," Vance said, reaching for the knob on the floor. It had three different levels; he gave the outermost one a turn to the right, and with a grinding sound the upper set of letters rotated clockwise, orienting themselves so the top letters were each poised above the next column to the right. "Each of the top three rows of letters can be moved," Vance explained. "The bottom row, with the doors, is fixed in place." "Let me try," said the bounder, moving several rows at random to see if they would make any words. "Hey!" called out Binkadink. "Move the second row over two spaces to the right." Castillan did so. "Look: the word 'door' is spelled out," the gnome observed. Sure enough, the word "door" was spelled from top to bottom in the space between the yellow and green doors. Starting from there and reading the words formed down between the doors to the right, the following message was formed: "That doesn't make any sense," pointed out Finoula. "It's got to be right, though," replied Castillan. "Look: we have "must pass thru the awl door.' That can't just be a coincidence. Now, which one is the awl door?" "But what about the 'D-R-R' column?" asked Hagan. Binkadink continued to stare at the letters. "It isn't D-R-R!" he exclaimed. "It's A-L-L! And that isn't 'AWL," it's 'RED'!" Sure enough, the "D" had serifs extending to the left from the top and bottom of the letter, and the letter "R" had not only been made lower case, it was just a bent line. By reading down the column with your head turned to the right, it spelled out "ALL." Similarly, because the "W" was a "U" shape with a vertical line rising up from its middle and the "A" was the same shape as the "D" turned on its side, by turning your head to the left and reading [i]up[/i] the last column, "AWL" became "rED." "'All must pass thru the red door'," translated Finoula. "That's actually pretty clever." Lord Cavelthorne's team, however, was groaning aloud at how quickly the Kordovians had figured out the puzzle that had confounded them for so long. "After you," sighed Caliandra, indicating the red door. Binkadink opened the red door without any trouble. On the other side was a narrow corridor which was covered in pitch black darkness about 10 feet in. Hagan and Ingebold both declared neither of them could see through the darkness despite their darkvision. Darrien passed up a sunrod to Binkadink and the gnome tossed it into the area of darkness; it winked out as soon as it passed the barrier. "[i]Deeper darkness[/i]," observed Binkadink. "Any of you spellcasters have anything that would counter that?" It would take something more powerful than a simple [i]light[/i] or [i]everburning flame[/i] spell - and none of the spellcasters had anything appropriate at the ready. Gilbert tried a [i]dispel magic[/i] on the [i]deeper darkness[/i] effect but was unsuccessful. "In we go, then," said Binkadink, tapping ahead into the darkness with his nonmagical glaive. "Wait a minute," exclaimed Ingebold suddenly, casting a [i]true seeing[/i] spell upon herself. "I cannae dispel th' darkness, but now I can see within it! Th' corridor's empty, but it leads into another round room ahead." "Then you'd better lead," suggested Binkadink, swapping places in line with her. Gilbert took a moment to cast a [i]Rary's telepathic bond[/i] spell that linked him to Binkadink, Castillan, Darrien, and Hagan. "Everybody put your hand on the shoulder of the person ahead of you," suggested Finoula. Thus situated, Ingebold led the group slowly forward. The others followed, hand on shoulder, with Lord Cavelthorne's team bringing up the rear, as if in shame at their dismal puzzle-solving skills. Binkadink felt a slight breeze as Ingebold entered the room - and then suddenly, his hand was no longer on her shoulder. He stopped and called out to her but there was no answer. Worried, he crept forward...and then he no longer felt Castillan's hand upon his own shoulder. However, from the light of his twin [i]everburning torches[/i] in his helmet, he could see he wasn't in a round room like Ingebold had claimed was ahead, but an empty, square room with a ten-foot ceiling and walls some 15 feet wide. There were no doors to be seen. While Binkadink was checking out his new surroundings, the others in line behind him kept moving forward. As each entered the circular room and was teleported to a different location, the teleport doorways of the room slid counterclockwise, aligning a new teleport doorway to the entrance to the circular room, accounting for the slight breeze Binkadink had felt in the corridor and assuring no two people in sequence would end up in the same place. By the time Binkadink thought to call out to the others over his [i]Rary's telepathic bond[/i], they had almost all been caught up in the teleport trap and were each in their own separate chambers. Only Gilbert and Mudpie remained of the Kordovians, with Cavelthorne's team behind them. "We about to be teleported," Gilbert advised the other team. "Others already separated, we might as well move ahead and find way back to each other after." That said, he hefted the weight of his earth elemental familiar and walked into the circular room ahead, ensuring that at least Mudpie would be teleported along