General Summary
When last we left our heroes...
They had just emerged up a ladder and through the trap door into the second level of The Tower of Haklack, a large room with seven doors at its edges and a large stone column in the middle. A faint clanking sound could be heard coming from the outer edges of the walls. Arindorf went to open one of the doors, and as he approached it, that door and one opposite to it opened up, and two automatons came tramping out, one out of each door. The five-foot-tall constructs were vaguely humanoid, with two legs, two arms, and a head (but un-helmeted, unlike the ones they fought on the ship). But they also appeared to have some kind of cannon built into their chests. Arindorf rushed at the two of them, missing one but hitting his shortsword into the second with a satisfying clang.
The two Steel Defenders then attacked Arindorf, shooting cannonballs and flame out of their chests at the ranger, who only barely managed to get out of the way. As Trickles circled the column to go and help his friend, two more doors opened, and two more Steel Defenders swerved out of them and into the battle. Not missing a beat, he stabbed the one closest to him hard with his rapier. Flaar ran directly to Arindorf and cast Acid Splash at the two automatons, damaging both of them but also turning Arindorf into his giant bear form.
The battle was now solidly split, with Slappa, Flaar, and Bearindorf in the northwest corner, and Marcel, Glitz, and Trickles in the southeast corner, each group fighting two automatons. Bearindorf lunged in a fury at the one that had singed him with its flamethrower earlier. His powerful claws tore into the construct, ripping apart its armor and exposing gears and clockwork on the inside. Slappa cast Vicious Mockery on one, and somehow the construct seemed slightly offended by his insults. Sparks flew out of its eye sockets, but it didn't take enough damage to go down.
Over in the southeast corner, Trickles was knocked backward by a cannonball into the other automaton, which promptly hit him with a buzzsaw-looking thing that came out of its chest. Marcel and Glitz kept trying to hit the constructs as best they could, but had a hard time getting past their sturdy exterior armor. As soon as he was able to get up, Trickles used his hook shot to loop around the two automatons and knock them into one another. They ended up in a pile in the southeast corner.
Meanwhile, Bearindorf was still on fire, and looked incredibly awesome while doing so. With a massive fiery roar, his claw shredded what remained of the gears in the already badly wounded construct's chest, and it crumpled into the ground, nothing more than a pile of metal. Slappa unfortunately did not have such good luck, as the Lute of Chaos erupted in dissident chords that hurt everyone's eardrums.
Trickles, looking around, used the central column to parkour-jump off of it onto one of the Steel Defenders, digging his rapier into its metal joints. Then, still hanging from his rapier, he climbed up its back, leapt off its shoulders, and drove the rapier down into the other one's head - or tried to. Unfortunately the heavy head plate deflected his rapier to the side. But that got the construct just distracted enough that Glitz was able to sneak up and attack it from behind.
As the automatons made their last stand, Vomit & Blood hit them with everything they had. Slappa used the Lute of Chaos to fire Magic Missiles their way. Trickles stabbed the one he was on repeatedly in the head. The final killing blows went to Flaar, who took one down with an Acid Bubble that very satisfyingly melted its head down to nothing; Glitz, who lopped one's head clean off with her shortsword, and Marcel, who took one down with a mighty swing of WaveRider.
Everyone took a moment to breathe, and now that he wasn't in the thick of battle Marcel noticed that the doors had been opened by them stepping on pressure plate traps on the floor. He quickly pointed them out to everyone so they could avoid them moving forward. Arindorf morphed back into his human form. Flaar and Trickles picked through the automatons, and found a key inside one of them - a key that easily opened the locked trap door at the top of the room.
As everyone climbed up to the next level, they found themselves in a room about 50 by 50 feet, with small orbs floating in the air that gave off a non-natural but rather pleasing light, lighting up the entire room. In a corner, there lay a pile of various motionless automatons, and there were two visible ways out of the room - a trapdoor leading to the next level, and a door on the south edge, leading out of the room.
