"I'm ready to be mad!" Dur-Dur-Dur says as he’s waking up.
"How about you think about when to be mad before just doing it," 🌱 says. "Put your hat on before you get mad!"
"I can't! I'm so mad!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, wringing his circlet of intellect.
The party decides to go check out that weird room with the yugoloth statue in it, so Dragonbait, 🌱, and Dur-Dur-Dur go check that room out. Unfortunately, the lever was never lifted back to its starting point, so pandemonic winds lash out at the PC’s, with Dur-Dur-Dur’s pitiful excuse for a brain becoming wracked with evil visions of scary shit.
Dur-Dur-Dur lets out a shriek, “AAAAH! Get out of the way!" he shouts as he piles through his sleeping comrades, wriggling his way out into the room with the water.
"Oh no we gotta catch Dur-Dur-Dur!" Valour says as Dur-Dur-Dur splashes around.
🌱 uses wild companion to summon a bat.
And of course it looks like this:
They all step out of the creepy, floating platform room after deciding against making Wisdom saves because that would mean they have to run around with Dur-Dur-Dur. Chumbawumba sends Tubthumpin into the creepy room since Tubthumpin is a robot and doesn’t get scared, and the homunculus smacks the shit out of the lever until it’s back in its original position, stopping the pandemonium winds.
Dur-Dur-Dur stops being scared, but he doesn’t stop being wet because that’s not how water works.
🌱 sends his bat to the other balcony and uses echolocation to check the other side out.
"What are some ways we can get across?" 🌱 says.
"I can climb across,” Dur-Dur-Dur says, walking up the wall.
"Can you carry us across?" 🌱 says.
"Right now I have all the adrenaline in the world!” Dur-Dur-Dur says.
Dur-Dur-Dur carries 🌱 across the chasm and places him on the other balcony.
"Go get the wizard next," 🌱 says.
"The who?" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"The wizard,” 🌱 says. “Don't let him tell you no!"
Dur-Dur-Dur snatches up Zanzibar and the whole gang, placing them on the other side of the balcony. Valour, however, wants to jump across the rotating platforms with his ring of jumping, because if there’s one thing you should do in a dungeon meant to murder people, it’s fuck around.
Valour ties a rope around his waist and gives Dur-Dur-Dur the other end of the rope, letting the orc stand on the ceiling above him in case he falls. Valour leaps to one of the platforms.
"I cast guidance on him," Armand says, raising his hands.
"You have to be next to him," 🌱 says, reminding the old vampire how magic works.
"Yeah, jump next to me," Valour says.
"I'm not jumping!" Armand says.
"What's wrong? Don't have faith in Jergal?" Dur-Dur-Dur laughs from above.
Valour slips when jumping and almost falls, but Dur-Dur-Dur is hanging onto his rope and holds him above the floor, then starts swinging him back and forth like a pendulum, taunting him because that is how the Dur-Dur-Dur do.
Valour eventually makes all of his jumps and joins the others on the cramped side.
🌱 sends his bat to explore a nearby crawlway, finding a metal sheet blocking a small path—the same path that Zanzibar’s owl found earlier.
Armand detects a secret door by standing near it and waving his hands around like a detective.
While the vampire is detecting secrets, Zanzibar’s owl and 🌱’s bat fly through a hole in the floor that leads to a room shaped like a drum on its side. Carvings of demons surround the wall. The bat echolocates and notices that there are three locks hidden within the room, but the locks aren’t bat-key-shaped so the bat can’t unlock them.
"Hey can you cast knock through the owl and unlock it that way?" 🌱 says to Zanzibar.
"I did prepare it because we talked about it being one of the good spells yesterday!" Zanzibar says, looking at the three locks on the wall through his owl. He casts knock, opening one of them. "It would use all of my level three spells to open that door... also if there is a secret door,” he says, looking at the vampire.
