Chpt 10 - The Descent

The party collects themselves after a battle with some deceptive Darkmantles, an Intellect Devourer, and a massive Umber Hulk. They sense the Intellect Devourer came from somewhere even deeper within the cave system…and so they decide to press on.

As the party descends, they discover the caverns to be dense and thick with…steam? What should be a cool system of caves turns out to be quite warm. Hot, even. Thankfully, the party finds themselves able to traverse with relative ease, thanks to Keth’s blindsense being a giant spider and Warden, revealing the way with his lantern and blowing aside the steam as he harnesses the wind mastery granted to him by the Sky Lord’s Regalia. As they descend, Cub and Warden notice pipes occasionally jutting through the cave walls, emitting a hissing noise and being hot to the touch. Confused, they press on.

As the caves go on, they slowly begin to uncover long forgotten Duergar architecture. Warden accidently steps on a pressure plate, causing pendulous hammers to swing from the ceiling and clobber the party. Warden lets loose many a clever quip. Further in, they encounter a Duergar Puzzle door, with a small slot in a facsimile of a Dwarven face. A riddle in Undercommon reads, “I have a head, and I have a tail, but I have no body. What am I?” Cub incorrectly guesses a snake, before Glaurung, in a moment of surprising clarity, simply states, “A coin”. In a moment of simultaneous revelation, the group attempts many coins in this slot machine door, as the door erupts with hot steam each time an incorrect coin is guessed. A copper, a silver, a gold. Before, in another moment of brilliance, Cub pulls out an old dwarven coin they collected some weeks ago in the long-forgotten Outpost, and the door opens before them. A worthy foe.

As the tunnel opens up, the party finds themselves in a pitch-black cavern filled with steam. As they attempt to clear the room with wind, they find that some of the steam eddies about in fits and hisses and starts, not being cleared by the wind. They proceed, and soon find themselves in combat with several imp-like steam creatures, a hulking cubic mass attempting to swallow them, and a roiling blob of acidic Black Pudding. A long, intense battle is fought, with Keth holding off on using the last of her shapeshifting, nervous of what they might find. Soon, however, Keth and Cub find themselves in dire straits as the Gelatinous Cube pursues them, intent to devour. Keth, having been swallowed several times and somewhat wounded, goes into lion form. Cub is on the brink of consciousness as well. As the mephits whittle away at the party with hot steam, Glaurung cleaves into the black, acidic mass, with each swing separating it into smaller, quivering blobs, still relentlessly attacking. Every cleave splashes acid onto him, and he eventually falls to the relentless, consuming blackness. Eventually, however, the room is cleared, and Cub, using the last reserves of his psionic ability, restores Glaurung to life.

The party rests in an Alchemist’s Shack Hem found and unlock in the Duergar chamber. In there, they find a mysterious potion of swirling, mercurial green and yellow, as well as a book they deem to be able to make people magically healthier. They rest, as they discover this to be an old Arcaneum for the Duergar, where alchemy, magic, and the pursuit of the mechanical were all tested. Apparently the source of the oozes. The steam is rolling up from this center chamber of this place of study.

The group proceeds to this central chamber, scouting out what is inside with Bruce, Hem’s friendly arcane bat. Inside, they see a chamber filled with pipes and gears, dimly lit by sconces of blue flame. Hunched over a console in the center is a hooded black figure, flanked by an Intellect Devourer. On the other end, they see a massive, hulking metal behemoth, massive iron maul in one hand, steam erupting from several places in it’s rusted metal form. As Hem looks through Bruce, she just manages to see a..tentacle? slip out from beneath the hood as a pale purple hand raises and zaps Bruce. Her vision darkens. After some debate, the party enters the room. Some invisible, some sneaking, some merely approaching this mysterious figure.

The figure calls to Cub, as he hears via telepathy, this raspy voice call to him about what he was doing here. As they establish that they are both nice people, Cub decides to help the person figure out how to work this Duergar console. As he approaches, the hood of the humanoid falls back, revealing a bald, pale purple head, mouth roiling with tentacles. A Mind Flayer. As the party stands guarded, the Mind Flayer grasps at Cub, muttering about how long it had been since it had a meal so worthy, so delicious as that of another psionic brain, a delicacy. As some of the party reacts, combat begins as the golem lurches into action.

The fight is long and grueling. Warden and Eagle attempt to pull the Mind Flayer into the skies off of Cub. However, Cub is dragged into the sky as well, and when Eagle tries to plummet the Mind Flayer to the ground, the humanoid merely hovers in the air. Keth, meanwhile, pounces into action as a lion, claws erupting with frost, keeping the golem busy. Hem flanks around the room, dispatching Intellect Devourers where she can, with swift daggers and hidden arrows. Glaurung attempts to cleave into another brain and the Mind Flayer. The Flayer, growing increasingly frustrated, lets out a psychic scream, shaking the minds of several people, and stunning Glaurung and sending Eagle plummeting to the ground.

As Glaurung lays there, stunned and weakened, a walking brain comes upon him. Clawing at the dragonborn, contesting wills against each other. Eventually, unable to overcome the stun of the scream, no one sees as Glaurung falls catatonic as the brain enters him, destroying his own mind and assuming control.

As the battle rages on, Cub struggles against the mind flayer, feeling this horrible beak scrape against his skull, trying to reach his delicious brain. As Glaurung rises, he proceeds to swing into Keth with ferocity, absolutely decimating the druid with some precise, critical swings, breaking her shapeshift. As she looks at him with rage and confusion, the Glaurung-Mind focuses his martial prowess and cleaves into her once more, brutally wounding the barbearian. The half-orc looks at him in desperation, flanked now by dragon and golem, roaring, “Why?!” Glaurung simply responds with “That baby creature’s death is on your hands.”

As eagle lies on the ground, a bloody, unconscious mess, Glaurung lets loose a flame breath to hit multiple foes. Eagle is barely hanging onto life, now singed. The brains now dispatched, focus is brought upon the Flayer. Unable to best Cub, and gravely wounded, the Flayer looks into Cub’s eyes, saying that it will be back. It MUST have Siluir’s brain now, as it teleports away. The golem, without the presence of the one now controlling it, begins to rampage. In it’s mindless fury, a maul gets brought down upon an unconscious mass of feathers and blood, as Eagle breathes his last, now a crushed ruin of a bird upon the floor. Glaurung glares happily at the group, slingling more brutally personal attacks. Cub is unconscious.

Warden draws his sword and shield, and heals Cub, telling him to run. As Cub wakes up and flees, Warden bravely inserts himself between the golem and Glaurung, attempting to give his allies some time. He looks up into the eyes of the golden dragonborn, saying something Glaurung himself said once before: “My soul is prepared for what comes next. Is yours?” With the loss of his companion, and bravely walking into certain demise, something awakens. The metal in Warden’s armor glows white, as tornadic energy swirls violently around him.

The combat is close. Blows are traded, before finally, Keth tears the golems to pieces with a mighty roar as Warden and Hem strike Glaurung down. Cub returns and informs them to not kill Glaurung, it is surely the work of a brain. Cub, with brilliant intellect, deduces how the machine in the chamber qorks, shutting it down and finding a mysterious book. The party, worldlessly gathering what they can, tie up the unconscious Mind-Glaurung and pick up what they can of Eagle’s remains, before heading out a different direction than they came, as Outsider senses the briefest sound and smell of air.

Silently, the party ascends out into a mountainside in a pine forest thick with mist. As they step into the dimming light of day, Warden notices one thing amidst the pines: a small, humanoid raven form, pinned lifelessly to a tree with an icicle.