Descending along the trail blazed by the lazy mage’s traveling eyeball, the group reaches an intersection where the sounds of distant construction are heard. Less noisy hallways lie in the opposite direction. Forming a defensive shell, the mage sets his eye to wandering. He spots a goblin construction team building a stage, a flourishing bazaar with goblins buying and selling a variety of gently used equipment and explores a variety of other areas, including a prison and a barracks. He notes a pair of guards at each entrance, then reverses course to see what lies in the other direction. A rusty hand-pump is all there is time to spy before the spell ends. The group moves onward, eventually passing into a series of unused chambers. One chamber contains a puppet version of a wizard, toiling away in a fake laboratory setting. Another old kitchen contains spectres. Both areas are explored…behind the specter kitchen is an old bedroom – complete with a note left in an empty trunk. Behind the pseudo mage are more hallways, culminating in what is assumed to be a gate/portal of some sort. Divination magics imply that the gate leads to an area with a heavy drow influence, so the group abandons that plan and begins exploring further. They uncover all manner of mundane and interesting things, including a headless elf body wearing rubber boots and then a metal elf head floating about in a copper plated room as it wildly discharges electrical energy. Oh yeah, there is a golem there too…and a tunnel.
Another eye is let fly and the tunnel is explored. It leads to a large area of apparently abandoned mining operations. Now the only living things roaming about are mobile puddles of mouths and eyeballs. The area is thoroughly explored and apart from some old bathrooms, the most interesting thing – aside from the horrid mouth-eye piles, of course – is a large wall made of stacked corpses, now in various states of skeletality. A room that may once have been a staging area for miners is inhabited by strange beings that resemble alligator hyenas with a searchlight sized eye in the middle of a skeletal face. A closed door bars further spying. A reversal of course has the eye spying on more abandoned digs, an encounter with a few more puddles of madness, and culminates in the discovery of a lone explorer fighting off an attack. The attackers are the strange ‘plate-eyed hyena crocs’ and appear to be led by a demon of some sort. Sucks to be you dude!
After the mage finishes filling in the details of the reconnaissance, that area seems like bad times all around, so the decision is made to go hang with the goblins. Out come the disguises and soon the party is a goblin guide. two bugbear bodyguards and two humans out for an escorted tour. The goblins at the bazaar are happy to try and wheedle coins out of them as the group surveys the scene. Eventually they make contact with the local goblin…king? A beautiful human male reclines upon a set of pillows, attended by bodyguards. A deal is struck and eventually the group is escorted out of the bazar and through a locked door. There is a half-hearted attempt on the part of the goblin courtiers to have the king deposed, claiming he has fallen victim to a cursed headband that has transformed him into this terrible travesty of a goblin king, but the group is unmoved. Off they go through the locked door. They end up exploring a section of hallways that show mages and wizards being transformed into the aforementioned hyena-crocs and mouth-eye puddles, so the mages feel a bit extra paranoid.
The sense of paranoia is enhanced when they stumble across a well appointed sitting room and are hailed by a woman in an overstuffed chair and invited to enter and take a load off. THe party retreats rapidly at the invite. What good could possibly come of consorting with a person who voluntarily lives here? *shudder*. Off they go to investigate adjoining hallways. They find a series of doors marked with water runes and eventually enter to investigate – the first door they open reveals a giant gelatinous cube with a glass encased skull ‘floating’ in the middle of it. Cube is swiftly defeated. Glass encased skull is examined. An inner door is opened and a tidal wave of water engulfs the party. Many are knocked down, but the water only forms a puddle a few inches deep. so no one drowns. An adjacent door reveals a large altar covered with a molten(?) pile of gold that radiates magic. The party decides to leave it alone for now and moves on into the hallways.
At the next intersection, they are ambushed by a spider/drow hybrid, a band of bugbears and a pack of humans of various stripes. In the ensuing melee, Gutboy is slain, as is Elulyn Hightree Well, nothing that a few spells and a five day span in the rod of security won’t cure. Plus, it gives time to identify various and sundry items. Once everyone is nice and breathing again, they prepare to venture out and resume exploring. What are we looking for? Stairs! When do we want to find them? Now!
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