Dragonbait steps up to the front of the group and smacks a hidden brick that causes the secret door to slide open, revealing a weird room. The room has two statues on either side of a pit. One statue is of a knight clad in armor, which Valour recognizes as Torm, who is one of those like three or four paladin deities based off a Viking or something. The other has a bearded man dressed like a wizard, which Chumbawumba recognizes as Azuth, the wizard Jesus. The pit beneath the statues has a clay, humanoid statue in it with a key around its neck. A treasure chest is next to the statue. Above the pit, on the same level as the statues, is an empty plinth where a statue would fit.
"That third empty plinth must be empty for a reason. Tell somebody to go stand on it!" Papazotl tells Zanzibar.
"Someone go stand on that!" Zanzibar says, pointing at the plinth on behalf of his god bird.
Dragonbait stands on the plinth.
Nobody knows what to do next.
Dragonbait makes the hand gestures of the statues, and nothing happens.
"Get the chest down there, Dur-Dur-Dur. There can't be two mimics in one game!" 🌱 says.
Dur-Dur-Dur doesn’t.
Artus Cimber inspects the statues and sees that they sit on a rotating, springloaded gear.
"This is some Legend of Zelda shit," Valour says.
Artus Cimber rotates the statue, and Dragonbait teleports from the plinth down to the pit, placing him right next to the golem, which animates and gets ready to swing on Dragonbait.
Dur-Dur-Dur casually walks up to the edge of the pit, ready to run down the sides and hit the golem, but there is an invisible barrier covering the whole pit, not letting him go down. "... Gooo Dragonbait!" he shouts.
Dragonbait is in trouble.
"Can we get Dragonbait out? Can we send someone down with him?" Armand says.
Artus Cimber rotates the statue back and waits for someone else to stand on the plinth.
Zanzibar steps up and holds a ray of frost to aim at the clay golem in case the barrier disappears.
Dragonbait draws his Flametongue and swings at the golem, but he can’t make contact with the creature. Armand steps up and dashes to the statue of Azuth while Chumbawuma crosses the room and readies a firebolt for anything that tries to fuck with him.
🌱 raises his plant parts and casts dispel magic on the force field floor, but the barrier is still there, unaffected by his spell. He stands there and pouts.
The golem turns towards Dragonbait and raises his fists, slamming them into Dragonbait and reducing his Hit Point maximum. Valour runs onto the plinth and holds his action to attack the golem once someone activates the statue to send him down there.
Dur-Dur-Dur cheers, but he’s not a bard so it does nothing. Except make people angry. When he can’t rage, he makes other people do it instead!
Artus Cimber rotates the statue of Torm, which thematically sends the paladin into the fight! Valour appears next to Dragonbait and uses his readied action to wrathful smite the golem, but since the golem is made of rocks, it takes no brain damage.
"I'm afraid to turn that one because it might bring the clay golem up here!" Armand says, looking at the statue of Azuth.
Zanzibar runs to the statue of Torm and readies an action to turn the statue the moment somebody appears on the empty plinth, which should send them back down into the pit.
Dragonbait manages to rake a bit of fire damage over the clay golem, then Chumbawumba grabs the statue of Azuth and spins it, which pops Dragonbait into the empty plinth and out of harms way—OOPS! Turns out Zanzibar triggers his readied action, sending Dragonbait right back down into the fight.
The clay golem swats Valour with a fist, hitting him for 17 damage and triggering him to make a Constitution save or lose 17 maximum Hit Points, which won’t be restored due to the Death Curse.
"I'm going to portent!" Zanzibar says, ready to give Valour a passing save.
"NOOOO!” Dur-Dur-Dur shouts. “Don't do that. His Constitution saves are like +4 and he has advantage! Don't waste it."
Valour rolls with advantage and critically fails both rolls, dropping his max HP by 17.
Everyone stares at Dur-Dur-Dur, whose one chance at producing accurate probability risk ratios turns around and just hits him in the face. He still doesn’t put on the hat.
Valour whirls back on the golem and hits it for 15 damage, then casts sanctuary on himself because this is some scary shit going on now.
"If they die, you can take their stuff!" Nangnang tells Dur-Dur-Dur, who looks ready to enter the fight.
