The party decides that they, in fact, do not want to go through the door with all the shapes on it because they are not in a mood of geometry.
"Doomfist it's time for your story. Why is your mask magical?" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
Nobody hears about the magical mask from the magical Doomfist.
"Let's talk to the kids,” Valour says.
"I don’t like the kids. They are weird!" Zanzibar says, looking at the weird doll children.
"Children!” Dur-Dur-Dur shouts to his adopted weird things. “Wardaddy needs answers!" He then fixes Joho the Monkey's squeaky wheel with some oil, and the terrifying doll hugs him, giving him a nice little boon that lets him essentially cast comprehend languages for a bit.
"The Sewn Sisters were nurturing some kind of thing back there," Strawbundle says, pointing at the door with the shapes.
"What are you?" Valour says with his low Charisma.
"They're my children!" Dur-Dur-Dur shouts.
"We used to be kids, but they did this to us," Strawbundle says, pointing at the dead hags.
"That's terrible!" Valour says.
Zanzibar decides to identify the two coins over Widow Groat’s eyes, finding out they’re just regular coins. Meanwhile Dur-Dur-Dur tries to be a good father by drawing a smiley face with a tongue on Clay-No-Face, but his finger goes through mouth altogether and forms a massive hold in its head.
"Thank you for giving me a mouth!" Clay-No-Face says, his hole flopping.
"You're a real boy!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
"No I'm not…" Clay-No-Face flutters, his hole mouth drooping.
"Everyone has their own experiences. There is no such thing as normal!" Valour says, trying to lighten up the mood with what little Charisma he has.
"All right children, we're going to go through drills. It may take a while," Dur-Dur-Dur says. "Do we know how to get you back into a real body?”
"What do you mean by a real body?" Valour says. "What about his body? Are you going to take someone else's?"
"There's a witch body right here," 🌱says, pointing at all the dead witchiness around them.
"But then we'll be making them be the person they don't like the most! And the wereboars will be better!" Valour says, pointing at the dead wereboars to make dead wereboar ghost children with because holy shit these kids have been through pure hell, why not just make them dead wereboars!?
"If there's one thing I know about children is that they'll prefer to be in the body of wereboars," 🌱says, knowing nothing about children.
"How do we get you into better bodies?" Dur-Dur-Dur says to his kids.
The dolls all shrug.
"Why do you think they would know that?" Valour says.
"Where do the witches keep their witch's potion?" 🌱 says, knowing somewhere in someplace there’s gotta be a witch’s potion that he can keep and maybe not use to help the children.
"That's a good question!" Valour says.
The dolls all point at the cauldron.
"That's a good answer!" Valour says.
🌱 takes off the cauldron lid and throws a froghemoth eye from his bag of all the things into the cauldron. It bobs up and down, as eyes do when cauldroned, then begins to jitter like it just snorted a whole mess of cocaine.
"Children what else is there to do down here?" Dur-Dur-Dur says, seeing as he’s slaughtered most everything else there is to do down here.
"Has anyone else tried to pass these tests before?" Zanzibar says.
Strawbundle nods.
They decide they don’t want to go through the door with geometry all over it, and instead to explore more areas of the deathly murder cog room above. That’s neat! I hope it all goes well for them.
It doesn’t.
Zanzibar goes all Bran Stark and summons his owl, then sees through its eyes. He sends the owl into the Mechanus chamber room and sees all these cool little chains and vortexes and such that are just doing their thing. He decides to send the flappy bird into the platform opposite their own in the vortex room, and what do you know…
There’s a brass armillary sphere of the planet, the sun, and the moon just hanging out in this little crawlspace! The planet is the largest, and the small sun and moon are rotating around it JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE, SO !@#$ YOUR ASTRONOMY, KAEPERNICK!
The owl gets near the sphere, and when it lands next to it, the sphere opens up and reveals a fancy chair with controls, levers, and buttons on its armrests! It’s like a little control room!
Zanzibar looks to his fellow party members and decides to ask which of them wants to sit in the magic chair in the magic sphere. "Who wants to—ME! I want to! Excuse me! Pardon me! I get to pilot the whole earth!"
