For the mental image:
Vorgo standing atop the ladder on the main level
Shattertooth nearest to the top
Lur beneath him
and Princess and Uek struggling in the coin pit
Vorgo waits for Shattertooth to pass, then sighs. Down the ladder, Vorgo!
He drops down, putting himself between his friends and harm.
Wek leaps for the largest pile of coins, blinking his toad eyes and milking out nasty slimy poison from his skin.
Wek then fwoomps back into lizardfolk form, clutching his stomach, hoping his gizzard stones can crush the wee mimic in his gut. The duckweed on his skin looks a little slimy still, and the fish swimming beneath his red scales dash agitatedly about.
Wek looks about in the pit for the vials, anything, that he can use against the darn coins. He hopes the poison kills or slows down a bunch of them...
...Wek is clearly not doing well, too busy slapping at his stomach and gasping to find anything useful in the pit of monetary doom.
"Ouch! Back, beastly things! Curse the gods for giving me such a juicy, delicious body!" Princess gets back to her feet and tries to bully her way to the ladder again.
Wek decides to smash as many mimics as he can, pounding them beneath the haft of his spear.
"Take that, you little biters!" he growls.
I can't do much against these things!, they're resistant to heat! Shattertooth yells down the hole.
Instead of heading back down, Shattertooth casts a spell of Blessing on Vorgo
The scene in the money pit devolves into chaos.
Princess and Vorgo meet going opposite directions on the ladder, and Princess swings around to the other side to let the reptilian through. The ladder creaks dangerously when her weight applies momentum to it, though...
Uek, you're able to grab hold of some vials. The skeleton's hand is close by to the clasp, but it appears that the owner succumbed to coin bites before they could open it and draw out a potion.
Feeling the living coin still wriggling around inside you makes you sick, and you vomit unexpectedly while trying to throw your spear around, but the urgency of the situation brings you back to your feet and you force yourself to fight on. Take the Sickened debility, a -1 ongoing to Constitution checks.
You would have had to roll a defy danger check to even get at the vials, but Vorgo stands in defense of you, hissing in defiance as he slaps living coins out of the air with his shield. With Shattertooth's magics enveloping him, the reptilian drives the mimics away from you for a moment, giving you a moment's breathing room.
You pull out the vials from the satchel they're in. One is blue, one is red, and one is yellow. They're all the same size. What do you do?
Princess, I'll allow you to recognize one of them at a distance because of your earlier Spout Lore roll. You'd know them all, but you're trying to escape the pit at the moment.
Lur stis at the top of the ladder nursing his bleeding hand.
You continue to bleed, Lur. You don't take additional HP damage yet, but you need medical attention for sure.
Princess, the red potion is a potion of ooze form. You become a gelatinous cube for 1d10+1 minutes. Princess conveys this knowledge to everyone. (I assume).
"That potion will turn you into an ooze, love! Not sure if it's useful right now!" Princess calls down. She clambers up the ladder once Vorgo passes.
Oozes are terrifying creatures. Fortunately, they're relatively easy to avoid in most circumstances, which is the option that every person should pick if possible. Normal means don't harm an ooze. Smash it, and your weapon simply gets sucked inside. Slice it in two, and it'll either reform together or become two new oozes, depending on the species.
Princess, you can climb up the ladder to the main floor where Lur is, but the ladder is starting to show the early signs of giving out...it creaks dangerously when you push down with your huge ogress foot on each rung. Fortunately, it bears you to the main floor again, out of the coins' reach.
Inside, Vorgo is a whirling dervish of defense. With his weapon and shield, and his large, muscular tail, he's defended in front and behind from the little jumping mini-Mimics. His Defend move has bought those of you in the coin pit some breathing room, forcing the false coins to back off for the moment. You hear them growling in the money pits, and the sound of coins clinking against each other as they roll around, circling you like a pack of hungry wolves.
What do you do?
Uek, I bought us some time but we need to go now, get up that ladder!
Vorgo waits until Uek gets up the ladder, then follows behind quickly.
Once we're both safely above:
Uek, drink the potion! I have a terrible idea! Once Uek drinks it, Vorgo slices the ooze in half, as close to the killer coin as possible, so that when Uek reforms, the coin will no longer be inside him.