with him instead of the two being separated. - - - After having stepped through the doorway, Ingebold suddenly found herself inexplicably elsewhere. She was in a square room, 15 feet on a side with a ceiling 10 feet above her. Each of the four walls had a doorway-sized niche in its middle, but no visible doorway. Looking down at her feet, she saw she stood upon a raised, circular platform about three feet in diameter. Around that, the rest of the floor looked different - translucent, even. And then the cleric found out why as, with a burbling noise, the floor rippled, formed a pseudopod, and slapped up at the astonished cleric. With a firm grip on her dwarven warhammer, she slammed back at the pseudopod, realizing in amazement that the platform upon which she stood was 15 feet tall and piercing straight through a gelatinous cube whose dimensions mirrored those of the lower section of the room - one with an actual floor some 15 feet below her! The gelatinous cube absorbed its pseudopod back into its body, only to form another one behind its intended prey and slam at her from behind. Ingebold turned on her pedestal, facing this new threat, then whacked away with her hammer. She squatted low on her stone platform, allowing her to hammer at the beast's body without actually touching the paralytic flesh of its amoeboid form. The two traded blows, with the ooze at a severe disadvantage, in that Ingebold could hardly miss her foe while it did little else; eventually the dwarven maiden had slain the gelatinous cube and had to hold her breath while its body bubbled and discorporated into a frothy, smelly mess. Still not wanting to lower herself down into its corpse to explore the lower section of the room (although fearing it might have to come to that), she took a few minutes to examine each of the four niches up at her level. Aided by her innate dwarven stonecunning, she eventually discerned that one was a stone slab merely inserted into a gap. She made the leap over to that niche, pushing with all of her might. The slab pivoted, allowing her to exit the room by way of a very narrow corridor that branched off into several different directions. Calling out and hearing no reply, Ingebold picked one at random and moved off to find her friends. - - - Binkadink used his nonmagical glaive to poke at the floor, the walls, and finally the ceiling. Each was completely featureless; it looked as if the gnome stood inside an empty chamber with no ways in or out save teleportation - which would be a bit of a problem, for the little gnome had no way to teleport on his own. Fortunately, his probing led to the discovery of a narrow hole in the middle of the ceiling, covered over with an [i]illusory wall[/i] spell - but once Binkadink knew the opening was there, it was the matter of mere moments to stare at the place and see through the clever illusion. So: a hole in the ceiling 10 feet above him, and no way to get up there. That was going to be a problem. His [i]gnomish stilt-boots[/i] could only elevate him to the height of a human - not nearly tall enough to get him to the hole in the ceiling. He had two glaives, each nearly 10 feet long; perhaps he could bind them together somehow, stick one end into the hole, and climb up them? He looked through his backpack for something he could use to tie his two lengthy weapons together. And then he found his vial of [i]sovereign glue[/i]. It would mean leaving his nonmagical glaive behind, but that was a small price to pay for his freedom. Binkadink poured some of the glue onto the bottom of his weapon's hilt, then stuck it in place and held it there long enough for the glue to dry. At the end of this process, he had a glaive standing straight up, its blade pointed at the edge of the hole in the ceiling. Gathering everything back up, Binkadink started climbing. At the top, he scrabbled up into the hole and pulled himself into a narrow tunnel leading away from the room in which he had been imprisoned. The tunnel moved past the room and then dropped back down, this time into another narrow passageway moving perpendicular from the tunnel he had just popped out of. - - - Castillan ended up in a pitch-black room with no way to see his surroundings. He had the typical elven low-light vision, but low-light and no-light conditions were worlds apart. Rummaging blindly through his backpack, the bounder felt a sunrod beneath his grasping fingers and activated it. That was better! He was in a square room, with walls 15 feet to a side and a ten-foot ceiling. There was only one exit, an open tunnel covered in pitch-black darkness after a few feet in. Sure enough, it was a permanent [i]deeper darkness[/i] spell effect, just like the one just past the red door; Castillan's sunrod seemed to wink out as soon as he brought it inside the area of effect. Tapping ahead of him with his sword, Castillan entered the tunnel, moving slowly enough that he found the pit straight ahead before blindly tumbling into it. He couldn't feel the other side of it with his extended blade, so he assumed it had to have a diameter of ten feet or more. So: dark tunnel, dead end, pit. It was possible there was another exit at the bottom of the pit, but Castillan opted to explore around further