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Wing Three
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6127687" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 68 - MAZE OF FOOLS</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Cal Trop, human cleric of Kord</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Telgrane, human conjurer/archmage</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thunderwolf, human fighter</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender</p><p></p><p>"I'm afraid we found him like this," said Guildmaster Farthingale sadly.</p><p></p><p>The adventurers looked down at their fallen compatriot, Mercutio Midas. The cleric of Pelor had been a member of Wing Four, but had shared a few adventures with his friends in Wing Three. Now he lay dead in the Guild Hall, his face twisted in a paroxysm of laughter, an expression of deranged glee frozen upon his lifeless features.</p><p></p><p>"Do we know what killed him?" asked Delphyne.</p><p></p><p>"No," admitted Farthingale. "And that's part of the oddness of this situation. I've had several Guild clerics try to speak with his spirit; all attempts have failed. We even tried raising him from the dead, with no results. It's as if something is blocking our access to his soul, now that it's been separated from his body."</p><p></p><p>"Where was he found?" asked Cal.</p><p></p><p>"In an alley around the corner from our Headquarters, although it doesn't seem likely that he died there. There were no signs of a struggle. So he was probably placed there, as if whoever did this <em>wanted</em> us to find him.</p><p></p><p>"And there's one other thing," Farthingale said. "This was found gripped tightly in his hands." The rotund Guildmaster handed over a small wooden box, with intricate carvings on each side. Galrich took it from Farthingale and turned it over and over. "What is it?" he asked. "Does it open up?" He tried prying it open, with no success.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane took the box from the increasingly frustrated barbarian, before Galrich's rage got the better of him and he decided to smash it against a wall. "I've seen boxes like these," the young archmage said. "It's a puzzle box. You generally have to push little latches around, that sort of thing." He, too, tried opening it, with no more success than Galrich had experienced. "Where's Rale?" he asked. "He can probably get this thing open."</p><p></p><p>Rale, however, hadn't been at hand when Mercutio's body had been brought into the Guild Headquarters building. Delphyne offered to go hunt him up, but then Aerik asked to see it, and with a deft flip, twist, and tug, the top of the wooden box opened up, revealing a deck of cards inside. "Seen these before," he admitted. "Craftsmanship like this, it's likely t'be of dwarven make."</p><p></p><p>"Is that...is that what I think it is?" asked Cal, almost in awe.</p><p></p><p>"What do you think it is?" asked Thunderwolf.</p><p></p><p>"There are tales of a powerful artifact called the <em>deck of many things</em>," Cal replied. "Very dangerous item. You take so many cards out, and each one does something different. You can end up with a pile of treasure, or your soul ripped out of your body and thrown down to the Nine Hells."</p><p></p><p>"Does a <em>deck of many things</em> have a cute little jester on the back of each card?" asked Delphyne. "Because this one does - look." She pointed to the back of the top card, at the grinning jester drawn therein. She cast a quick <em>detect magic</em> spell on the deck, and after a moment's concentration determined that the deck was not only magical but was radiating an aura of conjuration magic, of the variety most often associated with teleportation or planar travel. Steeling her nerves, she picked up the top card and turned it over.</p><p></p><p>"It's just a regular playing card," she said, showing everyone the face of the card. She had picked up a joker.</p><p></p><p>"Let me see," said Cal, picking up the next card. It, too, was a joker, as was the card after that, and the one after that.</p><p></p><p>"Is this a whole pack of jokers?" asked Telgrane, tipping the rest of the deck into his hand. He fanned the cards out, and they appeared to be a regular deck of cards, with the standard four suits: hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. "Weird," he said. He put the four jokers back into the deck, shuffled them up, and fanned them out again, face down. "Pick a card, any card," he said, offering the deck to Galrich.</p><p></p><p>Galrich grunted and picked a card. Looking at it, he snorted in disbelief and turned it to show the rest of the group that he had picked a joker.</p><p></p><p>"But the funny thing is," said Telgrane, flipping through the deck, "there are no jokers in this deck."</p><p></p><p>"Are you sure?" asked Delphyne, intrigued.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane counted the cards, and came up with a standard deck of 52, four suits of 13 cards each. A little experimentation showed that if you looked at the whole deck at once, rifling through the cards, it was a standard deck; yet if you only picked one card and looked at it, it was always a joker.</p><p></p><p>"I fail to see the point of this," commented Cal. "Why would anyone go to the trouble to make a deck of trick cards like this? And what's it got to do with Mercutio?" He tossed the deck of cards back into the wooden box, but one card toppled off the top of the deck and fell onto the kitchen table.</p><p></p><p>Naturally, it was a joker.</p><p></p><p>Not only that, but upon hitting the table the card started expanding in size, until it was a full six feet by about three and a half wide. Then, miraculously, the card seemed to hinge upright to a vertical position, leaving a quarter-arc of a cylinder in place behind it as it rose. Finally, once fully upright, the front face of the expanded joker card popped slightly open like a door that was ajar. It creaked as it opened, and there was a faint sound of laughter emanating from deep within it.</p><p></p><p>The Wing Three adventurers exchanged concerned glances. Then Cal reached over, fully opened the door, and glanced inside.</p><p></p><p>Inside the doorway was a set of stairs leading down. Viewed through the impossible doorway, the stairs continued down, only the first ten or fifteen feet of steps visible before being swallowed up in darkness. However, viewed from the side of the table, it appeared that there was merely a fourth of a circle sitting on top of the table, but nothing underneath it, certainly not stairs leading down. Galrich swung his greatsword underneath the table just to make sure, and it didn't hit anything.</p><p></p><p>"Do we go in?" asked Delphyne, looking over at Cal.</p><p></p><p>"It's our only lead to find out what happened to Mercutio," he replied. "I say we do."</p><p></p><p>"Good luck," replied Farthingale. "I'll send the rest of your Wing down here to your kitchen to guard the door while you explore what's inside it."</p><p></p><p>Entering the doorway involved climbing up onto the kitchen table, but a handily-placed chair made the ascent easy, even though the hardwood chair groaned and squeaked as the armored adventurers each put their weight upon it. Cal led the way, the others following.</p><p></p><p>Time seemed to pass oddly on the stairs. It was hard to say whether an hour or several passed while the adventurers continued down the dark stairs. Gravity seemed odd as well, for the stairs weren't heading straight down at a standard angle, but rather wobbled first one way and then the other, occasionally even doing a complete loop in one direction; in each case, gravity seemed to pull the heroes in the direction of the stairs immediately before them. And the same sporadic laughter echoed throughout the stairwell as they traveled down the expanse.</p><p></p><p>Eventually, though, the stairs came to an end, and a closed door stood before Cal. He scowled at it, ready to curse it into oblivion if it was locked after all of this, but it opened easily at his touch, spilling into a narrow room. The far end came to a point, holding the painted statue of a capering jester. Two side corridors branched off in opposite directions near the statue.</p><p></p><p>Before anyone actually entered the room, the spellcasters took the opportunity to cast their pre-battle buffing spells. Cal, Delphyne, and Telgrane made use of <em>stoneskin</em> spells, and Cal further boostered himself with a <em>death ward</em> spell. Telgrane cast a <em>Rary's telepathic bond</em> spell, so they'd all be able to communicate silently between themselves as needed. He also released Infernia from her tinder box. And then, gingerly, the group entered the room, not sure of what to expect.</p><p></p><p>The statue was the only feature of note in the room, so Cal walked up to it and examined it closely. As he was staring at it, another face popped out of the statue's face and yelled "Boo!" This new face was a duplicate of that of the statue, and the rest of the capering fool stepped out from the statue, gliding effortlessly through the solid carving.</p><p></p><p>"Welcome, welcome!" he said with a wide grin. "What a surprise! We haven't had any guests here since...the last time!" He held out his left hand, and an open ledger suddenly materialized into it. He held out his right hand, and a feather quill pen popped into existence, its tip wet with fresh ink. "I am your host, <strong>the Prime Fool</strong>. Please step forward, one at a time, and give me your name for the record," he said. "If you do not have a name, one will be provided to you at no cost." And then he grinned a wide grin and looked expectantly at Cal.</p><p></p><p>Cal looked at the rest of his adventuring group, and then looked back at the Prime Fool. He seemed harmless enough; what could it hurt? "Cal," he said brusquely.</p><p></p><p>"Cal?" repeated the Prime Fool. "Boring! Let's see," he said, circling Cal with an observant and critical eye. "An obvious cleric, and is that a holy symbol of Kord around your neck? Let's see, I think I'll call you...'Musclebutt.'" And he made a great showing of writing "Musclebutt" into his ledger, tickling himself with the feather as he did so.</p><p></p><p>"Next?" he called, stepping up to Delphyne. She gave her name, but once again the Prime Fool wasn't satisfied with it. He walked around her, examining her intensely. "Let's see, dark clothing, carrying a broom...you're either the scullery maid or a witch. 'Witchy-Poo!'" he designated her, writing the nickname into his ledger.</p><p></p><p>Next up was Thunderwolf, who was designated "New Guy," for the Prime Fool had latched on to the fact that he was younger than the rest of the group. Telgrane and Infernia were designated "Hot Stuff" and "Little Hottie," respectively. Galrich was entered into the ledger as "Temper Tantrum" - the Prime Fool having deduced the half-orc's barbarian heritage, with its rage-based powers - and Aerik's dwarven scowl earned him the nickname "Mr. Grumpypants."</p><p></p><p>"But I have yet to give you your official greeting!" said the Prime Fool, chiding himself as the ledger book and ink-pen disappeared with a snap of his fingers. And then he gave the group a wide grin...and burst into song.And with that, the Prime Fool vanished from sight, leaving only his laughter echoing in the room.</p><p></p><p>"Interesting guy," commented Telgrane. "Did anybody get a read on him?"