Vorgo looks at Lur with a mix of disappointment and exasperation. Managed to spring a leak, did we? I'll see what I can do.
Vorgo wraps his scaly claws around Lur's mangled hand. Blessed mother, please bestow me with your healing spit, so that I may end this wretched creature's ghastly suffering.
He spits a greenish fluid all over Lur's wound.
[dice=lay on "hands"]2d6+1[/dice]
Wek coughs weakly and tips the potion to his mouth, then pauses. "Wait, Vorgo...I might be able to just dissolve the damn thing...everyone clear out of the way. Also, let's see if I can still be telepathic while in ooze form. Hell of a time for an experiment."
He then gets further away from the party and drinks down the potion.
While Vorgo goes to heal Lur atop the ladder above, Uek downs the mysterious potion that he took off a skeleton's vial belt. Perhaps not surprisingly, it doesn't taste great, and in Uek's sickened condition it's difficult to choke down. However, the ever-contracting ring of coins around him growling for his blood hasten his efforts, and he swallows it all.
The transformation is immediate, and very different from when you transform using your druidic shapeshifting. That feels as natural to you as putting on a new coat. This is abominable by comparison. You fall to your knees on the coin piles, and you start to hurl, but the vomit won't come. By the time your roiling stomach tries to eject its contents, you don't have an esophagus anymore. You don't have arms, so you fall on your face onto the coins. Your eyes go black and your hearing reduces itself to a dull roar.
Then the transformation continues, pulling you into your full form as a Gelatinous Cube. Far from ejecting the coins you already had inside you, soon more and more of the coins are flowing into your oozey body, increasing your mass. The mimics are among the coins being absorbed, and the toxicity of your acid blood destroys them utterly, leaving only the real coins behind.
In mere moments, Uek fills almost the entire bottom level of the money pit, flowing back and forth in a way that makes onlookers nauseous if they look at it for too long. Coins, dead mimic-coins, and the two skeletons' belongings are among the lost items preserved inside Uek's body.
Shattertooth makes a sick face. That's disgusting... but ever so useful!. Uhh, by the flame. He staggers off to compose himself as the druid/ooze finishes up.
So...can I start cutting him up into little pieces yet? I don't think we want him to reform with all those coins inside him.
The acid and poison in the Ooze probably killed the coins, but if you want to go do some Ooze surgery, be my guest.
Killed the mimics, sure...but what of the other coins now inside him?
Princess stares in wonder at the shuddering mass of ooze that Uek has become. "I don't know... There's something oddly alluring about him..." She shifts to get a better view, her own flesh shuddering about with the movement.
"It would probably be best to cut the coins out before he reforms."
Newly healed, Lur smiles widely, possibly in thanks or possibly in excitement, as he hefts his large sword shoulder-side again and begins climbing down the ladder.
Back down the ladder Vorg...oh, you're going Lur? Great. Enjoy.
Vorgo sits down to take a much needed rest.
Shattertooth prepares himself to witness the most brutal surgery ever performed.
Lur descends the ladder and finds himself nearly pressed in at all sides by how huge Uek's ooze body has become. The druid retains enough presence of mind to avoid attempting to absorb the barbarian entirely, but the instinct to absorb and devour is present in the druid's mind. This is entirely unlike one of his shapeshifts, and only his druidic discipline is keeping him from being subsumed by Gelatinous Cube instincts.
Near you, Lur, are the two skeletons that still have the vial belt near them. You also see a number of coins, and a few dead mimics, but they're all floating rather chaotically and slowly inside the cloying ooze.
Uek, you're technically able to attempt thought-speak, but it's difficult to form words. Give me a Defy Danger Wisdom roll if you want to communicate to the others while shapeshifted via alchemy. The danger you're defying is that you sound unintelligible to the others when they hear you speak in their minds.
Lur begins attempting to chop a path through the now amorphous Uek to the skeletons and coins.
It's only a hack and slash roll if Uek is trying to avoid your blade. That's up to him, but unless he protests, you can cut free anything that is within your blade's length inside the ooze and add it to your inventory. It doesn't harm Uek, per se, but it does divide up his consciousness somewhat into two bodies, which is a very weird sensation for anyone that has never experienced it before.
