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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9432716" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 78: DERROK IN THE DUNGEONPC Roster: Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 16             Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 10             Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 8/paladin 8             Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 6/rogue 10             Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 16NPC Roster:Beetle Darkcloud, halfling ranger 5             Robin the Balladeer, human bard 5Game Session Date: 3 August 2024 - - -The morning began as most mornings had for the heroes in Talonia: Alewyth cast a sumptuous heroes' feast spell after she and Wakuren had cast all of the endure elements spells on those who needed them to make it comfortably through the day in the equatorial heat while wearing their normal armor.  After the meal was over, Zander cast his traditional mage armor spell and Wakuren, Alewyth, and Xandro each cast a tongues spell on themselves so they could speak and understand the drow language, which was the predominant tongue spoken in the drow city of Du'dorach.The group had tarried in Du'dorach for the past few days, as several of them had wished to purchase items or have upgrades made to their weapons.  Having been frustrated by the difficulties in fighting golems and other constructs in the arena, Xandro had ordered a masterwork rapier made of gleaming adamantine, a metal hard enough to penetrate the thickest golem's armor.  Wakuren likewise had a left-handed adamantine gauntlet forged for him, and upon receiving it he placed it over the left-handed glove of storing he normally wore.  Then, clicking his fingers, he "banished" it into the extradimensional glove, secure in the knowledge that if he ever needed it, it was but a finger-snap away.  Thurloe had his bastard sword Spellslicer upgraded to be especially lethal to undead creatures, even those who were normally insubstantial; he'd focused in on one aspect they knew about the Forbidden Lands: according to the dream of a drow woman living in the last drow city they'd visit before entering the Forbidden Lands, there was at least one vampire there, and Thurloe wasn't planning on being taken unawares by any undead monstrosity.Zander had no need for weapons or armor; instead, he haunted the various magic shops, purchasing exotic spell scrolls that would allow him to cast spells he'd never even heard of before.  As a sorcerer, his spell repertoire was somewhat limited, and this added quite a bit to his magical versatility.  Alewyth picked up a few potions and called herself ready to move on.And thus it was that the group started west once again, heading out of the city, when they came upon a commotion at the side of the road upon which they traveled.  A drow woman was arguing in front of a single-story stone keep with a pair of drow guardsmen.  As the heroes approached on their dinosaur mounts, those who understood the drow language understood the gist of the argument: the woman's son Derrok, newly of adult age and wanting to prove himself as a professional adventurer, opted to forego paying the city the payment that would allow him to attempt to pierce the dungeon levels said to be hidden beneath the stone tower - built centuries ago by a drow wizard, now long since dead, and rumored to hold the wizard's amassed treasure - and simply pick the lock on the wizard's door, to have a go at uncovering the treasures for himself.  The woman wanted the guards to go in and rescue her foolish son; the guards insisted it wasn't their job to risk their lives against unknown traps in a wizard's dungeon, and the fool child was simply going to find his way out on his own - and if he got himself killed in there, it was nobody's fault but his own."Not only that," insisted one of the guards, "but by bypassing the entry fee, anything he finds in the dungeon is automatically the property of the city."Beetle closed his eyes and silently prayed that the heroes would ignore the ruckus and just continue on the way they had been going, but in his heart he realized the odds of that were fairly slim.  Sure enough, Alewyth approached the guards and asked, "Can anyone enter the dungeons and explore them if they pay the entry fee?"  Once assured that was so, she inquired at the entry fee; after being told it was 50 pieces of gold per team, she pulled that amount from her purse and passed it over to the guard.  "We'd like to try our hand at the dungeon," she explained."Certainly," replied the guard, counting up the money and assuring himself it was sufficient.  "I'll go get the forms."  He went over to his riding lizard, scrounged around in a saddle bag, and returned with a sheet of parchment and a writing pen.  He indicated for her to transcribe the team members on the form; on a whim, the dwarf added the name "Derrok of Du'dorach" after the six heroes' own names.  (Beetle, bowing to the inevitable, offered to stay behind and watch over the dinosaurs while they wasted their time in dusty old ruins.)  Then, after the first guard nodded that all was in order, they opened the door to the keep and ushered the others inside.  "We're going to lock the door back up once you're inside," he said, but showed them a lever that would ring a bell on the keep's exterior.  "Just ring this when you're ready to exit, and someone will come let you out.  But we keep it locked, so nobody'll just wander in here and get themselves killed."  He looked sharply over at Derrok's mother as he said the last bit.Before entering the keep, Thurloe cast a detect magic spell and gave the building's exterior a quick examination.  But there were no magical auras emanating from the structure, so he followed the others inside and heard the guards outside securing the padlock to the chains keeping the door tightly closed.  He looked around the ground floor, which was empty save for a spiral staircase leading down to a lower level.  Just to be sure, the spellsword checked for magical auras all along the ground floor before giving up and following the others downstairs.  Zander and Xandro each held everburning torches to provide illumination for those without darkvision, and then Xandro pulled on his goggles of the night, allowing him to see in absolute darkness as well as any dwarf or half-orc.  Zander could have done the same by activating a charge from his scout's headband, but he opted to hold off - the headband could also provide him with short-lived true seeing, but only if all of its daily power was used all at once.The basement level was also one big room, circular in cross section with a 30-foot diameter.  There were a few differences, though: the entire outer wall was covered in a gear motif, with interlocking gears covering the curved wall from floor to ceiling.  There were also two piles of stone along the south side of the chamber.  Thurloe continued looking for magical auras, while Robin searched through the rubble."Hey!" she said, dropping the chunk of stone she'd picked up to examine.  "That was a hand!"  Sure enough, a close examination of the stones in the piles of rubble revealed an occasional facial feature or part of a limb; these had apparently once been animated stone statues, no doubt the drow wizard's first line of defense, and the first of the traps to have been triggered (and defeated) long ago, after his death and the beginning of the attempts to plunder his dwelling.  But judging from the dust covering the place, that had been some time ago."There are footprints all over the place," Xandro pointed out.  "Some fairly recent, others from long ago.""Can you tell where this Derrok guy went?" asked Thurloe, dejected that his detect magic spell hadn't unearthed anything of value - the only magical auras were coming from the equipment of the heroes themselves."Well, if we assume the most recent footprints were his, he was all over the place," Xandro replied.  "So no, not really -- hey, what's this?"  One of the gears on the wall had attracted his attention.  He wasn't even aware of what it had been that made it stick out to his notice, until he realized unlike most of the other gears it wasn't touching any of its neighbors.  On a whim, he pushed the gear, and sure enough, the gear slid smoothly into the wall.  And then a circular chunk of the entire wall followed, moving a good foot in, then rotating like a wheel, exposing a smaller, circular room just behind.  "I think I found out where Derrok went!" he called to the others.Judging that four people would fit inside the smaller room (which, based on the lack of other doors in the small room, the group assumed was some sort of shifting chamber that led elsewhere, perhaps lowering down like the elevator platform at the halfling monastery), Xandro and Robin volunteered to jump inside Hesperna's lamp while the other four squeezed into the room.  Alewyth announced almost at once the curved wall of the smaller room wasn't connected to the ceiling, and a close examination showed the dwarf to be correct.  As the room suddenly started lowering into the floor, slowly spinning in a circle as it did so, Alewyth cast a magic vestment spell upon herself, anticipating the potential for combat at the end of wherever this rotating elevator platform was taking them.After a little over two full rotations, the room came to a stop.  The open doorway, which had moved from the east along the original basement level to the south on this first dungeon level, now looked out onto yet another 30-foot-diameter chamber, this one also covered in a gear motif.  There was one difference, however, for there was a "chunk" of the room - along the eastern side - where a section of absolute blackness intruded into the room, covering a section of floor and everything above it, such that this room was actually concave.  The heroes spread out, examining this new room, Wakuren placing Hesperna's lamp on the floor and letting Xandro and Robin back out.Thurloe didn't trust the area of darkness; fearing it might be something similar to a sphere of annihilation, he tied a metal piton to the end of a coil of rope and tossed it into the darkness, where he could hear it strike what he assumed to be the unseen floor.  But when he pulled the rope back to him, the piton was whole and undamaged.  "I'm getting rid of this darkness," grumbled Wakuren, casting a focused dispel magic spell on the area of darkness - a pitch blackness even his own natural darkvision couldn't pierce.  