</p><p></p><p>"Evil," reported Cal, who had cast a <em>detect evil</em> spell on him as he capered and cavorted around the adventurers during his song.</p><p></p><p>"And incorporeal," added Delphyne. "I tried brushing up against him as he danced past, and my hand went right through him."</p><p></p><p>"So, ghost?" asked Telgrane to the group at large. It seemed as likely a guess as any.</p><p></p><p>"Uh, guys?" interrupted Thunderwolf. "Look at the door." As one, everyone looked back at the door they had passed through upon exiting the stairs. Actually, a better way to phrase that would be to say they looked back at where the door had been, for the wall was now blank, and showed no signs of ever having held a door. Galrich and Aerik examined the wall thoroughly, but could see no signs of the door. It wasn't well-hidden or covered, it was simply not there any more.</p><p></p><p>"I want to try something," said Cal, as he activated his Guild ring, preparing to bink back to the Wing Three living area in the Adventurers Guild Headquarters building. As he had expected, nothing happened. "We're on another plane," he reported to the group. "Well then, I guess we'll have to explore this Maze of Fools and find another way out." Looking at the two exit passageways by the statue of the Prime Fool, he randomly went to the left, the others following. Telgrane, the last in line, peeked down the other corridor, and saw that it opened into a small room.</p><p></p><p>"Hey, guys, let's check this out first!" he suggested, heading down that way, the light from his fire elemental familiar providing him with enough illumination to see by. The others turned to see what he had discovered, and started following him into the room.</p><p></p><p>Upon Telgrane's entrance into the room, a circular section of the floor slid aside and a large stone throne started raising up from beneath the floor, slowly rotating as it went. Upon stopping, the group saw they were now facing a skeletal being in rotting robes sitting regally in the throne. He glared at them, there was a flash from his eyes, and suddenly most of the group was gone. Only Telgrane, Infernia, and Delphyne still stood in the room, facing the undead being. However, the <em>Rary's telepathic bond</em> spell was still active, and sounds of surprise cascaded over its mental thought-channels.</p><p></p><p>"I'm in a wide passageway of some sort," reported Cal. "It's a dead end."</p><p></p><p>"I'm in a dark room!" called Galrich over the link. "No doors, just a ladder going up!"</p><p></p><p>"My liege!" cried Aerik in surprise. "I'll try to find a way back to ye! I'm in...a large room...filled with, uh..."</p><p></p><p>"Aerik?" called Cal. "Are you okay?"</p><p></p><p>"...mimes," finished the dwarf. "I'm in a room with a bunch of bloody mimes. An' they're all playin' that 'I'm in an invisible box' game."</p><p></p><p>"Thunderwolf?" asked Delphyne over the link. "Are you okay? Where are you?"</p><p></p><p>"Busy!" called back the young fighter, who had suddenly found himself in an octagonal room with only a bone naga for company. And despite the bone naga's cheery jester's cap - complete with jingling bells at the tips, which it wore at a rakish angle - it seemed no more cheerful than the typical undead creatures Thunderwolf had encountered thus far in his adventuring career. This seemed especially true when it started casting spells in an attempt to kill the young fighter who had suddenly appeared in its clutches.</p><p></p><p>The crypt thing didn't last long, its undead form totally engulfed in a gout of flame by Telgrane's <em>fireball</em> spell. Delphyne, ready to back up Telgrane's spell with one of her own, had the presence of mind to ensure her spell was needed before casting it; the crypt thing's body collapsed in a pile of blackened bones, so she reserved her spell for future use.</p><p></p><p>"We're going to need to find a way to link back up," she called over the <em>telepathic bond</em>. "Those of you not in immediate battle, try to map out your locations on whatever you have handy." Telgrane unrolled a scroll and cast a <em>prestidigitation</em> spell upon a piece of charcoal he had in a pouch, using it to draw their immediate surroundings. Cal sketched his location on a scrap of parchment and worked his way through his section of the maze. Thunderwolf wasn't able to immediately comply, finding himself in pitched battle with the bone naga; it had cast a <em>spider climb</em> spell and scurried up to the room's ceiling, from where it thought it could blast the fighter from a place of safety, but didn't count on Thunderwolf sheathing Xanthros and pulling out his longbow. The two took pot-shots at each other from a distance, Xanthros calling mental encouragement to his wielder despite not currently being the weapon of choice. When Thunderwolf's will wavered and he gave serious thought about dropping the attack to guzzle down a healing potion, Xanthros spurred him on to killing his enemy before attending to his own healing, suggesting - quite rightly - that the naga's spells would inflict more damage than he could heal by drinking down potions, and the best defense in this case was a strong offense. Xanthros was absolutely right, and after a pitched battle Thunderwolf found himself with all the time he needed to drink healing potions, his bone naga enemy now a pile of scattered bones in the corner of the room where it had fallen upon being destroyed.</p><p></p><p>Mapping was also the furthest thing from Aerik's mind, as he had discovered two things about the mimes: one, they were zombies dressed up in mime gear; and two, they weren't miming being in an invisible box - instead, they were mindlessly navigating a large room filled with invisible walls of force. Aerik had discovered this last item the hard way, by trying to rush the nearest zombie mime and running face-first into an invisible <em>wall of force</em>. From that point on, he had to feel his way through the invisible maze with his left hand while his right held his dwarven greataxe at the ready for chopping when he did finally find his way to a zombie mime.</p><p></p><p>Galrich, meanwhile, was in an oddly-shaped room, basically an equilateral right triangle with one of its shorter ends merged up against a square. On the diagonal wall there was a metal ladder leading up into the ceiling above. There was no illumination within the room, but that was all right - as a half-orc, Galrich could see perfectly fine, and could likewise see that there were no doors out of the room. However, when he started to climb the ladder, he discovered that the metal had been sharpened to a razor-fineness, and he cut both hands trying to climb it. Testing the two vertical edges, he found that even these were razor-sharp. "Stupid maze!" he roared in frustration, before clamping down on his rage and using his intellect for once. <em>If the ladder's a fake exit</em>, he reasoned, <em>then there has to be another way out of here!</em> A methodical search uncovered a secret door; sliding it open, Galrich was rewarded with a section of wide, mazelike passageways of the same type Cal had described. He opened his pack to search for a scrap of paper and some method of drawing on it so he could start mapping where he'd been, eventually settling on using his own dripping blood from his lacerated hands.</p><p></p><p>Cal, in the meantime, had followed several maze passageways into a larger room with three entrances. Floating in the middle of the room was a dark-colored beholder, similar in build to the ones the cleric had encountered before in previous adventures. This one, however, was different; instead of an anti-magic ray emanating from its central eye, this one had a ray of enervation which tried sucking out the life force of anyone standing within its area of effect. Fortunately, Cal's <em>death ward</em> kept the eye ray from having any effect upon his life energy, and the eye of darkness blasted him with various other rays from its smaller eyestalks.</p><p></p><p>Just as Cal was racing towards the eye of darkness, the Prime Fool manifested in the area, a gleeful look on his face indicating that he was looking forward to watching Cal undergo the death he had chosen. Cal's response was for the benefit of both creatures: a <em>holy word</em> spell, which caused the Prime Fool to temporarily lose both his vision and his hearing. He choked back a cry and disappeared from view, skedaddling until his vision and hearing returned a short time later. The beholder variant didn't get off as as easily, as it was not only deafened and blinded by Cal's spell but paralyzed as well; it was unable to resist as Cal made a coup de grace attack with his <em>hammer of frost</em>, killing the beast in a single mighty blow.</p><p></p><p>There was a single door from the octagonal room in which Thunderwolf had slain the bone naga; exiting through it, Thunderwolf found himself in a wide passageway that made two right turns before leading to another closed door, with the longest wall holding a warped mirror. As he approached, Thunderwolf saw his own reflection warp and move - one moment he appeared to be tall and thin from the waist up with short, stumpy legs; the next, he looked to be three times as wide as he was tall. However, Thunderwolf was not expecting his mutating reflection to pull itself out of the mirror and approach him to attack. Worse yet, the reflection's version of Xanthros was as flexible in shape as its own malleable body, and Thunderwolf found himself in the unenviable position of fighting a version of himself that had a greater reach and a larger weapon by dint of its size-stretching properties. Upon his own sentient sword's recommendation, Thunderwolf backed away from his odd reflection and peppered it from a distance with arrows. Despite having a twisted version of Thunderwolf's own longbow strapped to its back, the mirror-Thunderwolf seemed intent upon sticking with the mirror-Xanthros it gripped in an ever-changing hand, and to the young fighter's satisfaction the twisted thing shattered into several hundred pieces of glass shards upon being slain by Thunderwolf's arrows. The glass shards melted immediately like snow, and Thunderwolf looked hesitantly back at the funhouse mirror on the wall, but while it was still intact - and showing an ever-changing reflection of Thunderwolf in its distorting ripples - the manifestation effect apparently only worked once per victim, and his new reflection remained bound to the warped mirror.</p><p></p><p>Thunderwolf breathed a sigh of relief and headed towards the far door, but was suddenly stopped by the appearance of the Prime Fool, who manifested immediately in front of it, blocking the way with his insubstantial body. "You don't want to go in there!" insisted the mask-clad jester. "That room is no fun at all! Let's go find some other interesting monsters for you to fight!" But as Xanthros pointed out, if the Prime Fool didn't want Thunderwolf going into the room beyond the door, it was probably in the fighter's best interests to find out why, so he put his hand through the ghost's body and turned the doorknob. "You're no fun at all!" complained the Prime Fool, disappearing to go haunt somebody else for awhile.</p><p></p><p>While this was happening, Telgrane, Infernia, and Delphyne had found their way through various twisting branches of the maze to a small room inhabited by five skeletons. They were easily dispatched, but upon their distruction each skeleton shattered into myriad bone splinters which whipped about in a small whirlwind on the spot they had been slain. Faced with bone-shard mini-versions of a <em>blade barrier</em> spell before them, the two spellcasters opted to go another way.