Reentering the dark tower provides a bit of a surprise to the intrepid ditherers. It seems that during their leisure activities, the voluminous evil has reanimated some of the ambulatory flesh piles they first encountered. In an alarming twist – they are almost completely immune to magic so it falls mostly to the acid-soaked Cosmic accompanied by Mr. T and his dancing blades to wreak the appropriate levels of havoc.

The somewhat invisible stalkers are still top of the party’s dither agenda, so they veer in a different direction. Doors are scanned and unlocked, or broken down by the druid’s rampaging earth elemental...

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...

While Malchor spies with his little eye, Elulyn erects a ring of fire around the group. That keeps the snakes at bay and gives the party ample time to listen to the scouting report. The report details a set of descending stairs and a large chamber containing a sarcophagus carved in the form of a snake-monk. This chamber gets a long, hard investigation. Eventually, the arcane eye passes close enough to a small hole in the wall that it is noticed. The hole leads to a tube that passes through the stone wall. Exactly the type of thing a gassy person might use to get around. More investigation reveals little else of interest.

When the eye returns to the top of the stairs, Malchor realizes there is a bolt under the throne that locks it in place...

Traversing the upstairs reveals it to be the realm of the gatehouse guards – most of which were just slain in the pitched battle just minutes earlier. There is some light looting and a bit of partial pillaging…but the talk keeps coming back to the book that slew Kiko. What is it if not a decoy? Could this actually be the thing they sought? Hmm. Well, for now it is time to go up rope for a few days, until the druid regains his full measure of health.

When they resume moving about, it doesn’t look like there has been any action in their absence. Bodies and bits of bodies still litter the courtyard, so they resume exploring and eventually descend a set of stairs that leads to an armory/barracks and a locked door leads to a row of prison cells beyond.
The cells are filled with rust monsters ...

The lead they follow has them teleport to the far side of the continent, in the warm southern deserts of Calimshan…well, not exactly. A bit of homework reveals that while Calimshan is a wealthy place, it is also decidedly less good aligned than Cormyr. So, they journey to Tethyr instead. Border controls mean little to teleporting wizards. They mingle with the crowds in a port city and do some more research on their destination…a lonely group of standing stones in the middle of the western desert is where the portal is to be accessed. The portal is supposed to take them to a pocket plane where the Ophidian Monastery may be found. It is said that within the monastery there is a book of a powerful githyanki mage – lich?. How exactly it is accessed turns out to be quite interesting.

The par...