Eustoma sends her Flame Strike Spell where the demon is standing.
The demon avoids the worst of the flame strike, and while it resists most of the fire, the holy energy still wounds it. Its hide proves too tough for Sia to penetrate with her fangs.
Rogar's blasts both bounce off the gug's thick hide, not harming it at all!
Karla's wall of force separates the demon and Sia, keeping the fiend contained!
The swirling colors obscure the gug further as it shifts its focus from Rogar to Wulfram. It bites the shaman and rips into him with its claws, rending his flesh!
Badly wounded, Wulfram called upon the Battle Spirits to help him slay the aberration; he stabbed at the gug and backed up.
Rogar hesitates for just a moment, his stony chest offering just a bit more resistance to breathing than it normally would. He doesn't allow it to last long, though, and even with- especially with his eyes closed, he could feel where the gug was, how it lashed out at a figure he presumed was Wulfram above him, and allowed iron filings to swirl around him, coalescing into a spear, which he snapped his arm around to send shooting towards the sorcerer.
His second blast, meant as a follow-up, though goes wide, slamming into the back wall of the cave, and Rogar mentally cursed with how inaccurate his wound seemed to be making him.
Eustoma looks at Wulfram ten feet above her. "Come closer and I can heal you." She then turns and sends another Flame Strike at the Gug.
Sia stays put waiting to see what happens with the demon.
The demon briefly disappears, then reappears on the near side of the wall of force, roaring in rage!
Wulfram and Nik'o both fail to hurt the gug, but Rogar finally connects with a powerful blast that eviscerates the monster. A shower of gore stains the far wall as the creature falls! The dwarf follows up with a quick blast at the demon, but it deflects the blow with its arms.
Eustoma calls down a flame strike on the demon, who just barely manages to avoid it. Sia bites down on the fiend, though, wounding it and dragging to the ground, where Karla peppers it with magic missiles.
The demon snarls and climbs to its feet before trying to gore Sia, but the wolf's armor keeps her safe from harm!
Karla's magic missiles batter the demon, and Nik'o's blessed claws finish the task of ripping it to shreds. It falls to the ground and lies still!
Wulfram landed and healed the party. "That was nasty!"
As he prepared to move forward, he said, "According to the last spirit, there's a trap up ahead."
"That was horrible. I'm assuming anything down here that isn't us is an enemy of some kind. Even the spirits." Eustoma shudders as she looks at the Gug. "I don't like it here. I want to be out in the sun and feel the wind."
Rogar takes a moment to catch his breath as his blasts finally connect, and nods thanks to Wulfram as his magic knits his body back together, "Aye. Ah'll go check it out."
he doesn't use the ring, instead returning underground and looking for anything that looks suspicious.
Before Rogar burrowed into the stones again, Wulfram healed him with his healing wand.
Eustoma reaches out and touches Rogar on the back of the hand. She concentrates hard. "I haven't done this often."
She casts Cure Moderate Wounds.
Jagged, red-inked script covers the walls of this stone mausoleum. The snaking cavern enters through crumbled walls to the south, while a passage leads out to the west. A small, strangely organic-looking pillar stands to the north, supporting a gruesome stack of finely preserved human faces.
The script on the walls is written in Undercommon and consists mostly of translation notes to help translate Dwarven texts, as well as shorthand notes on the demon-summoning ritual the gug used. Even a cursory inspection reveals that the small pillar in the vault is actually one of the missing petrified legs of the human you previously encountered.
The west passage leads into a wide hallway that stretches on for over a hundred feet. Debris from collapsed walls blocks the route south, while to the north the hallway turns to the northwest before abruptly ending in a similar collapse. Two short corridors exit to the east, while a third exits to the northeast.
Rogar doesn't notice any traps, but if there is one that is magical in nature, he wouldn't be able to detect it.
Rogar returns, "Ah don't think there's any traps, leas' not mechanical ones. Ah'll see if ah trigger one." he tells the others, then walks through the corridor, saying "Torag grants me passage." in Dwarven as he does so.