The spell did the trick, dispelling the darkness and revealing another circular room just beyond, this one a bit larger and overlapping the room in which the half-orc stood; he assumed the area of darkness had been the section where the two circles overlapped.  The larger room was empty, its curved wall devoid of gears but containing some sort of pane of dark glass along the back wall, directly across from Wakuren.Wakuren stepped forward to enter this larger room and started to fall when his foot fell through the floor in the section where the two rooms overlapped - there was no floor there, just (apparently) an illusory wall spell cast horizontally to cover the gap.  Fortunately, he carried his shield of Cal on his left arm and its feather fall property kicked in almost at once; the others saw him fall in slow motion up to his chest before wriggling around, catching the side of the solid floor, and pulling himself back into the room with all the gears.  "There's no floor there!" he complained to the others."Yeah, we kind of figured that out," replied Thurloe.Xandro stepped forward to help pull the half-orc back to solid ground, and in so doing he brought the radius of illumination into contact with the pane of dark glass in the far room.  Immediately, the mirror of opposition spit forth mirror images of the three heroes standing directly before it - Wakuren, Alewyth, and Thurloe - although the skin of these "duplicates" was dark and their hair was a uniform white: they were drow versions of the three adventurers!  These three drow spread out to the sides of their room, slowly approaching the area where the rooms overlapped, their weapons out and ready for combat.Thurloe responded by casting a slow spell at the three drow mirror-foes, but as neither was moving at the time it was difficult to see whether the spell had any effect.  Robin pulled out her lute and dutifully began playing the song of inspirational courage.  Alewyth, oddly, moved to the back of the gear chamber, as far away from the mirror-foes as she could get, but this wasn't an act of cowardice; she wanted to try out a new spell she'd never before cast.  Saying the words to the repulsion spell, she felt its effects kick in: it would now be an act of deliberate forcefulness for anybody to try to advance any closer to her than they already were.  Maybe that would prevent the drow mirror-foes from charging into the gear room with the heroes.Zander cast a chain lightning spell, targeting drow-Alewyth as the primary, but the bolt of electricity leapt from his fingers, crossed the room, and sputtered to a full halt when it got as far as the back of the overlapping area between the two rooms.  He frowned in puzzlement, then called out to his friends, "There's a wall of force in place between the two rooms!"  That explained why his chain lightning spell fizzled, and it also explained why the drow mirror-foes hadn't advanced into the gear room with the adventurers.The elf directed his familiar to go check out what was underneath the floor between the two rooms, and Petey flew down from his master's shoulder, slipping through the illusory floor spell where Wakuren had sunk down to his chest.  He telepathically reported back to Zander, <There's a vertical shaft going straight down, and then curving at the bottom.  And there's a drow down here - he's still breathing!  I think I found Derrok!>Wakuren cast an air walk spell on himself and leaped down the shaft himself, following the pseudodragon's path.  When he got to the bottom, he saw the vertical tunnel curved into a much larger, cylindrical room, and it had been mere fortunate happenstance that Derrok's crumpled form hadn't slid into the larger room, to set off whatever further traps it might hold in store.  He cast a cure serious wounds spell on the unconscious drow, then shook him awake.  When the drow's face registered a look of absolute shock and fear at the sight of an orc bending over him, Wakuren calmed him at once by saying, in the drow tongue, "Derrok, I presume?  Your mother sent us to come get you - you have nothing to fear from us!"Back up in the gear room, Xandro stood guard over Thurloe, his rapier Deathwhisper out and ready to strike, as the spellsword pound his piton into the stone floor and made sure it was secure.  Then he flipped the coil of rope over the edge, grabbed it up in his hands, and started lowering himself down.  Alewyth activated her butterfly brooch and flew forward, eager to go check out the lower level for herself (and already forgetting about the repulsion spell she had active on her person).  Zander approached the rope and started climbing down after Thurloe, not noticing that the spellsword hadn't gotten to the bottom yet, so the piton was now bearing the weight of both heroes at the same time.Wakuren looked up at the ceiling of the cylinder room and saw it was covered in a pattern like a fly's eyes - strange.  "Everybody, stay out of the big room down here!  