</p><p></p><p>Galrich wandered around numerous passageways before finding himself entering a large room with two other entrances. Of obvious interest was the round lump of dark flesh lying in the center of the chamber, with numerous appendages twitching randomly. Then out from behind stepped an armored figure wielding a hammer in one hand and a shield in the other. Galrich tensed his grip on his greataxe until he saw that it was none other than Cal. After determining to their mutual satisfaction that they were both who they appeared to be, they compared maps and saw that between the two of them they had apparently mapped out an entire level of the maze, with only a section in the middle unaccounted for. They started immediately searching for a secret way into this hidden section, encountering a gelatinous cube during their exploration. After dispatching it, they did eventually find a secret door which led to a room very much like a mirror image of the room Galrich had first been shunted to, although this ladder was no trap. Cal cautiously climbed up it, with Galrich behind him, and together the two climbed up several scores of feet through a triangular vertical passageway before hitting the ceiling. Cal looked around, figuring out how to unlock what was obviously a trap door which should open into the floor of the level above.</p><p></p><p>Delphyne and Telgrane, in the meantime, had encountered another room of five skeletons, but these were covered in fungus and mold and emitted clouds of spores in a wide radius all about them. Still, this was nothing that another <em>fireball</em> spell couldn't handle, and they made their way through that room and followed a path through the maze leading to another undead denizen, this time a mummified minotaur. This creature gave them a bit more fight than did either of the two batches of skeletons, but the end result was the same: destruction by flame-based spells.</p><p></p><p>Thunderwolf, meanwhile, had entered the room the Prime Fool had wanted him to stay out of and found an unexpected sight: a skeleton sitting in a weathered old wooden rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth, while holding a baby-sized skeleton against her shoulder. Various globes floated throughout the room, providing feeble illumination, but enough to see a rickety wooden crib sitting unused in the corner of the room. The rocking skeleton turned its head slowly and stared at Thunderwolf's entry, but made no move to attack; it just continued its slow rocking, and the nervous fighter could see its bony fingers patting the baby skeleton's spine, creating a soft <em>tap-tap-tapping</em> sound as it did so. Upon the urging of Xanthros, Thunderwolf bit back his fear and confusion and stepped fully into the room, touching the first of the hovering globes.</p><p></p><p>Doing so caused the mists it seemed to hold within its crystal sphere to swirl and coalesce into a moving image: a young man and a young woman getting married at a small temple in a village. "We'll always be together," the man said to his new wife, and she smiled back at him.</p><p></p><p>Thunderwolf approached another floating sphere and touched it. He was rewarded by another image: the woman giving birth to a son, who was wrapped up in a warm blanket. Getting the idea that these images told an ongoing story, he touched each of them in turn and was rewarded with a series of scenes: the woman feeling the year-old baby's forehead, and turning to her husband, saying, "He's feverish." Her husband felt her forehead, and replied, "So are you." He put on a heavy coat and said, "I'll fetch medicine from the healer." The woman replied nervously, "We'll wait right here for your return. Please hurry." She sat in a rocking chair, slowly rocking her baby to sleep; Thunderwolf glanced over at the skeleton over in the corner of the room and confirmed the rocking chair looked the same as the one in the glass sphere. Moving on to the next hovering globe, he saw the man in a forest, struggling through a heavy snowstorm. He slipped on a patch of ice, struck his head on a tree trunk, and passed out. The next scene was of the man waking, covered in snow and nearly frozen to death, as two hunters pulled him up off the ground. "How long have you been out here?" one asked. "We've been snowed in for nearly three days!" The next scene was of the man, dropping to his knees in anguish at the sight of his dead wife and son, their bodies still waiting for him in the rocking chair, unmoving. And the final globe showed the man, somewhat older, reading a necromantic tome bound in black leather. A harlequin mask hung on the wall behind him. Thunderwolf realized he'd just witnessed the life story of the Prime Fool, memories the undead necromancer had wanted buried away. He turned to the rocking skeleton, unsure of what to say, and stepped back out of the room, closing the door reverently behind him, before telling the rest of the group over the <em>telepathic bond</em> what he had seen.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane looked over his own map as Thunderwolf described the rooms he'd been in, and came to a shocking realization: the octagonal room with the bone naga, the funhouse mirror room, and the room housing the Prime Fool's skeletal wife and son fit perfectly around the room where the group had encountered the crypt thing. "I know where you are!" Telgrane said over the link. "Go back to the room with the bone naga; there's got to be a secret door out of there." He also quizzed Cal about the vertical passageway he was traversing with Galrich, and pinpointed its location on his own map. According to the negative space on the group's individual maps, Galrich and Cal had come from a lower level, were climbing through the main level upon which they had all entered the Maze of Fools (and upon which level Telgrane, Infernia, Delphyne, and Thunderwolf were still present), and were headed for a level above them. Telgrane rushed over to where his map suggested the vertical passageway was located, and cast a <em>disintegrate</em> spell on that section of wall. He had been correct - it led to the triangular passageway currently being used by Cal and Galrich. Fortunately, the two were already high above them at the top of the passageway, Cal having successfully unlocked the trap door in the ceiling and popped it open to climb onto the level above.</p><p></p><p>They were confronted almost immediately by a zombie mime. Cal blasted it with his holy symbol of Kord in an outstretched hand, and it flew apart into dust. Oddly enough, the one immediately behind it was unaffected, but that was because it was protected behind a <em>wall of force</em>. Aerik maneuvered his way over to the others, and together they made their way over to the only odd feature of this level: a seven-foot square of metal hanging on an outer wall, upon which was painted a black circle some 5 feet in diameter.</p><p></p><p>Thunderwolf had made it back to the octagonal room the crypt thing had shunted him to, but was having difficulties discovering the secret passage out of that room. Knowing exactly where he was, Delphyne and Telgrane agreed to use one of the witch's prepared <em>dimension door</em> spells to teleport themselves over to the fighter so they could help him find a way to the others.</p><p></p><p>That turned out to be a mistake. Delphyne said the verbal components of the spell correctly, but instead of ending up in the octagonal room with Thunderwolf, they instead found themselves in the center of a large, rectangular room with four straight flights of stairs against the longer walls leading up to the corners of the room. The floor was scattered with all sorts of bones, from creatures the size of humans and elves to great beasts like dinosaurs and dragons. And, sure enough, upon the heroes' entrance, the bones started moving of their own accord, coalescing into a massive, snakelike beast with the head of a dragon. As it was forming, Delphyne whipped the broom from her back and leapt on it, Telgrane jumping on behind her, and Infernia leaping into her tinder box. They raced to the top of one of the stairs before the boneyard had fully formed; Delphyne tested the ceiling for traps doors - there were none - while Telgrane sealed off the stairs they were on and the one at the other end of the same wall with a <em>wall of fire</em>. The boneyard, being of limited intelligence, snapped its draconic jaws at Telgrane through the <em>wall of fire</em>, taking damage at it did so. Delphyne flew over to the other set of stairs to try her luck there, while Telgrane reinforced his original <em>wall of fire</em> with another one directly in front of it. While the boneyard shuddered and shifted and extracted a second creature from its own mass, this one taking the form of a skeletal tyrannosaurus, it took twice as much damage from the parallel <em>walls of fire</em>.</p><p></p><p>Once Delphyne had determined there was no trap door in the ceiling of the second set of stairs, they knew they'd have to get across the room to the other two sets. But there was no point in doing so immediately, especially when these undead guardians had no sense of self-preservation, and waited for them to immolate themselves by trying to bite at the two heroes. After a short while, that's exactly what happened, and both creatures collapsed into a pile of burning and blackened bones. Telgrane dismissed the twin <em>walls of fire</em>, Infernia jumped back out of her tinder box, and the three headed over to another set of stairs.</p><p></p><p>While all of this was happening, Thunderwolf discovered the secret door from the octagonal room he was in, and found his way to the vertical shaft. Climbing up to the "zombie mime level," he was reunited with Cal, Galrich, and Aerik, and assisted them in clearing out the last of the ridiculously-dressed zombies. Cal cast a <em>detect magic</em> spell on the item hanging on the wall, and determined it was similar to a <em>portable hole</em>, but only worked when it lay flat on the ground. Since the item was a 7-foot square and the invisible <em>walls of force</em> making up the maze on this level were based on a 5-foot grid, that seemed problematic, especially as nobody had bothered drawing out the map for this level. With a sigh of frustration, the group started doing just that.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, just as Delphyne was about to step onto the third set of stairs, a now-familiar entity popped into existence just before her. "I'm starting to get the idea that you people don't <em>like</em> it here!" snarled the Prime Fool, swinging a mace whose head was an animated jester's head who giggled as it swung at the young witch. "That you don't want to be my friends!" A second swing hit Telgrane on the side of the head, as he stepped up to assist Delphyne. A sudden mental compulsion overwhelmed his senses, and he collapsed to the ground in a fit of laughter, tickled insensate at the thought that the Prime Fool had set this all up for them and they were being ridiculously, incredibly foolishly ungrateful for his efforts.</p><p></p><p>The Prime Fool waved a hand, and a second harlequin materialized behind Delphyne, who had stepped back out of range of the Prime Fool's jester-mace, which still giggled and shrieked in excitement as it was whizzed through the air at each swing. This Secondary Fool was dressed in a gaudy blue and green getup, as opposed to the more somber-looking black of the Prime Fool.