As Zanzibar misty steps to the other side of the scary murder chains, Dur-Dur-Dur leaps across to the other side as well.
And that’s when the robots appear!
Pouring out from the vortex above them, descending with the Mechanus chain, a swarm of cube-shaped mechanical monsters with steel wings unleash a flurry of shots from their bows, targeting Zanzibar and peppering him with a few attacks. Lukanu sees that he is in mortal danger and runs in to defend his honor, drawing her bow and killing one.
As the fight begins, another robot creature descends with them. Larger and star-shaped, this robot is encased in a decahedron geometric ship that hums and drones. Well, this thing flies down and sprays poisonous gas in Zanzibar’s face. He runs and casts shield and cries a little.
Dur-Dur-Dur runs along the wall and chops the flying creatures up while Dragonbait snipes them from the platform. 🌱 faerie fires a batch of them so they glow like disco lights, then he runs away with Zanzibar.
Doomfist starts chucking darts at the robots and hits them. The darts do some damage. Yeah. He’s participating at least. Chumbawumba however brings the full artillery forward and launches a fireball out of his gun and ignites the ceiling. Then he uses boots of the winding path to teleport away.
Valour casts shield of faith on Zanzibar, giving him two shields! Can’t be too careful with the old folks!
Zanzibar uses the Ring of Winter to cast cone of cold and freeze up lots of the robots. Then he books it into the room with the planet chair. Lukanu destroys the flying machine robot with an arrow, and it descends into the depths. Dur-Dur-Dur and Dragonbait then shoot down and chop down the rest.
Zanzibar stands near the armillary sphere, and it opens up to reveal the chair. Ah yes! Chairs! So much better than barbaric couches! He hops into the chair with all the fancy buttons and such, and the planetary sphere closes around him, priming for something to activate it. Zanzibar also realizes that walls of the sphere are transparent from inside, allowing him to see outside.
This is the best!
Zanzibar sees Dur-Dur-Dur enter the room and take notice of the shiny machine.
This is not the best anymore!
"Oh what do we have here?" Dur-Dur-Dur says, tapping the armillary sphere with his Durminator.
"STOP THAT!" Zanzibar shouts from inside.
"Zanzibar is trapped!" Dur-Dur-Dur says, hearing his muffled voice.
"I'm not trapped!" Zanzibar shouts.
Dur-Dur-Dur runs over and shouts over the Mechanus chain, "Zanzibar is trapped you guys! Don't worry!” He then runs back to the sphere. “Are you being held against your will?"
"I am fine so far!"
Dur-Dur-Dur then looks at the little spheres of the sun and moon hanging down. "I wonder if I can cut these little balls off..."
"I’M NOT BEING HELD AGAINST MY WILL! PLEASE NO SMASHING!" Zanzibar shouts.
"Zanzibar, say something only I would know!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
Zanzibar panics, afraid that Dur-Dur-Dur will break his new machine. "Do you remember that time we fought a dragon?"
Dur-Dur-Dur narrows his eyes. "Dragons… aren't… real!"
Dur-Dur-Dur raises his axe and smashes the moon, which just happens to free the hellish nightmare creature inside of it that spews out and materializes on the floor. A winged nycaloth fiend spreads its wings, a gleaming axe shining with a sleek sheen gripped in its palm. It looks at the orc.
Dur-Dur-Dur engages face-to-face with the fiend and smashes at it with his own axe while Zanzibar watches from inside the sphere!
The rest of the party hears the engagement, so they leap and teleport across the gap to close in and assist the orc.
Except for Chumbawumba, he sits back and aims his gun around.
The nycaloth swings twice at Dur-Dur-Dur with its axe, narrowly missing the orc and almost cleaving his head straight from his shoulders. The sheen of the weapon swinging through the air sounds very… vorpal!
Zanzibar panics and does what any mage would do while in a giant sphere of buttons and levers—he pulls a lever! The armillary sphere rocks and makes some WOOP WOOP WOOP noises, then it casts cloudkill inside the sphere where Zanzibar is sitting.
This is not how the mage expected to pilot the planet! He immediately misty steps out because nope!
Doomfist steps in and beats the nycaloth with his mace while 🌱 shouts, "All right buddy, we'll make it over there!"