before he committed himself to jumping into a pit of unknown depth. By tapping the walls with his sword, he discovered an opening along the side wall of the pit, up at his level - or slightly below it. It had a solid floor, but was disturbingly narrow. It would be a difficult jump in absolute darkness, but the elf was sure he could make it - after all, bounding about was what he did for a living! He returned his sword to the extradimensional space in his magic [i]glove of storing[/i] with a snap of his fingers, got his bearings as best he could, and leaped for the unseen gap. He made the jump with ease and pulled himself into the tunnel, which was so small he was forced to crawl forward on his elbows and drag himself forward. On the plus side, the [i]deeper darkness[/i] spell effect didn't extend into the tunnel, so his sunrod was back to doing its job. The tunnel zigzagged back and forth a few times and the bounder could feel an upward slope through several sections. Eventually, after several minutes of slow crawling, he came to a dead end. That was extremely discouraging! But then the elf's sensitive fingers felt a stone block in the wall ahead of him that had gaps on either side just wide enough for him to slide his fingers into. It seemed, with enough wiggling the stone back and forth, he might be able to pull it back towards him - and from its size, Castillan was pretty sure he could fit into the gap it left behind if he could get past the block itself. Fortunately, while the tunnel he had been crawling in was low, it was probably wide enough for both him and the stone block if he could just get it out. With a grimace of determination, the bounder started prying the stone block back and forth with his fingers.... - - - Finoula stood in a room very much like the one Ingebold had appeared in, with two notable differences: there were no niches in the walls around her, and instead of a gelatinous cube surrounding the stone platform on which she stood, it was swirling water. Fortunately, Finoula had been holding a sunrod when she teleported into the room, so she could immediately see the danger of continuing to move forward - there was no telling how deep the water might be, but it probably wasn't a good idea to go jumping in while burdened by armor and weapons! She pulled a [i]potion of water walking[/i] from her belt and drank down its contents, thinking she could walk over to the walls and seek out secret passages. And then a sudden thought crossed the ranger's mind: why was the water swirling so, when there should be nothing there to agitate it? She got her answer when the water formed a heavy, wavelike fist and pummeled her, nearly knocking her from her perch. Fortunately, she turned the movement of the blow into a pivot in place and retained her balance, and now she knew what she was up against: a water elemental! Actually, it turned out to be two water elementals. Each would have been taller than the elf had they fully formed into humanoid shapes, but there was no need in this water-filled chamber. They took turns sending blows up at the elf, while she returned the attacks in kind, using her longsword [i]Tahlmalaera[/i] and her [i]flaming whip of thorns[/i]. It was two-against-one odds with the ranger stuck in place while the two elementals were free to attack from multiple directions, but the fact that Finoula managed not be to thrown from her perch gave her an advantage, in that the elementals could only do their best fighting against other creatures similarly submerged. Finoula's magic weapons cut each of the water elementals down, strike by strike. In fact, she was pretty sure she had killed one of them, but with creatures made of water striking from the water and turning back into water when slain, it was kind of hard to tell. But the fact that the attacks were coming at half their previous pace was a good indicator. What wasn't so hard to tell, though, was that the water level was slowly lowering. Trapped as she was on the stone platform she had no choice but to strike down at her attackers, and she was having to strike lower and lower against her enemies as the water level receded. Finoula wasn't sure what was responsible for the water's recession, but whatever it was seemed to be a good omen. Of course, it wasn't as good an omen to the person responsible: Castillan had managed to pry the block loose, and then water instantly came gushing at him, filling the narrow tunnel and sweeping him back the way he had come. He was bludgeoned against a sharp turn in the tunnel and swept away, reversing course back to the pit in the impenetrable darkness. The bounder managed to hang onto the edge of the pit rather than fall into it, and there he hung, with water cascading down around him, sneaking the occasional breath by lowering his face into his own armpit. The pit below him slowly filled up with the water, while at the other end of the zigzagging tunnel, Finoula was using her [i]boots of spider climbing[/i] to adhere to the side of the stone column, lowering herself into position so she could continue to attack the sole remaining water elemental. Eventually she was successful, and it was a simple matter of allowing the rest of the water to drain out of the room