Session 55 - Down Down Down Through the Tunnel

General Summary

We start the day with a visit from a courier who tells us the beholder’s wall of force will come down around noon, so we set out to buy climbing gear and also rope from a very knowledgeable rope salesman. Rope of Climbing costs 300gp, Endless Rope costs 500gp. We all chip in for the endless rope. We get torches ready and buy chalk in case it’s hard to navigate. Reading the book about beholders reveals devious traps are quite common in the lair of the beholder, and they keep creatures of a lower intelligence that it can control to guard its lair, but brutish and dangerous. After our prep, we head to the Panopticon.
We meet the philosopher there who disintegrates the wall of force. Xanthos and Kovu scout down and Xanthos almost falls prey to a trap when the floor gives way underneath him leading to a pit of acid! The tunnel continues to crumble, the acid pooling at the bottom. Honestly Xanthos just kills it, succeeding at a bunch of dex saves to avoid various acid pits. He sets the rope
Kestor dissociates and feels strong, he has the rippling chiselled body of a great hero, below him is a bubbling pit of lava and he’s climbing with just his arms. He flips from the rope and superhero lands in front of everyone and runs his hands through his hair as though it were long and flowing. He hears the sound of metal striking metal in the distance. A forge, the Underworld? We continue onwards and almost walk into a gelatinous cube, an unintelligent ooze that waits for prey to walk into it. We get the impression this means the beholder didn’t come this way very often, so we turn around and create a rope bridge to traverse the acid pit and go the other way.
Down the other way we spot a human who has been turned to stone, frozen running towards the exit. We decide to bring any petrified people to the entrance so we can bring them out at the end and unpetrify them back on the surface. Xanthos heads down the next vertical tunnel and spots a glyph of warding, unfortunately it takes three dispel magics to get rid of it, but we are able to move past. There’s a strange flickering light and a bunch of screaming mushrooms that probably alert any beaties, plus it stinks, and then we’re ambushed by trolls! We defeat them with the help of Ionessa and Kovu’s acid strikes.
Kestor inspects the trolls and identifies them, they’re always hungry and want to be eating, plus regenerate without being burned by fire or acid. Fiendish individuals throughout the ages have used trolls as minions because you can just feed them and give them treasure in exchange for their services. We’re on the right track, Ionessa leads us through this underground foliage and towards another tunnel. We see marks like something heavy was dragged through the tunnel leading up to a door, which Kestor investigates and finds it to be an illusion, behind which is an enormous wheeled construct carved to look like a horned creature. There’s a way up through the ceiling, but one risks touching the door and triggering the trap while climbing. We all manage to get up, avoiding being crushed!
The tunnel curves down towards another door, but real this time. It has two holes filled with magical darkness that Ionessa is able to see through with her truesight; one hole contains a mechanism that can open the door, while the other contains a floating black orb that was otherwise blending into the darkness. We pull the lever to open the door using Skotos, avoiding being trapped inside the hole, and continue down into an opulent treasure room. There’s a secret passage that leads on, but we gather some treasure and find a bunch of stuff. Some trinkets, a suit of incredibly well-crafted ornate armour (dwarven plate armour for Xanthos), a box of jewellery containing a perfectly circular pale pink sphere and a perfect blue rhomboid, and a beautiful gem-encrusted scroll case containing a golden scroll written with rainbow ink.
There’s also a bunch of artwork, pillows, etc. which are worth some money. We continue down the secret tunnel, at the end of which is Phosidaeus, who says “Phosidaeus you fool, I suppose my mind has been addled in my old age, for that is the only reason I can see you returning to this place. Turn back now, this is your last warning.” We deduce he must have left this message for himself to keep him from coming back there for some reason. We continue on to a big spherical room with a bridge leading to the centre, and a dais at the end of the bridge. There are letters and words carved into the entire area of the room’s walls in a strange language; Neo casts detect magic and the entire room glows to him, divination and necromancy magic from the walls, divination and conjuration from the dais.
Ionessa checks it out with true sight and finds that the entire room is shifting, the letters are changing. We take a short rest so that Kestor can prepare comprehend languages and translate the writing on the walls, and we identify some of the magical items at the same time. Ionessa’s is a scroll of leadership and influence, when studied for 48 hours over 4 days, their charisma increases by 2. Neo identifies the blue spherical stone, a Stone of Apnosis, a stone of Leadership, increases your charisma by 2 up to a total of 20. Xanthos’ armour is adamantium, you cannot be critically hit while wearing it. Hype!
Kestor casts comprehend languages and looks at the glyphs, he can read them without getting closer now! They are telling a story about an elf moving to slay a demon terrorising his home, Kestor hears a male Elven voice telling the story from the first person. He took up his father’s spear and went to the fields… but then it changes, another voice and another story and another, they start overlapping, hundreds and thousands of tales at once. Kestor recognizes this as the same effect as the ball of psychic minds he saw when he died. He looks back to the others and sees them surrounded by the swirling vortex.
Ionessa advises focus on specific play. Kestor doesn’t hear any of the ones in his head, but he focuses and pushes his way towards the dais. He notices some kind of shared presence there, though he cannot see its story. He sees sitting on the dais is a pouch with shifting runes carved into it, sitting open, inside is nothing but darkness. Kestor reaches his hand inside and pulls out a little yellow marble. Holding it brings one voice to the forefront of the cacophony, speaking into Kestor’s mind. A man’s voice, and a vision of Kestor clad in heavy ceremonial armour as the voice describes entering into this antechamber, a blade in his hand, a great throne, gorging on blood that sings in his mouth, power radiating through him as he gorges on divine blood. The marble feels as though it is melting in his fingers.
Kestor puts it back in the bag, the voice recedes and the story feels like a dream all of a sudden. He starts struggling to keep his own psyche amidst the roiling ego vortex, and closes the bag. The characters all disappear from the wall, the stories stop, and the magical auras disappear. Kestor picks up the bag and feels that it is full of marbles, maybe every story is contained within here. Ionessa asks if he recognised the language of the text, he doesn’t know what it was (but OOC we know it now to be Deep Speech.)
Why did Phosidaeus have this here in the first place? Maybe this was somehow transported here into the beholder’s dreams by Mourionoss, which conjured it into reality through dream magic? Maybe Phosidaeus was just chasing power and was interested in the god blood? What if Mourionoss saved these psyches from the previous purge and it just got out of control like Pairairi? WHAT IF THERE ARE GODS IN THERE???
I don’t know what the heck, so much to think about. We start heading back up.
The end.

Notes

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Report Date

29 Jan 2024