Chumbawumba is tired of not being in the fight since everyone left him, so he tries to jump the gap and barely grabs the ledge because he's so fat, then scurries up while doing his best because his testicle-shaped body just isn't built for jumping.
Lukanu hops on top of the sphere and swings with the dragon sword, jabbing the nycaloth back. Valour steps in as well and screams profanity since he’s boxed in with Dragonbait. He raises his sword and casts turn the unholy! The fiend fails and flies away from the fight, soaring through the halls and past the room with the Mechanus Chain, soaring through the once cursed hall where their clothes would decay.
"Don't hit him! You'll break the enchantment!" Valour shouts.
Nobody hits the fiend and it flies away.
To be lost in the dungeon.
Where they are.
Everyone goes from “Yay the scary thing is running!” to “No the scary thing is escaping!”
Zanzibar uses the Ring of Winter to cut off its escape with a wall of ice. Chumbawuma realizes that now he has to get his fat butt back over the gap that he tried so hard to get across the first time, “Well shit!” he says, the jumps across testicularly.
The PC’s fire salvos of arrows and shit from their platform, picking at the nycaloth. Valour casts protection from good and evil on himself and plants himself in the middle of the archway. The nycaloth closes in, swinging its weapon with disadvantage and clanking off of Valour’s parrying swings.
Doomfist steps up, mace of terror twirling in his big hand, and clobbers the fiend in the face with it, causing it to be banished back to its shadow realm as its axe clatters to the floor.
Zanzibar runs back to his planet sphere and cries a little bit when he sees it’s no longer functional and full of gas, just like his grandfather, Grandzibar. This makes him sad, and as his Grandzibar would always say, "the saddest candle cries the youngest."
Sad Zanzibar casts identify on the nycaloth's axe, confirming that is, in fact, a vorpal greataxe. Any critical hit made with the axe immediately decapitates the target… so yeah, they were all one natural 20 away from joining Soren, McSneakle, Argus, and Armand in the list of dead PC’s.
Dur-Dur-Dur grabs the greataxe.
"Who else can use this? Dragonfist?" Doomfist says, looking at the saurian.
"Not everyone is a fist!" Valour says.
The party takes a short rest so that Dur-Dur-Dur can attune to his new murder weapon of murderness that will surely come in handy.
While resting, they go down to the witches’ room and chow down on all that food in the scarecrow’s chambers. Valour then grabs the sun orb from the armillary sphere and gives it to Chumbawumba to rebuild his homunculus.
"I'm gonna call it Rad Dog-Pickle!" Chumbawumba says, and he does.
Having a brief rest, the party uses some Quest vision to look at the cog arrangements on the wall, realizing that there is a path that they missed. Valour talks to the horsey and tells it to twist some blue knobs and hit some blue buttons which opens a path to something reeeeally weird.
Zanzibar sends his owl down the new hallway and sees an open room, roughly the right size for a fight to happen in, with a golden mastodon standing in the center. The wall is covered in depictions of lots and lots of devil monsters fighting a Chultan warrior riding a mastodon through hell. It’s the most heavy metal album cover that could ever exist.
"I'm pretty sure there's 1,000 XP down there!" Zanzibar says, pointing down the hall. "There's a giant golden mastodon warrior figure!"
Lukanu hears what he says, then tells him that she knows who the warrior is. “Ch’gakare!” she speaks his name reverently. “Ch’gakare was a great warrior banished by an Omuan king to the great hells, but with his trusted mastodon, Ghom, he vanquished the devils and rode out—returning to the land of the living. He then confronted the king and chopped his evil head off, turning it into a golden, bejewelled chalice—the Chalice of Ch’gakare. His legend was sacrament to the Omuans and a warning to the nobility.”
"I have the Eye of Zaltec," Zanzibar says.
"No, I have the Eye of Zaltec," Valour says.
"That's the one you gave to me!" Zanzibar says.
"Yeah... Secretly!" Valour says, trying to get Zanzibar to take the hint.
Silence.
"I have the Eye of Zaltec!" Dur-Dur-Dur says.
They all produce their treasured items: the Black Opal Crown, the Eye of Zaltec, and the Navel of the Moon.