before ducking down into the damp tunnel. From her vantage point, she could see another tunnel opening along the ceiling of the narrow tunnel Castillan had crawled through on his elbows (which had prevented him from discovering this alternate route), and crawled up it to see where it went. Long after she was gone, Castillan retraced his path back up the now-wet crawlspace and inadvertently followed her path at the end, after having entered her now-empty room and exited it again, discovering the ceiling tunnel in that fashion. - - - Hagan's innate darkvision would have allowed him to see the area around him even if it hadn't had a ball of fiery illumination straight ahead. The half-orc sorcerer landed at one end of a platform which began to lower immediately under his weight. This, in turn, allowed the burning ball of fire that had been balanced in what had been the middle of the teeter-totter structure to start rolling his way. With a note of concern, Hagan realized he could smell an oily scent from the floor below him - some 10 feet or so below him - and that while allowing the [i]flaming sphere[/i] to hit him wasn't something he looked forward to, allowing it to ignite the oil beneath him was even less practical. Still, a [i]protection from fire[/i] spell seemed prudent, so Hagan cast it, covering not only himself but also his weasel familiar Wezhley who sat perched upon his shoulder. Fortunately, in the space of a heartbeat, Darrien teleported into place at the other end of the teeter-totter and the [i]flaming sphere[/i]'s sudden movement ceased. "You okay?" called out Hagan. "So far!" replied Darrien, looking around him. Both heroes were in identical rooms, each a mirror image of the other. The rooms were 15-foot squares with a 20-foot ceiling; the teeter-totter was at the midpoint, 10 feet above the oil-covered floor. There were no visible doors leaving the rooms, merely an open hole adjoining the two, from which the ends of the teeter-totter emerged. Seeing the situation and coming to the same conclusion Hagan had arrived at, Darrien cast a [i]resist fire[/i] spell upon himself. The [i]flaming sphere[/i] was still over closer to Hagan, but it had stopped moving. Cautiously, the half-orc crept closer to it - with Darrien serving as a counterpoint - until Hagan could cast a [i]cone of cold[/i] spell from above it without sending the spell's effects through the gap to hit the half-elf ranger. Overcome by the sudden blast of cold energy, the [i]flaming sphere[/i] spell effect popped into nonexistence. "That's better!" reasoned Hagan. "Now what?" asked Darrien. "I'm going to cast a [i]fly[/i] spell, but I won't leave the edge of the platform until you're ready!" called out Hagan. Darrien reached into a pouch and pulled out his [i]ebony fly[/i]. "Ready when you are!" he called back to the sorcerer. As one, Hagan cast his spell and Darrien activated his fly, then each flew off the teeter-totter platform to go explore the walls for secret doors. After a few minutes of investigation, Hagan found a part of one wall that could be hinged open, revealing a narrow tunnel on the other side. Over here!" he called, stepping into the tunnel. Darrien led his fly through the teeter-totter passageway over to Hagan's room and followed the sorcerer's path into the tunnel. Hagan's tunnel dropped down into an intersecting tunnel below. Choosing one path at random, he came to a dead end but found another secret door. Opening it, he saw another room the same general size and shape as the one he'd just left, only this one had a stone column rising up halfway to the ceiling, which was ringed by seven zombies. They turned at the intrusion with a speed the half-orc was not accustomed to in the normally slow-moving undead; he barely had time enough to slam the secret door shut on the juju zombies before they spilled out into the tunnel. "Dead end," he explained to Darrien, who had deactivated his [i]ebony fly[/i] and come up behind him. They retraced their steps and went the other way. - - - Gilbert arrived in a stone-hewn chamber filled with total darkness. Not having carried a light source, the wizard had to have Mudpie describe the room to him while he cast a [i]light[/i] spell on the end of his staff so he could see for himself. This room was an actual cube some 15 feet to a side. In the act of putting Mudpie down on the floor, Gilbert noted they were standing in a magic circle carved into the stone floor. "This not good," he muttered to himself. Examining the circle more closely, Gilbert surmised it was a summoning circle of some sort - and yet it seemed to be inside out, with the runes he'd have expected to be inside the circle just outside its outer edges. "Strange," he mumbled. Gilbert stuck the end of his staff outside the circle to see if it was a barrier of some sort; nope, the staff went past the circle's boundaries with no resistance. "Odd," he muttered. Then, realizing there was no time like the present, he took a deep breath and stepped outside the circle. Immediately, two forms materialized in the air above the two figures. These were insects of some sort, with buzzing wings and wicked-looking stingers; each creature was bigger than the heavyset wizard. "This not good!" Gilbert