Episode 2: Jzadirune (continued)

After the piggie detour, we're back to the game recap from the weekend.

The party entered the abandoned kitchen, where after some brief exploring they were once again ambushed by a couple of camouflaged beasties. These were the 'short ones' described by Keygan, and they were very elusive and difficult to hit. Alexandria again did the lion's share, getting through the shadowy defenses and crushing the first of the short, hooved monsters. Yaervan was able to finish off the second one, his sword just finding its way into the monster's gullet.

After the fight, the party explored the room. Erf got curious about the cabinet in the corner, and discovered that curiosity not only killed the cat, it also almost killed the gnome. The cabinet, decrepit and barely standing, didn't survive having the door opened, and the contents crashed down. Erf was able to avoid the worst of the accident, but it was close. As a reward, he found a small device with a gnomish rune on it, and quickly determined that it was a key to the gear doors. This one had a 'Z' on it, and he hung onto it for later.

The room had a single gear door, marked with an 'E' rune, and Erf was able to pick the lock and slide the door open. He walked out into the main dining hall, now abandoned and mostly destroyed by the new tenants. Jax followed him, and was nearly burned to death by the jets of fire that suddenly filled the doorway as he passed by. Realizing that Erf, being a gnome, was likely to be the only one unaffected, the rest of the party rushed through the door, one at a time, as fast as they could. Only Arthur was too slow to avoid the jets, though it was only a minor burn compared to what Jax had suffered.

The dining hall had four doors, two on either side, and a pair of archways, one at each end of the long hall. The other three doors were a 'J', a 'U', and a 'Z'. Eagerly, Erf tried the small key, and it worked as the 'Z' door slid open with no issues, and no traps. Unfortunately, all they found was an abandoned pantry with some old, molding bread and some dried, worthless herbs. Still, the key worked, so Erf kept it close.

Unwilling to risk the other gear doors yet, they searched the archway to the south, where they found more gear doors ('A' and 'R', and a couple of 'D's at the ends. Unable to unlock any of them, the party returned to the dining hall, where Erf tried the 'U' door, and finally the 'J' door, which he was able to unlock. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to disarm the trap, which shot some corrosive acid at them. If you've ever seen the Mummy (Brendan Fraser, not Tom Cruise), you'll remember the salt acid trap in the sarcophagus. Same thing, and this took down both Erf and Jax, wounding some of the other party members as well. The gnome and the paladin were pulled to safety, and the party retreated to the abandoned pantry, closing the door behind them.

Having expended his healing on the party earlier, Ruphus was able to do very little for the dying party members, until Arthur remembered the healing potions that Jenya had given them before they embarked on the mission. Jax was able to drink his on his own, while Yaervan and Alexandria forced the gnome's potion down his throat. It was enough for them to both recover, and the party resolved to rest and recuperate their spells and resources in the safety of the pantry.

After the magic-users recovered their spells, the party once again went back to the dining hall, where they saw the 'J' door had closed on its own. Unwilling to risk it, they tried the archway to the north. Here they found something very unexpected in an underground gnomish enclave: A room that looked like an outdoor forest, complete with filtered sunlight from the ceiling and the sound of birds. Yaervan suffered flashbacks to a past life and had a bit of a panic attack.* Erf reminded the party that this was a gnomish enclave, and gnomes are good at illusions, and they moved through the forest. They found another gear door (another 'D'), and after a failed attempt to open this one, they found the descending staircase at the north end of the room and continued on.

When they reached the bottom, they saw an empty room with a passage and a couple of the dug-out tunnels. As they entered, they heard a voice that shouted 'Attack the intruders!' in Gnomish. Suddenly, a monstrous contraption emerged out of nowhere that looked like a blacksmith's nightmare. Made of metal and with two deadly-looking pincers on the end of stubby arms, it advanced on the party.

Thinking quickly, Erf shouted out an order of his own, which caused the apparition to halt before it could attack them. After some experimenting, Erf recognized it as an automaton, a gnomish device that, while it wasn't technically alive, could still move and accomplish tasks if ordered by someone who could speak Gnomish. It was limited in what it could do and had no ability to communicate with them, so they settled for ordering it to return to wherever it came from, and it turned around and walked away, only to vanish as suddenly as it had appeared. Erf followed, and also disappeared from view even as he saw the automaton stop and assume a guarding position. The automaton was inside an invisibility sphere of some sort, as was anyone who entered it.

At the end of the passage, they found another 'J' door, which they avoided. Instead, they went down one of the tunnels leading out of the automaton room, and found themselves in another room behind the 'J' door. This was a glass workshop of some sort, with shards everywhere and tables rearranged haphazardly around the room with no discernible pattern. Seeing nothing else in the room, they moved in to explore it more carefully, unaware of the danger that was hiding from them almost in plain sight...

To be continued next weekend...

* To find out why, check out my book on Amazon, The Devil's Playground, which my son read and enjoyed (but also made him really scared of underground forest rooms).