While Rogar was away scouting, Wulfram healed himself three times with his wand. When the dwarf returned and walked forward, he used the item a final time, and then dropped the now spent wand.
When Rogar is halfway down the passage, the painted axes and urgroshes of the frescoes suddenly animate into a deadly hail of steel blades! They slice and dice the kineticist before retreating back into the wall.
Wulfram drew out a fresh wand and healed himself again. "It seems that last spirit lied or was mistaken! Would you care for some more healing, Rogar?"
Rogar nods, "Aye. I' just passed straight through my skin, even wi' a dodge. Do ye have any idea how ta get around it?"
Wulfram considered the matter and replied, "I could try to dispel the magic of the trap. No guarantee that would be successful, however." He moved up to a spot 10 ft before the trap went off, and scanned for magic auras.
Wulfram detects the trap's moderate aura of evocation magic.
"Karla, I suppose you would be able to teleport us past the trap, could you not?", Wulfram asked the sorceress.
He healed himself one more time with his wand.
Be careful. I wish I had a spell that could help." Eustoma down the hallway with a concerned look on her face.
Wulfram thought about the problem for a minute. He proposed, "How about you just take Nik'o and Sia across, and Eustoma and I use the ring that allows us to bypass traps. Eustoma could go first, and then Rogar could bring the ring back to me by moving through the rock."
That sounds like a good plan. Will that work with your magic Karla?
Karla uses her magic to teleport the group to the far side of the trap. As you continue along, you see a large door set in the east wall. A Dwarven-script plaque above the entry identifies this place as "The Aurum Store." The corridor continues on past the door.
Wulfram used his Pearl of Power to recall his Bless spell, and approached the door, searching for traps as he went.
Wulfram doesn't find any traps. Golden brackets line the walls of this chamber, lit by ickering ames from a ceiling-mounted brazier. Alongside the brackets are gold and silver alcoves, each resembling storage areas roughly two feet wide. Blocky dwarven script lines the tops of each alcove. Two large gold-painted statues of dwarves stand in the eastern corners of the room.
"No-one in here; let's leave this 'till later!", Wulfram reported. He continued on, flying to the next rockfall, and looking into the passageway that led off to the side.
A plaque at the entry hall to this vault reads, "The Calm Menagerie" in Dwarven. Chunks of metal and stone cover much of the floor here, along
with piled bones and streaks of blackened blood. To the north, the wall abruptly ends in a jagged collapse, opening to a wider cavern beyond.
Two gugs lurk here, but these look different than the others. Their furry bodies are striped with shades of rust and ochre, and their beady eyes blaze with a fiery red light! They are fiendish creatures!
Those are horrible. Sia Go!" she sends the wolf into the battle, and then fires her bow at the creature.
Sia moves forward, and bites.
Rogar digs his feet into the ground, and fashions a blade along his arm, and sends it shooting at the closer of the gugs, "A' leas' everything dies ta cold hard iron," he remarks, "Some things don' change."
It's barely landed, though, by the time Rogar already has his next attack ready and flying through the air.
Wulfram flew forward, above and behind Sia, and stabbed at the Gug she was attacking.
Wulfram, Sia, Eustoma, and Nik'o all pile on to one of the gugs, stabbing, biting, and clawing it until it falls to the ground. Rogar dispatches the second one with a single enormous blast of metal!
From around the corner comes a mighty bellow, and the ground shudders as an enormous worm emerges! It is covered with dark purple plates of chitinous armor mottled with angry spots of red. Its giant, tooth-filled mouth is the size of an ox!
"Wha' is tha' thing?" Rogar exclaims, but still does what he does best, not really having any other way to deal with it.
Both of Rogar's blasts bounce harmlessly off the monstrous worm's armored body!
"What is that thing?
She lets loose with a barrage of arrows.
Sia bounds up and tries to bite the creature.
"Never seen anything like it!", Wulfram declared. He flew around behind Sia and thrust his spear at the giant worm.