As it stood the characters entered into the third level, thinking that most of that level had been explored, but they still had not found a way down to the fourth level. They decided to explore the way past that they had been skirting around. They headed into the area with a number of statues and they found a few magical items. They were suspicious and handled them with care but but with a lot less care than a group of experienced adventurers that discovered magical items lying around in an active dungeon. Seriously, I would not trust any of them, but they picked out the whole lot and discovered a few traps, but still they grabbed a bunch of cursed items. Seriously.
Next they headed into a room with a Lamia that looked like a beautiful woman. I have learned that none of the players know true beauty, like Laetia Casta, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford, three super models of the nineties. Elle MacPherson, Heidi Klum, nope, but Katie Perry yes!?! So to address how good a being is, I have to say she looks as good or better than Katie Perry. The Lamia was using an illusion to disguise he lioness torso. She charmed the Paladin to help her, but the rest of the party wanted to kill her, so it was mildly amusing. They passed through the room and discovered a path to a set of stairs that lead down to the fourth level. They knew that they had beaten everyone that they had faced, so they were confident and they charged down the stairs.
Meanwhile, the Main temple was on high alert. They had scribed the characters and over the past three days they recorded three incursions into the third level. They were mounting up an attack to hope to crush the characters, but they were thinking that the last ambush was a failure so they were worriedly waiting their fate… until providence came knocking on their door. The High Priest of the Air temple just reported in. After his alliance with the party that defeated his rivals, the Fire Temple and the Water Temple, he left the temple with a few of the survivors. He had successfully manipulated the party to destroy the temples and e High Priests, but leave the guards in the south undamaged. Two trolls with a troll chieftain, that the two temples were treating with. Kelno presented himself as a wily leader who killed off his rivals by making a temporary alliance with a stronger group. The trolls sided with him and the Troll Chieftain joined up. Kelno arrived in the temple and all was forgiven; betrayal is never justifiable unless if it brings overwhelming advantage.
The Party moved into the lower temple and they discovered vile mosaics and a broad hallway. There was a forgotten scrap of paper in the foyer and it depicted an odd eight armed skull. They cautiously headed down the hallway and encountered a broad stair case that descended another twenty feet, the mosaic stopped for ten feet and then continued again at a second. They stopped to examine the stonework and the dwarf said that the stone was new, conjured stone. There was no other path left but to continue. They descended the second twenty foot stair and sent the ranger on ahead, invisible in darkness but in light he used his Elven cloak and Elven boots and Necklace of Proof Against Detection to great effect. At the end of the corridor he found the Greater Temple. The broad area was well lit at the floor level, but the ceiling vaulted above the floor by sixty feet and the roof glittered like the night sky, complete with constellations. There were eight hallways leading from the main chamber, four on the west and four on the east sides. The first was brown in colour, grey was the second, red then green. Along the wall were twelve flying buttresses and a gargoyle sitting at the top of each, watching the floor below. There was a central dais that lead to the alter proper, but it was obscured by a Adamatine structure; a fortress of magical origin set up with bugbear archers, human wizards and clerics. The alcoves to either side held giants, two hill giants and two trolls in each of the two alcoves. There were ogres too. The monsters appeared to be waiting for the party and they were ready to attack. The ranger dutifully returned to the party to report this. The party remembered how a single Hill Giant had nearly wrecked the party; the prospect of facing four at once, along with the entire might of the temple daunted them and they decided to leave the temple. They retreated. When they had cleared the second flight of stairs they came to a halt, they heard noise from the stairway from the third level.
Kelno had treated with the Troll Chieftain and agreed to journey to Troll encampment. It was a five day journey through the woods then swamp. When he arrived he gifted the trolls valuable treasures stolen from the fire and water temples. He impressed them and they agreed to follow their chieftain and fig for the Temple of Air. When he returned to the temple he took his two surviving bugbears and the chieftain of the Trolls down to the leadership on the fourth level. The leaders were impressed with his resourcefulness, ie in their desperation they forgave his betrayal and accepted his help and troll army. And asked that he participate with a trap they had planned for the Party of intruders….
