Firemonth 6, about 2:50 AM. We checked over the entirety of the nurse’s office, cabinets, boxes, desks, drawers. The place had been pretty picked over before us and some damage from years earlier, but after a solid search, we were ready to move on. We could hear some falling water in the distance and followed the passage eastward. There was a sign indicating “apothecist & library” further to the east, of the passage north and down the stairs (towards the falling water), read “Bridge”. We opted to stay where we were and headed eastward.
The apothecist looked like some attacks had occurred in here, 2 large cabinets, 1 was dumped over, some other trash about. We made some attempts to enter, Connal was our point man. He went to the closed cabinet, opened the door, and a 2’ tall figure smelling of earth and wood, extra long fingers and hands, and moving VERY fast, burst from within and assaulted the monk, making the attempt to strangle him. Its fingers were needle sharp and it tore into the skin with ease as its oversized hands proceeded to attempt to kill Connal.
Eoghan fired off fast, arrow missing, and we all proceeded to miss with our attacks as it was just that fast, dodging and flashing about. But Shim’s magic missile blasted into it, and it HURT. So, it snarled, hissed, gasped and lunged off of Connal and went to kill Shim, burying the gnome to the ground as the two of them rolled over and over and over. All attempts to hit it were getting nowhere and Shim took a chance of blasting his wand of fire at point blank range at both of them, burning the Negashi (as it was crying out, along with “Cree! Cree! Cree!).
And then another one flew out of the mess of rubble to help out and Connal got in the way. More attacks followed and the one fighting Shim finally died. But the other one was stuck as it tore at the monk’s throat. Shim fired off another round of magic missiles and it tried to outrun them – it would have been fast enough, but Connal refused to let go! And it had to take the punishing blasts before it too blew apart and died. Hot damn. We healed up a bit and Wilhelm took some of the needle-like teeth for his necklace. We did find a strange new plant growing in the locker, some sort of nodding onion. We took some seeds and the bulbs and then moved on.
The passage diverted here, either west to some door and a massive hole in the hallway – or eastward up the stairs…where we could hear a faint noise. We called up there and then got a reply to come up and mind yourself. At the top of the stairs was a large library, burned with only busted shelves and remains of books, with another 2nd room to the west here of another library area.
It was here that an anthropomorphic humanoid crow came out wearing a top hat and a black waistcoat and pocket watch, munching on a chocolate chip cookie. Introduced himself as Edgar Narrymur, a compatriot of Telltail, also here from the Happy Hunting Grounds. He honestly did not believe Telltail as he is prone to lies and bullshit. But we talked for a while with the other aspect of this pantheon. Edgar had some idiosyncrasies but the most telling was that he did not feel the natural flow of time and could reach back and forth through it if need be – without losing his anchor here in the now. Cannot travel to – but can sample from a “then” if need be. Also suggested that if there was a way to run the lift, it would be with some manual maybe in the lift control room, inside the panels maybe? We’ll check it out!
Some things were cleared up, others were answered. But after an hour of talking, we had a better understanding of the milieu here and that at some point we’d have to get to the 4th level. We also learned of “waterbabies”, evil creatures living in standing water that would cry like an infant and then grab whoever investigated, drown them, and eat their bloated corpses. Lovely. This place was chosen by the ancient dwarves specifically because there it is a weak point here for the prime material plane and the astral plane. There is a chamber of crystals where these differences become manifest, not too far from the chamber of mushrooms – where they can go and get some food.
We were allowed to sleep here unbothered for now and eventually woke up at 1 PM. We studied and prayed, bid farewell to Edgar who had moved on, and figured we’d go back to the stairs area and then around to the crystal and mushroom caves to get some food as our stores were getting lower. The stairs down had us to a large area where the cistern above had cracked and given way. A rain of water fell down from the ceiling 20’ up, to the floor, across the chamber, over the east side of the bridge, and then down the gap 60’ to the bottom. We could hear cries from there but between the fast-moving water and the warning of the waterbabies, we decided it was best to ignore it and head eastward.
There was a collapsed area here and we all tried to navigate the fallen rocks. Connal, Knox, Louie, and Quiver all took some tumbles going over and each of them were nursing sore legs and ankles, moving slower. From there we entered the crystal caves where long crystals of all sorts of colors grew from the ground. It was unearthly in its look and sound. And we felt like we were moving slowly. Shim was overwhelmed with the view of the angry Norns and the exploding mountain and passed out for a few hours. We all had some sort of odd sensation passing through, but Dizzy’s was the most dramatic. He had horns, vestigial wings, was more commanding, reddish eyes and ruddy skin, a demonic look about him, and an actual small globe of fire burning over his head. He also spoke more determinedly and without yielding.
We moved on to the byway of passages and then went north. There were some very tall mushrooms here, 11’ in height. So many many types. Wilhelm was pointing out what was the most likely safest to eat when a 5’ waddling toadstool with a dull pointed metal spear stepped before us and demanded that we leave after blowing a cloud of spores at us. With its ridiculously short legs, waddling feets, and stumpy arms, we were not inclined to do as it wanted. When it tried to shove Connal back with its spear point, the monastic blocked the clumsy blow and proceeded to murder the fuck out of the myconid without changing his expression. When it finally stopped moving, he looked around the chamber and made some noise about how he did not want to do that again, they would be gone soon after getting some food. If there were any other myconids in the area, they did NOT make their presence known.
We took some 40 or so pounds of edible fungi and then took our demonic and unconscious friends out of the area. Once free Dizzy returned to normal and what not, we retraced our steps back to the nurse’s office, the stairs, the meeting rooms, foreman’s office, and then lift area of level 2. We made our way up the stairs, over the gap and back to the 1st level before we went up the slope once more to the Lift Control room to see if there was something we missed when we were here earlier. Shim was now awake and it was about quarter to 5 on Firemonth the 6th.
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