Orhan 1 Day 40 TE 6063

Next time, the next level of the tower.

Meanwhile, back at the previous level, Kyrik steps into the machine. Sadly, it's probably broken as nothing happens.

We head down a stairwell to the next level. There's a room filled with 16 pools. Luminescent bluish fluid burbles. Yup, it's the jacuzzi room. Kyrik's 9 1/2 foot poll gets really brittle and snaps when poked into the liquid. Now it's 4 1/2 feet long. There are shadows in a couple of pools. Haeraan finds that there's a body down there. Strangely, not one registering as undead. All three with shadows have bodies in them.

We cast a death tale's spell and decide that they were cryo-suspension chambers that went bad. We move on.

We come to a big solid locked door. Oathar picks it. Inside is a store room filled with all manner of containers. Sadly, they are all covered by a frosty patina. Oathar thinks the containers are probably filled with icky stuff, given that this is the tower of healing gone bad. Oathar finds a Potion of Healing I. Haeraan and Alynna manages to get various goopy liquids on themselves. Oathar manages to poison himself too. Sigh. Someday we'll learn to leave stuff alone. I turns out that Oathar is comatose and will need two days to recover.

Orhan 1 Day 42 TE 6063

We continue exploring past the tower of healing, along the left branch. This tower has crazy symbols above the door. Yup, it's ancient language. "Tower of Discipline".

Oh dear. We find the room with the automated headsman golem. We back out slowly hoping to not draw its attemtion.

Then we come to the four rooms of the Interrogatorium. Sigh. One of the four rooms has a cocoon in it. We decide to not mess with it.

The next door has a tortured guy upon it, but is locked. At this point, Alynna remembers that the automated headsman golem had a key on a chain around his neck. So we start buffing up and prepare to go back there to liberate it from him. Oathar casts some buffs. Many spurn his buffs. Next time, Imre can be his blurry shield buddy.

We attack the Executioner! The fight goes well until we realize that the Executioner is a mentalist and commands Alynna to put her head on the block and stand still. She, of course, complies. Sigh.

The Executioner chops Alynna's head off. Oathar shouts "NOOOOOO!!" and blasts the Executioner with a Lightning bolt for a 32J crit. The Executioner implodes and then explodes and dies instantly! Imre rushes over and staples her soul in, but he head is off.

Imre thinhs about it and decides that there's nothing he can do. We activate the God Construct in Super Mode! He casts Joining True! All four times. And all sorts of other fixings...

Alynna wakes up.

We take the +15 Battle Axe of Decapitation. (It automatically decapitates anyone who is standing or kneeling motionless before the caster.)

We open the screaming door. There's a horrible mural of a demonic dinner party. There are blacker than black bars and things.

From one of the cells, a womans voice calls out to us in Shay. (Trap.) It detects as an evil voice that hates Ascerak. Wacky. It's a Medusa. She says if we free here, she'll help us. Ascerak wishes to feast upon our souls. We don't trust her, so we consider leaving here there. We discuss whether we should bring the Medusa with us. We think we probably don't. Imre pushes us out of the room.

Alynna thinks we should pull a "Clash of the Titans". It's almost a good idea. But it's not, so we leave her there.

We go back to the Y and head to the other tower. This one has a door of granite. There's the head of a horned ram on the door. There's a message. "Beware the weaver in her lair. -D."

Wow, it's dark in there. Strands of tangible darkness everywhere. Utterdarksight for Oathar. Light spell for Imre. Darksight for Alynna. It's a maze inside. Filled with liquid darkness. Light spells burn out the darkness nearby and then go out. We push our way into the darkness.

In the middle is a statue of a man in a flowing robe and a curving beard. It has hands offering or accepting something, though currently empty. "Quench the thirst of Golnar and your reward will be great." He was a minor servant of Scaluu.

We start heading further towards the center. We get to the center of the tower. We're mired in ebony molasses. There's a spooky sound. Yup, it's a spider. We get held by the darkness. Oh dear. The gloom of the darkness is mitigated by Oathar's Utterlight. Oathar attacks with various light spells while Alynna and Haeraan attack with chopping. Imre starts casting something long that delivers lightning crits (Some minor death thing).

Lot's of chopping happens as Alynna and Haeraan chop like mad, while Oathar keeps it stunned with light spells.

The darkweaver finally gets an action off and confuses Oathar. Doh! People press in on her. She casts a bunch more people, and Alynna kills her. Strangely, her jata flips a level back and forth. There's a great click. Next to the level is a plaque. "This is the mechanism you seek. Permanent activation will not only achieve one of your goals, but also set in motion events of great magnitude."

Huh, we theorize that this means the earthquake is coming.

We run back to the hourglass tower. It still says "When the glass runs out, bring the glass about." We wait. After 20 minutes of waiting, Haeraan scans back in time and watches Desitasso do the same sort of waiting. Of course, Machin Shin appears! (Desitasso teleported out at this point.) We hear it speaking into our mind wailing and stuff like that. They cryout in terror and anger.

We teleport away.

We approach the tower again, and find the black cloud is in there. Hrmm. How are we going to flip the hourglass over at the hour mark?

We decide to teleport into Machin Shin, flip over the hourglass, and teleport out. As soon as we arrive, we are surrounded by an evil black cloud of death. Ugh. We must make several resistance rolls based on RE/RE/ME. For every failure, we lose 12 points of Re and Me.

The final click is heard, and we teleport out. Ugh.