repeated as the first of the two spider eaters dove down to try to stab him. The spider eaters both ignored Mudpie, realizing he was a source of neither food not a host organism in which to lay eggs. Instead, the concentrated their attacks on Gilbert, who, having expected a puzzle-laden dungeon, had prepared plenty of divinations but not many attack spells. He resorted to using the katana he'd taken from an enemy samurai back in Kozakura; he wasn't very proficient with the curved sword, but it had a greater reach than his dagger and he wanted to keep the hungry insects as far away as possible from him. He actually did pretty well for himself with the unfamiliar weapon, but then he was in a rather cramped room for two large flying creatures, making it almost difficult for him to miss. Still, he was bitten and stung more than once and it was only the [i]heroes' feats[/i] he'd consumed that morning that boosted his immune system to the point where he didn't have to worry about the spider eaters' paralyzing venom. Mudpie got in a good punch or two when the creatures lowered to attack Gilbert with their stingers; Gilbert eventually got tired of the katana's weight and swapped to his trusty dagger, and together they managed to eventually slay the two spider eaters. As summoned creatures, they disappeared once slain, giving the mage and his familiar the empty room to themselves. "Whew!" Gilbert sighed, wiping his brow. "Now we see if we find way out of here!" - - - Eventually, the heroes started running in to each other in the tunnels. Binkadink was the first to find his way out of the narrow tunnels altogether, coming into another round room with seven doors and a knob in the middle that turned the four rows of letters. Instead of being different colors, these seven doors each had the carved image of a different species: a human, a dwarf, an elf, a half-elf, a half-orc, a gnome, and a halfling. Hagan discovered the room shortly after Binkadink did and helped the gnome figure out the correct letter combination to form a useful clue as to which door to try. Darrien had followed a different tunnel and discovered a secret door at the dead end he wound up in; opening it, he saw none other than a flustered Gilbert Fung and his faithful Mudpie. The ranger led the trio back to Binkadink and Hagan. Ingebold discovered the empty room Binkadink had escaped - that was obviously his old glaive standing straight up from the floor - and backtracked another way before meeting up with the others. By then, Binkadink had figured out the solution to the second word puzzle. By arranging the letters in the right configuration, he ended up with: "E-I-M-Z?" asked Hagan. "Turn your head," instructed Binkadink. "That's 'WHEN' - 'Kill the elf when he's your age.' Oh, crap!" "What?" demanded Hagan. "It's a stupid joke!" complained Binkadink. "Remember the engraved letters at the side of the stairs in that first room? 'I can show you how a human can live longer than an elf' - that stuff? Well, here's the answer: kill the elf when you're both the same age! We've been had." "Well, we still need to find a way out of here," pointed out Hagan. "I suppose," grumbled Binkadink. His demeanor didn't get any brighter when he grasped the handle to the elf door and was immediately zapped by a jolt of electricity. "What the Hell?" he yelled, rubbing his hand in irritation. "Maybe it's this one," reasoned Hagan, trying to open the half-elf door. It didn't open; instead, his body was flooded with a surge of poison - which had no effect on the half-orc at all, given he'd helped consume Ingebold's [i]heroes' feast[/i] that morning and was thus currently immune to poison. Finoula found her way into the room and was briefed by the others what they'd tried. She frowned, thinking it over, before Binkadink had a sudden thought. "We're supposed to kill the elf," he said, causing Finoula to look up at him in sudden alarm, but he thrust his glaive's blade not at her but at the elf carved onto the door. Then, having symbolically "killed the elf," he tried the door again - and it shimmered and disappeared from view, revealing an open chamber beyond. Hagan entered the lightless room before him. With his darkvision, he could see the room was an oddly-shaped one: nearly a perfect square but for one corner, which held a set of steps leading up into a smaller, circular room. Hanging along the two walls on either side of the steps were eight desiccated corpses, four to a wall. Their bloodstained robes hung over skeletons with little more than a single layer of parchmentlike skin. Below each pair of feet was an open container, like a lidless chest, from which a coppery smell emanated. There were recent trails of blood coming from the four receptacles on the right, leading into the center of the room, where the floor was covered in bloody footprints. A lump of blue flesh lay in a heap over by the stairs. And then, from the receptacles over on the left, four crimson blobs crawled up and over, making their way towards the astonished half-orc with amazing speed. Before he could react, one of the blood-blobs had crawled onto Hagan's feet and was slithering up his body, inserting bloody, tendril-like extrusions into the sorcerer's