I'm pretty sure there's a trap that'll spill something unpleasant down on our heads if you go in there!"Xander got tired of standing up in the gear room, facing off against three drow mirror-foes who weren't making any menacing movements (for he realized they probably knew about the wall of force blocking off the two rooms), so he decided to have a bit of fun and leaped over the edge of the floor, down the vertical shaft, leaving the everburning torch on the floor behind him so Robin wouldn't be left in the dark.  However, he hadn't counted on Zander being directly below him, still climbing down the rope, and Thurloe being directly below the elf; as a result, the rogue barreled into the elf, causing him to lose his grip, and the two of them landed on Thurloe, which caused him to lose his grip, and all three came crashing down on top of Derrok.  "Ow!" complained the drow would-be adventurer, pulling himself up out of the mad tangle of limbs and almost stepping into the cylinder room to get away.Wakuren grabbed him by the arm just in time and pulled him back.  "What did I just say?" chided the half-orc.  Thurloe got back up, glared at Zander and Xandro, and cast a second detect magic spell, his first one having expired in the meantime.  "The entire floor of that room is magical in nature," he advised.  "Yep, betcha it's a pressure point - stepping onto the floor activates whatever magic trap that drow wizard set into place all those years ago."Robin was not all that thrilled to have been left behind by herself; stopping her lute playing, she picked up the everburning torch and approached the hidden gap in the floor where the others had all disappeared.  If the next room was down there, she didn't want to be left behind!  But in advancing, she stepped directly before the mirror of opposition in the other room, and a drow version of the female bard climbed out of the mirror, advancing along the walls to take up a station beside the drow mirror version of Thurloe.  Robin stared in fascination at the drow version of herself, wearing her exact same clothes and carrying the same lute and sword, but everything fitted to a drow woman with a slightly smaller frame.Zander popped his head back up through the illusory floor and scrambled back up into the gear room.  Then he fumbled through his newly-purchased scrolls until he found the one he was looking for: mass fox's cunning, a spell that would temporarily increase the intelligence of everyone in his group.  That ought to aid in the puzzle-solving aspects of this dungeon, he thought to himself.  He even included Derrok as a target, figuring they were all on the same side down here - and, now that they'd found him, they might as well see if they could unearth the drow wizard's long-hidden treasure.Wakuren air walked to the top of the large, cylindrical room and examined the holes in the ceiling.  There was a solid ceiling on the other side of the holes, about an inch or two above the fly's-eye patterns in the readily visible lower ceiling.  The solid ceiling, he figured, was probably the floor of the room with the mirror-image drow, given their relative locations.  He still hadn't figured out what all was supposed to drop from the ceiling, but he was fairly certain that was the basis of the trap in here.  On the way back down, he spiraled around the room, searching to see if he could find any hidden doors or other exits out of the chamber, but it looked like a dead end.  Getting back down to the floor (but being careful not to touch it), he cast a control winds spell that sent gusts of wind blasting straight up from the floor.  Then, curiosity getting the better of him, he put his full weight on the floor and looked up to see what would happen.Sure enough, he'd been right: dozens, then hundreds, of solid metal balls came rolling from hidden recesses and spilling out of the numerous holes in the ceiling.  The spheres fell about a third of the way down the cylindrical room before being held back by the upthrusting winds, settling into a rough carpet that bounced and waved - and eventually sank lower in elevation - as more of the metal balls were dumped onto the ever-growing mass hovering in the air.  "Time to go!" the half-orc said to the others, shooing them back up the shaft while he stood just outside the cylindrical room and observed the balls' progress.  As they lowered in a large mass, the individual balls were shifting around and they were starting to take on a distinct shape.  Based on his experiences with the real thing, Wakuren was fairly certain it was morphing into a triceratops shape, albeit one whose entire form was composed of individual metal spheres.  But it was over halfway down from the ceiling by now, the control winds spell becoming less and less effective at supporting the ever-increasing weight of the dinosaur shape.Xandro climbed back up the rope and started examining the gears carved in the walls, thinking he might be able to find another push-button one like the one that opened to the elevator room.  Thurloe climbed up behind him, but only after casting a greater invisibility spell on himself.  Derrok followed the invisible spellsword up the rope, while Alewyth flew back up, having dismissed her repulsion spell, which hadn't been all that much of a help with the drow mirror-foes.By the time the others made it back up into the gear room, Xandro had made another discovery: he pushed in a particular gear and it popped back out, extending from the wall and making a sort of right-angle shelf.  