As they progressed further into the dungeon, the level of fucking around dropped even further, mostly by chance though. Of all the ways they could have progressed in this dungeon, they pretty much took one of the most dangerous possible choices. Let me check… no, that’s the most dangerous possible way they could have gone. Which is fine if they are on their A-game. Or have a plan. And get lucky. And have a healer.
Cyrus and Tarkus left the group to go haul Mort’s corpse to a destination closer to its final resting place and further from where giant corpse eating centipedes apparently laired. The Obscuring Mist hung around in the two-level chamber in which the goblins had ambushed the party. As they prepared to go through one of three possible exits in this upper level, two closed doors, one open doorway leading to stairs, they paused to at least loot the goblins. Him found a well kitted out goblin, who had a pouch of loot and a potion which they later determined was a Cure Light Wounds potion. Beth checked out the Emerald-set ring in the pouch but found that it was not magical. While they were still in the midst of searching the goblins, Verne entered the new chamber anyway. Beyond the heavy, but not-trapped door, he found another well lit chamber. Some stairs led down into a room with one open hallway leading off to the left and a statue standing at the far end. The statue was bronze and a man – probably. For the upper portion of the statue had been melted and disfigured, the bronze running in blobs around two red stone eyes. Mart the Bloodrager followed Verne and didn’t recognise the statue as anything… recognisable.
More fool them, for they botched their attempt to knock him unconscious in broad daylight and the tiefling instantly called up Darkness as a defensive measure and as the men tried to back out of the sudden lightlessness, he slashed both their throats and dragged their corpses to an alleyway, before dropping the darkness and walking on, unhurried. He returned the ring to the acolyte of Gorum and retrieved his armour.
The following day, now with CLW bottles spread between them, they returned to the HUTH/AH, prepared to meet the thing again in the room with the blob faced statue. They were not disappointed, as it leapt down at Verne, slashing him up and trying to poison him. The fetchling shrugged off the effect and kept the thing occupied while Him got into an advantageous position and stabbed it to death.
They ventured into the purple smoke/mist filled room and once inside found that the mist was really only densely thick up to about two or three feet off the ground. As they entered though, they encountered terrifying visions that left Verne and Beth Shaken. They also experienced intense sudden cold which Beth and Bam both felt. Him was totally fine. They examined this room – with its one exit and dark tiled floors. It looked as though heavy furniture had once been attached to the floor here, but that was all gone, leaving just the purple mist and the occasional scary vision.
Him, Bam and Verne combined their towering intellects to defuse the trap that had chilled and shaken them, prying up tiles, breaking contact points etc. They also found a small purplish semi-precious stone in the middle of the floor and upon picking it up, the mists lost their colour and were white.
Moving on from this now safe room, they left via the unexplored exit, a much rougher, perhaps unfinished sandstone tunnel. Floating down from the tunnel they heard the grating whine of goblin voices bickering about whether something would or would not work. The goblin voices were suddenly silenced by a curt order to be quiet. Bam chugged another mutagen and the party prepared to advance…
