Session 29 - 2 Miles down...
The party descends the stairs. Lane is comfortable in strange places, Olive feels an oppressive feeling. Thanatos checks in with Olive - being a creature with origins in fire, he wonders if there is any connection between the fire cult and Olive. Knack is a little worried that the gloom and humdrum of thousands of stairs in bringing on the “bleaching”. Taraxacam is along for the ride and following the group. Joseph feels a strong alien vibe and feels they may not belong here.
Knack creates a small stone that will trigger light when it hits something, he casts it off the side of the stairway and about 600 feet down there is some kind of bottom.
Reaching the bottom they find a cavern that looks like it may have been worked by dwarves, but then reworked by something else. One of the old Dwarven door looks like the “reworkers” tried to cover it over but it was “resistant” in some way. The other Dwarven doors have been reworked from a square top to a pointed top. The whole area is illuminated by biolumenescent lichen.
The most worn path seems to go from the stairs to the west door (the one that was not “resistant” to rework). Through that door the party finds remnants of an old mining area (of Dwarven origin). However, the main tunnel looks collapsed and the mine cart tracks look to have been damaged. There are also two doors (reworked doors), one to the south and one to the west. As Joseph inspects the collapsed tunnel, Specters rise up from the debris and engage the party. Lane and Joseph turn quite a few, the rest are mopped up without too much trouble.
With Lane’s spirit Guardians going, he wishes to press fast into any encounters. They open the south door, which opens into a 10 by 30 hallway with a door at the end. Violet light is visible from below the door which they burst through and find 3 Hill Giants.
At the end of the battle they find some treasure, two more doors (one going east and is a reworked Dwarven door and one going west which was seemingly added later and is not Dwarven. There are also two “open cracks” in the walls of this large hall… one leads down and east the other deadends. The cracks are rimmed with glowing purple crystal growths.
The party is feeling the need for a short rest. They move to the hallway, and spike the doors at each end. About 5 minutes into their rest they hear voices in a language none of them recognized and what sounds like “hooved” creatures moving about. Knack casts Rope Trick and the party scrabbles up into it. Olive uses minor illusion to make a sound down the old mining tunnel which momentarily seems to distract the voices (who appear to be searching the area). As the last person slips into the rope trick, Minotaurs force open the Northern spiked door, look around and then move on from the area.
The party takes the short rest inside the rope trick and then re-emerges. They debate where to go next and opt to take the non-dwarven door to the west. It opens to a cave like corridor that goes 10 feet and ends in a vertical wall of a black liquid like substance.
Josef pushes the end of his pole-arm though - there is no resistance. But upon drawing it back it seems “wet”. Knack attempts to collect a bit of the fluid that is dripping off the pole-arm in a vial. Taraxacam lights a torch and pushes it into the liquid which appears to block all light and sound. After withdrawing the torch, it still burns, but it is also covered in fluid. The three of them begin to feel nauseous. Taraxacam sprinkles sand on the touch and sees that it behaves like a liquid (some stand sticks to it, and some falls off. Knack plumbs the depths of his alchemical knowledge and suspects it is some kind of “evil elemental vile fluid”
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