"Well, you guys want to go fight the golden mastodon warrior?" Zanzibar says.
They enter the room, taking note of its bizarre cleanliness. "Ghom looks like a fine steed, but not as good as you, Quest!" Valour reassures his control panel steed.
"Does it rotate?" Dur-Dur-Dur says, seeing that the mastodon is mounted on a series of cogs.
They check the statue out and examine the murals around it, seeing that the murals sure enough depict a series of nasty devil things.
"Dur-Dur-Dur, hop on his back and we'll spin it!" Valour says.
"This sounds like an NPC thing to do," Dur-Dur-Dur says.
Lukanu is more than happy to sit on the golden mastodon of Ghom, but when she gets up there, nothing happens, and the PC’s can’t get it to rotate.
Chumbawumba creeps away, standing in the hallway and further away from anything dangerous that might happen. "I feel like you guys are reckless... so I will stay right here."
"I don't know what to do," Lukanu says from the mastodon’s back.
The Omuan warrior gets off the golden mastodon, and Valour hops up. He sees a star-shaped lever impression in the back of the mammoth’s skull, then recalls that Dur-Dur-Dur broke a star-shaped lever off the control panel that Quest is manning (or horsing?). The orc throws the lever to the half-elf, who inserts it into the slot and turns it, activating Ghom!
The room seals itself shut by having a large stone block slam down—exactly where Chumbawumba is standing! The hefty chonker of a goblin rolls out of the way before he loses too much weight, and the party draws their weapons as the mastodon rotates in place and faces one of the devil depictions on the wall: one of Ch’gakare fighting off spiny devils!
Speaking of spiny devils, a bunch of those appear!
AND the floor catches fire!
"I DID say the floor was clean!" Doomfist says, standing in the fire. He is burning.
Everyone is burning.
Except for Valour because he's riding the elephant, and there is only enough room for a handful of characters!
Dur-Dur-Dur hops on the wall and dashes along sideways, swatting at the flying devil creatures. Everyone then piles onto the back of the golden mastodon to get out of the fire, leaving no room for Lukanu because dammit she already had her turn sitting on here!
The spined devils launch a flurry of spines at the PC’s, stabbing at them as they drastically draw up defenses. 🌱 manages to vine whip one and pull it into Doomfist, who fists it into oblivion. When they vanquish the devils, the mastodon rotates again, pointing at a painting of devils with fantastic beards!
Speaking of devils with fantastic beards, a bunch of those appear too! It's like a pattern!
Dur-Dur-Dur swings his axe at one of the devils while Zanzibar finishes it off with shocking grasp. One of the devils lashes out at Doomfist, swiping with its barbed bear and stabbing with its glaive, severely hurting the monk. 🌱 realizes they need more help—but the floor is almost lava, so he conjures his eagle companions, Crime and Punishment, while Dragonbait pockets the bow and draws Holy Avenger.
Doomfist casts wand of entangle on the ground, but the fire does fire stuff and just burns it away.
Chumbawumba then draws his weapon and casts firebolt at the devil and hits! For nothing! It’s literally standing in fire! Fire does nothing! "Shit shit!" he shits.
Right when they’re about to vanquish the bearded devils, Ghom rotates again, this time pointing at some barb-covered devils. Another pattern emerges! The PC’s realize they have 1 round to slay the devils that spawn before the next tier of devils enter the fight, threatening to overwhelm them.
So yeah, some barbed devils appear!
It's chaos!
A bearded devil swings at Lukanu and hurts her terribly, especially since she’s still running around on the fiery floor. Dragonbait lunges to her aid because NPC’s gotta stick together! He swings at the devil with his righteous sword and murders it, leaving only the newly arrived barbed devils.
🌱 chill touches and pouts because he can’t hit nothing so he’s just gonna sit on the mastodon.
Doomfist smacks a barbed devil and hurts it while Lukanu strikes as well, then second winds to return some much needed Hit Points to her pool. Valour smacks as well with his sword while Chumbawumba pepper sprays a demon with acid from his acid gun. None of the barbed devils die, and Ghom rotates again…
A large, winged devil with massive horns and a skewering pitchfork appears!
