Touching down to knock the doors, it becomes clear that this is a very dark and terrible place. The cleric of justice asserts that this is an unhallowed place and evil is strong within, The druid points out that the entire place is shrouded in magical darkness – which doesn’t trouble many of our enhanced party members, as long as they don’t die and undo all their permanency spells. The doors swing wide onto a scene of destruction. It looks like someone has trashed a lab…and off in the corner there sits a large above-ground pool, apparently full of viscera and rotting meat from the smell of it. Suddenly the tank stuff coalesces into an abomination that shrieks into their psyche its love of freedom! The creature(?) is composed of many mouths, eyes and a number of disturbing limbs that flail about, It shoots various magic effects from its eyes as it closes to attack the group. Cosmic is slain before he can act and the party’s response is swift and overwhelming. Once the creature is defeated and Cosmic returns to the living – now unable to see in the magical darkness, the room is searched.
Below the bloody surface of the piles of viscera and gore still left in the tank, the gleam of magic! It is removed from the bloody pile and is identified. The staff is both magical and important – and disturbingly enough, seems to be the receptacle of thousands of souls. Yeah…that is fairly evil. The soul jar is smashed and the imprisoned spirits stream out the balcony doors and away from this wretched place. That was awfully good of the party and Elulyn hopes it won’t be awfully bad for them as a result. They spend a night up the rope outside, on the balcony.
They re-enter, and open the next set of doors and see that the release of the souls has ‘powered down’ many of the nightmarish creatures and creations that lay beyond. They poke around in increasing bewilderment…wtf is this place, and eventually come across a trapped room that contains a beating heart under a glass dome. They bypass the traps and seize it. Jar in the grasp of an unseen servant, they resume exploration and encounter some more abominations composed of various body parts loosely assembled into a terrible form. These are defeated and the rooms nearby are explored.
One of them is an armory, protected by invisible stalkers (well – not so invisible to the magically enhanced mage’s vision). Hmm. A stumper. Wonder what they are guarding and do we want to mess with them? This train of thought accompanies the group as they reverse course through the areas they have explored and they once again retreat to the safety of the balcony for a rest and a bit of a chat. The next day, the issue of the stalkers is raised again.
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