Expedition 66: Return to the Fiend's Lair

Goals: Retrieve Delphi’s mask of invisibility; scope out the fiend’s lair to make sure there are no more fiendish threats.

We all gathered together at my mage tower, which I guess is the meeting place now. You know, it feels pretty good to feel like everyone wants to meet here. I enjoy being the host for this super awesome group of people. My friends showed up, all ready to set out. Delphi looks very cute, although I would not tell her that because she probably doesn’t enjoy this outfit and wants to look intimidating, but she does. She’s all dressed for the occasion, with armor that has been painted black, three weapons at her belt, and a coiled rope as well. Even when she’s not wearing fancy clothes, it all still matches nicely.

We head over to the lair with little difficulty. We move through the dungeon, treading carefully and retracing our footsteps to the mirror we thought may be a portal to Dis. On the way, we find an area with striations in the rock wall. Calliope finds what looks like three trapwires, and disarms a magical trap with help from Delphi. No surprises there. Whenever we have traps or mechanical things to figure out, I find the best thing to do is just keep people out of Calliope’s way, honestly. We all push forward into the room, which about 30 by 15 feet in area. This is where that creepy mirror was, which Uzmir and I identified as the landscape of Dis earlier. Behind this mirror, which is clouded and slowly turning transparent, we can see a small figure, manacled to the wall. Fuck. It’s Mara Klein, restrained and breathing heavily. Thinking this may be more tricky fiendish plots, I cast sending to communicate with the Mara Klein we know, who says she is safe at home. When we get close and start asking questions, it’s clear that this is a trap. How dare the fiendish fuckers pull this with Mara?? They look like they’re casting a spell, but I counterspell it, because fuck that. Then, in possibly the greatest moment of my career, I dispel the whole contraption before anyone else gets a word in. Still feeling really happy about that. No more fiendish bullshit, thank you very much.

Calliope finds more traps in the darkness, with her magic “I know everything about machines and wires” thing. She sees there is a slide trap, but doesn’t fall down it. We destroy a magic circle of some type, and continue messing around in the tunnels.

We eventually come to a 400 foot drop, the very same chasm where Uzmir killed the fiend. We’re looking for things to throw down there, when we see some large lampposts. Naturally in our haste to figure out how to get down there, we all completely forget basic logic of being in caves (cave rule number one: there are not lampposts in caves). We also forget cave rule number two: there are mimics in caves. These are mimics. Though somehow completely surprised, we kill them pretty easily, though one of Calliope’s thunder gauntlets get mangled. With my little understanding of how she does her armor-stuff, I start to console her over the loss of a great weapon, but she is unfazed, explaining she can easily make another one tomorrow.

We toss down a light-ball bearing into the chasm, where it is covered up by something below in the murky water. Seeing this, Calliope shoots some bolts into the darkness, but does not manage to hit anything. Yezra calls lighting, starting a ten-minute storm that absolutely fucking annihilates these two monsters. God, my friends are so cool. I take this moment to break out some snacks, and sit on a rock watching the lightning storm. Delphi, Uzmir and I climb down in different ways, using detect magic and good old swimming skills to recover Delphi’s mask from the mud below. On the way, we see the corpses of two octopus-creatures Yezra decimated, and they appear to be fiendish in nature. Honestly, it’s pretty cathartic to see all these fiendish creatures and machinations fall.

We also find two underwater passages under this murky lake, and Delphi casts ritual waterbreathing so we can all go check it out. We find that the passages are blocked off with iron bars, but with a couple well placed shatters, we manage to bring down the iron bars blocking off this entrance and swim forth into the passage. Inside, we find a runed section of wall, which seems to be more fiendish bullshit. I hypothesize this is a portal to one of the planes of hell, which Uzmir confirms would make a weak spot between our planes, allowing fiends to slip through more easily. As we go to check it out and destroy it, though, we get caught in a fight with some sort of fiend (I really do need to learn religion one of these days—update, Uzmir says it was a nycaloth). The nycaloth can cast spells and seems unfazed by most of our attacks—they appear to be effective, but this thing just will not go down. Unfortunately, the fiend breaks down the entrance we came through so that it is covered by rock, and then the one thing I cannot counterspell turns out to be dispel magic, so the fiend dispels our waterbreathing and other active buffs, leaving us all stranded in what may be our watery graves. Gods damn it! We manage to break down the demonic entry portal and kill the nycaloth, but that still leaves us with almost no time before we drown. It is at this point I start to panic—fighting fiends is one thing, but being trapped in small watery caves… bleh.

When Yezra passes out and appears to be at death’s door (gets a nat one on her death saves), I grab her and teleport into the demiplane Delphi made with my cloak. We hang out in there for a full minute, as I bring Yezra back to consciousness and we heal up, taking a breath of fresh air in preparation for our return. I am told that during this time, Shabeel and Uzmir and Calliope found a way to break through this wall, maybe using shatter. Delphi came to help us from the other side, so when Yezra and I plummeted back into existence, our friends were able to help pull us both to safety.

Needless to say, after all *that,* we got the fuck out of there for some much needed rest in warm, dry locations. I will note there might be more caverns down there to explore at a later date. I will also note—emphatically— that I have absolutely no interest in exploring it further.