</p><p></p><p>"Ah!" exclaimed the Secondary Fool. "A meeting in the mysterious, menacing Maze 'tween the masters of mystic might and a merry master of mirth! Many men marvel at my magical, madcap madness, marking me as a mythical madman, a marauding menace, a maniacal malefactor! Malarkey! I am but a misunderstood moonchild, a man of moxie, a maker of mischief, miserably maligned by misinformed misanthropes! Mayhap your manifold memories hold mention of me?"</p><p></p><p>"No, sorry," replied Delphyne, backing away from the newcomer. She reasoned that this Secondary Fool was likely a ghost as well, and that force effects would have the best effect against his incorporeal body; thus she used her <em>wand of magic missiles</em> against him, smiling as the missiles struck him and he grunted as they hit. "I don't think we've ever met. Why? Who are you?"</p><p></p><p>"My name?" asked the Secondary Fool. "'Tis missing, melting like mercury, murky as mist, no more measurable than the most meager of moonbeams at midnight," and he threw a series of punches at the witch, who dodged them and scampered backwards out of the way. The Prime Fool, in the meantime, was taking his frustrations out on a prostrate Telgrane, who was still bowled over with laughter from the ghost's jester-mace. Infernia bravely stepped up to protect her master, but found that ghosts were particularly difficult to set ablaze.</p><p></p><p>"But no matter!" replied the Secondary Fool. "What matters most is my main mission: to morph you into mere mincemeat, to murder each member and move you merrily to the morgue!" But his boasts were more than he could carry through, and he fell before a barrage of <em>magic missiles</em> before he could catch up to Delphyne. Upon his death, his incorporeal body became an emerald mist, which flew over to Telgrane's body and entered the wooden box of cards that he still carried since being given them by Guildmaster Farthingale. By that time, the mirth effect of the Prime Fool's jester-mace had worn off, and Telgrane picked himself up off the floor. He, too, had a <em>wand of magic missiles</em>, and together he and Delphyne blasted the Prime Fool into non-existence. The undead jester's last words were a plaintive whine: "You guys are no <em>fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-un!</em>"</p><p></p><p>The Prime Fool simply disintegrated; he didn't become an emerald-hued body of mist, nor did he immediately make a bee-line for the wooden box of cards that had been found on Mercutio Midas's corpse. Intrigued, Telgrane opened the box and took out the top card. It was a joker, but the joker's face was unmistakably that of Mercutio Midas. And it was then that everything fell into place: Telgrane remembered hearing that Mercutio, upon first introducing himself to the group, had made a point of sticking in as many words beginning with 'M' as he could. The Secondary Fool was none other than the undead spirit of Mercutio Midas, trapped in the Maze of Fools after having been slain here, which explained why it had been impossible to raise him or use a <em>speak with dead</em> spell upon his dead body: the Maze of Fools was a soul trap, designed to keep the souls of those slain here trapped within its confines. With any luck, finding a way out of the Maze of Fools and back home would allow Mercutio to be <em>resurrected</em>, as his soul now seemed to be imbued upon one of the playing cards in the deck. Telgrane returned the card to the deck, the deck to the box, and secured the box's lid. "Let's get back to the others," he suggested.</p><p></p><p>That turned out to be fairly easy, as the top of the third set of stairs did indeed have a trap door in the ceiling, which led to the lower level of the maze where Cal and Galrich had met back up. Following their directions over the <em>telepathic bond</em>, Delphyne, Telgrane, and Infernia managed to find the ladder to the "zombie mime" level, and the entire group was once again together since first meeting up with the crypt thing.</p><p></p><p>It took awhile for the group to map out the location of all of the invisible <em>walls of force</em>, but eventually the mapping was complete.</p><p></p><p>"There's nowhere for the <em>portable hole</em> to fit flat on the floor!" complained Cal upon looking at the finished map.</p><p></p><p>"Let me see," asked Telgrane, examining the map. He found one square that had no walls on either of its four edges, which allowed the metal plate to be put into place diagonally. Upon doing so, the center of the black circle started draining away like sand from an hourglass, and the hole expanded in size until all of the black was gone; in its place, there was now a 5-foot-diameter hole leading down through the floor and to an as-yet-unexplored level of the maze. Cal pounded a piton into the floor, tied a rope to it, and sent an eager Galrich down first. (Or he tried to, at least; Aerik insisted on going before his liege.) One by one the group dropped down to the next level.</p><p></p><p>This new level was a maze of wider dimensions, with passageways some 15 feet wide. The first creature they discovered was a 9-foot-tall zombie whose eyes, mouth, nose, and ears had all been sewn shut. The reason for this was discovered when Galrich sliced through the creature's midsection with his greataxe, releasing an insanity mist which quickly spread throughout the room, encompassing all within its cloud of noxious vapors. Fortunately, the heroes were able to shrug off the mist's effects until Telgrane could lob a <em>fireball</em> into the room, incinerating the zombie hulk and burning the mist away to nothingness. Shortly thereafter, they encountered a skeletal cyclops, whose sole eye socket could unerringly shoot <em>magic missiles</em> at the heroes from a distance. Cal stepped to the front and successfully turned it, and it fled to a dead end of the maze.</p><p></p><p>Finally, the group found a narrow passageway at the end of one of the larger ones. There was a silver mirror along a diagonal at the entrance, and the narrow passageway went along the entire length of the Maze before turning back and going back the way it had come. As each of these turns had a diagonal mirror set along its length, the group reasoned this was an easy way for the skeletal cyclops' <em>magic missiles</em> to be shot from a great distance at anyone traversing its length. As a precaution, they smashed the mirrors as they encountered them.</p><p></p><p>Eventually, the narrow passageway led to a dead end, but a successful examination of the passageway's end revealed a secret passageway. This, at long last, seemed to lead out of the Maze of Fools, for it opened into what looked to be a natural cavern, complete with stalactites and stalagmites, a pile of treasure scattered along the center of the stone floor...and an enraged adult shadow dragon scowling at the sudden appearance of a group of humanoids into its personal den.</p><p></p><p>The battle was fierce, but relatively short. The dragon caught four of the group in its life-draining breath weapon, but each member of the group managed to resist its effects - Cal only due to the <em>death ward</em> spell that was still active on his body. Telgrane then used his archmage ability to shape the areas of spell effects to create first an <em>incendiary cloud</em>, then an overlapping <em>cloudkill</em> spell that entirely covered the dragon's position and the area around it, with the exception of a narrow passageway directly in front of it, where the other heroes could attack it without succumbing to Telgrane's spell's effects. Galrich took the opportunity thus provided to charge the dark-scaled dragon, slamming his greataxe deep into its flesh with a battle-cry of rage. Aerik ran up as well, but his way was blocked by his own liege, and he vowed to grab up a ranged weapon of some type in the future. However, the cloud-corridor gave Thunderwolf ample space to shoot arrows at the shadow dragon from afar, and likewise for Cal to cast a <em>flame strike</em> down upon the beast. The dragon, nearer to death in mere moments than it had been in years, decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valor and used a <em>dimension door</em> to escape to the surface, from which it took immediate flight.</p><p></p><p>The heroes gathered up the dragon's scattered treasure, which besides gems and coins also included a few magic weapons and useful items, and then everyone turned to Cal with looks of absolute readiness to return home. The cleric of Kord cast his <em>plane shift</em> spell, and the group was instantly transported to a dark forest somewhere on Oerth, from where Delphyne was able to cast a <em>greater teleport</em> spell to get them all back to Headquarters.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane's suppositions were correct, and within a day Mercutio Midas was once again among the living. He had no memories of the time after his death at the hands of the Prime Fool, but good-naturedly congratulated them on their efforts on his behalf and decided on the spot that he owed them all a drink - an offer, it should be said, that was agree to immediately.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>I was a little concerned that a five-level maze would come to be incredibly tedious, but I wanted to give it a try anyway. I did take some shortcuts, though, such as hand-waving the battles between Aerik and the zombie mimes, simply skipping their turns when they arose, reasoning that the mimes weren't much of a match for him, anyway. Likewise, I didn't bother with making them figuring out the location of the invisible <em>walls of force</em>, rather just handling the players a pre-drawn map of the "zombie-mime" level when they got to that point.</p><p></p><p>I also adapted my methods for this adventure, which was played over two game sessions. For the first session, after the group was scattered by the crypt thing's attacks (bless you, Logan, for having Telgrane check out the crypt thing's room when the group was moving in the other direction!), I used Dungeon Tiles and a pile of dominoes to map out the sections of the Maze that each player could see, but that was excruciatingly slow and quickly ate up all of the available table space. So for the second session, I retroactively allowed each PC to have mapped out what they'd seen thus far, and provided each player (or group, as Vicki's and Logan's PCs were still together) with their section of the maze. That made things go much faster.</p><p></p><p>Alas, the whole "the Secondary Fool is really Mercutio Midas's Undead Spirit" thing went right over everyone's heads; it had simply been too long ago that Stuart had recited his "Mercutio introduction" speech (all the way back in adventure 20, "Prism Keep"), so I had to prompt them what that was all about. Oh well, that's what happens when you only game every 4-6 weeks, and the DM pulls up something from literally years ago. I'd say "lesson learned," but that's a lesson I've had the opportunity to learn many times before in the past, and if hasn't sunk in yet, who am I to try to make it do so now?