The ooze pressing on all sides of the room continues to gain mass as more of the coins are absorbed into it. The ladder makes a loud creaking, straining sound.
BlllbblbllllIIiiii III cannn't realllly get upppp the laddderrrr gblblblbbbb... says the cube.
ssssa;askjbss . sss. Save. Saaaaave some rope because I think mas;lkd mmm gonna EAT the ladderrrrrr...
Uek wiggles curiously as he is bisected. If a cube could compose itself while being cut, that's what it does.
Lur is very sensaaation
this a strange...
Two separate thought bubbles smash into each other.
Remember Lur is edible
that not foodeddd!
And then two more, echoing and pingponging 'wider' in everyone's head.
With a joyous smile Lur gathers any other visible valuables hacking and slashing the whole way.
Vorgo watches with bemusement. He turns to Shattertooth. In retrospect, I bet I could have just used my healing spit to cure his ailment. That...that probably would have been better.
He shrugs. We'll just call this a learning opportunity. Next time, we won't use the ooze potion.
Shattertooth nods, but can't stop staring. It was like a wagon wreck; you just can't look away!
In your recklessness, Lur, you cut forward a little too deep into the gelatinous ooze's body. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, you stand on a pile of coins between two heaving walls of Uek's massive body, and the druid is clearly having trouble keeping all of his separate consciousnesses straight. The ooze walls begin to collapse in on you, threatening to absorb you and expose your skin to the digestive acids that are inside the Cube's body. Roll Defy Danger or be immersed in goo!
Lur. Look out for that goo. It’s acid.
Vorgo eats from a sack of dried crickets, his feet dangling off the edge of the pit. He offers one to Shattertooth. They’re spicy.
Shattertooth crunches down beside Vorgo and takes the bug without really looking. His eyes are glued to the scene before him. The pops it into his mouth and, after a couple seconds, his head snaps toward Vorgo. Mmmm. That's amazing. How did you pull that off?
Controlling your disparate bodies in this way is an act of will, so I'd say give it a Wisdom roll. I could definitely see the argument for it being a Constitution check as well, but since you aren't in your native form, let's go with Wisdom.
The potion temporarily suppresses your shapeshifting powers. Princess would've warned you, but it isn't common knowledge even to wizard lore, since most wizards can't naturally shapeshift.
Uek completely loses control of his ooze form. The division of his personalities into so many equally-vying entities is too much for anyone of singleton mind to comprehend. Uek surrenders to Gelatinous Cube instincts for the remainder of the potion's duration. Attack Lur with all your might, he is the nearest source of food!
For the time being, though, Lur is able to evade the collapsing goo. He backflips through the money pit and lands at the base of the ladder, immediately seeking higher ground as the gelatinous cube discorporates and begins absorbing everything in the room back into itself for one huge slam attack.
One of the two rails that is holding the ladder up to the main level snaps in two, causing the ladder to swing crazily around with Lur riding it and clinging on for dear life. What happens next?
Vorgo, who was already sitting on the edge of the pit, casually loops his foot around the ladder to help hold it steady. He takes another bite of cricket. Lur. The ladder is falling apart. Be careful.
There's actually a large amount of pulling on the broken ladder from below, between Lur's weight and the heaving ooze slamming against it, but your successful Defend roll just means you spend 1 of your Hold keeping it steady for him. Well done. Very blase as well, points for that. Imaginary points.
Shattertooth looks down and decides to give Lur some cover He spits what's left of the cricket from between his teeth out behind Lur and snaps his fingers. The cricket remnants explode like fire crackers!
But it's a bit less exciting than he was hoping for.
Continuing his play promoting his physical perfection, Lur attempts one more dangerous death defying deed up the ladder.
The ooze has a small resistance to the flames, but the sudden explosion of heat and light is enough to give it pause. For a moment, the area around the explosion clears, revealing the stone floor beneath. There are no coins left on the floor - they're all in one of Uek's bodies. Hopefully, he can excrete them before he reverts back to druid form...
Ooze-Wek lunges at Lur with many grasping filaments and blobs and such--some of them connect to the wily barbarian.