"That's true..." Dur-Dur-Dur says.
The orc then steps around to see the action better, readying an action next to the empty plinth. If the golem comes up, he'll hit him with Durminator.
Artus Cimber runs to the statue of Torm and readies an action: if the clay golem appears on the plinth, he’ll rotate the statue and send it back down.
Zanzibar rotates the statue of Azuth, and Dragonbait teleports from the pit to the plinth. Dragonbait then runs to the statue of Azuth as well and rotates it, teleporting Valour from the pit onto the plinth. Every sumbitch then readies an action to attack the clay golem, and Valour then rotates the statue of Azuth, teleporting the golem from the pit onto the empty plinth.
Everyone unloads into the golem, hitting it with spells and weapons and all kinds of numbers. Right before the golem can take its turn, 🌱 rotates the statue of Torm and sends it back to the pit, causing it to miss its turn in the rotation.
After the golem’s turn, Valour then turns the statue of Azuth to bring the golem back up. Unfortunately, the golem also knows how to use readied actions, so it punches 🌱 in the face. Zanzibar portents a saving throw for 🌱, allowing him to not lose any more Hit Points.
The party then descends upon the golem, chopping it up and loading it with another barrage of spells. In the end, Dragonbait swings Flametongue around for a critical hit and cleaves through the clay golem, letting it drop in two halves onto the ground, the key around its neck clinking onto the invisible pit barrier.
"Zanzibar, look at this key and make sure it ain't cursed!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, giving the key to Zanzibar.
Zanzibar waves his magic over the key and determines that it isn’t cursed.
Dur-Dur-Dur then takes the key and stands on the plinth. 🌱 teleports him down to the pit where the chest is at.
"Nangnang, is this chest going to hurt me if I put this key in there?" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"It won't hurt me," Nangnang says.
"But will it hurt me?" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"I don’t know! I’m dead!" Nangnang says.
Dur-Dur-Dur turns the key into the chest and opens it, revealing two more crystalline eyeballs, one that is pale green and another that is pink.
"🌱, put these balls in your pants!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, giving him the eyes.
🌱 juggles the eyeballs for a bit, then collects some clay from the slain golem.
"I don't feel good. This has been a terrible day," Valour says, not liking the 17 Hit Point max reduction he just dealt with.
🌱 sends his bat down a hallway from their room and sees a large stone door with a mirror planted in the center of it. Ten sockets line the outside of the mirror, each being one diameter in width… almost like they were meant for some crystal eyeballs to be inserted into them.
"We have six eyeballs!" Armand says, which out of context sounds kind of weird.
🌱 looks into the mirror as he starts inserting eyeballs into the sockets, then sees himself getting more and more decrepit in appearance. Not that he doesn’t like a good bit of decomposition every now and then, but this is not what he really had in mind. Armand peeks in and sees his reflection growing more decrepit as well—which is bizarre since he’s already fairly old and frail as well. 🌱 then notices that his eyes are goat-shaped, and his head has stumpy horns on it.
He’s getting goated! He’s been getting goated all along!
"Anybody got any cans you're not using? I feel like chewing on a can," 🌱 says, then pulls out a can of beans, feeds the beans to Dragonbait, then starts chewing on the can.
Chumbawumba, who has been requesting decent food for the past day, can only stare dumbfounded. But really it’s his own damned fault. He’s been complaining that fungus has been his only sustenance, so why should he expect sustenance from a different fungus?
"Did we ever do the room where the dwarf died?" Zanzibar says, thinking about the shrine with the almiraj sarcophagus.
"No, but we can go look again!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, relishing another chance to see the dwarf die.
The party debates for damn near forever on what to do next. While they do so, 🌱’s bat starts fucking around with the purple fungus growth, and an eyeball pops out of another patch of purple fungus, casting sleep on the bat, causing it to drop. 🌱 picks up the bat and puts it on his hat.