</p><p></p><p>And finally, I should point out that when the time came for the Prime Fool to do his little song and dance routine, I had Joey turn off the music we were playing in the background, scooted the kitchen table over a bit so I'd have room to squeeze in behind everyone, and sang the song from memory as I danced and capered around the seated players. Joey found the performance so unexpected and funny that he literally fell off of his chair and was holding his sides as he lay on his back on the kitchen floor, helplessly laughing; I had to step over him as I made my first circuit around the table.</p><p></p><p>My players are real troopers (as anyone who has ever heard me try to sing can attest).</p><p></p><p>And with this write-up, I am now officially caught up to where we are in the campaign. Fortunately, we game this afternoon; if we manage to finish up the adventure this session I should have something to post next week. If not...see you all in a month or so!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6127687, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 68 - MAZE OF FOOLS[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Cal Trop, human cleric of Kord Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard) Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian Telgrane, human conjurer/archmage Thunderwolf, human fighter[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender[/INDENT] "I'm afraid we found him like this," said Guildmaster Farthingale sadly. The adventurers looked down at their fallen compatriot, Mercutio Midas. The cleric of Pelor had been a member of Wing Four, but had shared a few adventures with his friends in Wing Three. Now he lay dead in the Guild Hall, his face twisted in a paroxysm of laughter, an expression of deranged glee frozen upon his lifeless features. "Do we know what killed him?" asked Delphyne. "No," admitted Farthingale. "And that's part of the oddness of this situation. I've had several Guild clerics try to speak with his spirit; all attempts have failed. We even tried raising him from the dead, with no results. It's as if something is blocking our access to his soul, now that it's been separated from his body." "Where was he found?" asked Cal. "In an alley around the corner from our Headquarters, although it doesn't seem likely that he died there. There were no signs of a struggle. So he was probably placed there, as if whoever did this [i]wanted[/i] us to find him. "And there's one other thing," Farthingale said. "This was found gripped tightly in his hands." The rotund Guildmaster handed over a small wooden box, with intricate carvings on each side. Galrich took it from Farthingale and turned it over and over. "What is it?" he asked. "Does it open up?" He tried prying it open, with no success. Telgrane took the box from the increasingly frustrated barbarian, before Galrich's rage got the better of him and he decided to smash it against a wall. "I've seen boxes like these," the young archmage said. "It's a puzzle box. You generally have to push little latches around, that sort of thing." He, too, tried opening it, with no more success than Galrich had experienced. "Where's Rale?" he asked. "He can probably get this thing open." Rale, however, hadn't been at hand when Mercutio's body had been brought into the Guild Headquarters building. Delphyne offered to go hunt him up, but then Aerik asked to see it, and with a deft flip, twist, and tug, the top of the wooden box opened up, revealing a deck of cards inside. "Seen these before," he admitted. "Craftsmanship like this, it's likely t'be of dwarven make." "Is that...is that what I think it is?" asked Cal, almost in awe. "What do you think it is?" asked Thunderwolf. "There are tales of a powerful artifact called the [i]deck of many things[/i]," Cal replied. "Very dangerous item. You take so many cards out, and each one does something different. You can end up with a pile of treasure, or your soul ripped out of your body and thrown down to the Nine Hells." "Does a [i]deck of many things[/i] have a cute little jester on the back of each card?" asked Delphyne. "Because this one does - look." She pointed to the back of the top card, at the grinning jester drawn therein. She cast a quick [i]detect magic[/i] spell on the deck, and after a moment's concentration determined that the deck was not only magical but was radiating an aura of conjuration magic, of the variety most often associated with teleportation or planar travel. Steeling her nerves, she picked up the top card and turned it over. "It's just a regular playing card," she said, showing everyone the face of the card. She had picked up a joker. "Let me see," said Cal, picking up the next card. It, too, was a joker, as was the card after that, and the one after that. "Is this a whole pack of jokers?" asked Telgrane, tipping the rest of the deck into his hand. He fanned the cards out, and they appeared to be a regular deck of cards, with the standard four suits: hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. "Weird," he said. He put the four jokers back into the deck, shuffled them up, and fanned them out again, face down. "Pick a card, any card," he said, offering the deck to Galrich. Galrich grunted and picked a card. Looking at it, he snorted in disbelief and turned it to show the rest of the group that he had picked a joker. "But the funny thing is," said Telgrane, flipping through the deck, "there are no jokers in this deck." "Are you sure?" asked Delphyne, intrigued. Telgrane counted the cards, and came up with a standard deck of 52, four suits of 13 cards each. A little experimentation showed that if you looked at the whole deck at once, rifling through the cards, it was a standard deck; yet if you only picked one card and looked at it, it was always a joker. "I fail to see the point of this," commented Cal. "Why would anyone go to the trouble to make a deck of trick cards like this? And what's it got to do with Mercutio?" He tossed the deck of cards back into the wooden box, but one card toppled off the top of the deck and fell onto the kitchen table. Naturally, it was a joker. Not only that, but upon hitting the table the card started expanding in size, until it was a full six feet by about three and a half wide. Then, miraculously, the card seemed to hinge upright to a vertical position, leaving a quarter-arc of a cylinder in place behind it as it rose. Finally, once fully upright, the front face of the expanded joker card popped slightly open like a door that was ajar. It creaked as it opened, and there was a faint sound of laughter emanating from deep within it. The Wing Three adventurers exchanged concerned glances. Then Cal reached over, fully opened the door, and glanced inside. Inside the doorway was a set of stairs leading down. Viewed through the impossible doorway, the stairs continued down, only the first ten or fifteen feet of steps visible before being swallowed up in darkness. However, viewed from the side of the table, it appeared that there was merely a fourth of a circle sitting on top of the table, but nothing underneath it, certainly not stairs leading down. Galrich swung his greatsword underneath the table just to make sure, and it didn't hit anything. "Do we go in?" asked Delphyne, looking over at Cal. "It's our only lead to find out what happened to Mercutio," he replied. "I say we do." "Good luck," replied Farthingale. "I'll send the rest of your Wing down here to your kitchen to guard the door while you explore what's inside it." Entering the doorway involved climbing up onto the kitchen table, but a handily-placed chair made the ascent easy, even though the hardwood chair groaned and squeaked as the armored adventurers each put their weight upon it. Cal led the way, the others following. Time seemed to pass oddly on the stairs. It was hard to say whether an hour or several passed while the adventurers continued down the dark stairs. Gravity seemed odd as well, for the stairs weren't heading straight down at a standard angle, but rather wobbled first one way and then the other, occasionally even doing a complete loop in one direction; in each case, gravity seemed to pull the heroes in the direction of the stairs immediately before them. And the same sporadic laughter echoed throughout the stairwell as they traveled down the expanse. Eventually, though, the stairs came to an end, and a closed door stood before Cal. He scowled at it, ready to curse it into oblivion if it was locked after all of this, but it opened easily at his touch, spilling into a narrow room. The far end came to a point, holding the painted statue of a capering jester. Two side corridors branched off in opposite directions near the statue. Before anyone actually entered the room, the spellcasters took the opportunity to cast their pre-battle buffing spells. Cal, Delphyne, and Telgrane made use of [i]stoneskin[/i] spells, and Cal further boostered himself with a [i]death ward[/i] spell. Telgrane cast a [i]Rary's telepathic bond[/i] spell, so they'd all be able to communicate silently between themselves as needed. He also released Infernia from her tinder box. And then, gingerly, the group entered the room, not sure of what to expect. The statue was the only feature of note in the room, so Cal walked up to it and examined it closely. As he was staring at it, another face popped out of the statue's face and yelled "Boo!" This new face was a duplicate of that of the statue, and the rest of the capering fool stepped out from the statue, gliding effortlessly through the solid carving. "Welcome, welcome!" he said with a wide grin. "What a surprise! We haven't had any guests here since...the last time!" He held out his left hand, and an open ledger suddenly materialized into it. He held out his right hand, and a feather quill pen popped into existence, its tip wet with fresh ink. "I am your host, [b]the Prime Fool[/b]. Please step forward, one at a time, and give me your name for the record," he said. "If you do not have a name, one will be provided to you at no cost." And then he grinned a wide grin and looked expectantly at Cal. Cal looked at the rest of his adventuring group, and then looked back at the Prime Fool. He seemed harmless enough; what could it hurt? "Cal," he said brusquely. "Cal?" repeated the Prime Fool. "Boring! Let's see," he said, circling Cal with an observant and critical eye. "An obvious cleric, and is that a holy symbol of Kord around your neck? Let's see, I think I'll call you...'Musclebutt.'" And he made a great showing of writing "Musclebutt" into his ledger, tickling himself with the feather as he did so. "Next?" he called, stepping up to Delphyne. She gave her name, but once again the Prime Fool wasn't satisfied with it. He walked around her, examining her intensely. "Let's see, dark clothing, carrying a broom...you're either the scullery maid or a witch. 