Sitting in the middle of this shelf was a figurine of some sort: a pixie or fairy of some sort, wreathed in flames.  He tried picking up the figurine, but it was attached to the shelf.  Some sort of clue, then, perhaps? the rogue thought to himself.Robin had returned to playing her song of inspirational courage, while Xandro puzzled over the meaning of the statuette.  "Fire pixie?" he mused aloud.  "Burning sprite?  Flaming fairy?  Whatever it is, I'll bet it's a way to shut off the wall of force, so we can advance further into the dungeon.""Don't be in such a big hurry," advised Zander, casting a stoneskin spell on himself.  "As soon as you drop that wall, those drow versions of us can attack.""Why don't you try casting a faerie fire spell on it?" suggested Derrok.  "You know, fire fairy?  Faerie fire?""I've heard of the spell, but I don't know it," admitted Xandro.  "If memory serves, I believe that's a spell only druids can cast.""Pfft!" scoffed Derrok.  "Druids, maybe, but also every drow that's ever been born!"  And with a flourish of his hand, he cast a faerie fire spell upon the fairy statuette.The effects were immediate.  The wall of force dropped, and the drow mirror foes cast the spells they'd been waiting to do so until this moment.  The drow version of Thurloe cast a fireball spell in the middle of the gear room, the flames encompassing all of the assembled heroes - even, ironically, the real Thurloe, whose greater invisibility spell did nothing to keep him protected.  The drow Wakuren cast a chain lightning spell centered on the real half-orc, and at least Thurloe was spared from being a secondary recipient of the blasts of electricity streaming off from Wakuren's body.  But then the drow Alewyth cast a fire storm spell that engulfed the whole of the gear-walled room, and that was enough to drop Derrok and Robin into unconsciousness and well on the way to death.  (Petey may well have followed, had he not been nimble enough to avoid some of the spell effects and cause others to pass him by without harm due to his innate spell resistance.)Only Alewyth was having none of that - not on her watch!  She immediately cast a mass cure critical wounds spell, restoring Robin and Derrok to consciousness and healing up the worst of all of the heroes' assorted wounds.Zander moved up, casting a prismatic spray at the four drow imposters, all lined up in a row.  The drow versions of Alewyth and Robin were each slain by massive bolts of electricity; upon their deaths, they shattered as if they themselves had been made of glass, the remnants of their illusory bodies fading away to nothingness.  The drow Thurloe and drow Wakuren were each blasted with gouts of flame, but they survived the spell's effects.Wakuren cast a chain lightning spell of his own, targeting his illusory drow counterpart and arcing the blast off to the drow version of Thurloe.  The half-orc advanced after having cast his spell, and the dark-skinned spellsword imposter got in a hit with an equally mirrored version of Spellslicer.  The drow Wakuren cast a thunder strike into the room, catching up all but Petey, Zander, and Derrok in its area of effect.  Robin fell back into unconsciousness from the thunderous spell, and Xandro caught her and gently lowered her to the ground, before casting a cure moderate wounds spell on her to bring her back to full wakefulness.Thurloe, still invisible, activated his ring of silence and rushed into the larger room, leaping over the gap in the floor and standing beside the two remaining mirror almost-clones.  The area of silence that fell over the two false drow was enough to ensure they wouldn't be performing any spellcasting while still in the area of effect.  The drow Thurloe showed he didn't need to cast spells to be deadly, by swinging his own copy of Spellslicer into Wakuren's side, eliciting an unheard grunt of pain from the half-orc.  But Alewyth, seeing the attack and judging Wakuren to be in fairly urgent need to healing, cast a cure critical wounds spell on him, keeping him in the fight that much longer."Stay back!" Xandro called to Derrok, who had his longsword out and looked as if he were about to jump into the melee with it.  Robin picked her song of inspirational courage back up, infusing the heroes with confidence that they would prevail in this fight.  And that they did, for Zander cast another chain lightning spell on the two drow images and they both shattered into nothingness.  He'd sent another bolt of electricity from his spell into the mirror itself, and it too shattered, although it left shards of broken glass on the floor before it.Wakuren entered the larger room, air walking an inch or so above the floor to avoid triggering any pressure plates.  He found a secret door to the south and opened it, discovering there was a partial corridor ringing a good chunk of the mirror room, holding a half dozen metal disks not unlike the floating ones that had attended to the arena sands after each bout had been completed.  Furthermore, there was a short passageway leading into another round room to the south.Xandro entered the mirror room, and he did activate a pressure plate on the floor, one Wakuren had bypassed by walking an inch above it.  