Pressing onwards past the Drow ambush site, the group starts to wander the twisting passages of the vast underground area in which they find themselves. They are lost… They check out side passages and side-side passages and the like, gradually making their way towards the map hex marked with what certainly looks like Cthulu. Upon arrival, Barada is scouting about 90 feet ahead of the party, trying to stay stealthy and invisible. As he approaches an especially well-lichened area, he is set upon by a band of 12 rats – no make that wererats – and a pair of Mind Flayers. Subjected to two Psionic Blasts in rapid succession, Brada resists the brain-pulping and lapses into panic mode. Screaming, he runs past the rest of the party. Alarmed, Dalliance looses a lightning bolt down the corridor as the group tries to figure out what was so scary.
Eventually, they decide to try and track Barada and ask him directly.
Once they catch up to him, the news he delivers makes all of them a bit loose in the stool. They decide that it would be best to try and work around the scary scary and venture off into side passages. Along the way they encounter two bands of Bugbears with various slaves, and make relatively quick work of them with various loud and flashy spells. Worried that the noise might lead whomever (or whatever) to their location, they start to backtrack. When they hear the noise of a large group approaching, they decide that discretion is the better (and more life affirming) part of valor. They duck into a side-side passage and hunker down while invisible Barada scouts the disturbance.
Disturbingly, the disturbance is a large group – nay a caravan – of Drow. The Drow number some two dozen and they are traveling with a train of huge subterranean lizards, loaded with goods and attended by about 100 human slaves. Barada retreats and alerts the group. They decide to wait a couple of hours and then follow in the wake of the caravan. Eventually, they arrive near the site of the original Drow ambush. Much to their dismay, the bridge is guarded by a pack (cluster, group, etc) of Drow and there are a trio of large lizards blocking the bridge span.
Now the group ponders. Is it better to wait until the Drow leave (even if it means being approached from behind by some scary scariness), or is it better to assault them now and try to win through the ambush site and depart the region immediately. Pondering and pondering, wander and wonder. Maybe it is best to surrender now and avoid the hassle?

Time will tell….

Once restocked and clear on purpose, the group ventures back past the decaying beholder (now part of the food chain again) to the cavern of molds. A ring of fire clears a path through the cavern and then into a tunnel array. After crossing the cavern of moldy doom, the group finds a winch and staircase that descend into a sinkhole ending sixty feet below. At the bottom of the descent are a trio of cargo nets, one of which still contains four barrels. Three contain berry scented ink (or what looks like ink) and the last contains ‘fruitcake turpentine’. Reza and Bud sample the berry drink, and while Bud is unaffected, Reza suffers a partial memory wipe following a night of intense hallucination.
Dalliance ponders the use of a Wish spell to return him to his ‘original’ self, but decides in the end that a more tractable Reza might prove to be less troublesome.
The descent continues and ends with a descent through terraces down to a vast underground lake. Upon the shore, a dock and attached to the dock a cable and attached to the cable a barge. The group debates a hike around the lake or a poling through it…poling wins and off they go into the impenetrable darkness…rendered occasionally less impenetrable when patches of luminescent lichens mark key waypoints.
They pole across the lake and skirt the edges of a large and distant waterfall until they arrive at a shore – where the cable ends at a dock. A series of switchbacks ascend several hundred feet to a terrace. Barada scouts ahead of the group and thinks he sees motion behind a lichen-lined archway. Invisible investigation reveals a party of drow preparing to ambush the group as they climb out of the lakeside.
Barada hustles back to warn the party and a brief discussion of the relative merits of fireball first vs parley is quickly tipped in favor of boom first. ‘Boom’ suggests Dalliance’s fireball…and ‘boom’ again from the wand of fire. Many of the ambush party are felled by the twin fireballs, then Reza leaps across the intervening space with his boots of springing and thrusts the Wand of Illumination into the opening and uses the sunburst function to blind whatever creatures are not dead.
As soon as the blinding flash has faded, the group springs into action, hacking, bashing and shooting (sometimes each other, sometimes the drow). Spells volley about and the lead drow turns into a Lurker Above and tries to fly away. The wand of fire bursts around the fleeing form like anti-aircraft fire and the flaming drow plummets into a deep chasm. A quick rest to survey the scene and plunder the plunderables and then the discussion is renewed…”why are we here again?”