On second thought, the risks of teleportation – although small – are potentially lethal and so the group decides to travel overland instead. The journey is lengthy, but the arrive at the ferry landing and quickly depart for the Mouth of Doom.
Following the paths they have traveled before, the group traverses the purple worm cavern and descends to the Temple of Orcus. There a day is spent reinforcing the protective spells that ward it and the group prepares for the next leg. They pass though the vast graveyards and through the portcullis that leads to the corridors of mazes. This time, their passage is not so swift and they spend two tendays wandering the hallways. It is a good thing they have a cleric, or someone would be salami by now.
They investigate and poke around, eventually encountering a small tribe/war party of goblins that they set about dispatching. Rather than face the swords of the party, yon goblins leap into the river that flows near the camp.
As they are swept out of sight – the party hesitates. Boats or no? Eventually the cleric’s water walking ability is used to scout the watery regions.
He reports back that the river is swift and that the chasm it runs through is spanned by a bridge carved with skulls, much like – if not exactly the same one – the bridge upon which waited the intellect devourers.
The cleric wishes to climb up to the bridge and make sure, but other party members are less certain about the wisdom of such a choice, foreseeing a gruesome end to existence should the dread creatures still be lurking about the area.
In the end, the rowboats are deployed and the party approaches the bridge from below – then swiftly passes right on into the winding waterway. THey have a wild yet nonthreatening adventure until they beach the boats and investigate a small rocky path that leads from teh shore. It brings them to a place filled with prismatic glass caterpillars – sporting six eyes and two mouths. Contact is made and the mage’s linguistic spells are employed to understand the strange creatures. ‘Get out’ is the message and the group complies.
Back into the river and onward until they exit into a large underground cavern carved by the flow of water for millennia. The walls and ceiling are far away and the sound of water fills the room. After disembarking the group explores and fids a large garden of mushrooms tended by larger ambulatory mushrooms, a precipitous drop with a waterfall and lake below it, a pack of ghouls – swiftly vaporized – the prismatic caterpillar clan (either again or perhaps another one), a hive of gargoyles that toss party members off of the side of a steep declination, and a staircase. Up the stairs it is!
the stairs are climbed to a landing, then the rope is deployed and the group rests for a day. Upon emerging they climb the next flight and exit into another large cavern. The sound of a nearby river is distinct and there is a beach ahead.
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