(Tales from the D&D Table) The Missing Mage Part Three

As the party examine the huge stadium-like cavern we find ourselves in, we realise that despite how well lit the area is there are no apparent light sources. Across the floor, at the bottom of a huge creepy dais, is a fractalline pattern of lumps of various sizes. In the centre of this is a humanoid figure in dark robes, beckoning us down.

The group is, of course, wary of such a stranger, but before any action can really be taken, the figure makes a different gesture and five chairs form out of the stone behind them, scoop them up and slide down towards the figure who turns out to be apparently a man in a black robe with thread-of-gold fractalline embroidery and a featureless mask, decorated on the forehead with a symbol that is like a wiggly loop within a triangle.

Peculiarly, the fellow seems happy, if surprised, to see us. Penny tells him that Jeremy had sent us down, and he mentions that we're early and that everyone is currently out searching for a mislaid 'special thing' but should be along soon. Apparently the party has been mistaken for a group of initiates that the Robed Person has been expecting.

The Robed Person asks us about a fifth person, and Euraxia quickly lies and says that he had died in the Darkness. The Robed Person says that there was meant to be someone to escort us through the Darkness but they must have been called away to join the search. Penny asks about how it's strange that he mentions people but the town above is barren, to the quiet face-palming of the more savvy party members. After an awkward glance at the lumps, he mentions there were more but we should just wait as the rest will be returning soon.

The Robed Person gestures again and a plate full of raw vegetables appears and he suggests we snack as we wait. The whole situation has the entire group skeeved out so Penny feigns a bad reaction to a carrot and requests a quick way out.

Somehow the strange being, despite confusion, believes her, and after some awkward questions he provides the fighter a magic light and vague instructions on how to get back - just picture your target location in your mind as you travel through the Darkness.

Attempting to go straight back to the inn but instead finding ourselves in a building nearby, the party travel the short distance remaining to the inn, encountering no-one on the way. When they enter, however, it is swiftly discovered that both the unusually tall gnome and Miguel have both disappeared. The gang is essentially back at square one.

Searching the room Miguel had been left in, Halbarad finds the man's Sending Stone hidden under the bed. He takes the opportunity to update Sophie, the girl who had hired the group, on how we knew where her uncle was and we were working on rescuing him.

(At this point our DM took his phone out of his pocket, bemoaning its sudden warmth. "It's all that Hentai." I jokingly suggest just as our current host's father walks into the room.)

A short argument arises about how to plan our way back into the Town Hall complex again, Euraxia certain that their previous ruse would not work again despite not being caught the first time. There was also the fact that she no longer had the big-gnome's armour. Penny decides affirmative action is required and uses a blanket to disguise herself as a cultist, to which the rest of the party follow suit; the only one not to do so is Halbarad who instead casts Disguise Self to imitate one of the guards.

The party climb the mesa stairs once more in the pre-dawn light and let themselves back in, descending the spiral stairs once more; this time stopping at 'Holding', the floor they had been trapped on. Next to each door is a lever, and preparing for danger from within, Halbarad pulls the first - to reveal the cell the gang had escaped from, the only contents of which were the rags scattered across the floor.

The next lever reveals the cell was being used as a storeroom, with various household miscellanea and a load of healing kits which the group share out between them so they each had one. Only Euraxia had two, having taken the one the guard had had on him in his pockets earlier.

The third door is opened and from inside springs the bandit leader from the bridge, a scuffle that now seems so long ago. He is restrained and questioned, revealing that his family (who, as it turns out, were the rest of the bandits) had been taken as well, the last time he saw them was before he was trapped, and that he didn't remember how he came to be there.

Taking a pragmatic approach, Nick asks if he wants to help us find out what's going on here and maybe even find his family. He agrees, and Halbarad gives him one of his daggers.

The Warlock opens the fourth door, and from inside cascades the other Bridge Bandit, much to the relief of the guy we'd just saved. After a brief, and admittedly touching, reunion between Steve and Cletus, and finding doors five, six and eight opening to empty rooms, we head to the seventh door.

Its opening is met with a huge axe swinging out, followed by a very upset Orc woman. She takes another swing at the group, and it's only a swift declaration of "Don't kill us we're here to help" that stops her taking off our heads.

The Orc woman lowers her axe, and after introducing herself as Gug, also agrees to help us stop the apparent cult, as revenge for her incarceration.

And thus the band of four became seven, if only for a short time.

(Tales from the D&D Table) The Missing Mage Part Two

Picking up where we left off, with the minor change of the Warlock changing from Azkabam to Halbarad (a far more tolerable character), the party is stuck in a cell with Miguel, the man they had been searching for.