A panel in the curved wall of the mirror room opened up, and the first of the metal disks glided forward through the narrow panel and into the mirror room.  The other disks moved forward behind the first one, as if waiting their time to enter.Thurloe dismissed the silence effect from his ring and stepped further into the mirror room, so he had a good view when the spell disk sent a scorching ray spell blasting over at Wakuren, catching him unawares.  Seeing this, Derrok and Robin opted to hang back for now and let the more experienced adventurers deal with the problem at hand.  Alewyth cast a cure serious wounds spell on Wakuren; it seemed like a lot of her spellcasting of late was keeping the half-orc alive!Zander cast a new spell from a scroll: prismatic wall, lining the wall up behind the first spell disk and directly in front of the open panel through which the others would be passing.  Wakuren spun about, bent over, and picked up the spell disk that had attacked him, then with a snarl of rage threw it through the prismatic wall effect.  The spell disk was buffeted by fire, electricity, acid, and worse and was already inert when it hit the back wall.  But the other spell disks moved obediently straight ahead through the pulsating spell-wall of a flowing prism of colors, each one following its programming into immediate destruction.With that threat behind them, the heroes were free to examine this next room.  It had a sort of spider web pattern etched into the floor, and ten different gear shapes hung at equally-spaced distances around the room.  There was a sign hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the room that had some writing on it - as well as five gear shapes, each recessed into the sign - but the lettering was too small for them to read it without advancing closer.  Once Wakuren had done so, he called back the carved message on the stone sign: "'There is a safe way below, if you know the trick.'  It's another puzzle room - this wizard guy sure liked his puzzles!"The ten gears, it turned out, each held the holy or unholy symbol of ten of the gods in the pantheon: Aerik, Akari, Cal, Delphyne, Farthingale, Galrich, Infernia, Kazmira, Rale, and Telgrane.  Between them, they ran the gamut from good to evil, with no obvious method of clumping five of them apart from the others, for it was obvious five of the holy/unholy symbols would need to be placed in the empty gear-shaped receptacles in the hanging sign."Read me that passage again, would you?" asked Thurloe, who couldn't read the drow language.  Wakuren did so, then had an inspiration.  "We need to spell out 'BELOW'!" he cried, then his exuberant expression deflated as he realized none of the deities began with a "B."  "Maybe it's their portfolios," the half-orc mused.  "Let's see, Aerik's the god of protection, Akari's the god of death and undeath....""You've got the right idea," observed Alewyth, "but the wrong word.  Try 'TRICK' instead: Telgrane, Rale, Infernia, Cal, Kazmira."  She placed the appropriate symbols in the slots, and the outer row of stones each began lowering into the ground.  But one only lowered a foot or so, while the one next to it went down two feet, and the one just beyond that one lowered a full three feet down; in that fashion, a set of winding stairs formed along the outer edge of the circular room, with just enough room for the group to go down in single file.  Wakuren cast a mass cure moderate wounds on everyone as they followed the passageway even further down into the ground, Thurloe uncharacteristically in the lead."Well, it's about time!" the spellsword cried when the illumination from Zander's everburning torch behind him reached into the next chamber.  It was another set of overlapping circles, the one in front smaller in diameter than the one behind it, which was one step higher in elevation.  The smaller circle was completely bare, but piled along the far wall of the room further back were chests of coins and gems, a black robe on a wooden stand, a life-size stone statue of an axebeak, and a few weapons and other items scattered loosely about, including a weathered skull."It's got to be trapped, somehow!" advised Alewyth.  "Here, let me cast a detect magic spell and see if I can see anything."  After a few moments of examination, the dwarf voiced, "The floor's emanating a couple different magical auras: illusion and evocation.""Well, let's take care of the illusion," said Thurloe, tapping the point of Spellslicer's blade onto the stone floor.  With a wink, the stone floor seemed to have vanished, revealing a 30-foot-deep pit in its place.  There was a side-pocket carved at the bottom of the pit, a niche in which floated the unmistakable form of a beholder.  But the beholder didn't move, didn't even bat an eye - it just hung there in place, completely motionless.  "I'll bet it's in stasis," observed Thurloe.  "But betcha anything as soon as we cross over the entry room and into the treasure room, it'll wake up.""But how d'we get across?" asked Alewyth.  "That pit's too large to jump."Thurloe tapped the nonexistent floor with the tip of his bastard sword's blade, hitting something solid and unseen.  "Those drow wizards with their walls of force," he said, shaking his head.  From the back of the single-file line, the strains of Robin's song of inspirational courage started anew."If we're going to do this, we need to all get across fast," Zander suggested.  He cast a haste spell on the assembled group, to speed their every action.  Wakuren followed up with a mass cure light wounds, since it only made sense they should begin a fight with a beholder with everyone as hale and hearty as possible.But Thurloe cut them all off.  "Hang on, I want to try something first," he said, casting a spell upon himself and walking across the horizontal wall of force covering the beholder pit.  The beholder didn't move at all, failing to register the spellsword's presence."What spell was that?" Alewyth wanted to know.  Whatever it was, it seemed to work."Shroud of undeath," Thurloe explained.  "I've never had occasion to use it before, but it causes mindless undead - and more importantly, spell effects and triggers - to treat me as an undead creature.  Odds are, it takes the presence of a living creature above to wake up that beholder.""At which point it's going to shut off that wall of force with its anti-magic eye ray," pointed out Xandro.  "We're all going to want to sprint over there as fast as we can.""Hang on, though," suggested Alewyth, casting a wall of stone vertically over the wall of force.  "There - he can shut off the wall of force with his anti-magic ray, but he can't undo my wall of stone - that magic's already come and gone, and the stone is there forever.""Until he disintegrates a nice hole in it, big enough for him to fly through," added Xandro."That'll still take him some time," argued Alewyth."The point's moot," said Zander.  "You guys head on over at a sprint, and I'll stay here and cast wall of force spells layered one atop the other - that'll keep him busy for a while!"It was as good a plan as any.  The heroes dashed across the room and Wakuren placed Hesperna's lamp on the ground, and then everyone took turns dumping armloads of loot into its extradimensional space.  "He's awake!" Zander called, when a circular hole appeared in the stone floor Alewyth had conjured up, and the top of the beholder's head appeared in its center.  But it bumped into the first of Zander's stacked walls of force with an irritated expression on its massive face, and then it swiveled in place and opened its central eye, blasting the invisible field of force into nonexistence.  But by then, Zander had three more on top of that one, and had run over to the treasure room himself with Petey on his shoulder.  "Hurry!" he called, aware that the layered walls of force were getting higher and higher off the level of the original floor, and eventually the beholder would be able to disintegrate a section of the treasure room floor and make his way into combat with the others.But by that time, the other heroes were safely inside Hesperna's lamp.  Alewyth, the only one still standing inside the now-empty treasure room, ushered Zander and Petey inside, picked up the lamp, and cast an ethereal jaunt spell on herself.  She flew straight upwards, passing through solid floors, and when the frustrated beholder finally popped up into the empty treasure room there was no longer anything to guard and no interlopers to fight.Alewyth passed through the outer wall of the ground floor of the wizard's keep and dismissed her spell, popping back into full, solid form once again.  Wakuren and the others exited the lamp, Derrok holding a black robe he'd taken from the treasure hoard.  "Derrok's agreed to take that as his share," Wakuren explained.  "It's a robe of the archmage, but it only works for those of an evil nature - none of us can use it.""But neither can you," pointed out Alewyth, looking over at Derrok."Don't matter," the young drow explained.  "I know a guy who'll give me close to full price for this - that's more than I ever expected to find in the wizard's dungeon!"  And, ecstatic that his plans had all worked out better than he had ever hoped, Derrok went running back home to show his mother what he'd unearthed, and how he'd pretty much conquered the dungeon on his own.  (He figured he could admit to those strangers having helped him a little; after all, his mother had apparently sent them after him, so she'd have expected something useful out of them.)"Can we finally go now?" asked Beetle, when they caught back up with him at the nearest stables.  The group agreed they could, and mounted up on their dinosaurs.  And then they finally left Du'dorach behind them. - - -I figured an old-school dungeon crawl would be a nice change of pace, and it was - the group had a good time with it.  And each PC (including Robin, as they split their share six ways) got around 39,000 gp, my way of making up for a bunch of adventures in the dinosaur half of Talonia where treasure was scarce or nonexistent.  And I assured everyone they'd be passing through several other drow cities, where they could purchase new supplies and upgrade their magical items as needed. - - -T-shirt worn: My "Chaotic evil means never having to say you're sorry" T- shirt; not all Talonian drow are chaotic evil, but the unnamed wizard who built this dungeon certainly was!</blockquote>

Verification