When it seems clear that the departed cleric will remain departed, the group backtracks through the tomb complex until they regain the surface. There they deploy illusionary magics to conceal the fact that the tomb is open and deploy Dalliance to fetch up another cleric. While she is gone, the rest of the group hides as best they can and keep their heads down. Her absence is fairly unremarkable – save for the gathering of the manscorpions that sacrifices humans and calls down lightning throughout the night.
Dalliance returns, along with Abraham Blade, first cousin to the departed cleric, and one of the few remaining high priests of the sect. Please be careful with our cleric! Abe Blade fits into the party with a minimum of rotating and off they go…
Back into the maze of isolation, this time deploying anti-magic shells to defeat the various magical traps. Paranoia runs high, but eventually the group wends its way to the middle of the maze. They find the 11-headed hydra of doom…and Dalliance disintegrates it. Bzzzzt. A quick wind walk up the greased chute of whirling death blades and a stop off in the room of staff-holding. A knock spell or two and the staff is plundered. Back into wind form…back into the maze…then back into the shells…then back into the main room. One staff down…one to go.
The single door is selected this time and the group traverses a hallway. It ends in a door, covered in runes. The runes are read and the meanings are debated. The door is opened and the debate goes out the window. Instead of picking the left-hand or the right hand path to follow through the room of floating discs suspended above roiling lava and guarded by 6 immense demonic statues…they close the door and retreat a bit.
Thinking caps are deployed and a plan is concocted. While attention is diverted by Dalliance’s projected image and the Demming the druid, the rest of the group tries to engage from the hallway while Ron’j! in wind-form sneaks into the room to try and plunder the second staff.
While Dalliance and Barada deploy multiple disintegrate spells from rings and so-forth, the now-animated statues rain hellish magics on the party – to no avail it seems. Ron’j! achieves the goal of unlocking the crystal cage – and is nearly ginsu’d to death as it unfolds into a whirling lattice of super sharp shards. The final statue is eliminated and the second staff is seized. The group returns to the central chamber and prepares for what may be the final leg of the journey to confron the sphinx queen…
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