Dur-Dur-Dur totes everyone to the other side of the balcony, all the while saying "Look at how fast I can count! Onetwothreefour--"
Eventually, the party is back in the room with the water and the carvings with weapons. Zanzibar grabs a trident and goes through the water veil without any issues, then sends his owl to fly around ahead. The owl passes through a long crawlspace that spans several feet before popping out on the other side, where it sees a painting on the wall of a jackal. Several locusts are carved into the wall around the jackal, and there’s a golden medallion around its neck. Assuming this is the entrance to I’jin’s tomb that the dwarf stepped through, he steps through the water veil and tells the other party members what he saw.
"I've learned many things!” Zanzibar declares. “There's a block on the other side. There's a jackal-man on the block. We're going to need a strong man. The jackal-man had a medallion painted on him and was surrounded by locusts."
The party then steps through the veil with tridents in hand, tossing the weapons back through the veils once they’ve stepped through. While walking to the jackal mural, the party notices a door to another room. Dragonbait opens the door, revealing a room with a cauldron bubbling with green liquid. A reflection of Dragonbait stands exactly like he’s standing.
The party then remembers Acererak’s warning, “Slake your shadow at the font.”
As Dragonbait moves, his shadow mimics him exactly. The party then tells Dragonbait to pantomime like he’s drinking from the cauldron, which he does. His shadow copies his movements, slurping up the liquid until none remains, at which point the shadow disappears.
Dragonbait glances inside the empty cauldron, then reaches in and pulls out a crystalline orange eye! 🌱 graciously takes the eye and adds it to his pants. The party then opens a door at the other end of the cauldron room, finding a dusty, old room. Armand is happy at this discovery since it is just like home for him.
“I wonder if we were supposed to get our shadow to go into this room,” Armand says. “And if that were to be something special… whatever.”
While going to the jackal thing, Armand realizes that there is a peephole in the wall they’re passing by. Ever one to peep in a hole, he puts his eye up to it and realizes that several magnifying lenses are stationed in the peephole, pointing directly at the bottom of the medallion on the jackal-man. Specifically, a part of the medallion with a picture of a vulture on it.
"Nangnang, is this good or bad treasure?" Dur-Dur-Dur says, looking at the medallion.
"What's bad treasure?" Nangnang says.
"It's treasure that hurts you!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
Tubthumpin smacks the medallion, causing it to fall off and a clay dial to fall out from behind it. At that point, Tubthumpin should have made a DC 14 Constitution save as 8d10 acid damage spewed out of the hole where the medallion was at, but a Dungeon Master just kind of misread that part!
Don’t worry… I’ll make up for that later.
The party looks at the clay dial, which has several hieroglyphs scrawled on it. Thinking the order of the hieroglyphs is important, the PC’s have Chumbawumba cast mending on it, reinserting it back into the medallion on the painting.
Zanzibar notices that one of the locusts on the painting can be pressed down, so Tubthumpin hits the button, which causes the wall with the paint to recede into the ground, revealing the tomb of I’jin behind it.
Dur-Dur-Dur doesn’t want to end up like the dead dwarf. Or a live dwarf, to be honest, so he starts to walk on the wall and climbs above the barge on the ceiling, near the shaft that leads upward through the ceiling.
"Chumbawumba, come check out your comrade," Valour says from the entrance.
"DON'T COME IN THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW!" Dur-Dur-Dur shouts.
"Well, the fact that you said that makes me want to!" Chumbawumba says.
Dur-Dur-Dur runs back to the party. The PC’s analyze what’s in order for them, and they start mapping out ways to hop from hieroglyph to hieroglyph, since the stepping order seems significant.
"Let's get a possum to do it... or Dur-Dur-Dur," Armand says.
Valour instead ventures forth to check out the dead dwarf. He steps on vulture tile first since Acerarak’s warning said that the vulture would be the first one. As he does so, the stone block rises up and closes off the rest of the party, trapping him with a dead dwarf.
Not the worst situation he’s been in... but not the best!