'Witchy-Poo!'" he designated her, writing the nickname into his ledger. Next up was Thunderwolf, who was designated "New Guy," for the Prime Fool had latched on to the fact that he was younger than the rest of the group. Telgrane and Infernia were designated "Hot Stuff" and "Little Hottie," respectively. Galrich was entered into the ledger as "Temper Tantrum" - the Prime Fool having deduced the half-orc's barbarian heritage, with its rage-based powers - and Aerik's dwarven scowl earned him the nickname "Mr. Grumpypants." "But I have yet to give you your official greeting!" said the Prime Fool, chiding himself as the ledger book and ink-pen disappeared with a snap of his fingers. And then he gave the group a wide grin...and burst into song.And with that, the Prime Fool vanished from sight, leaving only his laughter echoing in the room. "Interesting guy," commented Telgrane. "Did anybody get a read on him?" "Evil," reported Cal, who had cast a [i]detect evil[/i] spell on him as he capered and cavorted around the adventurers during his song. "And incorporeal," added Delphyne. "I tried brushing up against him as he danced past, and my hand went right through him." "So, ghost?" asked Telgrane to the group at large. It seemed as likely a guess as any. "Uh, guys?" interrupted Thunderwolf. "Look at the door." As one, everyone looked back at the door they had passed through upon exiting the stairs. Actually, a better way to phrase that would be to say they looked back at where the door had been, for the wall was now blank, and showed no signs of ever having held a door. Galrich and Aerik examined the wall thoroughly, but could see no signs of the door. It wasn't well-hidden or covered, it was simply not there any more. "I want to try something," said Cal, as he activated his Guild ring, preparing to bink back to the Wing Three living area in the Adventurers Guild Headquarters building. As he had expected, nothing happened. "We're on another plane," he reported to the group. "Well then, I guess we'll have to explore this Maze of Fools and find another way out." Looking at the two exit passageways by the statue of the Prime Fool, he randomly went to the left, the others following. Telgrane, the last in line, peeked down the other corridor, and saw that it opened into a small room. "Hey, guys, let's check this out first!" he suggested, heading down that way, the light from his fire elemental familiar providing him with enough illumination to see by. The others turned to see what he had discovered, and started following him into the room. Upon Telgrane's entrance into the room, a circular section of the floor slid aside and a large stone throne started raising up from beneath the floor, slowly rotating as it went. Upon stopping, the group saw they were now facing a skeletal being in rotting robes sitting regally in the throne. He glared at them, there was a flash from his eyes, and suddenly most of the group was gone. Only Telgrane, Infernia, and Delphyne still stood in the room, facing the undead being. However, the [i]Rary's telepathic bond[/i] spell was still active, and sounds of surprise cascaded over its mental thought-channels. "I'm in a wide passageway of some sort," reported Cal. "It's a dead end." "I'm in a dark room!" called Galrich over the link. "No doors, just a ladder going up!" "My liege!" cried Aerik in surprise. "I'll try to find a way back to ye! I'm in...a large room...filled with, uh..." "Aerik?" called Cal. "Are you okay?" "...mimes," finished the dwarf. "I'm in a room with a bunch of bloody mimes. An' they're all playin' that 'I'm in an invisible box' game." "Thunderwolf?" asked Delphyne over the link. "Are you okay? Where are you?" "Busy!" called back the young fighter, who had suddenly found himself in an octagonal room with only a bone naga for company. And despite the bone naga's cheery jester's cap - complete with jingling bells at the tips, which it wore at a rakish angle - it seemed no more cheerful than the typical undead creatures Thunderwolf had encountered thus far in his adventuring career. This seemed especially true when it started casting spells in an attempt to kill the young fighter who had suddenly appeared in its clutches. The crypt thing didn't last long, its undead form totally engulfed in a gout of flame by Telgrane's [i]fireball[/i] spell. Delphyne, ready to back up Telgrane's spell with one of her own, had the presence of mind to ensure her spell was needed before casting it; the crypt thing's body collapsed in a pile of blackened bones, so she reserved her spell for future use. "We're going to need to find a way to link back up," she called over the [i]telepathic bond[/i]. "Those of you not in immediate battle, try to map out your locations on whatever you have handy." Telgrane unrolled a scroll and cast a [i]prestidigitation[/i] spell upon a piece of charcoal he had in a pouch, using it to draw their immediate surroundings. Cal sketched his location on a scrap of parchment and worked his way through his section of the maze. Thunderwolf wasn't able to immediately comply, finding himself in pitched battle with the bone naga; it had cast a [i]spider climb[/i] spell and scurried up to the room's ceiling, from where it thought it could blast the fighter from a place of safety, but didn't count on Thunderwolf sheathing Xanthros and pulling out his longbow. The two took pot-shots at each other from a distance, Xanthros calling mental encouragement to his wielder despite not currently being the weapon of choice. When Thunderwolf's will wavered and he gave serious thought about dropping the attack to guzzle down a healing potion, Xanthros spurred him on to killing his enemy before attending to his own healing, suggesting - quite rightly - that the naga's spells would inflict more damage than he could heal by drinking down potions, and the best defense in this case was a strong offense. Xanthros was absolutely right, and after a pitched battle Thunderwolf found himself with all the time he needed to drink healing potions, his bone naga enemy now a pile of scattered bones in the corner of the room where it had fallen upon being destroyed. Mapping was also the furthest thing from Aerik's mind, as he had discovered two things about the mimes: one, they were zombies dressed up in mime gear; and two, they weren't miming being in an invisible box - instead, they were mindlessly navigating a large room filled with invisible walls of force. Aerik had discovered this last item the hard way, by trying to rush the nearest zombie mime and running face-first into an invisible [i]wall of force[/i]. From that point on, he had to feel his way through the invisible maze with his left hand while his right held his dwarven greataxe at the ready for chopping when he did finally find his way to a zombie mime. Galrich, meanwhile, was in an oddly-shaped room, basically an equilateral right triangle with one of its shorter ends merged up against a square. On the diagonal wall there was a metal ladder leading up into the ceiling above. There was no illumination within the room, but that was all right - as a half-orc, Galrich could see perfectly fine, and could likewise see that there were no doors out of the room. However, when he started to climb the ladder, he discovered that the metal had been sharpened to a razor-fineness, and he cut both hands trying to climb it. Testing the two vertical edges, he found that even these were razor-sharp. "Stupid maze!" he roared in frustration, before clamping down on his rage and using his intellect for once. [i]If the ladder's a fake exit[/i], he reasoned, [i]then there has to be another way out of here![/i] A methodical search uncovered a secret door; sliding it open, Galrich was rewarded with a section of wide, mazelike passageways of the same type Cal had described. He opened his pack to search for a scrap of paper and some method of drawing on it so he could start mapping where he'd been, eventually settling on using his own dripping blood from his lacerated hands. Cal, in the meantime, had followed several maze passageways into a larger room with three entrances. Floating in the middle of the room was a dark-colored beholder, similar in build to the ones the cleric had encountered before in previous adventures. This one, however, was different; instead of an anti-magic ray emanating from its central eye, this one had a ray of enervation which tried sucking out the life force of anyone standing within its area of effect. Fortunately, Cal's [i]death ward[/i] kept the eye ray from having any effect upon his life energy, and the eye of darkness blasted him with various other rays from its smaller eyestalks. Just as Cal was racing towards the eye of darkness, the Prime Fool manifested in the area, a gleeful look on his face indicating that he was looking forward to watching Cal undergo the death he had chosen. Cal's response was for the benefit of both creatures: a [i]holy word[/i] spell, which caused the Prime Fool to temporarily lose both his vision and his hearing. He choked back a cry and disappeared from view, skedaddling until his vision and hearing returned a short time later. The beholder variant didn't get off as as easily, as it was not only deafened and blinded by Cal's spell but paralyzed as well; it was unable to resist as Cal made a coup de grace attack with his [i]hammer of frost[/i], killing the beast in a single mighty blow. There was a single door from the octagonal room in which Thunderwolf had slain the bone naga; exiting through it, Thunderwolf found himself in a wide passageway that made two right turns before leading to another closed door, with the longest wall holding a warped mirror. As he approached, Thunderwolf saw his own reflection warp and move - one moment he appeared to be tall and thin from the waist up with short, stumpy legs; the next, he looked to be three times as wide as he was tall. However, Thunderwolf was not expecting his mutating reflection to pull itself out of the mirror and approach him to attack. Worse yet, the reflection's version of Xanthros was as flexible in shape as its own malleable body, and Thunderwolf found himself in the unenviable position of fighting a version of himself that had a greater reach and a larger weapon by dint of its size-stretching properties. Upon his own sentient sword's recommendation, Thunderwolf backed away from his odd reflection and peppered it from a distance with arrows. Despite having a twisted version of Thunderwolf's own longbow strapped to its back, the mirror-Thunderwolf seemed intent upon sticking with the mirror-Xanthros it gripped in an ever-changing hand, and to the young fighter's satisfaction the twisted thing shattered into several hundred pieces of glass shards upon being slain by Thunderwolf's arrows. The glass shards melted immediately like snow, and Thunderwolf looked hesitantly back at the funhouse mirror on the wall, but while it was still intact - and showing an ever-changing reflection of Thunderwolf in its distorting ripples - the manifestation effect apparently only worked once per victim, and his new reflection remained bound to the warped mirror. Thunderwolf breathed a sigh of relief and headed towards the far door, but was suddenly stopped by the appearance of the Prime Fool, who manifested immediately in front of it, blocking the way with his insubstantial body. "You don't want to go in there!" insisted the mask-clad jester. "That room is no fun at all! Let's go find some other interesting monsters for you to fight!" But as Xanthros pointed out, if the Prime Fool didn't want Thunderwolf going into the room beyond the door, it was probably in the fighter's best interests to find out why, so he put his hand through the ghost's body and turned the doorknob. "You're no fun at all!" complained the Prime Fool, disappearing to go haunt somebody else for awhile. While this was happening, Telgrane, Infernia, and Delphyne had found their way through various twisting branches of the maze to a small room inhabited by five skeletons. They were easily dispatched, but upon their distruction each skeleton shattered into myriad bone splinters which whipped about in a small whirlwind on the spot they had been slain. Faced with bone-shard mini-versions of a [i]blade barrier[/i] spell before them, the two spellcasters opted to go another way. Galrich wandered around numerous passageways before finding