Attendees:
Returned back to saftey by virute of the beholder and his disintegration of the block that had been capping us in the dungeon, we begin this adventure anew, trying to finish up some unknown sections. In this case what we find is a large natural cavern. Jeff takes a great deal of time mapping out the room which tells ya we won't be running around it like Jim's stuff. I think I see a corrolation: The reason we got through jim's stuff was because he kept using the same incomplete corridor hastily drawn. If he'd taken time to draw them out, we might still be there fighting.
When we enter said cavern, which features an alter to Vecna, a single exit on the far side, 75' ceiling, rubble to impede movement in some areas, a few fissures in the floor that must be crossed, a pool (which nobody drank from... so maybe we skipped our magical treasure for the session?), and something else... what am I forgetting?.... oh, yes.... An undead Drider and an undead Drow.
This drow is less pleasant than the one that gave us the map in Jim's game. This one, in fact, is rather confrontational. Combat ensues. Krayden gets in a shot on the Drider before the Drow's scary gaze attack sends him scurrying out of the cavern. Meanwhile the team is doing a number on the drow and Vernal is doing yeoman's work holding the undead drider in place with his turning ability. Eventually, Drow will go down, and not just because Philius keeps trying to use his polearm to trip it, but it does not go down before it makes sure it takes several opportunities to free it's companion from the turning effect. The drider then proceeds to annoy the living heck out of us by continually spitting webs every round, thus slowing down anyone trying to move through the place. By now Krayden is back, everyone is still upright and fighting, but many are wrapped in webbing. In fact, Vernal is covered by webs as many as 4-5 times, freeing himself from one such set of webs. Krayden helps burn webs 1 hex at a time, since he can't reach the spider on the ceiling, while Morningstar does damage by summoning a little ball of light that attacks the creature, a hitpoint or two at a time.
Frankly, I don't remember the killing blow on this beast. We loot and continue.
Now to the room of many teleports. Here's the rules: There are six rooms, numbered thusly. Each time you enter a room you must locate the concealed exits. Everyone in a room rolls a D4. On a 1 they are teleported to a randomly determined room where they are dizzy for 1 round and at corresponding minuses until they reorient themselves, find another door, and decide whether to fight whatever is waiting or to just flee through a randomly selected door. Now I won't detail this whackiness. I will however say that among these things we fought were:
When at last all of us get out, Philus is the only one who can't get out the final room. Failing his roll, he winds up in the only room no one had landed in before. He exits it and finds a room we had not yet explored, and a voice gibbering somewhere in the attached room.
So when he finally makes it back to us, he tells us and we realize that now we must go back. During this procedure, the only person who gets transported out is Morningstar. She fortunately lands in a room that had been previously marked by us with an exit. Problem is, during the next round, the chaos thing teleports into the room. We flee the room and get out, but... Etrin gets struck by the beast and does not make his save.
Yup... Etrin is infected with Chaos. And it does not take long for it to grow. It is suspected that within rounds he will be a beast of chaos. But no one has a full Restoration, full Healing, or even the stoneskin or other spell that might simply slow the metamorphosis. Etrin tries to kill himself, but he cannot handle his weapon anymore (per descriptions straight from the book!) Vernal can get the spells, but it will be far to late. So we toss a bedroll over him and roll him into the box we use for carrying everything. Once inside he becomes a chaos beast and we give up on trying to retrieve my bedroll or any food we might have left in there.
Inside this final room Morningstar can recognize the gibbering as Infernal. Attempts to send in a summoned spy yield only that it is some type of skeletal beast, then the summoned creature is dead. So we bait the trap and try to lure it out of it's room (which is bathed in sense impairing darkness).
When it comes out, we do combat and bring it down through various blows, holy spells and special abilities, and then we loot the rooms