Euraxia, having peered through the hole made by the Paladin Penny and being surprised by an eye peering back at her, attempts to poke it. This does not fare well for her: her hand is now stuck in whatever owns the eye and she finds herself being pulled through the fragile not-stone wall and up, through the town hall above and far into the sky.

Everyone else merely sees her start seizing, her arm stuck through the wall with a fleshy ooze-like stuff clinging to her. Penny tries to pull the rogue back away from the wall but fails. Halbarad works out that the fleshy ooze-like stuff is like that because the creature on the other side of the wall is a fleshy, ooze-like thing.

While Penny and the fighter Nicholas struggle to prevent Euraxia from being sucked through the wall, Penny whacks the wall again in a separate place, making another hole through which seeps more fleshy ooze-like. Nicholas uses the torch he holds to try to burn the ooze, which thins out a little but not enough to relinquish its grip on the half-elf. The warlock attempts an Eldritch Blast, hitting the wall instead making yet another hole, which the paladin attempts to pull down, connecting the holes into one big one.

At this point Euraxia stops hallucinating and stabs at the ooze with her dagger, causing it to finally let go and she falls back, feeling very out-of-sorts indeed. Penny stabs the ooze, which begins to retreat; faster after Euraxia immerses her dagger in its being again.

Halbarad looks through the hole after the retreating fleshy ooze-like thing, and sees it retreating down a spiral staircase at the end of the hallway, which is lined with more not-stone cells. Signs on the stairway indicate 'Facade' up the stairs and, ominously, 'Processing' down.

Apparent danger now absent, Penny manages to awkwardly heft Miguel onto her shoulder and, enlarging the hole for ease of passage, we leave the cell and head to the stairs.

Deciding that exploring wherever we are with Miguel is probably a bad idea, we decide to head up. The fighter heads up first, treading heavily with his bare feet, and the warlock follows making an even louder ruckus. At the top, they find themselves under a light desk, which they move out of the way of the rest of the party.

As the rogue, bringing up the rear and still suffering the after-effects of her hallucinations, leaves the spiral staircase, they hear footsteps from below headed upwards, so the group upturn the desk and cover the exit of the stairs, hoping to at least mildly inconvenience whoever is following. They head out of the room into a hallway that spans the entire length of the building with the front entrance at one end and a back door at the other.

Thinking fast (despite her low intelligence) Euraxia pulls out her soap from her bag and, after wetting it, sends it skidding down the hallway towards the back door, reasoning that if there was a trap like the one at the front the soap would fall in and prove its existence. Thankfully there wasn't, but the door itself was locked - and just as sturdy as the front.

Hearing the desk being pushed aside from the room they'd just left, the party ducks into a side room (Euraxia retrieving her soap) and breaks a window to escape through; the fighter insisting on being carried beyond the broken glass while Halbarad manages to injure himself on a shard still stuck in the frame. This turns out to be a rather dangerous endeavour in itself as the space between the building and the edge of the mesa is just wide enough for travel in single file with Halbarad in front, followed by Euraxia then Penny (still carrying a now-somehow-asleep Miguel) and Nicholas bringing up rearguard.

Reaching the corner of the Town Hall, Halbarad peeks around to discover the entrance now guarded by two men in patchy plate armour. Euraxia slides past and walks up to the guards to distract them while the rest of the party head towards the stairs down into the town.

"Hey; there's a commotion going on downstairs - something about escaping prisoners? They need your help."

'Um.. that's why we were posted out here though.'

"Yeah, but they were seen going downstairs into processing and they need the extra hands."

'Damn it Jeremy.' One of the guards ducks back inside while the other lingers.

"You know how it is; always hand off the difficult jobs to the other guys. It sounded like they thought they'd be a bit of trouble though. Tell you what, I'll keep an eye on things here while you go help too."

'You sure? I guess that works...' and off goes the other.

Once the door has closed behind him, Euraxia beckons the party to go quickly and quietly down the stairs, following at the rear. Once out of sight of the Town Hall, the group all run back to the inn and slump down at a table. Miguel is placed down next to them.

Intending to rest up, recuperate and plan ahead, Nicholas enters one of the inn rooms to discover their stolen belongings stashed inside. Equipment reclaimed and Euraxia's musings that perhaps the bandits and the Town Hall Happenings are connected going apparently ignored, Nicholas takes first watch as the rest of the group sleep. His and Euraxia's shifts go by undisturbed, but during Penny's watch, something rustles outside.

She is outside investigating just long enough for one of the poorly equipped guards from before to somehow slip inside. Penny, immediately upon her return inside, takes them by surprise herself and grapples him, pinning his arms to his side. She wakes the rest of the crew except for the unfortunate Miguel (who has by this time been escorted into a comfortable room and tucked in) and we attempt to interrogate the unusually tall gnome.

