Expedition 37: Back to the Bunker

Or, "The Trap. The trap for wizards, the trap chosen especially to kill wizards, wizard's trap."

## Expedition 37: Back to the Bunker

### Summary

We decide to look past the Badlands bunker, and fall into a deadly anti-magic slime trap. We also discover the manufacturing pits.

### Detailed Writeup

The party arrived at the bunker and continued down the stairs. As we reached another door at the bottom, we triggered a mechanism that caused the stairs behind us to turn into a slide, and a hatch above dropped a gelatinous cube. We attacked the cube as it came down, and managed to kill it thanks to Jamie and Nexrin. To try and escape this trap, Uzmir opened the door at the bottom, revealing a beholder statue that immediately suffused the party in an anti-magic cone. Unfortunately, this removed Calliope's ability to walk. At this point, a second cube came down the chute. Nexrin and Jamie avoided it, but Tolyr was caught in it. Jamie leapt above the door and tried to shove the door closed, but it was caught on Uzmir and Calliope. Uzmir shifted them out of the way, and allowed the door to close. The 2nd ooze raced down to the bottom, catching Calliope and impacting the door and eating away at it. A third ooze fell down the chute. The door broke open, exposing the group to the anti-magic cone once more. Jamie and Calliope were briefly caught on in the third cube, but were able to escape and the final cube was killed. The fight was taxing enough that the party decided to take a short rest.

After that, the group entered the bunker and searched it, in case the undead mage was able to revive itself. The laboratory seemed to have been damaged in an explosion. Calliope found a skull inside a pile of rubble, which promptly attacked. After a short mage battle between the skull, Tolyr, and Uzmir, Nexrin rushed it and smashed the skull to bits. Calliope knew that the frost skull would be able to reform itself, so the party decided to dispel the magic contained in the skull.

After that, the party headed down the track towards the Manufacturing Pits. We found a bright landscape, with green hills and mountains. Tolyr was able to immediately identify it as an illusion. Interestingly, the suns were different than they were now. Torr was a bright sun in the sky, rather than a small star in the distance.

The party moved on up the stairs, and were subjected to poison. Only Calliope suffered from it, at which point the party was ambushed by gricks. They briefly attacked, but were quickly dispatched thanks to Uzmir's psionic spells. After that, Tolyr casted Bless on Tolyr, Uzmir, and Nexrin to protect against poison and we rushed through the poison trap.

On the other side, we found a massive cavern full of pipes and vats full of green and white liquid. The air was full of poison and acid, making it difficult to breathe. On a nearby platform the group spotted a couple skeletons, their garb mostly eaten away. Calliope rummaged through them with her mage hand, finding some kind of old religious icon, which Uzmir identified as an icon to Ova in the shape of a heron. After that the group left, taking a detour to remove the gemstone from beholder, though the anti-magic effect was no longer there.

The group then returned to Port Vrall.