This forest has eyes Report

General Summary

1490 DR - Winter - 21, Hammer (1) - Thay, The Doomvault  

• The crew decides to finish exploring the Forest before trying to move to a new zone, they find precious little in the area, noticing that the enchanted moss on the ground seems to devour all excrement and other organic material left behind.
• Moving into a larger cavern, they find a charred area, and a sleeping monstrous Behir. After much deliberation they choose to wake the behemoth and charm it, only to realize it is intelligent and not easily tricked. Huden uses his wiles to feign being guards, but something he says tips off the Behir, and it attacks from a strategic advantage, laying waste to the party with lightning.
• Seeing it's obvious advantage, the Behir demands a key be turned over to him, and then uses it to exit the zone and continue to another area, with unknown intentions. But leaves with a threat.
• The Chosen evaluate their options and follow the Behir's path, seeing no other good exits.  They pass a light trap room with seemingly trapped undead, and carefully avoid the trap by RUNNING THROUGH!
• On the other side the party encounters the Behir again, with blackened eyes and a new demeanor. A voice speaks in their heads and seems to be reading their thoughts as they realize that something has claimed the mind of the Behir.  An Aboleth (as identified by Oudman) demands their help in escaping, by passing finding another key, the alternative be them being taken by him and forced.  They agree, after some uncomfortable inner dialogues and retreat back, taking one of the floating water orbs in the room with them.
• They run into further trouble getting back through the lit tunnel, and suffer some pain and hurt as the light burns them, with a last minute save from Huden as he hauls Oudmans body back through.
• The group determines they have reached their limit, and need to take a break.  They use the black gate to rest in the gatehouse, trying to reset their plan and change strategy.  Syranna is unable to give them further information and suggest they seek alternate forms of espionage.  They know this will increase the threat and alarm level in the Doomvault as some may realize that they are cutoff and not able to leave or get messages out, but feel they have no choice given their condition.
• Xifor weaves his magic to learn answers from the other side, guiding their choice of where to head next.  Llewellyn contacts her patron and attemps to glean more info as well. They learn that the phylactery vault is BELOW the Doomvault, not in it, significantly changing their approach to exploration.
• Searching through the forests, they do not find any additional keys, but choose to continue past the Displacer beasts still chewing on their butchered owlbear, and into the Ooze Grottos.
• They enter a cavern like area, filled with strange substances and sounds of combat.  They sneak up to a group of Thayans and a red wizard and ambush their leader, while the group was seemingly in combat with a gray ooze.  Xifor charms the Red Wizard and convinces him that the enemies here have been controlled by the Aboleth, this gambit works and the wizard immolates the Thayans while the crew dispatches the ooze.
• Still hearing combat, but now having an additional ally, the crew prepares to press on, asking some additional questions of the Wizard before continuing, who only seems to know a little about the present area, and does have another Glyph key for the Culling Pens which he passes along and the crew syncs with their one remaining key (after accidentally destroying the other one trying to clone it).  They lament not being able to keep track of their friends in here, as the mist portals pull members in and out of the Doomvault.