The party quickly reevaluated their options, twenty trolls in a wide corridor with enemies behind, vs giants, trolls and spell casters with trolls behind them. It was hopeless. But. They were going to die. Well the warlock was going to dimension door out of there and everyone else was going to die. The wide corridor meant that they would be facing two trolls at a time or more in the other direction. If only there was away to limit the number of enemies that they would need to fight at once. The coloured passage ways were only ten feet across, if they were going to fight that would give them the best odds. They charged the temple and ducked into the side passage closest to the main way. The long passage ended in a large triangular room with a summoning circle in it. Looking for advantage one party member looked at the circle and inspected it. They vanished. Seeing their slim chances of winning a fight getting slimmer and wherever the circle sent the party member as potentially a safer place, they all entered the circle.
Chocking dust. The thick smell of methane. Light reflected off the dust and the light extended a few feet from the source, but even without it the party's Darkvision was equally obscured. At best they could only see thirty feet. This place was certainly safer than the ambush they had left, but it clearly had its dangers. They carefully moved through the cave?, if it was a cave. They entered into a grotto and they saw a figure in the dust standing before them. It appeared to be a statue of a cleric with a mace raised to stick the characters, but it was a statue, so finely crafted that the hairs on his beard snapped off when they were examined. Clearly, this was a person who had been turned to stone!
The statue was covered with dunes of dust, so clearly it had been a long time that he had been killed, still the cast around looking for tracks, but in the lig and the dust they could not find any. They continued on. Soon they found another passageway and they found tracks, the tracks were old and the dust had settled into them, almost obscuring them. How long would it take the dust to fill in the tracks? They asked the dwarf to try to cover their passage through the caves. They decided to follow the tracks to the destination or the place where they started from, because they could not tell one or the other. They found a camp with a tent, but the tent sagged with the weight of the dust. The paladin went ahead to look in the tent while the Ranger/Assassin waited as a rear guard in the darkness. So it was he, that first saw the woman wading through the dust and he stepped out to stop her in a gesture of friendship. He surprised her and he attempted to grapple her when she tried to kill him with an arrow. She surprised him with her strength and he was also surprised when her hair animated and attacked him with a snake bite. The Ranger drew his Flametongue sword and the light it shed allowed him to see the beauty of his assailant, that and the hair of snakes a Medusa! The rest of the party saw his flaming sword and dashed up to reach him. The ranger attacked and damaged her, but when she moved it was to move to his other side so she could face the rest of the party. They saw her and slowed instantly, stunned by her beauty! The Bard realized that this was bad and motivated the party to attack the fell creature. The party galvanized together and brought the creature down, the dwarf scoring two critical hits in a flurry of attacks as she surged forth. Soon the medusa was dead at their feet before they turned to stone. They knew now which way the lair of this beast was and they knew where its larder was, e paladin had discovered a pile of stone corpses in the tent.
They followed the tracks back to their fallen enemies lair and they soon found it. But what they failed to realize was that there might be another Medusa in that lair. The second medusa seeing their light source fired upon it from far out striking one person and missing another. The characters dashed forward trying to find their attacker in the dust and darkness. The cleric fired a vain shot in the direction of the first volley of arrows and struck the quarry. The sound guided the Paladin to its location and he decided that he would get the kill for this fight and charged forth, glimpsing her beauty, she was hotter than Katie Perry! (ugh) and the paladin felt his limbs and torso begin to instantly turn to stone. He felt his end so near and he reached out to use the Blessing of the Hidden Goddess and Hasted himself, which quickened his failing form and staved off his doom. The fight was close, but only the paladin was close to death for the entire fight. When they rested in the camp they all began to brainstorm a way to survive in this dangerous environment. The dwarf experimented with soaking a cloth in water and wrapping it around her face, and the other party members saw this and copied it. The medusa lair was defensible; it had a passage that was only five feet wide in the start and that would keep larger monsters out, but it would not keep everything out, they had already seen strange rock fish jumping from wall to wall like dolphins in water.
The coming Days would present many challenges, in this strange environment.
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