At first all we get are ramblings about the 'one true god Kalina' until Penny threatens to turn his insides into outsides at which point all the party are able to uncover is that the townsfolk are all being used for some nefarious probably-a-ritual and are all in processing and the fleshy ooze-like thing is the Jeremy guy that the guard had mentioned before; someone a bit higher up the 'food chain' than the guards.

Having had enough, Halbarad asks the paladin to remove the guy's metal mask so he can knock the dude out with a thump to the face. Sizing up the fellow's armour, Euraxia reasons she can use it as a disguise so they can sneak back into the Town Hall as prisoners being led by a guard.

Hiding their larger weaponry and loosely binding themselves, with Euraxia wearing the awkward plate and mask and confidently leading the way, the group head back up the stairs as the sun slowly rises.

Using a key still in the armour pockets they re-enter the building and luckily the trap had been disabled for easy use by those meant to be there. People who were, apparently, currently absent.

Heading back down the spiral stairs, they pass the floor they had been briefly detained on and noticed that the door they'd made for themselves was apparently no longer there; it was as intact as the rest of them.

Down in Processing they found the floor to be pretty much identical to the one above, except for the labels on the doors and the guardpost at one end of the hallway - with a very oozy occupant who seemed to be currently distracted with, no doubt, workplace incident forms to be filled in triplicate and filed with the appropriate officers in HR.

The townsfolk apparently forgotten in the worry of being spotted by Jeremy, Euraxia and the party continue down the stairs to the bottom of the spiral to a floor that is yet again identical to the one above, but thankfully lacking in slimy horrors. The only difference with this floor is the wide stairway heading downwards into pitch darkness.

The group of almost-heroes pile into the empty guardpost and doff their 'bonds'. As Euraxia gladly sheds the borrowed armour, Halbarad uses Comprehend Languages to investigate the gnomish paperwork left on the desk in the middle of the room.

The language having been corrupted somehow does not help; even with the spell he can only make out some few words and a couple of passages mentioning apparently important people and locations. No understanding comes of this, so we investigate a set of eight levers that line one wall of the room, one of them pulled. Euraxia pushes it to match the others, reasoning that if the others currently were locked then that would lock whatever it was connected to and thus obstruct whatever would be on the other side of that lock.

Halbarad, however, follows no such logic and tugs on a different lever, which causes the sound of heavy breathing to appear from somewhere down the corridor.

Since his spell is still active, and ever the curious one, Halbarad requests of Penny to carry him from door to door to read what each of the labels on them say.

Door One: 'Duck?'

Door Two: 'Compass Turtles.'

Door Three: 'Darkness.'

Door Four: This one has no label on it, much to the warlock's (and the paladin's) disappointment.

Door Five. 'DO NOT OPEN! If you open this door you are being controlled. If you open this door you are to close it immediately and report to your superiors.'

Door Six: 'Fox.'

As we work our way down the corridor we come closer to the stairs and from the darkness comes a sussuration much like whispering. Nearly dauntless, we continue reading the labels.

Door Seven: 'Fortune Teller.'

Door Eight: 'Sponge.'

We are right next to the darkness and it feels a lot darker than normal darkness. The torches don't seem to be able to cast their usual light down this end. Penny casts Divine Sense again, and feels the presence of corrupted celestial and fiendish energies from around them in the cells - or was it from the cells themselves?

The party start down the ominous stairs, but immediately turn around to go back to the hallway as it was so dark as to be immediately disorientating. Not even the 'halfers' with their darkvision could see. What was even more disconcerting was that it took a good couple of minutes to return to the hallway when they had only taken a couple of steps in...

 Using the various lengths of rope the party owned, they used them to tether each other together lest one get lost in the Dark. Reluctantly the group re-enter the Dark, carefully descending. The further the group goes the thicker the air seems and the louder the whispering which never quite forms into actual words. Something is very wrong with this Darkness, but having gone so far the only way out is further on. Halbarad is the only one not forced to his knees by a painful sensation of something scratching at them from inside their bodies, but everyone manages to regain their footing and continue onwards through the wall of blackness ahead of them.

Suddenly the pressure dramatically changes and it is like trying to walk through half-set concrete. Penny, Nicholas and Euraxia manage to force their way through into a huge cavern, dragging the unfortunate warlock out behind them who suffers from such a violent action.

The group takes a moment to recover and untie themselves, and gaze around them with awe.

The cavern they are in is absolutely enormous, the Darkness seeming to be a patch some twenty feet away from the nearest wall. The floor slopes towards a dais in the centre in such a way that, were the cavern filled with a crowd, everyone could see whatever was happening in the middle. Obviously whatever this space was for was not going to be something good!