The party has gone “down the well” to stop the Ravager, and have found themselves in a lethal dungeon.
(-GM)
6th day of Sarenith, 4722 AR
If it wasn’t for Deckard Cain we would all be dead. Seriously. After being surrounded by wraiths he clutched up. Shia gave him a little more time to cast his spells so he was able to cast three spells in rapid succession. He first weakened all of the wraiths and made them more vulnerable to his spells. After that he cast Storm Bolts which, in case you didn’t figure out, makes giant bolts of lighting come out of his hands and strike everything. The enemies were about to descend on him but he burned them with his flames. Some survived but were wiped out when he regained his breath.
We retreated out of the room but this time made sure to not have everybody leave. We did not want to have to fight the wraiths for a third time. We summoned an apple tree with our Sapling Rod and Grom-Gil-Gorm and I ate a few apples to restore the damage the wraiths had dealt to our physiology. Those with more severe damage had to return to the capital to buy scrolls of spells that could heal them.
Finally, we were all back together and ready to address the vault door. It was unlocked but very heavy. However with Grom-gil-Gorm’s mighty strength, we were able to pry it open enough for us to slip through. The walls in the room beyond were made of a strange rock. The rock was embedded with strange colored crystals and our wizard informed us that it had the special property of being immune to any magical effects. The room itself was filled with small pillars that seemed to go into the floor and up into the ceiling. There was another vault door on the other side of the room, but as I scanned the walls and ceiling, I noticed a secret door on the right hand side.
I moved over to it to try and open it but it wouldn’t open. There was no visible lock and no amount of pushing or pulling seemed to move it. Eventually Deckard Cain stepped in and dispelled the arcane lock effect that no one but our spellcasters had noticed. Behind the door was a little 5 foot hallway that turned sharply left. I walked forward and peeked my head around the corner. I was greeted by a stairway sloping downward. The party decided to address this later and continue making our way forward. I backed out of the hallway and back into the main room.
Grom-gil-Gorm was struggling to turn the wheel that would open this next vault door. He had to go into a rage to even make it budge. As he turned the wheel, the pillars in the room retreated slowly into the floor. After two rotations of the wheel we could see the end of these moving pillars. The ends were razor sharp points, but as our barbarian completed the twelfth rotation of the wheel, they slid down into the floor and little covers slid out to cover them. There was an audible click as the second vault door opened.
We swung the door open and beheld two hallways, one going right, the other left. I moved right but found a dead end after moving thirty or so feet. I doubled back and met up with the party, arriving to see them standing in front of another vault door. Once again, our barbarian grabbed the wheel firmly with both hands and turned. Unlike the last door, the wheel on this one turned easily but as it opened a powerful wind sucked us forward, right through a grid of lasers. Burn marks criss-crossed the bodies of our party, but to adventurers as powerful as us, they were mere sunburns.
The room we were thrown into had three plinths, each with a body resting upon it. Doomfist tried to reach over and grab the sword of one of these fallen soldiers, but a wall of force stopped his hand. Susurrus notified us that the other plinths have similar effects in front of them. However, we had no time to think this over because suddenly two Demiliches appeared right next to the party. We were surprised when they attacked us because Demiliches only attack when their treasures are touched. While these monsters might be deadly to a less experienced party, we slaughtered them easily, only to find out that they were illusions. This made sense though because we had never touched any treasure that could have belonged to a Demilich.
With the current threat vanquished, Susurrus dispelled the wall of force in front of the closest plinth. The loot on the body was mediocre at best, but as I looked closer I noticed a separation between the top of the plinth and the base. I asked Grom-gil-Gorm to give me a hand, and lo and behold the top lifted off to reveal a room below.
Susurrus sent an Arcane Eye down to scout but only found a bunch of alcoves with Prismatic Spheres in them. The only thing defining about this level was a circular room with a key hanging from a string that went up into the ceiling. We dropped down into the level but immediately realized that we would have to make a quick trip to the capital to buy scrolls that would let us dispel the Prismatic Spheres. While Susurrus was gone, we soon noticed that every few hours, seemingly at random, the vault doors would close. This was strange to us, but there was nothing that could be done.
After Susurrus returned from the capital with all the supplies we needed, we started dispelling spheres. Inside each sphere was a plinth. Some were empty, but there were slight signs on those that something had been there that had been looted. We didn’t find much else of interest with the exception of a cursed mace. It stuck itself to Susurrus’s hand and we had to teleport him to the Pope to remove it. We returned to find that all of the shimmering spheres had reformed. This didn’t matter though because we had already checked all of them.
Now all that was left was the key dangling from the string. Doomfist was about to go into the room and grab the key, but I stopped him. I had noticed a thin line all the way around the outer edge of this circular room. I also noticed that the string was not attached to the ceiling but instead continued up into it. This smelled like a trap.
And right I was! Doomfist looped some rope lightly around the key and from outside the room I shot the string with an arrow and he pulled the key into his grip. As he did so, the top of the circular room flipped over and a bead of spikes slammed down right where he would have been standing. Strangely enough, the platform the spikes were underneath started to move downward. A new ceiling above moved with it until eventually it hit the bottom, the new roof sealing away whatever lay below.
Since the rest of the level seemed to loop every few hours, we sat down and waited, hoping the “elevator” would rise up and we could trigger the trap again but this time get inside. During the few-hours wait, we decided that instead of us going down, we should send an Arcane Eye to scout for us.
Two-and-a-half hours later, there was a loud noise as the trap reset itself, the spikes folding up into the roof once more. We triggered the trap the same way we did before, by yanking the key from outside the room. This time, however, Susurrus commanded his Arcane Eye to shoot forward into the gap as the trap moved downward. After a few minutes of our wizard concentrating on moving the eye around, he reported back to us that at the bottom there was a small forest of fake petrified trees. They looked very real, but to his trained eye he could see that they had not gone through the typical process of petrification.
I was able to write all this in the few hours we had while we waited for the third reset of the trap. I can hear it rising up now so I must go.
Need to talk? Got something to say?
Well that’s too bad, I’m irrelevantly far away!
Until next time,
DFSIFA
=========================
Deckard Cain, aasimar oracle 19
Death from Somewhere Irrelevantly Far Away, tiefling slayer 20
Doomfist, oread monk 17
Grom-gil-Gorm, half-orc viking fighter 18
Susurrus of the Wind, sylph wizard 19
Shia Labeouf, merfolk bard 17
Valestar Ekhart, aasimar paladin 20
Pathfinders' Guild of Berkeley 
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