nostrils, mouth, and ears. On his shoulder, Wezhley hissed in anger and fear. Binkadink stepped into the room, plucking a bead from his [i]necklace of fireballs[/i] and throwing it down onto the stone floor. It exploded upon impact, killing outright two of the blood puddings - including, fortunately, the one that had been trying to insert itself into Hagan's body through his facial orifices and even by seeping through his pores. Hagan's [i]protection from fire[/i] spell was still in effect so the sorcerer hadn't been harmed; Binkadink hadn't known that, but had been willing to take the chance in order to get the blood-thing off his friend. As Binkadink attacked one of the remaining blood puddings with his magical glaive, he discovered a blade of steel didn't do much against a creature whose amoeboid body seemed composed of blood. Finoula stepped into the room and attacked a blood pudding with her whip, as a water-soaked Castillan found his way back to the group and asked what was going on. "Fill you in later!" promised Gilbert. The flame from Finoula's whip managed to slay the pudding she'd struck with it, as Hagan finished the other one off with a [i]magic missile[/i] spell. It now being safe to do so, the rest of the group entered the room. Darrien walked straight over to the blue flesh over by the steps and gave a gasp of surprise. "What is it?" asked Finoula. Darrien turned the corpse over so the others could get a better view. "It's a dead shocker lizard!" he explained, the blood draining from his face. "So?" demanded Gilbert. "What big deal about that?" "Caliandra had a shocker lizard familiar, named Zapper!" Darrien explained. "Hey, where are those guys?" asked Castillan, as gasps of realization sounded from around the room: If that was Zapper, then Caliandra had been here before! Probably with the rest of her group! And those were their footprints in the middle of the room! Where there had been a combat with four other blood puddings! "Oh no," moaned Darrien at the thought that their friends - especially Caliandra - from the southern kingdom had been taken over by blood puddings. "We got to get out of here, back to ship!" declared Gilbert. They investigated the circular room at the top of the steps, where Gilbert recognized the runes of a [i]teleportation circle[/i] carved on the stone floor. Hidden among the runes were seven letters arranged in a circle: A, R, T, U, D, E, and P. "Artudep!" Gilbert cried, to no effect. "Tudepar!" he tried, with similar results. "Departu!" called out Finoula suddenly, causing everyone in the cramped room to vanish. They ended up back in the narrow entrance cave, to find a bound and gagged Jinkadoodle waiting for them. "What happened?" demanded Binkadink, removing the gag from his cousin. "It was the big half-orc, Quincy or Jorg or whatever! They all came running back to the ship, and the woman said there had been an accident in the cave and that you were hurt badly! Then that damned half-orc clocked me but good! I woke up here, all tied up, but I could see the dragonfly ship rising up out of the valley!" "Crap!" cursed Gilbert. "That's not all: they had Aithanar tied up to the main mast, at the top of the ship! I don't know what they're doing with him, but at least he looked alive." "When was this?" demanded Finoula. "Not too long after you guys had left the ship in the first place - maybe half an hour? Twenty minutes? I dunno." By then, Binkadink had untied the illusionist's bound limbs and Jinkadoodle was rubbing his wrists, trying to restore circulation to his hands. "I'm sorry, guys," he said, tears forming in his eyes. He had been the planet's foremost spelljammer pilot, and now their dragonfly ship was gone! "It's not yer fault," reassured Ingebold. "Ye had no way of knowin'." "So what do we do now?" wheedled the illusionist. "That simple," affirmed Gilbert Fung. "We get our ship back!" - - - Well, this adventure certainly ended on a note of surprise! None of the players had seen any of this coming until they hit the last two rooms, which is what I had been hoping for. And now they're eager to get their ship back at all costs. I was a bit disappointed in the speed by which the players figured out the two word puzzles - they had taken me a lot of effort to make, as I not only had four embedded circular layers built at the correct scale for our battle maps with all the letters on them so they could be moved around, but I had also made up four strips of paper with the seven letters/spaces printed out twice in a row for each player, so they could each manipulate the rows as needed. For the scant few minutes it took Logan to figure out the puzzles, I probably needn't have put in all that work! But oh well. We actually played this adventure all the way through in the same session as the previous adventure, since that one only took us about 2 hours to finish. It made for an almost six-hour session overall, which is about as long as we ever like to go. The next adventure ("Grand Theft Airship" - I couldn't resist) will undoubtedly take the whole session to play through. - - - T-Shirt Worn: My Dalek "Exterminate!" shirt, because it was the same session as the previous adventure. [/QUOTE]
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