S1 E38: Deep Scream

in which the gang invents the portable computer...

• Mae leaps through the doorway only to lose her footing on the other side and fall into a couple of dormant Black Puddings, which immediately wake up to whatever consciousness they have to start fighting back against the intruder. At the same time, a cold female voice announces that a protocol was negotiated and a link connected, and it needed the password. Lorfel, after a moment of reflection, realizes that whether this password was set up by Quindarin, or Borem Cultists, the answer is probably the same - Gorgasuul.
• The Black Puddings are fought and defeated fairly handily, though Blizzard's Longsword is damaged in the process.
• The management system, calling itself the Regulator, greets Lorfel as "Doctor Quindarin" after he gives it the correct password. A great deal of questioning and answering proceeds, during which the Regulator begins to suspect that Lorfel is not actually Quindarin. In turn, Lorfel decides to scry on Deep Scream, named in the notes, and discovers that the vision he receives is of the room he's already in.
• The Regulator wants to return home. The story it tells regarding Quindarin helps many loose ends fall into place. That Quindarin was attempting to create a stable, long-lasting and relatively inexpensive healing gel using a combination of pure elemental forms, with the help of a race of intelligent beings he had encountered who needed his help. These were/are the Stardonyx. He attempted to use 'the experiment' - this laboratory deep under the ground - to deliver healing gel through a portal into the Stardonyx' homeworld. But the Regulator evidently tampered with the equations and instead, the gel was blasted into a river or lake in a portion of the Shadowfell called Murk.
• The gel not only healed, but on a longer timeline of perhaps a month or so, actually had the same effect as a permanent Awakening spell. The net net of this was that the muddy hot spring became a sentient, and angry, quasi-intelligent elemental of enormous power, filled with permanent awareness and healing but with no capacity to regulate its own emotions or desires. it began to take out its anger on the Stardonyx, traveling from the Shadowfell to their homeworld, which it began to devour and incorporate into itself. This massive transfer of planar and planetary matter in turn unbalanced the motions of the Great Wheel enough to cause a planar overlap and collision with astral/astronomical matter during the stellar conjunction which was evidently just an interesting planetary event in the heavens before this. An orrery in the lab showed in some detail exactly how and where the collision would line up.
• The Regulator explained how to correct some broken parts on the exterior of the hub, with the atmosphere outside the lab being fairly dangerous, with a very small amount of breathable oxygen and a quantity of volcanic gases and high heat at this 2000 foot depth. Lorfel and Mae went out onto the exterior of the building and discovered first of all, that it left marks in the ceiling as it traveled around, and these marks were the somatic components of multiple spells. Secondly, it was near a deposit of some kind of luminous crystal that behaved as an anchor point for the lab and likely a power source for the Regulator. When they tried to return indoors, te Regulator refused to open the airtight doors and let them inside.
• The party pried open the doors on their side, and the pressure allowed the outer door to open. The regulator made up some story to explain tis behavior, but then attacked with a blast of mental energy.
• Thinking quickly, Lorfel cast a polymorph spell and used his divination power to ensure the Regulator - who was Deep Scream all along - couldn't resist the effect. He turned it into a small portable object and eventually dropped it into the bag of holding.
• In the meantime the party poked around in the rest of the building, and found themselves in room 5 on the other end of the circle. The regulator had said that the system required souls for power, but it seems likely she was lying or fudging the truth in some way. It appears that the missing dwarves were sucked into the pipe and killed instantly, but the system is not currently active, and for that matter, the dwarven scouts from Kannet certainly did not have the correct password, so their deaths may have nothing to so with the mechanism, just with the security measures. Regardless, a cloudy vortex of purple and black swirls tantalizingly overhead in the final room.