himself entering a large room with two other entrances. Of obvious interest was the round lump of dark flesh lying in the center of the chamber, with numerous appendages twitching randomly. Then out from behind stepped an armored figure wielding a hammer in one hand and a shield in the other. Galrich tensed his grip on his greataxe until he saw that it was none other than Cal. After determining to their mutual satisfaction that they were both who they appeared to be, they compared maps and saw that between the two of them they had apparently mapped out an entire level of the maze, with only a section in the middle unaccounted for. They started immediately searching for a secret way into this hidden section, encountering a gelatinous cube during their exploration. After dispatching it, they did eventually find a secret door which led to a room very much like a mirror image of the room Galrich had first been shunted to, although this ladder was no trap. Cal cautiously climbed up it, with Galrich behind him, and together the two climbed up several scores of feet through a triangular vertical passageway before hitting the ceiling. Cal looked around, figuring out how to unlock what was obviously a trap door which should open into the floor of the level above. Delphyne and Telgrane, in the meantime, had encountered another room of five skeletons, but these were covered in fungus and mold and emitted clouds of spores in a wide radius all about them. Still, this was nothing that another [i]fireball[/i] spell couldn't handle, and they made their way through that room and followed a path through the maze leading to another undead denizen, this time a mummified minotaur. This creature gave them a bit more fight than did either of the two batches of skeletons, but the end result was the same: destruction by flame-based spells. Thunderwolf, meanwhile, had entered the room the Prime Fool had wanted him to stay out of and found an unexpected sight: a skeleton sitting in a weathered old wooden rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth, while holding a baby-sized skeleton against her shoulder. Various globes floated throughout the room, providing feeble illumination, but enough to see a rickety wooden crib sitting unused in the corner of the room. The rocking skeleton turned its head slowly and stared at Thunderwolf's entry, but made no move to attack; it just continued its slow rocking, and the nervous fighter could see its bony fingers patting the baby skeleton's spine, creating a soft [i]tap-tap-tapping[/i] sound as it did so. Upon the urging of Xanthros, Thunderwolf bit back his fear and confusion and stepped fully into the room, touching the first of the hovering globes. Doing so caused the mists it seemed to hold within its crystal sphere to swirl and coalesce into a moving image: a young man and a young woman getting married at a small temple in a village. "We'll always be together," the man said to his new wife, and she smiled back at him. Thunderwolf approached another floating sphere and touched it. He was rewarded by another image: the woman giving birth to a son, who was wrapped up in a warm blanket. Getting the idea that these images told an ongoing story, he touched each of them in turn and was rewarded with a series of scenes: the woman feeling the year-old baby's forehead, and turning to her husband, saying, "He's feverish." Her husband felt her forehead, and replied, "So are you." He put on a heavy coat and said, "I'll fetch medicine from the healer." The woman replied nervously, "We'll wait right here for your return. Please hurry." She sat in a rocking chair, slowly rocking her baby to sleep; Thunderwolf glanced over at the skeleton over in the corner of the room and confirmed the rocking chair looked the same as the one in the glass sphere. Moving on to the next hovering globe, he saw the man in a forest, struggling through a heavy snowstorm. He slipped on a patch of ice, struck his head on a tree trunk, and passed out. The next scene was of the man waking, covered in snow and nearly frozen to death, as two hunters pulled him up off the ground. "How long have you been out here?" one asked. "We've been snowed in for nearly three days!" The next scene was of the man, dropping to his knees in anguish at the sight of his dead wife and son, their bodies still waiting for him in the rocking chair, unmoving. And the final globe showed the man, somewhat older, reading a necromantic tome bound in black leather. A harlequin mask hung on the wall behind him. Thunderwolf realized he'd just witnessed the life story of the Prime Fool, memories the undead necromancer had wanted buried away. He turned to the rocking skeleton, unsure of what to say, and stepped back out of the room, closing the door reverently behind him, before telling the rest of the group over the [i]telepathic bond[/i] what he had seen. Telgrane looked over his own map as Thunderwolf described the rooms he'd been in, and came to a shocking realization: the octagonal room with the bone naga, the funhouse mirror room, and the room housing the Prime Fool's skeletal wife and son fit perfectly around the room where the group had encountered the crypt thing. "I know where you are!" Telgrane said over the link. "Go back to the room with the bone naga; there's got to be a secret door out of there." He also quizzed Cal about the vertical passageway he was traversing with Galrich, and pinpointed its location on his own map. According to the negative space on the group's individual maps, Galrich and Cal had come from a lower level, were climbing through the main level upon which they had all entered the Maze of Fools (and upon which level Telgrane, Infernia, Delphyne, and Thunderwolf were still present), and were headed for a level above them. Telgrane rushed over to where his map suggested the vertical passageway was located, and cast a [i]disintegrate[/i] spell on that section of wall. He had been correct - it led to the triangular passageway currently being used by Cal and Galrich. Fortunately, the two were already high above them at the top of the passageway, Cal having successfully unlocked the trap door in the ceiling and popped it open to climb onto the level above. They were confronted almost immediately by a zombie mime. Cal blasted it with his holy symbol of Kord in an outstretched hand, and it flew apart into dust. Oddly enough, the one immediately behind it was unaffected, but that was because it was protected behind a [i]wall of force[/i]. Aerik maneuvered his way over to the others, and together they made their way over to the only odd feature of this level: a seven-foot square of metal hanging on an outer wall, upon which was painted a black circle some 5 feet in diameter. Thunderwolf had made it back to the octagonal room the crypt thing had shunted him to, but was having difficulties discovering the secret passage out of that room. Knowing exactly where he was, Delphyne and Telgrane agreed to use one of the witch's prepared [i]dimension door[/i] spells to teleport themselves over to the fighter so they could help him find a way to the others. That turned out to be a mistake. Delphyne said the verbal components of the spell correctly, but instead of ending up in the octagonal room with Thunderwolf, they instead found themselves in the center of a large, rectangular room with four straight flights of stairs against the longer walls leading up to the corners of the room. The floor was scattered with all sorts of bones, from creatures the size of humans and elves to great beasts like dinosaurs and dragons. And, sure enough, upon the heroes' entrance, the bones started moving of their own accord, coalescing into a massive, snakelike beast with the head of a dragon. As it was forming, Delphyne whipped the broom from her back and leapt on it, Telgrane jumping on behind her, and Infernia leaping into her tinder box. They raced to the top of one of the stairs before the boneyard had fully formed; Delphyne tested the ceiling for traps doors - there were none - while Telgrane sealed off the stairs they were on and the one at the other end of the same wall with a [i]wall of fire[/i]. The boneyard, being of limited intelligence, snapped its draconic jaws at Telgrane through the [i]wall of fire[/i], taking damage at it did so. Delphyne flew over to the other set of stairs to try her luck there, while Telgrane reinforced his original [i]wall of fire[/i] with another one directly in front of it. While the boneyard shuddered and shifted and extracted a second creature from its own mass, this one taking the form of a skeletal tyrannosaurus, it took twice as much damage from the parallel [i]walls of fire[/i]. Once Delphyne had determined there was no trap door in the ceiling of the second set of stairs, they knew they'd have to get across the room to the other two sets. But there was no point in doing so immediately, especially when these undead guardians had no sense of self-preservation, and waited for them to immolate themselves by trying to bite at the two heroes. After a short while, that's exactly what happened, and both creatures collapsed into a pile of burning and blackened bones. Telgrane dismissed the twin [i]walls of fire[/i], Infernia jumped back out of her tinder box, and the three headed over to another set of stairs. While all of this was happening, Thunderwolf discovered the secret door from the octagonal room he was in, and found his way to the vertical shaft. Climbing up to the "zombie mime level," he was reunited with Cal, Galrich, and Aerik, and assisted them in clearing out the last of the ridiculously-dressed zombies. Cal cast a [i]detect magic[/i] spell on the item hanging on the wall, and determined it was similar to a [i]portable hole[/i], but only worked when it lay flat on the ground. Since the item was a 7-foot square and the invisible [i]walls of force[/i] making up the maze on this level were based on a 5-foot grid, that seemed problematic, especially as nobody had bothered drawing out the map for this level. With a sigh of frustration, the group started doing just that. Meanwhile, just as Delphyne was about to step onto the third set of stairs, a now-familiar entity popped into existence just before her. "I'm starting to get the idea that you people don't [i]like[/i] it here!" snarled the Prime Fool, swinging a mace whose head was an animated jester's head who giggled as it swung at the young witch. "That you don't want to be my friends!" A second swing hit Telgrane on the side of the head, as he stepped up to assist Delphyne. A sudden mental compulsion overwhelmed his senses, and he collapsed to the ground in a fit of laughter, tickled insensate at the thought that the Prime Fool had set this all up for them and they were being ridiculously, incredibly foolishly ungrateful for his efforts. The Prime Fool waved a hand, and a second harlequin materialized behind Delphyne, who had stepped back out of range of the Prime Fool's jester-mace, which still giggled and shrieked in excitement as it was whizzed through the air at each swing. This Secondary Fool was dressed in a gaudy blue and green getup, as opposed to the more somber-looking black of the Prime Fool. "Ah!" exclaimed the Secondary Fool. "A meeting in the mysterious, menacing Maze 'tween the masters of mystic might and a merry master of mirth! Many men marvel at my magical, madcap madness, marking me as a mythical madman, a marauding menace, a maniacal malefactor! Malarkey! I am but a misunderstood moonchild, a man of moxie, a maker of