Episode 26: Lick The Slime

* We follow Hamish into a large grotto which is dotted with several shrieking mushrooms. Vahlka presses ahead to investigate what Hamish is looking at while Deacon and Godfrey murder some mushrooms with extreme prejudice. She finds a dead Umber Hulk with someone who is waist deep in it's innards - eating it.
* The person turns out to be a human girl, around 11 or 12 years old, she doesn't answer Vahlka when she questions her so Vahlka asks Godfrey to try and speak with her telepathically.
* Godfrey tries to talk to her with his telepathic ability but it seems to scare the girl and she lashes out at him with some strange psionic magic, trying to shove him back. Godfrey insists that we mean her no harm but she continues not to answer.
* The girl bolts away, Godfrey argues with Vahlka for a bit about what to do with the kid. She is rather unhelpful. The girl talks to Sethokesh rather than speaking directly to Vahlka. She asks where we're going and Godfrey rambles on for a bit explaining some of our mission here in extremely vague terms.
* The girl does answer, but is still standoffish, not satisfied with Godfrey's concern or vague answer she asks again; forcefully. Magically compelling a truthful answer. Godfrey is forced to answer. The girl relaxes somewhat and speaks to everyone revealing that she's "Supposed to take us to the mirror." and that she once resided at the Black Ziggurat. We agree, some of us hesitantly (Vahlka), to allow her to show us the way.
* She also claims to have a "Friend" and says "She should show up soon."
* We follow the girl (whose name we *never* ask, we're amazing like that) while Vahlka and Godfrey argue. We follow her through a series of tunnels avoiding a purple worm and very quickly GTFOing out of those tunnels. Her name is Desdemona tho.
* Desdemona leads us to a narrow bridge, where we encounter more shrieking mushrooms. We take them out from a distance and head across.
* As Vahlka tries to press ahead she's attacked by a Cloaker. We make short work of it and it surrenders offering us info on what's been happening here in exchange for its life. Vahlka intimidates it into showing us where the archaeologists went. An old abandoned beholder lair that's been taken over by a green dragon - Deathcrawl.
* We look over the abandoned lair from the outsider and decide to go rest somewhere safer for a few hours and then check it out afterwards. We find a nice camping spot to spend the "night" undisturbed.
* We journey into the beholder lair, discovering a series of mostly free standing platforms in open space, thewalls and floor are streaked with a viscous and foul smelling slime. Vahlka tries to identify what it is, Lucius tells her to lick it, she does so because the dumbass rolled a nat 1 on her nature check.She takes poison damage.
* Vahlka wipes the slime on Lucius' robe and we move into the room to investigate further, immediately walks into a pit trap and falls 30ft. Vahlka and Godfrey argue back and forth for awhile, Des tries to lift her out with her psionics but Vahlka freaks out about it and gets dropped, climbs out of the hole her damn self!!!
* We move on, finding a large crude shrine to Tiamat and a bunch of burned books everything is covered in the same weird slime. The books are burned beyond any use. Vahlka confirms "Yep that's definitely Tiamat" with a useless natural 20 on her religion check. The shrine seems to be Deathcrawl's attempt to desecrate what the beholder left behind.
* Godfrey wanders his happy ass into another trap, Vahlka smiles. Godfrey flies out the hole and flies around investigating the area a bit. Its above a seemingly bottomless pit.
* We leave Hamish and the cart behind because the passage is a bit narrow for him and descend down a narrow stairway. Eventually it opens up into a large open platform with a large pile of gold in the center with a narrow walkway leading up to it and a long long fall. Vahlka uses her divine sense - and senses an undead in the room ahead hiding behind the pile of gold.
* The undead seems to vanish, Vahlka waits a moment, then uses divine sense again - senses the undead behind the party, completely blocking the party's retreat. She warns the party - Deathcrawl speaks with us briefly but before he can say much Godfrey casts Hunger of Hadar on him and tells everyone to scatter.

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