The Battle Below
"Dywedodd rhywun wrthyf unwaith fod y byd yn mynd i fy rolio
Nid fi yw'r teclyn craffaf yn y sied
Roedd hi'n edrych yn fath o fud gyda'i bys a'i bawd
Ar ffurf L ar ei thalcen"
-aberrant chanting, as transliterated by Lethe
Smoked Out
Upon waking from their rest, the party found the room much darker than before and filled with a thick purple smoke making it nearly impossible to see. When Lethe's tiny hut dropped they were immediately hit with an aggressively acrid stench as the poisonous gas began burning their lungs. Lethe attempted to investigate for some of the remaining bodies to do his own research on, but found none left in the room. Suffering from continuous poison damage, the party moved quickly to get out of the room. Running back the way they came, they found the door sealed shut. Erevan prepared to cast shatter on the door, but Lethe managed to save him a spell slot by using the mold earth to dig a tunnel beneath the doorway. The party barely managed to escape the room with their lives before finding themselves back in the antechamber they had initially encountered. In desperate need of a rest, party realized that whatever entity resided in this lair clearly would use any opportunity to attack them in their sleep. Aberchak came up with a solution and casted rope trick to allow them a brief respite to take a short rest in a small demiplane.Unsettling Experiments
After recovering from the poison chamber, the party descended from the rope and prepared to move forward through the second door in the antechamber. Lethe began to psychically detect fear and desperation coming from deeper in the lair as the party entered into the next room. Immediately met with a near-freezing cold, the party looked around the room and found it along the walls several more of the type of vats seen in the other room. Within each was a similarly decraniated body suspended in the same silvery-blue liquid. At the far end of the room stood a much larger vat containing over a dozen bodies slowly swirling in the viscous material. In the center were eight large ornate stone slabs with almost tendril-like designs along them, and upon each slab laid bodies in various stages of dissection. In another corner of the room were stacked dozens more bodies in a sort of mausoleum, each having tubes into and out of them through which pumped a thick, dark ichor. Entering from the south, the party could see a door across from them on the north wall, and two doorways on the east wall. Through the southeast doorway, the party found what appeared to be cold storage for dozens more bodies in various states of disassembly. Lethe took four of these bodies and stored them in the bag of holding. In the far corner of the room was a chute that Lethe determined to be a way of disposing of parts of the bodies, and another door to the north of the room. Passing through this north doorway, the party found themselves in a room containing a large central vat of this same blue liquid suspended from the ceiling. Dozens of tubes ran into and out of it. The far northern wall was glass, and on the other side were what appeared to be thousands of tadpole-like creatures swimming in the blue liquid. Along the edge of the room were six glass cases, half of which contained a body that lay suspended in blue liquid. At the head of each of these cases was a second small glass box; of the boxes attached to ones containing bodies, two of them contained a single tadpole. The third box was empty, but as the party inspected the body in this third box they saw a tadpole latched onto the creature's brain stem. Precision attempted to reach out and speak with these creatures using speak with animals but received no response from them; Aberchak was able to detect that these tadpoles were not beasts but aberrations. Meanwhile, Lethe found a strange dodecahedron on a desk nearby inscribed with some sort of strange lines. He attempted to use comprehend languages to read it, but the writing and language was so foreign to him that he was able to glean very little from it. He gathered it to be some sort of personal diary, scientific lab notes, or both; stashing it in the bag of holding, the party moved on into a doorway on the east wall.Battle in the Dark
Immediately upon stepping through the doorway, the party found all light to be magically snuffed out. Lethe attempted to illuminate the area using dancing lights, and found the magical globules' light to be diminished and struggling against the thick darkness. The party did not have much time to ponder what could be causing this however, as they were all simultaneously hit with a massive wave of psychic energy. Lethe managed to shake off the effects, but the rest were temporarily stunned from the attack. The battle was on. Lethe opened up the fight by ordering his skeletons to form a defensive perimeter around the party, and prepared a toll the dead for whatever emerged from the darkness. Erevan and Aberchak were able to shake off the effects of the