The Outlands Odyssey Part 5: Into the Hole

So the party finished their rest, prepared spells, reopened the door, and headed in to the Shrine of Tvashtri. The entrance corridor is a slowly rotating hexagonal cylinder, and a little disorienting to stand on. At the end of it spins a brassy, corkscrew-shaped ramp that descends into the dark. 12-Bar lead the way, and all three carefully made their way into the opening chamber without slipping into a pit trap. 

The opening chamber is a huge hall containing a forest of pillars of hammered brass, all of them rotating. The heroes made light work of some mechanical cobras that hid among the pillars to attack, and found hidden panels in the walls that headed downstairs. They stopped to wonder at the huge, rotating sculpture in the centre of the atrium, before exploring a room containing several stone tables, some bloodstained saws, and a stationary flesh golem attached to a massive set of electrodes. 12-Bar stepped on a floor plate that activated the golem, who attacked with ferocious strength. He seemed to have adopted 12-Bar’s ability to distract foes, even impeding M’narr’s attempt to resuscitate 12-Bar! He destroyed the electrodes in an explosion of lightning, as his flesh was hacked away to reveal a metal skeleton underneath. But the party prevailed in the end, and even found a hidden getaway stash behind a false wall. M’narr wasn’t a fan of the putrefied guts sloshing around the bin they looked inside. 

In the next room, they easily dispatched a retinue of long-fingered and sharp-clawed undead, using the room’s levers and doors to separate them into smaller groups. They went back to explore the lower chamber they found, seeing that the dungeon’s pit trap contained a Gelatinous Cube, feeling incredible relief to have all avoided it. The cube was quickly liquefied with spells. 

On to the main worship hall, where the party discovered a massacre. Mutilated corpses were strewn across the chamber’s various altars. 12-Bar found a control panel behind the main altar; Ragados found an odd riddle on a door; and M’narr found a teleportation circle daubed in blood. The silence was broken by a pack of fiends teleporting in with a wretched prisoner in tow.

“You’re not supposed to be down here!” yelled the insectoid creature that led the pack. Behind it, a small pack of demons. Hungry, hungry demons.

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