One of the barbed devils lobs a ball of fire at Dur-Dur-Dur, and Zanzibar waves his magic hands around and aims at the new, giant devil. He casts banishment! But the horned devil resists his spell, then obliterates one of the summoned eagles with a slam from its pitchfork.
Lukanu gets low and swings at the barbed devil, then Valour comes from behind and murders it back to the shadow realm! He casts shield of faith on Lukanu since she’s taking so much damage.
Chumbawumba realizes that they need some extra tankability, so he summons his temporary HP vending machine and plants it on top of Ghom, which is perfect because Ghom rotates again, and things get reeeally rough.
An erinyes appears, clad in armor with eyes glaring, a true fallen angel entering the fight! Dur-Dur-Dur charges at it and hits, then runs away while taking 21 damage from an attack of opportunity as she lashes with her sword.
Zanzibar sees that Lukanu needs help, so he polymorphs her into a tyrannosaurus rex! Dragonbait rotates to face the erinyes and critically fails with his Holy Avenger twice—they really needed that attack to hit!
🌱 realizes that if he can’t hit with a chill touch, he might be able to tell everyone to close their eyes as he dons his robe of scintillating colors, filling the room with a rainbow blast of blinding energy! Unfortunately these devils are really good at saving throws, so none of them are entirely dazzled… but 🌱 looked pretty terrifying while he was doing it, like a rainbow goat monster from Skittles Hell.
Lukanu tries to bite and swat at the devils, but her new form is too unwieldy. The PC’s realize that they can’t shift positions on the mammoth without one of them stepping into the fire, so Valour steps off and tries to hit the Erinyes. Chumbawumba hits some buttons on the vending machine and everyone gets some temporary Hit Points, which Valour uses to eat the fire damage.
Zanzibar tries to blast one of the devils, but he barely misses. He then activates the book he just received from drinking the beer in the witch’s room, adding an extra d6 to his chance to hit, and it works! But then his 23 Strength from Kubazan vanishes, returning him to his wimpy self!
T-rex Lukanu leans over and peers at him strangely.
The erinyes slams Zanzibar, then swings again and he shields. She then swipes at Valour who blocks the attack.
The horned devil swoops in, realizing that Zanzibar is concentrating on the dinosaur spell. He stabs with his tail and pronged pitchfork, stabbing the mage repeatedly and dropping him to 0, breaking his concentration and causing Lukanu to revert back to human form.
Doomfist finally banishes the last barbed devil back to the shadow realm, then goes up to the erinyes and punches that bitch in the face.
Lukanu trudges through the fire at the horned devil, squaring off with it as Valour engages the erinyes, but she keeps parrying his attacks. Chumawumba casts cure wounds for 15 Hit Points on Lukanu, he then pulses the temporary Hit Point machine again.
Dur-Dur-Dur engages the erinyes again, swings, and hits. The fallen angel then swarms on him, dropping the orc and Doomfist in one round of attacks. Three PC’s are down!
Dragonbait brings the Holy Avenger around and meets the erinyes with it, holy power spewing forth and slicing the devil in twain, fizzling her away to the hells.
🌱 shouts a healing word at the orc on the ground, "GET UP DUR-DUR-DUR!" and heals him for 8 lost Hit Points.
Lukanu swings at the horned devil, and Valour lays on hands Zanzibar for 1 Hit Point. The mage stands up, throws the Ring of Winter forward, and casts Bigby’s giant hand, creating a giant fist with it and channeling his inner Doomfist to punch the fiend!
Dragonbait leaps from Ghom and swipes Holy Avenger at the devil, then parries the devil’s attacks as I’jin gifts him with a boon of high Dexterity. The fight buys enough time as Dur-Dur-Dur dashes across the wall, sweeps up behind the devil, and vanquishes it with the vorpal greataxe.
With the devils all slain, the fiery spouts disappear. The smoke coalesces, forming a solid mass that takes the form of a decrepit, scarred Omuan warrior bedecked in rotting burial plumage. The warrior steps forward, presenting a golden chalice carved from the skull of an Omuan king: the Chalice of Ch’gakare.
Dur-Dur-Dur takes it.
Everyone decides that its time to take a BIG, FAT NAP!