stun but Precision remained incapacitated as five arrows came shooting out of the darkness, somehow managing to miss everyone. Before the party had a chance to retaliate another wave of pulsing psychic energy wracked their brains, dealing damage to Erevan and Aberchak and seemingly pulling memories from their minds. Lethe ordered his skeletons to move towards where the arrows had come from, where they encountered more of the decraniated thralls the party had encountered earlier in the lair. Between the skeletons and a fire bolt from Lethe, two of the thralls were taken out. Erevan, blinded, sculpted a fireball around the party, hoping to take out anything that might be in range. Precision managed to rouse from her incapacitation and used her shortsword to illuminate their immediate area, while Aberchak used his falchion to cast detect evil and good, which revealed five undead creatures and two powerful aberrations in the chamber. Now armed with better sight and a sense of what they were up against, the party pressed the attack. Aberchak, seeing one of the powerful aberrations flying above him, let off a salvo of crossbow bolts and managed to hit it. The creature responded by forcing Lethe's concentration on the dancing lights to break. After another round of attacks from the skeletons, Lethe sent out another fire bolt at the creature but accidentally struck one of his skeletons instead. Erevan used magic missile to take out on of the nearby thralls as Precision charged into the darkness, unwittingly directly towards the creature which was clearly visible for the first time. About fifteen feet above her, Precision saw a humanoid figure with purple skin, a bulbous cranium and six tentacles emerging from what should be its mouth. Precision was able to hit it with a javelin before it darted back off into the darkness; Aberchak used the opportunity of its brief appearance to cast hunter's mark upon it and sink another crossbow bolt into it. Another pulsing wave of psychic damage hit the party as the skeletons continued distracting the thralls. Lethe utilized faerie fire to illuminate the flying aberration and allow everyone full sight of it. Erevan let off a higher-level magic missile at the now-exposed monster, who used a legendary action to break Lethe's concentration on faerie fire. Precision continued pushing through the darkness, chasing the creature up the stairs up a large altar in the center of the room. Aberchak continues the volleys of crossbows against the creature, which fled into the darkness in fear. Lethe's skeletons managed to finish off the last of the thralls as Lethe dashed through the darkness towards Precision. Aberchak gave chase to the creature, guided by his hunter's mark, as the rest of the party continued to the stairs of the altar. At the top, they found a massive, half-formed brain surrounded by purplish-black energy floating above the same viscous blue-white liquid they had observed in the other rooms. In battle against the creature, Aberchak fell unconscious. Meanwhile the party began focusing attacks against this brain, realizing it to be a source of power. The creature, seemingly desperate to defend the brain, left Aberchak and responded to the party; Aberchak managed to come back to consciousness in the creature's absence. As Precision sank her axe deep into the brain, the creature shrieked out in pain. In response, it dove into the pool and discorporated, lending its consciousness to the brain in a desperate bid to keep it alive. Lethe responded with a lightning bolt that took out the brain for good.Aberrant Visions
In the last moments of the creature's life, the party were all struck with visions as it lashed out with psychic energy. They saw an ancient city, the seat of a massive empire, in its prime for only a moment before in a flash seeing it ruined and burning, as a flash of gold and fire screamed overhead. They felt pain, fear, and loneliness and saw visions of rubble, of tunnels, and of the lair they were in. They could feel the creature enter an imbued sleep in desperation before being reawoken centuries later by miners. They felt a flash of hope as the creature used the life force of those around him to begin rebuilding. As the creature died, they saw visions of another realm; an endless sky of black and purple, of gossamer clouds and floating chunks of reality. Fear and unease filled their minds as they felt a malevolent force turn its eyes towards them... before finding themselves back in the chamber, the dead husk of the brain-like being before them. As they took stock of their situation, they felt a rumble from above as shards of the ceiling began to drop around them... and realized the lair had begun to collapse.Chapter Thirty-One
"The Battle Below"
Previous Chapter: A Friend Forgotten
Next Chapter: Through the Looking-Glass
Ingame Date: 29th of Rainseed, 1855
Real-Life Date: March 7, 2021
Protagonists: Locations:
- Vergess Blackrock Mine
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