mischief, miserably maligned by misinformed misanthropes! Mayhap your manifold memories hold mention of me?" "No, sorry," replied Delphyne, backing away from the newcomer. She reasoned that this Secondary Fool was likely a ghost as well, and that force effects would have the best effect against his incorporeal body; thus she used her [i]wand of magic missiles[/i] against him, smiling as the missiles struck him and he grunted as they hit. "I don't think we've ever met. Why? Who are you?" "My name?" asked the Secondary Fool. "'Tis missing, melting like mercury, murky as mist, no more measurable than the most meager of moonbeams at midnight," and he threw a series of punches at the witch, who dodged them and scampered backwards out of the way. The Prime Fool, in the meantime, was taking his frustrations out on a prostrate Telgrane, who was still bowled over with laughter from the ghost's jester-mace. Infernia bravely stepped up to protect her master, but found that ghosts were particularly difficult to set ablaze. "But no matter!" replied the Secondary Fool. "What matters most is my main mission: to morph you into mere mincemeat, to murder each member and move you merrily to the morgue!" But his boasts were more than he could carry through, and he fell before a barrage of [i]magic missiles[/i] before he could catch up to Delphyne. Upon his death, his incorporeal body became an emerald mist, which flew over to Telgrane's body and entered the wooden box of cards that he still carried since being given them by Guildmaster Farthingale. By that time, the mirth effect of the Prime Fool's jester-mace had worn off, and Telgrane picked himself up off the floor. He, too, had a [i]wand of magic missiles[/i], and together he and Delphyne blasted the Prime Fool into non-existence. The undead jester's last words were a plaintive whine: "You guys are no [i]fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-un![/i]" The Prime Fool simply disintegrated; he didn't become an emerald-hued body of mist, nor did he immediately make a bee-line for the wooden box of cards that had been found on Mercutio Midas's corpse. Intrigued, Telgrane opened the box and took out the top card. It was a joker, but the joker's face was unmistakably that of Mercutio Midas. And it was then that everything fell into place: Telgrane remembered hearing that Mercutio, upon first introducing himself to the group, had made a point of sticking in as many words beginning with 'M' as he could. The Secondary Fool was none other than the undead spirit of Mercutio Midas, trapped in the Maze of Fools after having been slain here, which explained why it had been impossible to raise him or use a [i]speak with dead[/i] spell upon his dead body: the Maze of Fools was a soul trap, designed to keep the souls of those slain here trapped within its confines. With any luck, finding a way out of the Maze of Fools and back home would allow Mercutio to be [i]resurrected[/i], as his soul now seemed to be imbued upon one of the playing cards in the deck. Telgrane returned the card to the deck, the deck to the box, and secured the box's lid. "Let's get back to the others," he suggested. That turned out to be fairly easy, as the top of the third set of stairs did indeed have a trap door in the ceiling, which led to the lower level of the maze where Cal and Galrich had met back up. Following their directions over the [i]telepathic bond[/i], Delphyne, Telgrane, and Infernia managed to find the ladder to the "zombie mime" level, and the entire group was once again together since first meeting up with the crypt thing. It took awhile for the group to map out the location of all of the invisible [i]walls of force[/i], but eventually the mapping was complete. "There's nowhere for the [i]portable hole[/i] to fit flat on the floor!" complained Cal upon looking at the finished map. "Let me see," asked Telgrane, examining the map. He found one square that had no walls on either of its four edges, which allowed the metal plate to be put into place diagonally. Upon doing so, the center of the black circle started draining away like sand from an hourglass, and the hole expanded in size until all of the black was gone; in its place, there was now a 5-foot-diameter hole leading down through the floor and to an as-yet-unexplored level of the maze. Cal pounded a piton into the floor, tied a rope to it, and sent an eager Galrich down first. (Or he tried to, at least; Aerik insisted on going before his liege.) One by one the group dropped down to the next level. This new level was a maze of wider dimensions, with passageways some 15 feet wide. The first creature they discovered was a 9-foot-tall zombie whose eyes, mouth, nose, and ears had all been sewn shut. The reason for this was discovered when Galrich sliced through the creature's midsection with his greataxe, releasing an insanity mist which quickly spread throughout the room, encompassing all within its cloud of noxious vapors. Fortunately, the heroes were able to shrug off the mist's effects until Telgrane could lob a [i]fireball[/i] into the room, incinerating the zombie hulk and burning the mist away to nothingness. Shortly thereafter, they encountered a skeletal cyclops, whose sole eye socket could unerringly shoot [i]magic missiles[/i] at the heroes from a distance. Cal stepped to the front and successfully turned it, and it fled to a dead end of the maze. Finally, the group found a narrow passageway at the end of one of the larger ones. There was a silver mirror along a diagonal at the entrance, and the narrow passageway went along the entire length of the Maze before turning back and going back the way it had come. As each of these turns had a diagonal mirror set along its length, the group reasoned this was an easy way for the skeletal cyclops' [i]magic missiles[/i] to be shot from a great distance at anyone traversing its length. As a precaution, they smashed the mirrors as they encountered them. Eventually, the narrow passageway led to a dead end, but a successful examination of the passageway's end revealed a secret passageway. This, at long last, seemed to lead out of the Maze of Fools, for it opened into what looked to be a natural cavern, complete with stalactites and stalagmites, a pile of treasure scattered along the center of the stone floor...and an enraged adult shadow dragon scowling at the sudden appearance of a group of humanoids into its personal den. The battle was fierce, but relatively short. The dragon caught four of the group in its life-draining breath weapon, but each member of the group managed to resist its effects - Cal only due to the [i]death ward[/i] spell that was still active on his body. Telgrane then used his archmage ability to shape the areas of spell effects to create first an [i]incendiary cloud[/i], then an overlapping [i]cloudkill[/i] spell that entirely covered the dragon's position and the area around it, with the exception of a narrow passageway directly in front of it, where the other heroes could attack it without succumbing to Telgrane's spell's effects. Galrich took the opportunity thus provided to charge the dark-scaled dragon, slamming his greataxe deep into its flesh with a battle-cry of rage. Aerik ran up as well, but his way was blocked by his own liege, and he vowed to grab up a ranged weapon of some type in the future. However, the cloud-corridor gave Thunderwolf ample space to shoot arrows at the shadow dragon from afar, and likewise for Cal to cast a [i]flame strike[/i] down upon the beast. The dragon, nearer to death in mere moments than it had been in years, decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valor and used a [i]dimension door[/i] to escape to the surface, from which it took immediate flight. The heroes gathered up the dragon's scattered treasure, which besides gems and coins also included a few magic weapons and useful items, and then everyone turned to Cal with looks of absolute readiness to return home. The cleric of Kord cast his [i]plane shift[/i] spell, and the group was instantly transported to a dark forest somewhere on Oerth, from where Delphyne was able to cast a [i]greater teleport[/i] spell to get them all back to Headquarters. Telgrane's suppositions were correct, and within a day Mercutio Midas was once again among the living. He had no memories of the time after his death at the hands of the Prime Fool, but good-naturedly congratulated them on their efforts on his behalf and decided on the spot that he owed them all a drink - an offer, it should be said, that was agree to immediately. - - - I was a little concerned that a five-level maze would come to be incredibly tedious, but I wanted to give it a try anyway. I did take some shortcuts, though, such as hand-waving the battles between Aerik and the zombie mimes, simply skipping their turns when they arose, reasoning that the mimes weren't much of a match for him, anyway. Likewise, I didn't bother with making them figuring out the location of the invisible [i]walls of force[/i], rather just handling the players a pre-drawn map of the "zombie-mime" level when they got to that point. I also adapted my methods for this adventure, which was played over two game sessions. For the first session, after the group was scattered by the crypt thing's attacks (bless you, Logan, for having Telgrane check out the crypt thing's room when the group was moving in the other direction!), I used Dungeon Tiles and a pile of dominoes to map out the sections of the Maze that each player could see, but that was excruciatingly slow and quickly ate up all of the available table space. So for the second session, I retroactively allowed each PC to have mapped out what they'd seen thus far, and provided each player (or group, as Vicki's and Logan's PCs were still together) with their section of the maze. That made things go much faster. Alas, the whole "the Secondary Fool is really Mercutio Midas's Undead Spirit" thing went right over everyone's heads; it had simply been too long ago that Stuart had recited his "Mercutio introduction" speech (all the way back in adventure 20, "Prism Keep"), so I had to prompt them what that was all about. Oh well, that's what happens when you only game every 4-6 weeks, and the DM pulls up something from literally years ago. I'd say "lesson learned," but that's a lesson I've had the opportunity to learn many times before in the past, and if hasn't sunk in yet, who am I to try to make it do so now? And finally, I should point out that when the time came for the Prime Fool to do his little song and dance routine, I had Joey turn off the music we were playing in the background, scooted the kitchen table over a bit so I'd have room to squeeze in behind everyone, and sang the song from memory as I danced and capered around the seated players. Joey found the performance so unexpected and funny that he literally fell off of his chair and was holding his sides as he lay on his back on the kitchen floor, helplessly laughing; I had to step over him as I made my first circuit around the table. My players are real troopers (as anyone who has ever heard me try to sing can attest). And with this write-up, I am now officially caught up to where we are in the campaign. Fortunately, we game this afternoon; if we manage to finish up the adventure this session I should have something to post next week. If not...see you all in a month or so! [/QUOTE]
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Story Hour
Wing Three
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