With nobody seeing him, Valour doesn’t perform ceremony or any of that paladin shit, instead choosing to loot the dwarf, finding a 500 gp peridot on the dwarf’s turban and a 500 gp diamond in his pouch, and two crystal eyeballs that are dark blue and vibrant purple.
That’s nine crystal eyeballs in total!
"I can probably fight some locusts, right?" Valour says out loud.
On the other side of the block, Armand hears Valour’s words in his head as he’s staring through the peephole. "Jergal, is that you?" Armand says.
Valour can hear Armand in his own head as well. "Um... who is this?"
"This is Armand, who is this?" Armand says.
"Armand is that you?" Valour says.
He literally just said who he was!
"Yeah. How are you talking to me?" Armand says.
"I just stepped in here behind this rock!" Valour says. "Apparently, I broadcast that out loud."
Armand peers through the peephole and realizes that the vulture symbol on the medallion has shifted to a different symbol, this one being a serpent. Armand tells Valour that there is a serpent on the medallion now, so Valour steps onto the serpent hieroglyph. Surprise, no locusts spill forth and devour him! And the hieroglyph on the medallion then changes to a different symbol.
The two relay information back and forth to one another until Valour makes his way up to the sarcophagus, which unlocks after he steps on the last hieroglyph. The stone block also descends downward, revealing the rest of the party.
Valour peeks down and sees the bones of an almiraj and a separated horn. Valour reaches for the horn, but I’jin’s spirit spirals out of it and leaps towards his head, but Moa pushes the spirit out. I’jin then soars towards Dragonbait and possesses him, granting him the flaw of “never sticking to a plan” but also giving him a BUTTLOAD of Dexterity.
Since Dragonbait is feeling extra fast with his new possession, he doffs his breastplate and gives it to Valour, who by now is used to receiving Dragonbait’s hand-me-downs.
"Thank you," Valour says, then goes invisible and dresses into the breastplate attire.
Chumbawumba says he can use one of his infused abilities to infuse his breastplate, so he grabs hold of it and starts hammering away on it to make it fancy.
Zanzibar inspects the almiraj horn and sees that it is a wand of wonder, which definitely will add to their shenanigans. They give it to Chumbawumba since he’s the more chaotic of the lot.
"When you die, I call dibs on that," Zanzibar says when giving the wand over.
Zanzibar then suggests going through the long crawlspace nearby and trying to find anything that the owl missed.
Valour agrees, "It's gotta be here for some reason. Let's check it out!"
Dragonbait is super eager to crawl through some spaces, so he inches his way through the long tunnel for a good while, but after a little while, he feels the whole area rotate a little bit, then drop five feet. His segment of tunnel is now blocked off, trapping him!
Not one to let his knightly buddy stay trapped, Valour goes to check on him by climbing through the tunnel as well. Instead of seeing Dragonbait, he sees a skeleton lying inside the tunnel. He pilfers the corpse since nobody is looking, and finds a tenth crystal eyeball! They now have the whole set! But as he steps towards the skeleton, the tunnel segment rotates again, this time pushing Valour up and blocking off the tunnel for him, but reconnecting Dragonbait.
The saurian crawls out of the tunnel and tells the other PC’s what happened, so 🌱 uses his staff of the serpent to summon a giant constrictor snake, which slithers down the path and triggers the rotation again, freeing Valour but trapping the snake.
After a lot of debate regarding who should go in to free who, Dur-Dur-Dur squeezes through the crawlspaces and just smacks the shit out of an area, snatches the staff back up, then walks out.
"You guys with all your spells!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, and he can barely spell at all!
They now have 10 crystal eyes.
Also, there was that one mirror door with 10 crystal eye shaped holes.
Hrm...
"Do we want to go check the place where the tomb guardians were?" Armand says.
"Do we want to do that before or after the eyeball door?" Zanzibar says.
They return to the mirror door, and Dragonbait inserts the eyeballs. The eyeballs rest neatly in the crevices, and the door shudders as it lowers into the ground, revealing a very strange room on the other side. It's like, super bizarre! Very intriguing. I can't wait to tell you about it.
Speaking of leaving people hanging:
